US: Tens of thousands of African-Americans gathered in Washington on Saturday to mark the 10th anniversary of the Million Man March and hear calls for urgent action to overcome poverty, injustice and deprivation in black communities.
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan told the crowd that Hurricane Katrina showed that poor people and blacks could not depend on the federal government for help. "For five days, the government did not act. Lives were lost. We charge America with criminal neglect," he said.
Mr Farrakhan said his Millions More movement was setting up a disaster relief fund and urged African-Americans to contribute $1 a week to it.
Saturday's demonstration was much smaller but more diverse than the Million Man March in 1995, with women and children present as well as men. In 1995, more than a million black men pledged to become more self-reliant and to work to improve the lot of their families and communities.
The plight of African-Americans has not improved in the past decade and homicide remains the leading cause of death for young black males, who are much more likely to be poor or in prison than their white counterparts.
Mr Farrakhan floated the idea of a new political party to represent the poor in America as he criticised Democrats as well as Republicans for letting down America's less fortunate.
"The Democrats have used us and abused us," he said. "They look at the black and the brown and the poor like this is a plantation and our Democratic leaders are like the house Negro on the plantation of Democratic policies."
The Rev Jesse Jackson urged African-Americans to channel their fury over Hurricane Katrina into changing their communities.
"Don't imitate the violence, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-Arabism, gay bashing. We need . . . millions more to build a multicultural coalition, we need not battle alone to fight poverty and greed and war," he said.
The march's organisers broke a promise to allow black gay activist Keith Boykin to address the demonstration. Instead, Cleo Manago, the founder of the Black Men's Xchange, an all-male organisation whose members do not identify as gay but rather as "same- gender loving", spoke to the rally.