Trayvon Martin & the Call to True Black Unity
(Final Call, August 5, 2013) – The leaders of the Black community have been assessing their options in addressing the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin—a death that the American government deems justifiable homicide. Generally, Blacks perceive it as a grievous injustice; whites see it as “the good ol’ days.”
Our President stepped into the White House briefing room to offer much symbol but very little substance. Other leaders collectively called for legislation, protests, vigils, prayers, and boycotts. It is marvelous to see Blacks honoring the legacy of young Trayvon, standing up for America’s most denigrated and deplored sub-citizen—the American Black man. But the debate has subtly turned right back to the condition of the Black male, rather than the condition of the racist vigilantes and the laws that excuse their murderous behavior. The President himself spent his “impromptu” press statement reviewing the maladies of American Black maleness, and the white commentators used the Zimmerman verdict to show the Black male to be a clear and present menace to American society.
We should not let any of these commentators forget an episode of history that our enemies must suppress and that our leaders can no longer avoid. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan saw the militarization of the minds and hearts of white people many years ago and in the late 1980s he took to the highways and byways to remind us en masse about a plot and plan to “deal wisely” with the increasingly troublesome Black population (Exodus 1:10). He saw that our enemies had moved quickly to flood our neighborhoods with a new form of an incredibly addictive drug called crack. Their lawmakers heightened the penalties for the users, possessors, and dealers of the government drug and thus started their own million man march of Black men into prison.
Minister Farrakhan confronted the plot and the plotters and decisively deployed the mighty men of the Nation of Islam—the Fruit of Islam—to strike back at ground zero. In 1988, the Muslims in Washington DC marched unarmed into a veritable drug gang war at the Kenilworth Parkside and Mayfair Mansions housing projects and a remarkable thing happened. The Muslims became known as the “Dopebusters” and they closed open-air drug markets and brought peace and quiet to those neighborhoods. It was a condition that had never been seen in that area since those projects were built.
The residents were ecstatic. In the months after the Muslims’ arrival both the drugs and the drug wars vanished, city bus routes that had been rerouted away from the daily battles were reinstated. With the improved security, businesses began to open, afterschool activities for the neighborhood youth were initiated, educational and cultural programs were launched. The Sisters were then able to set up daycare and job-training centers. The blinding stadium lights that generated daylight 24 hours a day were removed, and grass began to grow in the center courtyard.
As the word spread of the tremendous success of the NOI, residents of government ghettoes around America started to request that the Dopebusters come into their neighborhoods. Mayfair Mansions went from an ugly, unsafe, open-air drug market in 1988 to being a handsomely restored, safe, vibrant community. Where police and government agencies had failed to find any effective way to curtail the intensifying pattern of drug trafficking and violence, Dopebusters had succeeded.
The officials in Washington were so shocked at this positive turnaround that the police chief, who had previously been sharply critical of the Muslim antidrug patrols, completely changed his mind and stated publicly that his department would work with the Nation of Islam.
Incredibly, not everyone was pleased with this highly successful BLACK SOLUTION to our Black self-destruction. Leaders of the Jewish community, who live in wealthy communities far away from the violence, actually went to Congress and demanded that it cut off the money for the Dopebuster security contracts. Their language is wicked and unforgivable: “Leader, Louis Farrakhan, is a racist and a hatemonger…who said he would grind Jews and break them into little bits…” A bolder lie has never been told. A more demonic set of words has never been printed. It was, in effect, the weapons-of-mass-destruction lie that “justified” their war against Black people. In short order, the Dopebuster contracts were ended.
But this was not an assault on just Minister Farrakhan or just the Dopebusters or just the Nation of Islam. No sir. This was a strike against Marc Morial and the Urban League, Benjamin Jealous and the NAACP, Jesse Jackson and the Rainbow Coalition, Al Sharpton and the National Action Network, John Conyers, Marcia Fudge, Elijah Cummings, and the Congressional Black Caucus, and against the high-profile Black men and women who speak on our people’s behalf like Tavis Smiley, Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, Julianne Malveaux, Melissa Harris-Perry, and even President Barack Obama. For it is they who must now try to grapple with a heightened, intensified, and spreading problem of Black dysfunction and violence, now fueled by massive unemployment, a failing economy, devastating hopelessness, and an aggressive return of white males to their racist and violent roots.
These Black leaders have never asked Why? Why should such an effective Black program have been destroyed? And what was the REAL motive for such an aggressively wicked Jewish action? Was a Jewish lie about The Minister a satisfactory reason to return our Black cities and Black youth back over to the drug merchants? Who are these people that have exercised this much control over our Black destiny and our Black progress?
We can only now speculate as to the progress we could have made had the Dopebusters been deployed in EVERY major city. How many of our youth would have been saved from the pull of drugs and violence? How many prisons would now be empty? How many Black businesses could have started up, grown, and thrived in PEACEFUL communities of self-respecting young men and women with hope and vision? And how many jobs and careers and revenue might those businesses have generated to solve our own economic woes? How many young families could have been repaired? This is the vision that Minister Farrakhan had for his people. Trayvon represents the thousands upon thousands that now watch as the Black leaders, yet again, wring their hands in confused public angst over which way to turn.
Look at your cities now. Have those destroyers of the Dopebusters aided you with solutions? Or have they from their dominant positions in banking, politics, and media only added to the distress of your people? Black people can now make a crucial and decisive move. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan stood before the world in February of this year and called for a Unity Meeting to strategically plan for the betterment of our people. He called the pastors, the business leaders, the politicians, the educators, the military men and women, the gang bangers, the entertainers and sports figures, and all in leadership positions to “come together to produce this renewal of our people’s minds and cleaning our people up from the moral condition that disallows an effective economic program to be established.”
If the Trayvon Martin tragedy can move our people to heed this historic call, then his life will have served a profound and divine purpose. The Minister closed his historic appeal reading from a letter written in 1966 by The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King:
We have reached a crucial crossroad in the life of our people here in America. Since all of us who love our people are walking towards one goal: freedom, justice and equality from the common enemy—let us realize that in unity there is strength. Let us come together in a meeting to discuss the future plans and programs needed to achieve these goals for our people. If we have any love and respect for each other, let us be intelligent about the matter and present to America and all the world a United Black Front.
Reverend King and several strong Black leaders boldly answered that call and met with The Honorable Elijah Muhammad. It is now 2013 and the Trayvon Martin tragedy proves that the issues we faced 50 years ago yet remain. It is time for us all to answer the call of Minister Farrakhan to find a true and lasting freedom, justice, and equality.