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. 18, 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.”
