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The Roundtable interviews Ms. Elner Clark, sister of Black Panther Party organizer Mark Clark, who, along with Chairman Fred Hampton, was assassinated by Chicago Police in the early morning of December 4, 1969. 

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From The Final Call Newspaper

Child Protective Services agencies are tearing Black families apart, advocates warn
By Michael Z. Muhammad, Contributing Writer
- September 14, 2021





Child protective and welfare service agencies are supposed to ensure the safety and security of children in loving and protective environments. However, for some Black family and child advocates and Black families these agencies are a wolf in sheep’s clothing and could more accurately be called “family policing services.”

Child Protective Services, the official name in many states, is the government agency that responds to reports of child neglect and abuse and is mandated to protect children, but their often reckless approach wreaks havoc on Black families daily. The story of former “American Idol” contestant Syesha Mercado and her partner Tyron Deener is a textbook case on the overreach and disturbing methods of some of these agencies, said the couple.

Manatee County Child Protective Services in Florida removed the couple’s son, Amen’Ra Sba, from their care on March 11 when he was just 13 months old, after the parents sought medical assistance for him.

Authorities allege Ms. Mercado failed to agree to have the child take a Vitamin B12 shot. The mother denies this. Their newborn daughter Ast was taken at gunpoint by Manatee County sheriff’s deputies from the couple’s car in August under the guise of a medical checkup, according to the parents. Authorities allege the parents did not inform them of her birth. Ms. Mercado captured the disturbing incident on video which garnered over three million views.

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Black parents often reach out to hospitals, physicians, and other agencies for help with their children. Suddenly the tables are turned, the parents are accused of child mistreatment or endangerment and children are taken away.


“It’s just completely false to think that White people are going to come in and save Black children that is part of that same ideology that we can go back to slavery as the origins of this idea that White people need to save Black children from their families. It’s been false, not only false but in a racist White supremacist ideology that paints Black parents and families and communities as if they’re defective and harmful,” said Dr. Dorothy Roberts, a University of Pennsylvania professor of law and sociology.

In the same manner that the murder of George Floyd brought the spotlight on racism in policing, the sad story of Ms. Mercado and Mr. Deener is shining a light on the gross inequalities of a national child welfare system steeped in racism and the ongoing destruction of the Black family as its outcome.

Targeting Black families

It’s difficult to get families victimized by the system to go on record about their ordeals out of fear of retaliation, given the vindictiveness of the system. April McBride, a Philadelphia resident, was willing to discuss her ongoing fight with the city’s child welfare agency. Ms. McBride said her descent into hell began when her eight year old daughter was disciplined for acting out in school. She received a spanking which left marks. The school reported the alleged abuse, and the child was removed from the school by the agency and placed in the foster care system immediately.

Dorothy Roberts on Twitter

“My daughter was kidnapped,” Ms. McBride declared.

This happened without the agency talking to her or discussing the situation, she said. The scenario is all too familiar.

Having the financial resources to hire a private attorney, Ms. McBride was able to have her daughter returned in a reasonable amount of time. However, she was indicted for child abuse, and her name placed on a state registry. Although she is still fighting this finding, she cannot work in many areas, which happens to thousands of people in the state.

According to the National Center for Juvenile Justice, Black people comprise about 13 percent of the total United States population and 25 percent of youth in foster care. In Philadelphia, Black people are 42 percent of the population and 65 percent of the youth in foster care. The Philadelphia Department of Human Services is legendary for its removal of Black children from their homes.

In an interview with The Final Call, the agency acknowledged problems but said it was working to solve them. “Since 2016, DHS priority is to right size the system. For child welfare, this means reducing the number of children in placement with DHS, expanding prevention services, and reunifying families as soon as it is safe to do so. This effort has resulted in a significant reduction in the number of families receiving DHS formal child welfare services,” an agency representative told The Final Call.

“We continue to work toward ensuring that families receive the services that best fit their needs, and that children and youth only come into DHS care when there is an imminent safety threat that prevents the child or youth from remaining safely in their own homes.”

Earlier this year, the “Children and Youth Services Review” found a correlation between child protective services investigations and race. It determined that Black families are subject to more significant intrusion and strident judgment at every contact stage, including disproportionate reports to Child Protective Services, subsequent investigations, and child removal.

Joyce McMillian, of Harlem-based JMacForFamilies

Over a decade ago, a study by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia found Black children more likely to be evaluated for abuse than White children with comparable injuries. It raised concerns some children are being subjected to unnecessary testing while other cases of abuse go undiagnosed. Black families and families with governmental insurance were more likely to come under scrutiny than White families and families with private insurance.

Black families have come to dread the horrible knock on the door, which can come at any hour, day or night with the announcement, “We have received a report that your child is a victim of abuse and neglect.”

The report can even come from anonymous reports.

What follows next is an intrusion like no other. Children are awakened and can be strip searched, asked to take off their clothes by total strangers looking for signs of physical abuse. Caseworkers can rifle through the home, turn on faucets and ask, “why there is no milk in the refrigerator?”

It manifests as a humiliating, punitive and overstepping system, particularly toward Black families. Child welfare advocates say it must change.

This terrible scene played out again recently in Los Angeles. According to news reports, Kayla Love and Khari Jones were thrilled about their daughter Fari Love Jones, born at home in June. The child came quickly, and paramedics were called. Fari was subsequently taken to LA County USC Medical Center.

The couple declined to let doctors draw the baby’s blood. The parents informed the hospital they would have the child’s medical care followed up by their personal physician. “We said no. We prefer our child to be seen by a private physician. I don’t want your services. Reserve the right to deny,” Ms. Love said. After returning home that evening, 10 to 15 police with guns drawn stormed their home with a child welfare social worker in tow, she said. Authorities claimed the parents left the hospital against medical advice, placing the newborn in danger.

“This is predatory. They are just going for people they feel can be a victim. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. We are not letting this slide,” Ms. Love said.

California state Sen. Sydney Kamlager angrily posted on Twitter: “A young Black couple just had a baby at home. LAPD showed up; guns were drawn on the father and his newborn baby!”

“They were criminalized for giving birth. I am sick of us not being seen as autonomous beings. SICK!!!” Sen. Kamlager wrote.

The hospital states it was merely following protocol. “When there are concerns about the health and welfare of a minor, our medical staff have obligations to report such matters to appropriate social welfare authorities so they can investigate the safety of the home environment,” a hospital statement said.

A history of tearing Black families apart

Child welfare and the Black family can be traced back to Reconstruction after the Civil War. “For a time, white Northern reformers became captivated by an idealized mission of civilizing ‘Freedom’s Children,’ the offspring of former slaves. In an echo of the Orphan Train concept, some Black children were sent north to live—and work for white families where they traveled hundreds of miles away from their families to fill the needs of northern employers for dishwashers and household servants,” noted the International Socialist Review.

A recent study in the American Journal of Public Health examined and tracked the rates of Child Protective Services involvement in the lives of half a million children born in 1999 in California.

“The number of Black children in the system continues to be staggering: Half of the Black children, as well as half of the Native American children, experienced a CPS investigation at some point during the first 18 years of their lives, compared to nearly a quarter of white children,” the report stated.

“One in eight Black children spent time in foster care—a rate three times as high as white children. Three percent of Black children experienced termination of parental rights, compared with 1 percent of white children.”

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam, in a message titled “Rebuilding the Family,” spoke on the intentional dismantling and targeted, systematic destruction of Black families.

“The great sin that has been committed against Black people, in particular, is the destruction of the Black male and the corruption of the Black female; the denial of our natural right to marriage and the raising of a family,” the Minister stated.

“The destruction of the Black family is a sin of huge proportion; therefore, the effort to rebuild this family must be aided by those who destroyed the family, and the responsibility of helping must be accepted by the generations that have benefited from the institutional slavery and the destruction of our families,” Min. Farrakhan continued.

Black family and child advocates are demanding agencies and systems be reformed, even reimagined. Advocates are advancing an agenda to transform the system’s approach to family safety, which they say is rooted in racist notions of non-White motherhood and plagued by institutional racism.

Joyce McMillian heads the Harlem-based group JMacForFamilies. In a detailed interview with The Final Call, Ms. McMillian reflected on the case of Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio. Ma’Khia, 16, called police to her foster home because she felt threatened by older adults who were at the home. A physical altercation ensued and Ma’Khia, who had a knife, was shot and killed by a responding police officer. Ms. McMillian said she advocates for Ma’Khia’s mother, who has three other children still in foster care.

“Child welfare in America is an extension of the 13th Amendment, which allows a person convicted of a crime to be forced to work. It’s the only way to have slaves in this country. They are the same system where one is for children, and one is for adults. Children in foster care are preconditioned, kind of like a prerequisite to incarceration because the outcome for the majority of the children is a prison,” she explained.

“One study shows 90 percent of children in foster care will become involved in the juvenile justice system. It’s a foster care to penitentiary pipeline. The parallels are remarkable. Both are stripped searched; both are separated from everyone they know and love. Both have oversight during visits. They both change homes and cells regularly and use pillowcases and garbage bags to transport their stuff. When they are returned home, there is oversight, and the violation of the slightest infraction will land them back in foster care or prison. I am here to tell you any system that portends to protect children should not look like a system that punishes adults,” Ms. McMillian pointed out.

A punitive system

“You should protect children by keeping them home. These children are not taken for reasons related to a crime. These kids have been taken for reasons related to an opinion. We know that the root cause of out-of-home placement is economic hardship. Simply examine where these agencies are located. The simple answer is the money spent on foster care could be better utilized to strengthen the home. Why remove a child because the lights are out or no winter coat? I tell you; it is all because of design,” said Ms. McMillian.

Pamela Muhammad is a Houston-based attorney. She has represented many mothers trapped in the child welfare system.

“You have a punitive organization, and they’re surveilling Black women to the extent that they call it ‘the new Jane Crow,’ where because of poverty, you see people targeted. They’re saying these mothers are abusive, but often at best, it may be neglect caused by poverty,” Atty. Muhammad told The Final Call.

“Once in the system, the parents are confronted with two problems. They are made to jump through hoops, having to take different classes. It’s a moneymaking machine,” Atty. Muhammad said. “The children are appointed White attorneys called guardian ad litems who allegedly represent the best interest of the child and find every reason under the sun not to return the child to their family. So you have three attorneys involved. The parent’s attorney who is almost always court appointed and overwhelmed, the child’s attorney and the attorney for the state in an adversarial system that is wholly dysfunctional and has no interest in bringing families together,” she explained.

“It’s just all punitive. If you have one child in the system, they want to find a way to place your other child. Every obstacle is placed in the way for relatives to assume care of the family member. Suppose the family member has a negative encounter with the agency in the long ago past? In that case, they are prohibited from caring for the relative child. If the parent has an abuse charge against them, they cannot find work in certain areas. This inability to find work is held against them and cited as another reason the child should not be returned,” said Atty. Muhammad.

Dorothy Roberts, who also authored “Torn Apart: How the Child Welfare System Destroys Black Families,” said the system needs to be “blown up.”

“Child welfare is an arm of the U.S. carceral state that aims to destroy the Black community,” she said. “It is intimately connected to police and the regulation of Black families and to breaking them apart. You cannot fix what is designed to oppress Black people. The harm it does to Black children is tremendous. We have to abolish the system, and it should be replaced with community-based ways of caring for families and keeping children safe,” she added.

“What is needed is radical transformative thinking where we abolish this brutal intrusion into Black families and create and build and strengthen the ways that Black people have always cared for children,” Dr. Roberts argued.

Many mothers who have been victimized by Child Protective Services have felt isolated due to many factors.

The African National Women’s Organization has stepped forward to fill this dark hole through their “#Arrest CPS campaign.”

Yejide Orunmila, president of the organization, told The Final Call something needed to happen to give voice to the many working class Black women who have felt the cold hand of CPS agencies around the country.

“Our campaign is meant to expose Child Protective Services as an agency that facilitates state-sponsored kidnapping of Black children, in particular,” she said. The campaign organizes parents who have been impacted or victimized by CPS to advocate on their own behalf, she explained.

Based in Maryland, ANWO organizes nationally around the CPS issue and is one of the few to advocate for victims of the system.

Ms. Orunmila shared how last month the group organized a “National Day of Action” with protests in St. Petersburg, Fla.; Sanford, Fla.; Wilmington, Del.; Washington, D.C.; Portland; Philadelphia; San Diego; Pittsburgh and St. Louis “exposing the parasitic nature of the foster care system and the devastating role it plays in the lives of Black families.”

Ms. Orunmila noted that her organization has been advocating for parents and families since 2017, when several women in Philadelphia who didn’t have anybody to help them in their desperate attempt to have their children returned came to their attention.

“The system is disgusting, and it requires more than us. It requires a whole movement. That’s going to bring it to task.

“In attacking these issues, ANWO works with building action committees, advocating for adequate legal representation and community support. The organization also publishes a pamphlet on guidelines to follow if investigated by CPS entitled ‘Know Your Rights,’ ” Ms. Orunmila said.

For more information on ANWO visit anwouhuru.org. Other resources include the Philadelphia-based Families Are Important to Heal (F.A.I.T.H.). This group can be found on Facebook under Faith Advocacy (Movement). Or visit officialbiggadre.hearnow.com.

 

From The Final Call Newspaper

Lies, loss, death and destruction: Twenty years of post-9/11 misery

By The Final Call
- September 7, 2021

In this Sept. 11, 2001 fi le photo, the twin towers of the World Trade Center burn after hijacked planes crashed into them in New York. As the post-Sept. 11 decade ends, some foreign families of the victims are eager to move past the tragedy. But though the pain transcended borders, foreign families have battled to cope with their loss from afar. AP Photo/Diane Bondareff


by Naba’a Muhammad and Brian E. Muhammad

More than 500 people poured into the streets in the Surkh Rod district of Nangahar province to protest the raid by international forces that they claim killed at least nine civilians. AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

U.S. service members assigned to Joint Task Force-Crisis Response, are pallbearers on Aug. 27, for the service members killed in action during operations at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, Afghanistan, as transfer cases are placed onto a U.S. Air Force C17A Globemaster III for the fl ght back to the United States. 1st Lt. Mark Andries/U.S. Marine Corps via AP

“And Allah’s is the kingdom of the heavens and the earth. And on the day when the Hour comes to pass, on that day will the followers of falsehood perish. And thou wilt see every nation kneeling down. Every nation will be called to its record. This day you are requited for what you did.”

—Holy Qur’an 45:27.28

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Twenty years have passed since jumbo jets flew into New York City’s World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. In horror, the world watched the implosion of the twin towers followed by reports of passenger planes striking the Pentagon outside of Washington, D.C., and going down in Pennsylvania.

On that day 3,000 people perished, changing reality for Americans and millions around the world in different ways. 9/11 was so momentous an event that many who lived it remember what they were doing and where they were that Tuesday at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Standard Time when tragedy struck.

The hours, days, weeks, and months after the attack brought stories of “the best” of America surfacing and praise for fire fighters, police and EMT professionals who were injured, died, and lost colleagues answering the call to save lives in New York. It also left many Americans crying for blood and a president vowing to give them blood.

September 11, 2001, was an emotional and unifying event for a country divided after the controversial election of Republican George W. Bush over Democratic Party candidate and former vice-president Al Gore in November 2000. With Mr. Bush ostensibly declared president by a Supreme Court decision to stop a vote recount in Florida, a state politically controlled by Mr. Bush’s brother, and a Gore concession, many were bitter and angry. “Hail to the thief!” had been chanted at Mr. Bush during his inauguration months before 9/11 happened and galvanized the nation.

In this Sept. 14, 2001 file photo, President George W. Bush puts his arm around fi refi ghter Bob Beckwith while standing in front of the World Trade Center in New York during a tour of the devastation. AP Photo/Doug Mills

The 20-year mark for 9/11 warrants a look at America and the world. Analysts say America must come to grips with herself, ugly truths behind 9/11, bloody U.S. foreign policy, deceit and a loss of freedoms at home and abroad.

“The tragedy of 9/11 is a tragedy on many levels,” said Mauri Saalakhan, of the Aafia Siddique Foundation, a Muslim human rights group. “It’s a tragedy for this nation vis-a-vis what this nation is supposed to represent theoretically as a nation with liberty and justice for all.”

Mr. Saalakhan said 9/11 exposed deep, “ever-present” contradictions in America’s well-crafted image as a bastion of freedom.

The U.S. government moved swiftly to attach blame for the deadly act. Officials said the enemies were Arabs, Muslims, who acted out of hatred for America’s freedoms.

The U.S. blamed Osama Bin-Laden, a Saudi businessman, onetime U.S. ally in a war against the Soviet Union, and founder of the militant organization Al-Qaeda. The U.S. blamed Al-Qaeda and its leader for the act of “terrorism,” and accused the Taliban government ruling Afghanistan of harboring him. America demanded that the Taliban turn him over. The Taliban refused to do so without evidence of his guilt. U.S. bombs quickly followed the request, and the Taliban government fell as President Bush declared a “global war on terror” divided into those with America and those against America. The first nations targeted were Afghanistan and Iraq.

“The Taliban just wanted proof,” recalled Abdul Akbar Muhammad, International Representative of the Nation of Islam. “And America went after Afghanistan and began to dismantle it as a nation,” he said. The war in Afghanistan was underway by October 2001 and, two decades later, on Aug. 31 a defeated America left the country using a resurgent Taliban to help guarantee her safe exit.

Kevin Barrett, of Veterans Today and an author, believes none of the war on terror hype and calls 9/11 a “false flag” operation that triggered years of adverse events and war in Afghanistan and Iraq. A false flag is a covert operation designed to deceive and create the appearance of a particular party, group, or nation being responsible for some activity while disguising the actual source of the action.

Local residents and relatives gather around the bodies of people killed in an overnight raid by NATO forces, at Surkh Rod, Afghanistan, May 14, 2010. More than 500 people poured into the streets in the Surkh Rod district of Nangahar province to protest the raid by international forces that they claim killed at least nine civilians. AP Photo/Rahmat Gul

“Of course, it was a false pretext,” he said, “the whole story of anti-terrorism is a big lie.” “It’s very interesting and ironic that the liberation of Afghanistan happened almost simultaneous with the 20th anniversary of 9/11,” he added.

He said fighting terrorists and going after those the Bush administration deemed responsible for 9/11 put a noble face on a bold lie. The true reasons for invading Afghanistan were planned in July 2001, months before 9/11, and the goals were to protect heroin profits, secure oil pipelines, and establish U.S military bases, he said.

Mr. Barrett referred back to America’s sordid past in Afghanistan during the 1980s when the CIA backed and trained Osama Bin Laden and the mujahadeen, Muslim warriors engaged in an armed struggle to drive the Soviet Union out of the country.

The Soviets were initially invited to Afghanistan by the socialist government of Afghan leader Mohammad Najibullah. These were the years of the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. The U.S. military operation to oust the Soviets was initiated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter.

In the nine-year conflict, an estimated one million civilians were killed as well as 90,000 mujahideen fighters, 18,000 Afghan troops, and 14,500 Soviet soldiers. The Soviets withdrew leading to a long civil war won by the Taliban in 1996.

Outside of that history, there are questions about intelligence failures by the FBI prior to 9/11 and failures of American officials to act. Coleen Rowley, an FBI agent in Minnesota, was chosen as a Time magazine person of the year in 2002.

“Coleen Rowley is the FBI staff attorney who caused a sensation in May with a memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller about how the bureau brushed off pleas from her Minneapolis, Minn., field office that Zacarias Moussaoui, who is now indicted as a Sept. 11 co-conspirator, was a man who must be investigated,” said Time.

Other questions surfaced about how U.S. intelligence agencies missed tips about foreigners trying to learn to fly planes paying large amounts in cash for classes but uninterested in learning to land and other acts. Later disclosures, including a 2015 Politico piece by researcher and writer Chris Whipple, revealed how pre-attack warnings given to President Bush and the White House officials went unheeded.

People run from the collapse of one of the twin towers of New York’s World Trade Center in this Sept. 11, 2001, file photo. (AP Photo/FILE/Suzanne Plunkett)

“ ‘Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.’ The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming,” wrote Mr. Whipple.

“By May of 2001, says Cofer Black, then chief of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, ‘it was very evident that we were going to be struck, we were gonna be struck hard and lots of Americans were going to die.’ ‘There were real plots being manifested,’ Cofer’s former boss, George Tenet (onetime CIA director), told me in his first interview in eight years. ‘The world felt like it was on the edge of eruption.’ ”

Persistent angry questions about what happened and different connections, especially any links to U.S. ally Saudi Arabia, were so strong that President Biden was disinvited from 2021 commemorations by family members who lost loved ones seeking answers and demanding more secret information be declassified. Mr. Biden, days before the 20-year anniversary, directed that some additional information be made public and was invited back to take part in commemorations. Mr. Biden made the announcement Sept. 3.

Min. Akbar Muhammad said it’s also important to understand the spiritual context 9/11 sprang from, the subsequent events, and that it occurred during the prophesied time of America’s decline and fall as a power. He referenced the warnings and guidance to America and world nations by the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, the Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, and his student and National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.

‘It’s all signs,” said Min. Akbar Muhammad, referring to America’s “unravelling, both domestically and internationally.” “When you get a sign and are heedless to that warning, you pay a price,” he said.

“You will be foolish not to see the hand of the Almighty in what is happening to the world and America in particular,” explained Minister Akbar Muhammad.

The 9/11 remembrance comes while America is beset with manifest loss from a Covid-19 pestilence, weather calamities, and military defeat. Abdul Akbar Muhammad said people should consult the scriptures of Bible and Holy Qur’an to understand why America is losing.

Elijah Muhammad in his pivotal book “The Fall of America” wrote that the United States would reap what she has sown on the world stage. “She is destined to never win a war again. America is losing control of her world. In desperation, she feels that her guns, rockets, bombs, and technology will keep her kingdom in power,” he warned.

Smoke billows from the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center before they collapsed on September 11, 2001 in New York, NY. (AP Photo/Amy Sancetta)

“However, more powerful kingdoms than America had to lay their burden down when the time came, and America is no different. Time is declaring that America had better change or the end is upon her. Furthermore, as past empires had to pay for the injustices in their history, America is now in the throes of judgement.”

“America’s knees are bowing due to her corrupt domestic and foreign policies,” said Minister Farrakhan in Part 13 of a 2013 lecture series called “The Time and What Must Be Done.”

Minister Farrakhan compared America’s predicament to that of Pharaoh in the scriptures, finally bowing down when the last plague struck Egypt. “So will America bow down,” he said. At the outset of the Afghan War, Min. Farrakhan warned the president that America would not win and could unite the Muslim World against her and move closer to a final cataclysmic battle that would destroy her.

The aftermath of 9/11 changed global politics and the faith of 1.6 billion Muslims was attacked and blamed for a horrible killing.

Civil liberties were stripped from American citizens carrying such names as Abdul, Karriem, Ayesha or Muhammad. Anti-Arab xenophobia and blatant Islamophobia were rampant. Being Muslim, Middle Eastern led to being profiled as an enemy with “enemy combatants” arrested, disappeared, or held without charge at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba or CIA black sites scattered around the world. At Guantanamo Bay two decades later, 39 detainees remain, 27 held as law-of-war detainees without a charge or trial, according to the New York Times.

Mr. Saalakhan is an activist against wrongful detention cases such as Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist jailed on charges related to attempted murder and assault of U.S. officers in Afghanistan in 2008. America, he said, had legislation that was accelerated in the climate of 9/11.

“The process was already begun before 9/11,” said Mr. Saalakhan. “What 9/11 did was basically open the floodgates and justified what was already in the works.”

In the tradition of Communist witch hunts and illegal surveillance of individuals and organizations during the Black liberation struggles of 1960s-1970s America, the Patriot Act was enacted. The act allowed the federal government expanded authority to track and intercept communications for law enforcement and foreign intelligence gathering.

“All of this was to unveil a new Cointelpro … that was in the open and on steroids,” Mr. Saalakhan said. He was referring to the FBI’s infamous Counterintelligence Program aimed at Black and groups calling for change in American society.

While the entire U.S. was affected by these policies, the Muslim community was disproportionately affected, he said. For the military industrial complex, Muslims replaced Communists as the new bogeyman after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. 9/11 was used to connect the fear to Islam with a “war on terror” that was really a “war on Islam,” said activists and advocates.

Washington’s war on terror also became a cover for American plans to remake the Middle East in five years. The countries to be overthrown were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.

The war in Afghanistan shifted to an illegal war on Iraq, only with an added façade—to root out weapons of mass destruction. History debunked the lie, but not before the U.S. overthrew the government, executed Saddam Hussein, and spilled Iraqi blood.

With 9/11 the U.S. government played the American people through manipulation of their emotions to justify endless war driven by a multi-billion-dollar military industrial complex, not justice for thousands of citizens killed in a heinous act.

The government became too invasive and ratcheted up public fear, said Barry Landendorf of Veterans for Peace. It used constant streams of high alerts through color coded daily reminders of the next imminent threat, he said.

“A lot of the information was coming from prisoners at Guantanamo who were being tortured, who would just say anything not to be tortured,” Mr. Landendorf added. “And they (U.S. officials) would use that information as public propaganda,” he said.

Since 9/11, America paid a hefty price in deaths and treasure and the blood of many worldwide is on her hands. If America remains on the same course, the worse is yet to come.

An annual report released by the Costs of War project at Brown University, the leading watch group on the toll of war, tells the story. In 20 years of post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan, America spent an estimated $8 trillion and killed more than 929,000 people.

The Afghanistan/Pakistan war zone costs were $2.3 trillion; Iraq/Syria war zone costs $2.1 trillion; and $355 billion in other wars including Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere. These staggering figures were spent based on lies.

“Eight trillion dollars dedicated to the murder of Muslims, and I see no better way to make this sound any better or different,” said Dr. Maha Hilal of Justice for Muslims Collective during a Sept. 1 virtual forum.

She added the true loss was of humanity, citing 2013 congressional testimony by a 13-year-old boy from Pakistan named Zabir whose family was targeted by U.S. drones. He told lawmakers: “I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer gray skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are gray.”

“This is the cost of war,” stated Dr. Hilal. “That a young boy can never see the sky the same as people who were never bombarded with violence can.”

Catherine Lutz, co-director of Costs of War and a professor of international and public affairs at Brown University, noted the so-called war on terror has been “long and complex,” “horrific and unsuccessful” but continues in over 80 countries.

Researchers said though the total number of direct deaths caused by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are less than both World Wars and the Vietnam War, the post-9/11 conflicts are different because of the long-term damage done to societies that suffered years of constant bombings, death, and destruction.

“The twenty-first century was supposed to be the century of America,” said Ajamu Baraka, national organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace. That fantasy was ruined by America, “fueled by colonialist hubris” and belief she could fight two major wars simultaneously in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“What they ended up doing was not only losing those wars, but exposing the U.S. … as a paper tiger,” said Mr. Baraka. “So instead of the 21st century being the century of U.S. power, it will be the century of U.S. decline, and what we’re seeing is, in just 20 years, the precipitous decline of the U.S.,” said Mr. Baraka. “That to me is what signifies the 20-year anniversary of 9/11.”

From The Final Call Newspaper

America—on the wrong side of history

By Askia Muhammad, Senior Editor
- August 24, 2021

U.S. Marines with Special Purpose Marine Air-Ground Task Force - Crisis Response - Central Command, provide assistance during an evacuation at Hamid Karzai International Airport, Kabul, Afghanistan, Aug. 20. U.S. service members are assisting the Department of State with an orderly drawdown of designated personnel in Afghanistan. Photo: U.S. Marine Corps/Lance Cpl. Nicholas Guevara


WASHINGTON—As 21st Century politics would have it, the questions which should be answered about the failed, 20-year-long U.S. invasion/occupation of Afghanistan have been ignored in the fuss about the chaotic evacuation of the last U.S. military forces from Kabul. Had the evacuation gone smoothly, with no desperate Afghans clinging to the skin of a departing aircraft for example, there would have been little criticism of President Joe Biden’s removal of this country’s troops from the “Graveyard of Empires” and from America’s longest war.

Indeed, this was “the last dusk of empire,” China’s official news agency said, a lesson in “reckless military adventures.” Comparisons to the Vietnam War are also common. The U.S. lost again, just as in Korea (a cessation of hostilities and an armistice without a peace treaty) ended fighting there, just as in Iraq.

In 2021 as in time after time before, when the U.S. attempts to save a country, that place ends up instead, resembling an insane asylum or a cemetery.

“Wherever the United States sets foot, be it Iraq, Syria or Afghanistan, we see turbulence, division, broken families, deaths and other scars,” Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a news briefing.

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The United States, the leader of the Caucasian world, is decidedly on the wrong side of history.

Decades before, Britain, which controlled neighboring India, invaded Afghanistan three times—in 1839, 1879 and 1919—but could never keep a colonial regime in power there. Each time, popular uprisings drove out the British troops.

In the 1970s, the United States secretly funded a rebellion against a pro-Soviet Afghan government. In 1979, 30,000 Soviet troops invaded to prop up the government. But in 1989, the Soviets withdrew, defeated, as had been the Mongol Empire, as had Alexander the Great, as would the United States and a NATO Coalition: The Graveyard of Empires.

Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States from 1977 to 1981

Since World War II, the U.S. has been fighting endless wars, with troops today in 150 countries.

The United States and her “Western” allies have been driven by the same vices: greed, avarice, White supremacy, a path which has led only to defeat after defeat.

U.S. involvement in Afghanistan began long before the 2001 invasion. “On July 3, 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul,” Deirdre Griswold, wrote in The Workers World, June 5, 2017. “And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.”

Former President George W. Bush

The Taliban seized power in 1996. After September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration, was looking for added justifications for its war. They argued there was evidence that Al Qaeda, which carried out the attack, had been given safe haven in Afghanistan.

The Bush administration also grasped on to a campaign being voiced by White feminists, which is now being repeated in today’s outrage over Afghanistan: “Save the women and the girls.” By November, 2001 first lady Laura Bush was arguing that the reason for the war was to “liberate Afghan women.”

Taliban fighters seen near Kabul Thursday, Oct. 3, 1996. The Taliban, an Islamic fundamentalist army, took over Kabul and drove out forces loyal to President Burhanuddin Rabbani a week ago. Taliban forces now control most of Afghanistan. In the first new reports of fresh fighting since Taliban rebels took over Kabul on Sept. 28, witnesses said they saw hundreds of the fighters clamboring up the rugged mountains overlooking the Panjshir Valley.(AP Photo/Hurriyet) — TURKEY OUT —

Soon, the leaders of the Feminist Majority—including Ellie Smeal, the former head of the National Organization for Women—were attending events at the State Department and meeting with administration officials. The spring 2002 issue of Ms. magazine called the invasion a “coalition of hope.” White feminists supported the Afghan invasion. The Feminist Majority Foundation’s campaign to “End Gender Apartheid in Afghanistan,” highlighted conditions of women living under Taliban rule.

Before long, actresses like Susan Sarandon and Meryl Streep, along with First Lady Laura Bush signed on and made the issue a cause célèbre. There was one lone member of Congress, who foresaw the dangers, and voted against the war resolution.

As a member of the clergy so eloquently said, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said on the House Floor on Sept. 14, 2001, “as we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore. A rush to launch precipitous military counterattacks runs too great a risk that more innocent men, women, children will be killed. I could not vote for a resolution that I believe could lead to such an outcome.”

And, so it was. The outcome could have hardly been worse for the U.S., another humiliating defeat for the world’s most belligerent military machine.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said: “America will not win another war,” Minister Louis Farrakhan said in an address “Accepting Responsibility to Build Our Community,” at Mosque Maryam on March 8, 2009. “She will not win another war, and foreign wars and the plagues that are hitting America and the world is destroying the American economy and the American way of life.”

Rather than examine this country’s addiction to war, and the lies which have been told to justify U.S. involvement, instead, today’s conversation is shifted back to the Taliban. “They are Islamic extremists who repress women.”

Hundreds of people run alongside a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane, some climbing on the plane, as it moves down a runway of the international airport, in Kabul, Afghanistan, Monday, Aug.16. 2021. Thousands of Afghans have rushed onto the tarmac at the airport, some so desperate to escape the Taliban capture of their country that they held onto the American military jet as it took off and plunged to death. (AP Photo)

But the Taliban has promised to be different this time in power. During a press conference, Aug. 17 the Taliban vowed to respect women’s rights; to forgive those who fought them; and to ensure Afghanistan does not become a haven for terrorists.

It was part of a campaign aimed at reassuring world powers and their own fearful population. The threat no longer remains in Afghanistan because the threat is the ambition to dominate the region by the United States.

The fact of the matter is that this country is in grave peril, and will ultimately have to face a divine reckoning for her evil and her love of war and love of intervening in the affairs of others.

“After this, America will never rise to be an independent nation again,” Minister Farrakhan stated in a lecture titled the “Divine Destruction of America, Can She Avert it?” “Come out of her, my people,” the book says, the Muslim leader said in another address, “and be ye not partakers of her sins and her plagues, for her sins have reached unto heaven.

“Well, where you going? It don’t mean, go here, go there. It means come out of the way of life that you are living under the guidance of an enemy of God. You can come out of that. You can stop doing the thing that you’re doing that makes you an enemy of God.”

From The Final Call Newspaper

Evil America is under judgement: She cannot escape Allah’s (God’s) accountability

By FCN News Post
- August 10, 2021

A demonstrator is taken into custody by police after a curfew took effect during a protest over the death of George Floyd, Monday, June 1, 2020, near the White House in Washington. Floyd died after being restrained by Minneapolis police officers. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)


by Naba’a Muhammad, Michael Z. Muhammad and Brian Muhammad

When the document came out, it was historic but also fell in line with calls for justice from the United Nations and protecting human rights. However, this time UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet’s calls for action and measures to end systemic racism and racial violence against Blacks and people of African descent were aimed at the United States of America.

Instead of balking, the White House and State Dept. said looking at America’s shortcomings was welcomed and having UN experts and investigators, known as special rapporteurs, visit would be fine.

The UN official had presented a series of recommendations to address existing problems in a report to the UN Human Rights Council. But while the United Nations may be only able to point out America’s wrong, there is a real power in the world who can, will and is punishing America: The Great Madhi, Master Fard Muhammad, who taught the Hon.

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Elijah Muhammad and backs the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan in a bold mission give full and complete freedom to Black people and is delivering the divine destruction and fall of America.

Demetric Muhammad, a Memphis-based Nation of Islam student minister, likened the United Nations to a body that documents right and wrong from a spiritual perspective.

“We know that the God of the Bible and the Qur’an is in favor of such because scripturally God has always been on the side of the oppressed against the oppressive. The problem is the UN has no teeth as far as enforcement,” he said.

“So you’re talking about ending injustice, ending racial profiling, ending the abuse of Black people in America, in Europe, then you’re talking about a resolution that the powers inside of America will view as in conflict with her purposes and goals. And so what the UN does not have power to do, God is well able.”

Honorable Elijah Muhammad, patriarch of the Nation of Islam, and his top helper, Minister Farrakhan, have repeated a divine warning of God’s judgement against America, a judgement that mirrors God’s chastisement against the wicked found in scripture.

God’s power to punish the powerful who are wicked and save what appears to be a defenseless people are recurring messages and promises from the Divine Supreme Being, promises that are binding on Him and the beneficiary of those promises today, in particular, are the descendants of former slaves in America and the native people destroyed by Whites in this country.

Ajamu Baraka (Photo – Black Alliance for Peace)

The UN Human Rights Office action was mandated by a June 2020 Human Rights Council resolution. In the aftermath of the videotaped murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by an American police officer in Minnesota, the resolution called for a comprehensive report on systemic racism, violations of international human rights law against Blacks and people of African descent by law enforcement agencies, government responses to peaceful anti-racism protests, as well as accountability and redress for victims.

But the United Nations can’t punish the last superpower. Even criticisms on paper have often been shunned, shelved and avoided because of the power and the Security Council veto the U.S. wields at the international body headquartered in New York.

Ajamu Baraka, a longtime human rights advocate and critic of U.S. domestic and foreign policy, described the Biden administration position as a “slick one.” The White House wants to “give the impression” that it’s open to any critique or criticism that may come from these special rapporteurs, Mr. Baraka said.

And, he continued, American officials feel confident they can contain any threat and any critique that may come from the UN Human Rights Council and benefit from positive public relations. So there’s no real threat, he noted.

The Human Rights Council document was titled “Promotion and protection of the human rights and fundamental freedoms of Africans and of people of African descent against excessive use of force and other human rights violations by law enforcement officers.” It was released June 9.

Justice For Breonna DSC_6854 (Photo JA Salaam)

“The objectives of this transformative agenda are to reverse cultures of denial, dismantle systemic racism and accelerate the pace of action; end impunity for human rights violations by law enforcement officials and close trust deficits in this area; ensure that the voices of people of African descent and those who stand up against racism are heard and that their concerns are acted upon; and acknowledge and confront legacies, including through accountability and redress,” said the document.

If the U.S. is really open to UN scrutiny, the country should submit reports on conditions in the country to the UN human rights structures or conventions it is part of, such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and ratify other conventions it has refused to back, Mr. Baraka said.

True seriousness would mean the U.S. immediately ratifying UN human rights pacts, such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which says housing, health care, education and the ability to practice one’s culture are fundamental human rights.

A demonstrator carries a sign as he joins others rallying outside of the Atlanta City Detention Center in Atlanta on Sunday, June 14, 2020. Rayshard Brooks died after a confrontation with police officers at a fast food restaurant in Atlanta on Friday. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

The U.S. does not recognize any of those things as fundamental human rights, he said.

The United Nations’ public position matters, which is why the U.S. is trying to manage the perception, Mr. Baraka argued. “That’s why it’s important victims of U.S. hypocrisy demand accountability within those UN structures,” he said.

Blacks should engage with the UN and demand accountability, he continued. “But not have any illusions about what the UN is really able to do to affect the material condition of our people in the United States. We will only be liberated through our own agency,” the activist declared.

Former President Donald J. Trump left the Human Rights Council in 2018 and President Biden wants to rejoin the body this year.

Many reparations advocates saw the report’s findings and recommendations as giving strong support for reparations. Kamm Howard of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America and reparations commissioner, said online,

“The report reinforces the push for Congress or the President to pass or enact HR 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparations Proposals for African Americans Act. HR 40’s Commission has as its mandate to develop reparations remedies ‘that include full reparations and special measures,’ which is echoed here with the recommendations in this latest UN report.”

Photo UN News Shirin Yaseen Anti-police brutality protests were held in New York and other cities

Human rights attorney Roger Wareham of the International Secretariat of the New York-based December 12 Movement told The Final Call while the United Nations has no enforceability power against the U.S., documenting a country’s human rights responses becomes a moral record.

Periodic reviews of a country’s human rights record are based on these reports and become a mechanism to expose that country to the world on its “adherence or violation” of human rights, he said. Special Rapporteurs are key for the process of accountability, particularly for nations like the United States that usually skirt accountability, the attorney continued. When they gather information through hearings concerning a country, a report is done that becomes part of the permanent record at the United Nations, he said.

But America’s record is already written in her bloody history and was foretold of in scripture with Blacks fulfilling the prophecy of Abraham’s seed in the bible who would serve and be afflicted by a strange people in a strange land for 400 years but afterward God would come, judge their tormentors and oppressors and give them a land of their own. That is the future of the United States and Black people.

“America is Falling Her Doom is Sealed” declared the Hon. Elijah Muhammad in his monumental book, “The Fall of America,” originally published in 1965. His words ring with supreme truth today: “This people has gone to the limit in doing evil; as God dealt with ancient people, so will He deal with the modern Babylon (America).

As God says: ‘Son of Man, when the land (people) sinneth against Me by trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out Mine hand upon it, and will break the staff of bread thereof, and will send famine upon it, and will cut off man and beast from it’ (Ezekiel 14:13).

Justice For Breonna DSC_6972 (Photo JA Salaam)

“We see with our own eyes—but, the wicked Americans are too proud to confess that they see the bread of America gradually being cut off. Take a look into the southwest and Middle West, see the hand of Allah (God) at work against modern Babylon—to break the whole staff of her bread for her evils done against His people (the so-called Negroes).”

And, he adds, “Allah (God) has found His people (the so-called Negroes), and is angry with the slave-masters for the evil done by them to His people (the so-called Negroes). Allah (God) is going to repay them according to their doings.”

“America is falling; she is a habitation of devils and every uncleanness and hateful people of the righteous. Forsake her and fly to your own before it is too late,” warned the Hon. Elijah Muhammad.

“America, you owe us something. We don’t want you to dole it out in welfare checks. If you give us what you owe us, we’ll take it from there,” said Min. Farrakhan in a message titled “A Case for Reparations: Add It Up!”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if America said, ‘We ask the Blacks of the world to forgive us? We ask the Black people of America to forgive us for our hypocrisy and the hostility of official United States policy toward Black people, and for the persecution and degradation of Black people even after 1863 when we called them citizens and said they were free,’ ” said the Minister. “ ‘And we (the government of America) declare our willingness to contribute as much as possible to the healing of mental and physical suffering of any survivors and to provide just compensation for material losses.’ ”

He continued: “Well, if a hundred million of us lost our lives in the Middle Passage, add it up. What is one Black life worth? Three hundred years working from ‘can’t see morning to can’t see night’ for no pay. Three hundred years working millions of slaves for nothing. Add it up! Add it up! Add it up!

“The killing of our fathers and mothers after mating them like animals, then taking the children and naming us after the slave master, stripping us of our language, our God, our religion, our minds. Add it up! Add it up.”

Blacks fought in every war but Blacks were denied justice, Black leaders and organizations were set upon by the government and decimated, Blacks were mentally and physically destroyed, he said.

“Now what does justice look like? If you add it up … if you add it up White folks, you are going to have to give us the whole country,” said Min. Farrakhan. “We’re not asking for the whole thing, but we do deserve the whole thing. Just give us some of it and let us go to build a nation for ourselves. Since you don’t want us, don’t keep us here and kill us. Let us go and let us build a new reality in the name of God. Let us build for God.”

Protesters march from a Wendy’s restaurant to a police precinct at Grant Park on Sunday, June 14, 2020, in Atlanta. Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old black man, was fatally shot by a white Atlanta police officer outside the Wendy’s Friday night. (Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)

“You don’t have to give us anything, but God said He’s the Power today, and He’ll take the Kingdom from whom He pleases, and He will give it to whom He pleases. When I ask for reparations, I’m asking you to save your life. But if you don’t want to save your life, then leave it to God. He’ll settle it,” said Min. Farrakhan.

“If it’s a life for a life, then God is justified in killing everything that refuses to submit, as He killed Pharaoh and his people, as He destroyed Babylon, and Sodom and Gomorrah,” the Minister explained.

Ava Muhammad, the national student spokesperson for Min. Farrakhan, said, “We know that we are in the time of judgment and that Allah (God) is actively engaged in what the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan referred to in 2020 as the unraveling of America.”

“When will we stand up and face the reality of the teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, which is that the U.S. government with its policies is an enemy of the Lord of the Worlds and this effort to constantly integrate and assimilate and find a place is crazy. Lastly, I would say a perfect example of the integration effort is the results of the voting rights struggle. We’re going around on a merry-go-round. We’re fighting in 2021 for what we obtained in 1965 and have been fighting for since we were brought here in chains.”

“The power is in the unity first and foremost of the Black man and the woman in America. Once we get up and find the courage and follow the Muslim Program and establish a functional nation within a nation, then we will have the ability to advocate for Black and indigenous people around the world and be able to impose those beautiful things cited in the UN resolution,” Minister Ava Muhammad said.

From The Final Call Newspaper

Coercion, force, intimidation Federal government, major corporations, institutions force use of experimental vaccines
By Anisah Muhammad, Contributing Writer
- August 3, 2021

Anti-vaccination, New normals, Against, Rejection, Refusing, Protest


Since the roll out of the Covid-19 vaccine in Dec. 2020, the American people had been faced with a choice of getting vaccinated or not. Now, despite the rise in Covid-19 vaccine-related injuries and deaths, the federal government has begun a crusade against “the unvaccinated,” with major corporations on the same coercive path.

One of the early strategies lawmakers and corporations used to get people vaccinated were vaccine incentives. Incentives included money, lottery tickets, free food, and free entrance to local attractions. Now, there is a new strategy at play: take the vaccine or risk losing your job.

President Joe Biden confirmed July 29 that his administration is mandating the Covid-19 vaccine for federal workers and on-site contractors. Those who do not get the vaccine will have to submit to regular coronavirus testing. They may also have to pay for the federally required testing.

The president also announced that his administration is urging state and local governments to provide $100 payments to newly vaccinated residents. California and New York City have already enacted similar policies.

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“It started that way. Trusted messengers. You can enter a lottery and possibly win a million dollars. They were offering people incentives to get vaccinated. Even President Biden in his statement said he was encouraging states to give people $100 if they get vaccinated, asking them to give them leave, paid leave, to go get vaccinated. These are incentives, but now they’re tightening it into more of a demand and insistence, through coercion and force and intimidation,” Nation of Islam General Counsel Abdul Arif Muhammad told The Final Call.

“Now, prove that you’ve been vaccinated. If you work for the federal government, you have to prove that you have been vaccinated before you can come in,” he continued. “And if you have not and if you don’t take the vaccine, then we’re going to be rigorously testing you once a week or twice a week and you’re going to have to wear a mask and you’re going to have to be socially distant and you’re going to have to be limited in how you travel. That’s how it starts.”

The vaccine mandate affects the over 378,000 Black people who work as federal civilian non-postal employees.

Some corporations preceded the federal government in requiring the Covid-19 vaccine for employees. Others instituted their own vaccine requirement after the federal mandate. Among the list of companies requiring employees to take the vaccine are Google, Facebook, Netflix, BlackRock, Morgan Stanley’s New York office, Saks Fifth Avenue, The Washington Post, Ascension Health, Lyft and Twitter.

Danny Meyer, founder of the restaurant Shake Shack, told CNBC that his company will require Covid-19 vaccinations for all employees and customers at his restaurants. Billionaire Ken Langone told CNBC that once the FDA fully approves of the vaccines, which officials say is expected in September, all of his businesses will mandate that employees be vaccinated; if they don’t, they will be fired.

College students are also facing vaccine mandates, with over 600 universities announcing mandates for students or employees, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In May, the CDC told the American public that vaccinated people no longer had to wear masks or socially distance. Because of the Delta variant, the CDC reversed that recommendation on July 27, saying fully vaccinated people should begin to wear masks indoors again. On that same day, President Biden was asked if the CDC’s mask guidance could sow confusion. He falsely declared there was “a pandemic because of the unvaccinated.”

“Really, it’s almost creating a class of unvaccinated versus vaccinated. And of course, now you hear them saying that this is the ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated,’ so all of this is the pressure and coercion, as we call it. To coerce people, and to coerce is ‘to compel by force, intimidation or authority.’ So they are attempting to force, intimidate people into compliance,” Atty. Arif Muhammad said.

Social media influencer Rizza Islam called President Biden’s words “another label to justify White supremacy’s insatiable thirst for blood.”

His words hint at the toxic relationship America’s medical and pharmaceutical industries have with Black people, which has caused Black people to be “hesitant” or opposed to accepting the Covid-19 vaccine. A March 24 study published in the Elsevier Public Health Emergency Collection found that 32 percent of Black people had a substantially lower intent to get vaccinated.

Close up of doctor hand wearing blue disposable gloves and showing vaccine phial for coronavirus covid-19. Detail of hand with protective surgical gloves in lab holding vial dose vaccine for sars-coV-2 vaccine, prevention and immunization concept.

“What did the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan say to us in terms of the Black and Hispanic community and other communities of color and the oppressed? To let us now look at the history of the treachery against us when it came to medical experimentation on Black and Brown people. And we can never forget the history. It’s more than just the Tuskegee Experiment,” Atty.

Arif Muhammad said, lifting words from Minister Farrakhan’s July 4, 2020, lecture, titled “The Criterion.” Atty. Arif Muhammad also brought up the books “Medical Apartheid” by Harriet A. Washington, which details the dark history of medical experimentation on Black people, and “Acres of Skin” by Allen M. Hornblum, which goes into medical experiments done on largely Black inmates.

“When the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan talked to us about the National Security Study Memorandum 200, where it said they had a plan to cull the population by two to three billion people, you have to ask yourself who is the target of that? It is the Original People. It is the Black and Brown and Native American and the oppressed non-White. That is the target,” Atty. Arif Muhammad said.

He questioned why there was such great concern for Black people now.

“Denial of medical care to Black people, discrimination, all of this that we’ve endured, police killings, denied employment, housing, and we just run all of the things that we’ve suffered over these years. And all of a sudden, there’s such a great concern about us? You have to ask the question why,” he said. “What did the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan warn us that this was? He said, ‘Do not take this vaccine; it’s death.’ ”


The Biden administration is also attempting to increase vaccinations among adolescents, as children return to school. The Children’s Health Defense, an activist group founded by attorney Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., released a statement on July 29 in response to the federal government’s mandates. The organization declared that the mandates violate both the U.S. Constitution and the Nuremberg Code, which states that informed consent is essential in medical experimentation.

“This type of coercion would be unthinkable to the Founding Fathers of this nation and it should be unthinkable to all Americans today who value freedom from tyrannical governments,” said CHD board chair Kennedy. “Coerced medical interventions have been abhorrent to advocates of liberty and human dignity in every age. The fact that these vaccines are shoddily tested, experimental, unapproved and so risky that their manufacturers can neither obtain insurance coverage nor indemnify users against grave injuries or death should magnify our ethical revulsion.”

According to the federal government’s Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System, there had been 491,217 reports of suffering and death caused by the Covid-19 vaccine, as of July 16. There are 11,405 reports of deaths.

In a July 29 Instagram post, Dr. Abdul Alim Muhammad, founder of the Abundant Life Health Attainment Center in Washington, D.C., accused Covid-19 vaccine-maker and pharmaceutical company Pfizer of being a “criminal corporation.”

“Pfizer itself is the number one criminal corporation in the history of the world. They have paid more criminal fines than any corporation in the history of the world,” he said. “And they will have been criminally negligent, bribing doctors, falsifying research data. See, this is what they pleaded guilty to and paid fines for.”

A May 2010 study published in the journal Healthcare Policy says Pfizer has been a habitual offender, persistently engaging in illegal and corrupt marketing practices, bribing physicians, and suppressing adverse trial results.

Female patient refusing the coronavirus vaccine offered by her doctor

“Since 2002 the company and its subsidiaries have been assessed $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards. The $2.3-billion settlement in September 2009 set a new record for both criminal fines and total penalties,” the report reads.

Abdul Arif Muhammad said by calling the Covid-19 vaccine “safe and effective,” the deaths and injuries caused by the vaccine are being ignored. “And people’s voices are being silenced. Doctors’ voices are being silenced,” he said.

One of the first people to discuss mandatory vaccines was attorney Alan Dershowitz. In a May 2020 interview, he said, “If you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm. If there’s a disease that will kill you, you have the right to refuse that, but you have no right to refuse to be vaccinated against a contagious disease for public health.”

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam condemned the Dershowitz pronouncement in “The Criterion.”

“So Mr. Dershowitz, if you bring the vaccine and say you’re going to bring your army to force us to take it, once you try to force us, that’s a declaration of war on all of us,” the Minister said. “You only have this one life. Fight like hell to keep it, and fight like hell to destroy those whose heart and mind is to destroy you and take your life from you.”

Jennifer Bridges, left, leads people marching past protest Houston Methodist Baytown Hospital to protest against the hospital system’s rule of firing any employee who is not immunized by Monday, June 7, 2021, in Baytown, Texas. Public and Houston Methodist staff who have refused the COVID-19 vaccine so far participated a gathering and march. (Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Atty. Arif Muhammad said the war doesn’t start physically. “It always starts with these other means. Using the media, building up public sentiment, as you see they’re creating, now, the pandemic of the unvaccinated. Literally pitting the vaccinated against the unvaccinated. So, they’re starting to create those conditions of tension. The physical part of war is after all of the other elements have been put in place,” he said.

Mr. Islam explained that because incentives didn’t work and because other bribes didn’t work, the last option is force. “It is to use threats. To threat: ‘to take away family; to take away money; to take away housing; to take away the necessities of life that we need to live every day.’ And then of course finally after that, the last two options would be to imprison and or put to death,” he said.

He believes the U.S. government will move to imprisoning those who refuse to take the Covid-19 vaccine. “Their characterizing label will be that these are the people who are causing lives to be lost. That’s how they’re going to characterize it. They’re going to characterize people who refuse to be vaccinated as domestic terrorists, as those who are a threat to national security,” he said.

Atty. Arif Muhammad said the best advice he could give to those who are under the threat of taking the Covid-19 vaccine is to stand up for what they believe in. “People have rights. You have a God-given right over your own body. And no one has the right to intrude on you. And of course, people have individual rights under the Constitution, to not be subjected to government intrusion and force and intimidation. But you have to make a decision.

You have to stand up. What does your conscience tell you in terms of the morality of this type of behavior by the government to force and oppress and use force and intimidation?” Atty. Arif Muhammad asked. “You have to be willing to say that I’m one that will not submit to this coercion, to this force and intimidation, based upon your conviction and concern over taking an experimental vaccine.”

Mr. Islam said Black people should get prepared. He lifted words from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and Minister Farrakhan on having emergency kits, water stored and food to last two to three months. He also said both children and adults should know basic survival training.

From The Final Call Newspaper

A crisis inside of a pandemic: Missing Black women and girls
By Michael Z. Muhammad, Contributing Writer
- July 27, 2021

LONDON, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 10: A protestor holds a sign during a "Save our Children" rally outside Downing Street on October 10, 2020 in London, England. During the demonstration, protesters held signs which called for an end to child sex trafficking and made references to "Pizzagate". (Photo by Hollie Adams/Getty Images)


PHILADELPHIA—Conscious rap artist Bigga Dre is a man on a mission. It’s a big mission and one that has been worked on for years: the continued battle to stop the abuse, trafficking and disappearances of Black women and girls. The Covid-19 pandemic doesn’t seem to have slowed the problem. And the isolation felt by many young people—along with danger in their homes, complicated family relations and prowling by online predators—may have helped make things worse.

Bigga Dre and other activists and advocates believe a combination of vigilance and tackling problems in Black households and neighborhoods, nonstop pressure on authorities to seek and save missing Black females, stronger and more awareness of laws related to disappearances and refusing to accept that these precious ones can be discarded are places to start. Getting the word out quickly when a girl or woman goes missing is also essential, they said.

“My goal is to show people that we’re living in a day and time that we need to hear the call and pay attention. Is this a pandemic or is it a plandemic?” he asked.

Bigga Dre, who is using his music to highlight the country’s constant undervaluing of Black females, pointed to an estimated 64,000-75,000 Black women and girls currently missing in America as an indicator of the depth of the problem. Those figures come from the Black and Missing Foundation.

“Human trafficking is just as serious as the coronavirus,” argued Bigga Dre. “People ignore the whole pandemic and the virus thing until it hits somebody in their family or them personally. So, I’m on a human trafficking prevention awareness campaign. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” he said.

“What I want to do is promote awareness, to wake people up that this is not something that you should sit down on; it needs to be at the forefront. We need to go head-on with this, and we need to counteract it, and we need to put something in place to prevent the numbers from increasing.”

Earlier this year, the Green Party of the United States National Women’s Caucus called for a national task force to focus on solving the disappearances of Black women and girls. Caucus spokesperson Monica James said, “As Black women and girls go missing, and the media hardly gives coverage and the police do very little to solve their cases, the GPUS Women’s Caucus believes a national task force is required to address this issue.”

The task force would accurately collect and share data on missing Black women and girls and provide financial and logistical support to local government agencies in solving the disappearances, among other goals, said the Green Party women’s caucus.

Research shows Blacks make up a disproportionate number of missing persons, but Black women and girls reported missing are frequently inappropriately classified as runaways, which removes the sense of urgency in the response, said the caucus.

The Green Party women’s caucus also called for educating “local government agencies on stereotypes that prevent officials from taking disappearances of Black women and girls seriously” and more efforts to “seek input from the families of the missing Black women and girls to better understand the issue.”

Blacks make up 13.4 percent of the U.S. population, according to 2019 Census estimates, but statistics show that 33.8 percent of reports in 2019 were for missing Black people and the percentage of Blacks over the 37 years of active cases is even higher, the caucus noted.

“Min & Feaster, in their landmark 2010 study, found that missing Black children got 19.5 percent of news coverage about missing children despite accounting for 33.2 percent of cases. Other studies report the same results: White missing persons of all ages proportionately get far more media coverage than do Black missing persons,” said the caucus.

Four-year-old Rilya Wilson, who went missing in Florida.

“Black people go missing about three times more often than might be expected based on population,” said the caucus. “But once a Black child or adult is missing, they are also a lot less likely to be found. A 2019 study by Jada L. Moss showed that ‘in 2016, African-American missing persons cases appeared amongst the remaining older and open cases four times as often as the cases of White and Hispanic missing persons,’ ” it added.

Alerting people to a serious problem

Peas In Their Pods, based in Snellville, Ga., is a program founded by Janice Lowery and Gaetane Borders, who also serves as president. The organization offers free services and advocates for missing children and their families, offering safety seminars and workshops, Rilya Alert System activation, missing poster creation and distribution, hosts community awareness events, organizes prayer vigils, serves as family spokespersons, contacts the media, conducts social media campaigns, counseling, contact with police, and organizes search groups.

Their Rilya Alert System, named after a four-year-old Rilya Wilson, who went missing in Florida while under the supervision of the state in 2001, allows anyone who has a missing child to load the information onto the group’s website, www.peasinapod.com. An alert will be sent to organizations and others in the group’s network to help find Black children, female or male, under age 18. The network lists the children by state and spreads the missing child’s photo and information through social media. One of the things the Rilya Alert System strives to do is get information and images about missing children out quickly.


Ms. Borders told The Final Call, the information is “transmitted to the public electronically, similar to the Amber Alert, but without their stringent criteria that can impede progress or immediate attention or action. The Rilya Alert is not meant to replace the Amber Alert System. It simply bridges the gap where the Amber Alert excludes or does not engage due to its criteria,” she explained. If a child or woman is considered a runaway, the Amber Alert is not issued by police agencies.

“There’s so many different factors, you know, but certainly one of the greater pieces of it is education and knowledge across the board, not only with people of color, but just in general because perception is reality. And what we found through the work that we do is that there isn’t a lot of knowledge and understanding of just how great and bad this issue is,” Ms. Borders said.

According to the Women’s Media Center in New York, Black girls comprise over 40 percent of domestic sex trafficking victims in the U.S. “While running away from physical and/or sexual abuse or economic deprivation, Black girls run into sexual predators preying on their vulnerabilities and capitalizing on the lack of collective outrage expressed when Black girls disappear. Runaways don’t get Amber Alerts, as those are reserved for abductees. No texts or sirens go out when these girls go missing,” the center explained.

“Systemic failures render Black girl runaways invisible and, more harrowingly, disposable. Their stories remain untold or unfairly chronicled as tales of juvenile delinquency and criminality. Black girls aren’t afforded the protection of childhood innocence,” the Women’s Media Center said.

Washington, D.C.-based Sudan Muhammad has worked on the problem of sex trafficking for years through her program Sudan’s Services of Love. There is a huge connection between missing girls and sex trafficking, she stressed. Once girls connect with pimps they are controlled, intimidated and used to recruit other girls, she added.

“We need to be more involved in our communities and listen to our young people,” advised Ms. Muhammad, who is a member of Muhammad Mosque No. 4 in the Nation of Islam.

“We see girls as young as 11 years old recruiting other girls then often they go missing. They need us to be open and not judgmental. Our young people need jobs and these pimps provide that. They can make hundreds of dollars doing sex movies. In order to address this issue, we need to create jobs as well as demonstrate love. We must develop safe places where they can get the help they need. We need to have open communication. The pandemic has only made the problem worse because it has increased the need for our children to support themselves financially,” said Ms. Muhammad. “These abductors they know what these children need. They listen, they listen to the cries. We have to start listening to our children and stop being judgmental. And like the Minister Farrakhan said, remember what you went through when you were younger.”

Black Women’s Blueprint, an organization that advocates for policy that supports Black women and girls, said “approximately 60 percent of Black girls are sexually assaulted before turning 18. Even conservative estimates indicate that at least 40 percent of Black girls are sexually victimized before their eighteenth birthdays. Running away from family situations or communities in which all forms of violence occur is not an uncommon response.”

The Women’s Media Center added that adult Black women often don’t fare much better than Black girls when they go missing. “As they do with Black girls, law enforcement often classifies Black women as runaways,” the center said. “Furthermore, Black women endure higher rates of sexual and physical violence than their White counterparts. They often encounter racist, sexist, and classist barriers when reporting violence and within the very systems and organizations established to support victims and survivors of violence. With few or no options for redress, Black women may feel compelled to leave violent and potentially deadly situations. Disconnecting from loved ones and their communities, they seek safety in a world too often perilous for those barely surviving on the margins.”

Congressman Bobby Rush, a Chicago Democrat, recently held a forum on missing women. “Nationally, cases involving missing Black women remain open and unresolved four times longer—four times longer—than cases that are involving White and Hispanic Americans,” he said. He held the forum to gather more information, help highlight the problem and look at racial disparity in how the system responds.

“It remains clear to me that there is a lot more that can be done. A single missing woman or child, no matter their race, creed, or color, no matter what their zip code, is indeed an American tragedy. And America has to step up to the plate. But when most cases—and the majority of unsolved cases—involve Black women, some serious soul-searching needs to occur,” Rep. Rush said.

The danger also can go beyond sex trafficking when Black females vanish. The Chicago Tribune reported that at least 75 Black women, ages 18 to 58, have been strangled or smothered between 2001 and 2017 in the Windy City. Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project, told The Final Call the rate for solving the murder of Black women in Chicago is well below that of the national average and falling. “The rate at which African American women are murdered in the U.S. is much, much higher than for any other race,” he said.

Forgotten by police, stalked by ‘keystroke gangsters’

Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation, a Maryland-based organization that also increases awareness and exposure of missing persons of color, told The Final Call: “One problem is when Black teenagers are reported missing to the police they are classified as runaways, so they don’t receive needed attention given to victims designated with Amber Alerts which signify an abduction. We need to be vigilant as a community when it comes to missing adults and children. Often, their cases are classified as some sort of criminal activity. We’ve had issues where law enforcement didn’t even take the police reports in cases of missing Black and Brown women, children, and men.

“What we are finding is an uptick with missing Black girls during the pandemic. They are on the computer more and are being lured by predators. You don’t know what they’re going through at home, and there is a correlation between missing persons and domestic violence. So a lot of girls are turning to these ‘keystroke gangsters.’ You got people hiding behind their computers, and they’re saying any and everything and making these false promises. So many girls have taken the bait of these predators online, who are promising them an escape. We’ve dealt with a lot of girls being victimized and trafficked online,” said Ms. Wilson.

“There are multiple reasons Black girls and women go missing,” Ms. Wilson said. “What is needed is the coordination of supporting organizations like faith-based communities, a commitment to end homelessness, restructuring the foster care system, and using victim-centered models for ending sex trafficking, centering Black girls and women as victims of sexual and gender-based violence.”

Violence, abuse, strained relationships or other complicated issues in homes can be challenging. Children in the care of extended family sometimes feel abandoned or unwanted. Those feelings of alienation, loneliness or unmet or even undiagnosed mental health and emotional needs can leave them susceptible to emotional traps set by predators and abductors.

Denea Whitest of the well-respected Philadelphia-based violence prevention program Mother’s In Charge shared a heartbreaking story. A soon to be 18-year-old niece was victimized by a 60-year-old man through a chat app. According to Ms. Whitest, her niece went from a straight-A student to languishing in a shelter in upstate Pennsylvania for homeless youth and was a shell of her former self when found.

The story was almost a textbook case of the failure of various systems responsible for the niece’s care and protection, starting with unresponsive police when she disappeared, failed mental health services, and a broken child welfare system.

“The problems began at age 14. She started sneaking talking to people on a chat app,” Ms. Whitest recounted. “They made her believe, you know, it was better for her to be with them than be home with her parents, and the flood gates of deception opened. I had to become my own detective to find her.

“What people do not understand is the trauma these children go through at the hands of these predators. And I started speaking out, you know, I made my campaign. We call it ‘Bring Her Home.’ I got my neighbors and friends involved. My church family was an intricate part of getting the word out on Facebook, Instagram, flyers, and sharing my story about what was going on. I tried to hire a private detective.” Her campaign looking for her niece created so much heat that the pimp let her go to avoid getting caught.

“My niece has gone from an honor roll student who played multiple instruments and was recommended for the Philadelphia orchestra to a child sitting in a program without any family. Her life is ruined,” said Ms. Wilson. Her niece was sex trafficked for several years. Girls and women subjected to sex trafficking are often beaten, drugged and told they or family members will be harmed or killed.

Ms. Wilson sees holding elected officials accountable, changing policies and reporting laws and knowing how the system works and the language to use is essential. Saying the child ran away can mean the case drops to the lowest priority so stress might be laid on the fact that the child could face danger or has some other type of vulnerability.

“The community needs to know the reporting laws and advocate for laws that address our specific issues. As parents we cannot be our children’s friends. We need to know who they are interacting with on social media, we need to have those uncomfortable conversations at our homes, and this cannot be a one-time deal. I think it’s equally important, especially in the Black community, to involve our churches. They are a pillar of the community. We really need to get our faith-based community involved,” she said.

“We are stronger together. We need the media to be more proactive and the community more vigilant.”

Bigga Dre is looking to use technology and his music to help solve the problem. “We’re working on a comprehensive application that prioritizes melanated (Black) people. Many of us know about the Amber Alert; I would like to develop an app that prioritizes melanated people. We have to recognize that the helping hand that we’re looking for is at the end of our arm,” he said.

“In the studio, we have produced the song called ‘Eschatology (Bring Our Girls Back).’ I’m very intentional about this work. It’s not a song. It’s a public service announcement. I want people to take this music, create Tik Toks, use it for documentaries, and put it in films so it can be a soundtrack and a message that reverberates throughout the community, and people respond to the call. This is a call. This is, that’s why I named it eschatology. This is the end time, and it is now. We don’t have time to waste, and we need to remedy this,” Bigga Dre said.