Sparks Fly Over Military Flyover at MLK March
Some opponents of the flyover are calling for a boycott of the march, while others plan to attend with bandanas over their mouths and black and yellow ribbons around their arms in a show of protest.
Two fighter jets from the 99th Flying Training Squadron at Randolph AFB will zoom over Pittman-Sullivan Park at noon at the end of the nearly three-mile march from Martin Luther King Drive to Iowa Street.
While some say the flyover will provide a patriotic flair to the march during a time of war, others say it will represent support for the war — something King would not approve of.
The Rev. Herman Price, chairman of the city's MLK Commission, said the flyover was meant to honor King, and he is dismayed by the divisiveness it has caused.
"It all depends on how you look at it," Price said Thursday. "They say the planes represent war and bombs and death, but at the same time those planes can also represent our freedom and peace."
But City Councilwoman Patti Radle, who objected to the flyover in a letter to the editor in Wednesday's Express-News, doesn't see it that way.
"War is a different system working for peace. Martin Luther King was not part of that system," she said.