In Black America; National Association Of Black Journalists Dallas Fort-Worth/ABC with Louis Farrakhan, Part 2

This helps you recover. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. All of you that live in black communities, you see the Muslims, you see a clean looking group who are reforming their lives, women who were not so nice, striving to be better. Convicts coming up out of prison to become socially responsible, building institutions, schools, farms.

What could we do with a billion dollars? Should our government permit us to have it? Our history says we are not revolutionaries in the sense of guns. We are not terrorists except that you are afraid of the truth. Minister Lewis Farcon, Nation of Islam Leader. Last August, the National Association of Black Journalists held his 21st Annual Convention in Jobs Fair in Nashville, Tennessee. More than 1800 broadcasts and print journalists, along with students, met for five days to discuss relevant issues, express concerns, share ideas and help chart the course for the future of the 4th and 5th estates and the community at large. The Convention in Nashville had an historic meaning, particularly for African Americans.

Nashville played an important role in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, with students from Fist University, Tennessee State University, and Meheri Medical College, being among those who stayed cityans at downtown lunch counters. Many of those students participated in the Freedom Rides, the lead to bus turnermones throughout the South, being integrated. I'm John L. Hanson Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, the National Association of Black Journalists 21st Annual Convention, was ministered Lewis Farcon Part 2 in Black America. We are not anti-social, nor are we anti-American. A billion dollars should it be given. We want to be able to receive it. Not for me, you can tell that I address well, I look well, I live in a nice home, I don't need it for me.

But we could use that money to put some hope in a people who are quickly losing hope. At this year's opening session, the speaker was a man credited with turning his vision of a million-man march into a reality, with more than one million black men responded to his call to converge on Washington, D.C. last October 16th for a day of atonement. Minister Lewis Farcon, the nation of Islam, leader, main and historic first appearance before the National Membership of the National Association of Black Journalists. The organization received more than it had expected. Members were body searched before they were allowed to enter the hall. Signing the founding father's vision of a free press, the minister told the audience that they will never be free, as long as they think their jobs are more important than telling the truth. Also, he had managed to black journalists there who work in mainstream media, not to follow the trap of trying to please the master at the expense of hiding the truth.

He went on to criticize black media professionals, who debated whether to separate the message of the media man march from the messenger. On this week's program, we conclude Minister Farcon's remark, and here in onstage interview with Chicago's WMAQ TV News anchor, Warner Sanders. Our president has just signed welfare reform. I noticed he had little black children around him when he signed the little minimum wage bill. This is photo op. You all know what that is, but you can't say it. This is a deceit. But you can't call it. What you really know it is, he is a man that signed welfare reform. Yes, welfare needs to be reformed, but to say, cruelly, you're going to take people off of welfare. They have to get a job, but you're not creating jobs in the inner cities. Those jobs are fleeing.

You're not retraining the people or training them to fit into this new economy. So you're just abandoning people, huh? See, I'm a child of welfare. Many of you, your mothers receive welfare. If it were not for welfare, maybe I wouldn't be who and what I am. I had a good mother. And when I finished high school, my mother took the check that she had just received and took it back to the welfare office and said, thank you for giving my two sons through high school. I will take it from here. The person on welfare is not a welfare chief. You want welfare reform? I want welfare reform, but to sign a bill and then tell us when I get reelected, I can fix this.

Now, brothers and sisters, somebody's playing some heavy games. Affirmative action cut back. Jobs leaving the cities. Homeless people who fought blood died for the country, living under bridges and in cardboard boxes, while America gives billions elsewhere. American people are dying. And I say this. If Kadafi wants to give a gift unrestricted, free. No interest in it. Just give it. And let me use it with your help. I want to see will the government turn us down in the face of the need of our people. And in the face of the brilliance in our black community, that could be summoned to plan and leverage that billion into 10 billion and then use it to rebuild our wasted communities.

What about television? Why don't we have television stations and a network that speaks to our needs? What about hospitals, clinics? We are far behind. And you know what? You are always there. But you, when you saw Du Bois and they took his passport and they wanted him to register as a foreign agent. Do you remember an agent of some foreign power because he had friendship outside of America and white folk didn't want us to have no friend and didn't want us to be friends of each other. That's what happened to W.B. Du Bois. That's what happened to Marcus Gov. That's what happened to Martin Luther King. That's what happened to Malcolm X. And let me tell you something.

Paul Robes called the list whenever we had international connections. We were in trouble with our own government. But I got international connections. I don't care who don't know it. That trip that I made was the greatest trip ever made by any black man in the history of America. But white folk will not tell the story. But media, I got all the film. And we will release it so you could see how your brothers and sisters all over the world handled me because of the million man march and my work in America. They have never treated no black man. Like I was treated and white folk knew it. But they didn't tell you. And if they did tell you. And acted like they liked it. Maybe we would act like we like it.

But we're always looking over our shoulder to see if the boss like what we go see. Now hope that God will give me courage and strength to keep on pushing. Until everybody is free to speak and wrecked. What is in your heart? What is in your head? And what you know and what you see is truth. If it's against me, write it. But if you know some truth on a deceitful door or deceitful clit. Call him on it. Because as long as you let him think, he can do everything to you and you're going to be alright. And it all he got to do is go to Tennessee and put some some applied or some water up and look like he painted a house.

I'm going to burn down and then let little children die from poverty. You don't say nothing. And may God help you. If he take me from you, he will give you what you deserve. So how you been? Full of the spirit. Alright. Thank you. I guess everybody needs a spanking once in a while. Honest of God, brother minister, if I hadn't been searched at the front door, I would have taken that knife I brought in here and cut my wrist. Don't do that. It wasn't that bad. It is a pleasure to be with you again. I've just jotted down a couple of little no-chairs terms of what you said and some of the things that I'd like to talk about with you.

The issue of the Million Man March has been on the minds and lips of some of our scared boys and girls out there. And we have in our limited way did our very best to place that on the front pages of our newspapers and in our television stations. And I'm sure that you have realized that. What has been the tangible evidence that you have seen from the Million Man March in terms of the brothers and sisters out there in our communities? As you know, fellow Warner, we have never seen black men demonstrate love for each other as was witnessed at the Million Man March. And if you believe that God is love and love was certainly present, that love had a transforming effect on the hearts and minds of many of those men who were present and on those who watched by television.

Since that time, I'm very happy to announce that there were 25,000 black children needing adoption. As of now, from what I have heard from the Reverend Dr. Benjamin Chavis, a little over 14,000 applications have been filed for adopting those children. As of today, several thousand inmates in prisons across this nation have been adopted. The crime rate and the murder rate in particular in many of the cities across this nation has indeed gone down since the Million Man March.

And again, black men went home to their wives and asked for forgiveness. Black men went home to their families that they had abandoned and asked for forgiveness. The transformative effect is still being felt, even though you did put it on the front pages, because you really had no choice. Because it was news, big news. But you messed up the news by getting involved in a stupid argument. Should we accept a message or a messenger? Will and Lynch was busy. Would you accept the apple and condemn the tree?

Full? The tree could pull the apple. Well, we wish it could have come through somebody else. I listened. But journalists, you were inspired, you know you were. And you did speak. But then we had that put the other side on, as we always do in television. And in the news, well, yeah, it was just a love fast and nothing happened. Just a day and it's gone. But I'm happy to tell you, tens of thousands of black men, women and young people have been registered to vote. 200,000 applications for registration to vote were taken up at the mall itself. And every Muslim now is a deputy registrar, male and female.

And as we knock on doors to sell the final call, we're asking, are you registered? This is going on throughout the country. Over 300 local organizing committees have reported to Dr. Chabis and from him to myself that hundreds of thousands of our people are being registered. And our goal is several million by the time November 5th, I think it is. We're all around. So that is a lot of achievement if indeed it can be traced back to the million man march. I like to deal with the issue of the vote. Voting for what? There are two parties. There is a third party with Ross Perot. But there are basically two parties that we are dealing with here in America, the Republicans and the Democrats. Where are black people to go? What are you talking about in terms of voting? So we are voting for what? Are we voting for Bill Clinton? Who you certainly criticize, Appling?

See, it's time out for whose white man is better. That's my point. And none of them doing too good. So where do we vote? The point is that the Democratic party is filled with black people who are being disrespected. The leveraging of our voting strength to extract from that which we have given our blood to, not an individual, but we can decide who will be president. And this is a very, very important election. But you know something, Brother Warner? I had a talk with George Magazine maybe about a month ago. John Kennedy's publication? Yes, John Kennedy, Jr., himself. And he made a statement. He says, well, why should we consider?

The black Democrats, when they don't give a lot of money, they have very little influence. I said, oh, Mr. Kennedy, I said, that's the reason your party and your nation is going to hell. You see, if I may be so bold, according to those who know how many people are registered to vote, qualified to vote, in the last presidential election, 35% to 40% of those qualified to vote even bothered. So if 60%, listen to me carefully, of those eligible to vote did not exercise that most precious right. Then that 60% has been alienated from the process and Bill Clinton got a little overhead.

So if he got 25% about a 40%, he don't speak for the American people. Then who the... See? So I'm out here now getting involved. And we hope to have a political convention in St. Louis, the 27th through the 29th of September. It's called the Convention of the Oppressed. You know that will orchestrate it, sure that we saw a last week. It was so magnificent, so scripted.

You didn't say that, did you? You didn't say that. If you don't take a village, it takes a fa... knocking an African proverb. The family is the village and the village is the family. Don't talk about it. Nobody picked up on that. You did good. Oh, thank you. Here's what I'm getting a good report on. Here's what I'm kind of getting at, brother minister. I don't know a lot about national politics. Certainly I'm not a student at area.

But I've been hanging around Chicago for 61 years. The City Council area is full of black people. They're the majority. Black people voted Mayor Dayley in year after year after year. But the projects grew and grew and grew. So it appears that the numbers themselves and the people who voted in large numbers to put these politicians in have reaped very little in terms of the benefit. So the question that I am sincerely asking you is that numbers don't necessarily mean change in the party. There was a time when we all, you and I, and Jim Bevel out there, and Ben Chavis talked about if we could just get a city council that had a majority of black people in it, we would change the city. Well, we got it. And the city has not changed. That's true. Does that make sense to you? Yes, it does. It really does, brother Warner. And that's a sad fact. And that's why we lost the mayoral seat in New York City and Chicago and Chicago.

And in other cities across this nation because black people wanted to vote in their own people. And that's natural and it's right. But we didn't know or we did not make our own people accountable. Or we didn't know how to make our councilman, our alderman accountable. And our people then began to lose the spirit of politics and voting because they saw they reaped very little from it. All of that is true, brother Warner, but I really believe I really believe is a new day dawning. Getting people registered to vote without education is giving candy to some baby that some slick politician can take.

But if we raise the level of consciousness of the electorate, then every vote becomes a tangible factor of power. And that's the missing ingredient. We've got the right to vote, but we have an exercise, the responsibility that comes with that right. There's a lot of education that has to go on. I'd like to bring the audience in on this conversation, but I have just one other bit of a conversation to talk to you a little bit about. You've been pretty tough on us and I guess indeed we do need certainly to be put in our place. I'd like to say it like that.

I just want to bring back this issue about Chicago. One of the very reasons that the daily administration holds such a stronghold is because mainly of black ministers. Now I am not about to sit up here and criticize black ministers, of course not. But when you go church after church in the city of Chicago, you find almost a kind of a locked step in the administration where congregations are urged each Sunday to find their way to the voting booth to pull the lever for the local democratic party. What are some of your thoughts on their transgressions? Slaves do as slaves think. I just talked about freedom. You put black people into office thinking you've got somebody black that was going to work for the interests of the community. Mistake. We got more black people in Birmingham. Well just left. You got a black mayor, black police chief, black fireman, black school board, black city council, majority, but the city is suffering. Why?

Because the scripture says, be ye not conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds. You can put black people in wherever you want, preachers, teachers, they all need renewal. And that's why we're not making progress because they're black people with the mind of their slave master. So they fit like this slave master. That's why nothing changes. Minister Lewis Farcon, the nation of Islam leader, speaking before the national membership of the national association of black journalists. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked the future in black America programs, write us. Also let us know what radio station you heard us over. The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA technical producer Cliff Hargrove. I'm John L Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. And please join us again next week.

Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. That's in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas 78712. From the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in black America. There is mass dissatisfaction among white people, among black and brown people, over there the quality of our leadership.