"Fearless organizing for Justice Or Else!"
while immigrants benefited from the wealth of a country forged out of the destruction and oppression of Black bodies that never enjoyed freedom, the Minister said.
Then today Blacks are shot down almost daily and the federal government is too weak and corrupt to protect the lives of Black people, Min. Farrakhan said.
“How long are you are going to live under tyranny and continue to pass on the legacy of cowardice to your children? How long will you continue to suffer what we suffer and when somebody is bold enough to speak truth to power, you get frightened?” he asked. “What are you afraid of?”
“We must never let fleeting wealth and ever fleeting fame stop us from seeing the plantation. The same owners that came from Europe that owned the acres of land that they could not work but found it easy to own the ships that brought our fathers out of Africa. So slavery made America rich, slavery never made us rich.”
So-called education is training to keep Blacks in a “slave box” as Black neighborhoods don’t provide goods and services for themselves, are exploited and receive the worst products and services from those who provide goods and services, he said. The law is restricted and expanded as Whites use the criminal justice system to release and punish those as it wishes without regard for justice, he said.
Black America needs to wake up, said the Minister, vowing to sound the alarm to bring a slumbering people out of their dream as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., awoke from his dream. In the last year of his life, Dr. King spoke strongly about the failures of America, the reality of racial intransigence, economic boycotts and the criminality of White society, the Minister said. Dr. King’s life cannot be summed up in I Have A Dream in 1963 when in 1967, he talked about waking from a dream and seeing an American nightmare, Min. Farrakhan said.
Dr. King was a revolutionary thinker and the speeches of the last year of his life must be studied by those who come to Washington, D.C. on Oct. 10, as the civil rights leader spoke of boycotts, spreading economic pain and collective Black economic action, said Min. Farrakhan.
The Million Man March anniversary gathering is about justice and a demand on government for redress of grievances, so if you are afraid stay home, he said. “Leave me alone, if you don’t have it in your heart that Justice must come Or Else,” the Minister said as the audience exploded into applause.
“When you are seeking justice, you aren’t laughing and clowning. When you want justice you got to have a mind prepared for the ‘Or Else,’” he said.
“If we are denied what is rightfully due to us, then there has to be unified action that we take that will force the justice that we seek,” said the Minister. “This is no march, this is a gathering of those who seek justice.”
We can no longer be threatened by militarized police and when a people are willing to die for their freedom, they are worthy of freedom, he added.
As America tries to police the world, China and other nations are sending American officials back home saying clean up your human rights violations, the Minister said.
The Minister’s themes in Chicago reflected similar themes from messages delivered in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and in New York in early June that focused on the need for concerted economic action and withdrawal, as advocated by Dr. King, the power of Black unity and the opportunity to seek justice for Latinos, Native Americans and even poor Whites.
We need to boycott Xmas holiday spending as part of demands for addressing the crisis in Black America, the Minister declared. The crowd again applauded and shouted its approval.