Leadership
meeting convened as Millions
More Movement tour comes to Cleveland, Ohio
 |
| On the fourth
stop of the Millions More Movement tour in Ohio, Minister
Farrakhan speaks to Cleveland Black leaders.
Photo: Kenneth
Muhammad |
CLEVELAND (FinalCall.com - Stressing
the need to stand behind the "very visionary idea of expanding the
Million Man March into the Millions More Movement, over 200 local
leaders convened for a morning meeting at the Ritz Carlton Hotel
ballroom Aug. 22 to be advised by the Honorable Minister Louis
Farrakhan.
"The goal of the meeting is to
rally support from the Cleveland leadership behind the Millions More
Movement (MMM), so that Cleveland can stand tall at the Mall,"
explained George Fraser, co-founder of the Cleveland Leadership
Advisory Council and chairman of Frasernet, in his opening of the
program.
He outlined the need for support
of the MMM with moral, human capital and financial investments, as
the city aims to bring over 200 bus loads to Washington, D.C. on
Oct. 15.
"Through this endeavor, we look
forward to building an alliance," Minister Richard Muhammad, head of
Muhammad’s Mosque No., said to the leaders in a letter in the
meeting’s briefing packet, "that will move the direction of our
community to one of unity and strength."
Co-founder of the Ashe Cultural
Center Dr. Kwa David Whitaker introduced Minister Farrakhan,
admitting that he had difficulty thinking of the words to say for
such a privilege. He recounted his recent travel to Africa, visiting
the slave dungeons, where he said it becomes clear the journey of
horror and brutality that our people were forced to travel at the
hands of slave-masters.
"Something is horrible that we
don’t have this legacy," he said. "Our people have been in a
400-year coma. We are waking up only to realize that we now suffer
from mass amnesia. Some of us are waking up to what we used to be
and could be."
Referenced the adage that "People
never really fail at anything, they simply stop trying," he welcomed
the esteemed leader to the podium by saying, "Somebody is destined
to succeed because we can all see that he will never stop trying. He
is never going to stop trying to create a reality where everybody
can pariticipate in the dream and nobody will suffer because they
lack the basic necessities of life."
Minister Farrakhan began his
address with words of graciousness at being honored to stand before
powerful leaders in such a great city, yet pointed out that the
condition is worsening of the masses of our people despite an
increase in millionaires, college graduates, elected officials and
entrepreneurs.
"The masses have not been
empowered or improved," he observed, adding that our people are on a
death march of social deterioration. "The time has come for us to
recognize the need for unity of our agendas and organizations. The
knowledge to correct our condition is among us," he continued, "What
then is needed? The unity of our leaders and organizations, thinking
and planning, not for the few, but the whole of our people, that we
may lift our people from where we are to where God wants us to be.
That is the reason for the call for the Millions More Movement."
He recalled the evolution towards
the MMM, starting in 1986 with his vision experience that revealed
the president had met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a war,
which manifested shortly thereafter in the war against Libya
initially, and then the war against the Black community couched as a
"war on drugs" in the early 1990s.
"They were setting us up for
slaughter. Our youth was in peril," he said, comparing the
widespread distribution of drugs on the streets to capture profits
to purchase guns to fight the Communist rise in Nicarugau (a.k.a.
the Iran/Contra scandal) to Western development of the opium trade
in China in order to pillage the country of its silver to capture
profits to fight against the Boxer Rebellion that targeted foreign
governments dominating Asia.
He also reminded the leaders that,
after the fall of the Berlin Wall, CIA agents were reassigned from
countries into U.S. gangs; then guns and drugs flooded Black
community, the Crips and Bloods gangs formed, and subsequently
Hollywood began producting a series of movies that depicted the
Black community from the violent perspective of young gangbangers.
"What I was shown in a vision
continues," Minister Farrakhan said, noting his letter of warning to
President George Bush of the consequences of his desire to go to war
before the American leader publicly revealed his plans to invade
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Eliciting murmurs of acknowlegment
from the audience, the Minister asserted the need to ask what was
the status of Pres. Bush on Sept. 10 as a result of the Florida
voting fiasco and Ohio election controversy, and the
Republican-controlled Supreme Court that ushered him into office.
The country was divided, he
answered, as a result of the "bloodless coup." And then, the Sept.
11 tragedies occurred, which refashioned Pres. Bush’s image in the
media from public chants of "Hail to the Thief" to a hero.
However, the Muslim leader
debunked the false pretense of using the World Trade Center tragedy
to justify attacking Afganistan and raping the taxpayers’ treasury
to fund the occupation of Iraq, when he pointed out that the Taliban
had rejected the July offer of the U.S. government to open up
Afghanistan to allow the construction of an oil pipeline through the
Middle East.
"Whenever an unrighteous man
brings you news, look carefully into it," he advised, reciting a
verse from the Holy Qur’an to emphasize that the Taliban was moved
out of government in order to satisfy the desires of greedy leaders
eager to control oil in the Middle East.
He ended his hour-long address by
passionately imploring everyone to exercise their power to change
the world.
"It’s about getting our people
organized to maximize their power to produce change in the harshness
of their condition," he concluded. "We can influence public policy
as well as foreign policy, but we must be unified and organized."
Report provided by
Final Call News Managing Editor, Dora Muhammad
