03 Mar 2011 Project 21’s Mychal Massie Debates Al Sharpton in “Empty Chair Debate”

After numerous efforts to secure their participation went ignored, Project 21 chairman Mychal Massie went ahead with a long-planned debate against civil rights establishment leaders Al Sharpton, Marc Morial and Walter Fauntroy over allegations the trio has made against the tea party movement and race — without them.

Held at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on February 28, Massie — with the aid of moderator Richard Pollock, the Washington bureau chief of Pajamas Media — dealt with the absences by rebutting past statements made by the men that were reported in the media regarding conservatives, tea party members and race.

Particularly around the time of Glenn Beck’s 2010 rally at the Lincoln Memorial that coincidentally occurred on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the same venue, civil rights leaders took unnecessary umbrage with the symbolism and implied that anyone right-of-center was not allowed to use the site or aspire to interpret King’s lessons.

The Daily Caller’s report on the event can be found here.

In his first rebuttal to Al Sharpton, the president of the National Action Network, Mychal answers previous assertions made by Sharpton that King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is something mainly for black Americans.  Massie disagrees, calling King’s address “an American dream.”

In his second response to Sharpton’s anti-tea party radicalism, Massie denies that conservatives are trying to hijack King’s message but that the left — typified by people such as Sharpton — are actively working to co-opt King’s memory to advance their own political agenda.