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From The Final Call Newspaper

FOOD SHORTAGES, COVID-19 AND FEARS OF A MAJOR CRISIS

By Nisa Islam Muhammad, Staff Writer
- March 30, 2021


Surrounded by a few volunteers, a man carries food donations from St. Stephen Outreach in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on Friday, March 20, 2020. For decades, American nonprofits have relied on a cadre of volunteers who quite suddenly aren't able to show up. With millions staying home during the pandemic, charities that help the country's neediest are facing even greater need. Many Americans have now been ordered to shelter in place, but there is an exception for people providing essential services, and that includes food bank volunteering. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)


Around the country Covid-19 has impacted the food-supply chain causing disruptions in deliveries, shortages in products and sent millions of people to long lines at food banks. One year into the pandemic, food insecurity continues to grow with people who never thought they would visit a food bank becoming regular visitors—and almost every major food producer still trying to figure out what comes next and how to survive.

Access to food is an increasing concern, Feeding America reported in a March brief, “The Impact of the Coronavirus on Food Insecurity in 2020 & 2021.”

“The pandemic is not yet over, and the future remains tenuous (very weak) for people who have experienced uncertain access to enough food for their families. It is likely that it will take time for food insecurity levels to recover,” the report said.

Boxes of food are distributed by the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, at a drive thru distribution near PPG Arena in downtown Pittsburgh, Friday, April 10, 2020. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

America had a food insecurity problem before Covid-19. That means many people did not have the ability to get enough food, places to get food or the money to meet basic needs, like paying for food. “Though food insecurity is closely related to poverty, not all people living below the poverty line experience food insecurity and people living above the poverty line can experience food insecurity,” observed Feeding America, a group that promotes access to food and ending hunger in the United States.


In this Tuesday, May 12, 2020, photo, Linda Shine secures the second bag of food to her wheelchair after visiting a food giveaway sponsored by the Greater Chicago Food Depository in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago. Across the country, food insecurity is adding to the anxiety of millions of people, according to a new survey that finds 37 percent of unemployed Americans ran out of food in the past month, while 46 percent worried that they would. The nationwide unemployment rate on Friday was 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression.(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Food insecurity revealed significant racial disparities before Covid-19 struck. The pandemic only made things worse. Feeding America projects 42 million people, 1 in 8 Americans, including 13 million children, or 1 in 6, may experience food insecurity in 2021 due to Covid-19. Twenty-one percent of Blacks, 1 in 5, may experience food insecurity in 2021, compared to 11 percent of Whites, 1 in 9.

In Baltimore, We Are Us, a community-based organization, responded to the growing need for food at the onset of the pandemic. The group took food to the neediest people in several parts of the city, hitting the East, West and South sides.

“At the close of 2020 we’d given out 1.5 million pounds of food with two to three food deliveries every week, from March last year right into the end of the year. We’re all over the city,” Pastor Derek Hall, the group’s director of outreach, told The Final Call.

“We are serving Black, Brown and White people in need. Whoever comes up to our truck in need, that’s who we serve in East, West and South Baltimore. We schedule a time, let the community know we will be there and bring the delivery truck. The people come and we give out food until it’s all gone. We recognized early this need for food. The pandemic shaped where we go.”

The group gets food from multiple sources including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Baltimore City, Amazon and J.C. Faulk, founder of Circle of Voices and food distributor Blessings of Hope.

“We are looking for additional distributors to meet the growing need. We have continued this year with increasing numbers of families getting in line. You may think it’s just poor people who are getting food from our food bank but that’s not true. We see people leaving their jobs at Johns Hopkins University (a premier university that maintains daily U.S. Covid-19 numbers), getting in their fine cars and driving up to pick up our food boxes. The demand is not slowing down. The demand is growing.”

Lines of cars have been seen in media nationwide as people and families who have lost jobs due to the pandemic, loved ones too sick to work, loved ones who have died due to the virus and any number of other crises that brings them to need help with food.

In Chicago at Mosque Maryam, the National Center for the Nation of Islam, there is a monthly free community food bank. “We call the people we serve our guests or customers. We’ve seen them grow and we’ve seen a diversification as far as the ethnicity of our customers and clients are concerned. We did this for years before Covid-19,” Eugene Khaan, food bank manager, told The Final Call.
 
Sheila Williams, left, who manages the soup kitchen and food pantry at St. Stephen Outreach, tells people waiting in line for their food donations to keep bigger distances between one another, in the Brooklyn borough of New York, on Friday, March 20, 2020. Williams usually has 25 volunteers to feed about 100 people a day at St. Stephen Outreach in Brooklyn. Now she’s down to just 10 volunteers and says that there are more people waiting in line for food. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)

“We offer fresh produce from grapes, tomatoes, vegetables, fruits, pastries, and bakery products to our customers. This year brought on a new partner, the Chicago Furniture Bank. I’m proud to say that we have provided furniture for housing apartments for three families this year at no cost to the families.”

The food bank, located on the South Side of Chicago, has also grown to meet increasing demand.The food bank, located on the South Side of Chicago, has also grown to meet increasing demand.

Manufacturers, producers and supply chains suffer

At the beginning of the pandemic many people experienced food insecurity for the first time in their lives. There were supply chain disruptions all over the country. Trucks sometimes didn’t roll and sometimes store shelves were sparse or some shelves were empty. Problems didn’t end with questions about food deliveries, fears grew as Americans wondered if they could get Covid-19 from factories where there were outbreaks among workers or where food was produced.

This fear was caused by Covid-19 outbreaks among slaughterhouse and chicken processing workers around the country that temporarily closed plants. Last May, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union reported more than 10,000 workers had been infected or exposed. In Virginia, at Final Call presstime, a total of 17 Covid-19 outbreaks were identified in meat and poultry processing facilities with 1,306 Covid-19 cases, 53 hospitalizations and nine deaths.

Last August the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture and the World Health Organization announced that there was no evidence to support transmission of Covid-19 associated with food and there were no reports at that time of any human illnesses that suggested the virus could be transmitted by food or food packaging.

But almost overnight 46 percent of the food service industry disappeared. With lockdowns across the country, restaurants closed. Schools closed. Food that normally went to those sources was now stuck on farms.

FOI unload food for giveaway Feb. 27 in parking lot of Mosque Maryam in Chicago. Photos: Abdul Karriem Muhammad

Some food service programs at Title 1 schools continued during the shutdowns so children would still have access to meals. Title 1, a $15.9 billion expenditure, is the largest federal program that provides assistance to schools where at least 40 percent of the students are low income. Assistance is based on student enrollment, the free and reduced lunch percentage for each school, and other data.

Nationwide, some 50,000 public schools (14.9 million or 64 percent of students) from preschool to high school receive Title 1 funds. Fifty eight percent of all public schools in the U.S. receive Title 1 funding. According to data analysis from the National Equity Atlas, in about half of the largest 100 cities, most Black and Latino students attend schools where at least 75 percent of all students qualify as poor or low-income under federal guidelines.

“Food service orders went to nearly zero,” said Phil Plourd, president of the Services Division of Dairy.com at a Mississippi State University virtual program and discussion of “Food Supply Chain Disruptions During the Covid-19 Pandemic: Lessons Learned and Future Implications.”

“Three hundred fifty million pounds of milk were dumped in April. There is a clock on milk. It spoils. Schools have an issue; eight percent of dairy sales go to schools. With schools closed this has been a problem. Twenty one percent of schools are still in virtual mode but lunch has still not recovered.”

This sudden and immediate supply chain disruption at schools, universities, restaurants, workplace cafeterias, airports, the travel industry and other places forced some producers into the heart-wrenching position of having to euthanize their animals as a last resort. With no place to sell chickens or cattle, growers were looking at going out of business by having raised animals they could no longer sell.
 
Free food and information is given away by Fruit of Islam in Chicago during Saviours’ Day 2021 celebration weekend.

In May 2020, ten million hens were estimated to have been “depopulated” despite six mile long lines at some area food banks. Closed plants meant the animals could not be killed for food.

By June 2020, some 580 farmers had file for bankruptcy, unable to sustain the major losses due to Covid-19. Farmers had to plow under thousands of acres of vegetables, and corn. Prices tanked as Americans stopped driving, cutting the price for ethanol, a corn-based biofuel blended with gasoline. The price for cattle dropped as meatpacking plants became virus hot spots that slowed or stopped production.

The cattle industry is slowly coming back as restaurants start to reopen with in-room dining. The industry was decimated at the beginning of the pandemic. By April, its losses were an estimated $13.6 billion and the numbers continued to climb.

Closed meat processing factories forced owners to look to upgrade and improve conditions for worker safety to prevent additional outbreaks as well as look for new ways to get their products to consumers.

The pandemic changed everything. Small farmers who were used to taking their livestock to commercial processors were suddenly inundated with requests from family and friends for direct sales.

“We’re working overtime to try and keep up with the demand that exists from people buying direct, buying in bulk, just wanting to know where their food comes from,” Tyrone Gustafson told Civil Eats. He owns a small Iowa slaughterhouse and butchering facility, Story City Locker.

In this Tuesday, May 12, 2020, photo, Manson Gibson sits with his box and bag of food as he waits for a ride home at a giveaway sponsored by the Greater Chicago Food Depository in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood of Chicago. Across the country, food insecurity is adding to the anxiety of millions of people, according to a new survey that finds 37 percent of unemployed Americans ran out of food in the past month, while 46 percent worried that they would. The nationwide unemployment rate on Friday was 14.7 percent, the highest since the Great Depression.(AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture opened new sales channels for Iowa farmers who use slaughterhouses. The Cooperative Interstate Shipment program promotes the expansion of business opportunities for state-inspected meat and poultry establishments. Under CIS, state-inspected plants can operate as federally-inspected facilities, under specific conditions, and ship their products in interstate commerce and internationally.

The CIS program is limited to plants located in the 27 states that have established a Meat and Poultry Inspection Program and maintain standards “at least equal to” federal regulatory standards.

This program allows small butchers to work together and service their communities.
 
Nation of Islam Waxahachi, Tx., study group gives away free food March 22. Photo: Ben X Facebook

The pandemic shined a light on meatpacking industry inequities. Four firms, Tyson Foods Inc., Cargill Inc., the JBS USA unit of Brazil’s JBS SA and National Beef Packing Co., control more than 80 percent of the beef processing market. Further, federal laws that require large animals to be processed at a slaughterhouse under the supervision of a USDA inspector left many small meat producers nearly out of business.

The Biden administration announced March 24 the allocation of $12 billion for Pandemic Assistance for Producers, which will help farmers and ranchers who previously did not qualify for Covid-19 aid and expand assistance to farmers who have already received help.

Pandemic Assistance for Producers will establish new programs and efforts to bring financial assistance to a broad set of farmers, ranchers, and producers who felt the impact of Covid-19 market disruptions.

More than 110,000 eating and drinking establishments closed for business temporarily or permanently last year with nearly 2.5 million jobs lost from pre-pandemic levels, according to the National Restaurant Association. Restaurant and foodservice industry sales fell by $240 billion in 2020 from an expected level of $899 billion.

Many cities are reopening the restaurant industry slowly and increasing numbers for legal in-person dining. But alongside food delivery services, increasing numbers of people are interested in drive up and curb side services for meals and groceries to continue social distancing. Other services will shop and deliver groceries but that service comes with added fees and costs.

The pandemic produced a new normal where widespread use of takeout and delivery services have become a part of people’s routines. In the National Restaurant Association’s 2021 State of the Restaurant Industry Report, 68 percent of consumers were more likely to purchase takeout from a restaurant than before the pandemic and 53 percent of consumers said takeout and delivery was essential to the way they live. Other key takeaways from the report:

64 percent of delivery customers prefer to order directly from the restaurant and 18 percent prefer to order through a third-party service.

72 percent of adults say it’s important their delivery orders come from a location that they can visit in person—as opposed to a virtual kitchen space.

The report revealed the restaurant and foodservice industry were projected to provide 15.6 million jobs in 2020 representing 10 percent of all payroll jobs. The pandemic caused staffing levels to fall across all restaurant and foodservice areas with restaurant employment below pre-pandemic levels in 47 states and D.C. Key figures on the restaurant workforce include:

62 percent of fine dining operators and 54 percent of both family dining and casual dining operators say staffing levels are more than 20 percent below normal.

There are nearly two million fewer 16-to-34-year-olds in the labor force, the most prominent age cohort in the restaurant industry workforce.

Restaurants were hit harder than any other industry during the pandemic, and still have the longest climb back to pre-coronavirus employment levels.

All this means job losses, especially for adolescents and young adults, higher prices for people like seniors to get the food they need with delivery services sometimes as high as $10 and more and continuing long lines at food banks.

As the food industry recovers, families will also find higher food prices for eggs, fish, poultry, and meat (4.4 percent), as well as milk and other dairy products (3.8 percent) due to higher gas prices, said industry projections.

Do for Self

From backyard gardening to raising chickens to baking bread, the pandemic has encouraged Americans to do something for themselves. Empty grocery shelves due to food supply disruptions, stay at home orders and teleworking has added to the desire to do something with spare time families found themselves with.

Brecks Flower Bulbs analyzed retails sales in 2020 and found which retail sectors had the largest spikes and drops due to the quarantine. Their study found the “gardening industry saw an incredibly healthy spike in revenue, despite Covid-19, sales revenue for the building material and garden retail sector actually increased by 8.6 percent between Spring 2019 and Spring 2020.”

Jennifer Davis was sent home from her job as a consultant with the federal government in March 2020. She began teleworking in Northern Virginia and had more time than she was used to. “I started growing tomatoes and broccoli in my backyard. It was my first garden and I was loving every minute of it,” she told The Final Call. “There were shortages at the grocery store and I had the space in my backyard. That was last year. This year I’m expanding and growing even more things.”

“My neighbor is helping me and we are planning a community garden since I have all of this space. We don’t know when something like this will happen again but we will be ready with food we grow ourselves. We are even canning. My grandmother taught me how to do that.”

About 50 miles outside of D.C. in Damascus, Md., Rhonda Perry has a chicken coop with three chickens.

“I really got them for the eggs. I went to the store and I could only get one carton of eggs. I was stunned. What was going on? I immediately searched for chickens. I have the backyard space and now my friends want fresh eggs too. I want to be able to have eggs when I want them and not have to worry about the next time when things get scarce because I know the next time is coming. I want to be ready.”

Covid-19 brought Americans back to the kitchen. Social media was awash with cooking pictures and classes. Viewers could choose and find a class, how to or someone with guidance to get cooking done. Food shortages also forced families to learn how to make meals with what was in their pantry.

For others, like members of the Nation of Islam, it meant storing and canning food for tough times prophesized to strike America.

Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, speaking July 4, 2020, and delivering a special message, “The Criterion,” warned the deadly coronavirus is a God-sent pestilence and neither America, China nor others will escape its grip. “You don’t know this virus, it mutates and goes into different directions with a different strain of itself,” he said. The Minister also warned famine was coming to America in association with the coronavirus. He has continued that warning in other messages since last summer.

You have planned death for others and now God is unleashing death on you, Min. Farrakhan said last summer. “We need to call a meeting of Black epidemiologists, virologists, students of biology and chemistry to look at what they give us and we need to give ourselves something better,” he added.

Dr. Ridgely Muhammad runs the 1,556 acres at Muhammad Farms in Georgia owned by the Nation of Islam. The farm grows vegetables like broccoli, eggplant and green beans as well as fruit like watermelons and cantaloupe. Covid-19 brought an increase in customers who wanted to know exactly where their food was coming from and know that it was pure.

He told The Final Call, “We make whole wheat flour, whole wheat pastry flour, cream of whole wheat muffin mix, cream of whole wheat buttermilk muffin mix and more. It’s been challenging to get people back into cooking and baking until people went to the grocery stores and there were no dry beans or flour.

“Covid-19 scared people to death but actually brought them back to life. Now they’re trying to cook. They’re trying to think. We’ve had four times the orders for flour and our other staple goods like navy beans, lentils, raw sugar, soap, salt and coffee. It almost literally broke our backs to try to get all the orders out, but we did it.”

(Final Call staff contributed to this report.)

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From The Final Call Newspaper

Cries, condemnation but no convictions?: Despite protests, politics and lawsuits, killers of Blacks still almost never go to prison

By Barrington M. Salmon, Contributing Writer
- March 23, 2021


Law and Justice in United States of America, statue of Lady Justice with USA flag in background, selective focus


What many called the random, brutal and callous murder of an unarmed man—George Floyd—on May 25, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minn., at the hands of police officers, unleashed a torrent of condemnation nationwide after the incident. The charges filed against four officers in the case were characterized as a long overdue racial and criminal justice reckoning.

But it wasn’t, it was public condemnation, which is a long way from conviction. And public condemnation doesn’t mean an officer will be charged, let alone convicted and sent to jail.

For months, millions of people, young and old, rallied, marched and protested on the streets of America’s cities, towns and villages calling for a change in the way policing is done. They demanded an end to the spate of state-sanctioned murders, police brutality, the over-policing and the occupation of Black neighborhoods as well as police accountability and responsibility.

Now, almost a year later, Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who knelt on Mr. Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while he was handcuffed and lying face down on the ground, is on trial, charged with second-degree murder, second-degree manslaughter and third-degree murder.


A group of protesters march in the snow around the Hennepin County Government Center, Monday, March 15, 2021, in Minneapolis where the second week of jury selection continues in the trial for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin is charged with murder in the death of George Floyd during an arrest last may in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Jim Mone)

As jury selection continued in the Floyd trial, the Minneapolis City Council approved a historic $27 million settlement with the family on the one-year anniversary of the Louisville, Ky., fatal police shooting of Breonna Taylor, whose death also brought condemnation but no convictions and not even charges against the cops who shot and killed her during a no knock raid.

While the Minneapolis settlement did not admit culpability, City Council President Lisa Bender offered condolences to Mr. Floyd’s family after the vote.

“No amount of money can ever address the intense pain or trauma caused by this death to George Floyd’s family or to the people of our city,” she said. “Minneapolis has been fundamentally changed by this time of racial reckoning and this city council is united in working together with our community, and the Floyd family to equitably reshape our city of Minneapolis.”

“When George Floyd was horrifically killed on May 25, 2020, it was a watershed moment for America,” said Floyd family attorney Benjamin Crump. “It was one of the most egregious and shocking documentations of an American citizen being tortured to death by a police officer … one of the worst ever witnessed in history.”

America has seen such watershed racial moments before: The brutal beating, torture and shooting of Black teenager Emmett Till in 1955 in Money, Miss., and his disfigured body in an open casket helped ignite the modern civil rights movement.
Protesters march on the first day of the Derek Chauvin trial Monday, March 8, in Minneapolis, Minn. Chauvin is the former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd. Photo: AP Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune via AP

No one was ever jailed for murdering him.

Cops are rarely charged, much less convicted for killing Blacks. Most often, law enforcement has been allowed to kill, maim and injure Black people with impunity. So there is widespread concern that Mr. Chauvin will walk even though Mr. Floyd’s death was captured on videotape. A Black juror was removed from the case March 18 by defense lawyers for Mr. Chauvin and a judge denied a defense request to move the case out of the Minneapolis area.

Despite protests last summer, talk of justice and accountability and corporations airing commercials about inclusion, Black contributions, and Black struggle, police brutality and other egregious racist behavior continues.

Rochester, New York

In Rochester, New York, the Rev. Myra Brown, pastor of Spiritus Christi Church, said residents in her city are grappling with a grand jury verdict that allowed the police officers involved in Daniel Prude’s death to walk free.

For almost six months, the Rochester Police Department and Rochester city officials hid a videotape from public view which showed how police officers treated 41-year-old Daniel Prude as he suffered a mental breakdown. Mr. Prude’s encounter with the police took place at 3 a.m. on the morning of March 23—a full two months before the death of George Floyd.

The Black father of five was naked in the street in upstate New York. He pleaded he could not breathe as police had handcuffed and pinned him to the ground, then placed a mesh mask over his face. Police say he was spitting on them. Authorities said Mr. Prude later died of asphyxiation.

Police body camera footage of the arrest sparked outrage when it was published in September, prompting days of protests and accusations of a cover-up by city officials.

“Our community is really reeling from this. We are disgusted, angry, frustrated with this outcome,” said Rev. Brown, a leading voice in efforts to advocate for and bring about racial justice. “The strategy across the country is to give us a Black attorney general to pursue justice. But we forget that they are politicians.

“I was deeply, deeply disappointed. I have no confidence in the grand jury process. The phrase is that you can indict a ham sandwich, except when it concerns Black and Brown people.”

The encounter and its aftermath escaped public attention until Sept. 2, 2020, when Mr. Prude’s family and their family attorney released the videotape along with police reports. The videotape and police denials triggered protests.

Rev. Brown gave protestors sanctuary in her church when cops fired pepper spray and pepper bullets at them and at her church and released police dogs on peaceful protestors. She is one of the elders who put their bodies between the cops and protestors. She served as a mediator in sometimes tense negotiations between protest leaders, the mayor and other city officials.

“Cops surrounded protestors, called it an unlawful gathering,” she said, recalling demonstrations last year. “This was a tactic to intimidate. They targeted protestors and said if we didn’t disperse, we’d be arrested even though we have a constitutional right to protest. Police criminalize the community as if marching and protesting is against the law. It is an injustice that shouldn’t be allowed to happen.

“We live in a racist, White supremacist system and the blueprint of oppression has been killing Black people.”

Rev. Brown was unhappy with the way New York Attorney General Letitia James presented the grand jury case. Ms. James is a Black woman. The grand jury refused to charge any officer in the death. “She had a meeting with us. We asked her why she only put one charge, she made it sound as if ethically she couldn’t bring charges,” said Rev.

Brown, who served the faith community for more than 25 years in various capacities before being named pastor in 2018. “They focused on excitable delirium which is not recognized by the medical community but is used by police departments,” she said. “If (the attorney general) used this argument, that’s suspicious to us.”

Rev. Brown said Rochester’s White residents are generally conservative and White lawmakers are unwilling to put their support behind policies or programs that would significantly shift the current policing paradigm for fear of upsetting their constituents.

She also rebuked the grand jury process.

“The systems stops working for us,” she explained soberly. “With a grand jury of 16 White and three Black people, it says we have a system that has a transparent preference for Whiteness when it comes to dispensing justice. That demographic and racial composition will never get us justice. The system is set up to fail us.”

Rev. Brown said the way forward for her and others seeking substantive change is what she calls a policing blueprint.

“I proposed to the mayor (Lovely Warren) to design a policing blueprint,” she said. “The policing blueprint given to us is from 1819. Slavery was legal until 1827. It was not designed to give us public safety or protection under the law.”

“What I said to the mayor is put out a call for a citywide discussion to change things,” Rev. Brown said. “It may be a symposium of activists, politicians, the faith community, and retired officers not so connected to the institution that they’re not beholden to it, the Police Accountable Board and members of the United Church Ministries.”

Mayor Warren is Black. She was recently criticized for withholding the truth in the Prude case. An investigation into the official response to Mr. Prude’s death faulted the mayor and former police chief for keeping critical details of the case secret for months and lying to the public about what they knew.

The report, commissioned by Rochester’s city council and made public March 12, said Mayor Warren lied at a September press conference when she said it wasn’t until August that she learned officers had physically restrained Mr. Prude during the arrest that led to his death.

Mayor Warren was told that very day that officers had used physical restraint, the report said, and by mid-April she, then-Police Chief La’Ron Singletary and other officials were aware Mr. Prude had died as a result and the officers were under criminal investigation.

“In the final analysis, the decision not to publicly disclose these facts rested with Mayor Warren, as the elected mayor of the city of Rochester,” said the report, written by New York City-based lawyer Andrew G. Celli Jr. “But Mayor Warren alone is not responsible for the suppression of the circumstances of the Prude arrest and Mr. Prude’s death.” A special counsel to the city administration disputed claims that Ms. Warren lied.

The mayor spoke based on the facts known to her at the time and if what she said wasn’t true it was because then police chief Singletary had misled her, Carrie Cohen said. Chief Singletary, who retired last year, is also Black. Mr. Singletary’s characterization “likely impacted” how city officials viewed the matter, the report said.

Additionally, the report said, a city lawyer in August discouraged Mayor Warren from publicly disclosing Mr. Prude’s arrest or commencing disciplinary action against the officers after she viewed body camera video of the encounter for the first time.

The lawyer incorrectly stated that the city was barred from taking action against the officers while the state attorney general’s office was investigating Mr. Prude’s death, the report said. The officers held him down for about two minutes until he stopped breathing. He was taken off life support a week later.

The report also confirms Rochester police commanders urged city officials to hold off on publicly releasing the body camera footage of Mr. Prude’s suffocation death because they feared violent blowback if it came out during protests over the police killing of Mr. Floyd in Minneapolis. Mr. Prude’s children have since filed a lawsuit over their father’s death.

Aurora, Colorado

The community has been roiled by anger and protests since officers from the Aurora Police Department detained 23-year-old Elijah McClain when he was walking home from a convenience store on August 30, 2019. They held him down by the neck. When he fell unconscious, fire department paramedics injected him with a dose of ketamine, a tranquilizer. Mr. McClain went into cardiac arrest on the way to the hospital and died a few days later.

An independent panel investigating the McClain death released a deeply critical report saying the officer had no justification to stop Mr. McClain and blamed officers for unnecessarily escalating their use of force, including using a neck hold twice in order to render Mr. McClain unconscious. The report authors also decried fire department paramedics for their delay in helping Mr. McClain, then injecting him with a dose of ketamine that would have subdued a much larger person. In November 2019, Adams County District Attorney Brian Mason declined to file criminal charges, announcing that there wasn’t enough evidence that the officers had broken the law despite their use of force.

Elijah McClain’s death unleashed angry protests. Local activist Lillian House, one of the organizers of several protests, said she has incurred the wrath of police brass and law enforcement. “He was in his own neighborhood. It sounds like he was dancing and someone thought he looked suspicious,” Ms. House told The Final Call. “He was grabbing an iced tea and coming back home. Within 10 seconds, they put hands on him … paramedics stood there for 6, 7 minutes. Cops put him in a chokehold twice and once when they were on top of him.”

“He was 5 feet 6, 145 pounds. They said he was resisting. McClain had been through hell. What they did was so vicious and racist. Not firing officers is an insult to the community. One cop was fired for mocking Elijah. The officers and two paramedics are still on the job. It was a murder. They should be fired … .”

The panel said the investigation by local police detectives “raised serious concerns” for failing to rigorously question the officers involved and failing to examine the circumstances of Mr. McClain’s death.

Ms. House said those in the law enforcement have escaped responsibility and characterized the police department as “corrupt.”

“No one has challenged the Aurora Police Department. We’ve been trying to bring light to this case since 2019,” said Ms. House. “We invited protestors to come to Aurora. All of these cops are so furious about protests and being held accountable. They are used to getting away with murder and terrorism … .”

She said she is paying a price for pushing against police brutality and murders. She faces arraignment on 25 charges—including 12 felonies—and faces 48 years in prison. Ms. House is one of five activists who she said “are facing serious charges.”

“My arraignment is coming up. I’ve already served more time than these cops,” Ms. House observed. “I spent eight days in near-solitary confinement. The whole thing is an intimidation scheme,” said Ms. House, an independent activist with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. “I found out through the report that they have been surveilling us. They put all these resources and energy building a case against us. They sought to repress the protests, calling our allies and trying to turn them against us. I heard from student protestors that they contacted their parents.

“There’s a lot of power in these departments. They used really dirty tactics. The report shows what we already know: that this was a wholly unjustified murder. The city is dedicated to maintaining the police department.”

Brunswick, Georgia

The killing of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick in South Georgia on February 23, 2020, stunned the nation when law enforcement officials released a video of the shooting months later. An article in the New York Times, the release of a video of the shooting and widespread furor and anger from civil rights activists, lawmakers and celebrities precipitated the arrest of Gregory McMichael and his son Travis. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation charged the pair with murder and aggravated assault. The younger McMichael is said to have shot Mr. Arbery with a shotgun, GBI officials said.

The trio of deaths—Mr. Floyd, Ms. Taylor and Mr. Arbery—shined a harsh but familiar light on the police-involved and vigilante killings of the three victims, and illustrated the dangers faced by primarily unarmed Black men women and children.

The protests last summer, nationwide discussions about justice and accountability, corporations airing commercials about the importance of inclusion and Black contributions, what does that actually mean?

For Iman Ali, even as she advocates and fights for justice for her people in traditional terms, she is also employing a range of healing modalities for the Arbery family.

“I am helping the family with healing work. We don’t often hear about this aspect but it’s a long road,” said Ms. Ali, a Reiki Master and teacher, practitioner of transcendental meditation and integrative medicine. “I was here in the Brunswick, Golden Isle area. I couldn’t believe that it had happened in our backyard because this is a very quiet but a historical slave area. It just shocked me that it happened. I felt in my spirit that there was an ancestral uprising.”

“The family is trying their best to cope. They’re very hurt,” she explained. “They are a beautiful, spiritual, soulful family. You could hear it, being so fresh. Ahmaud’s mom had to move to North Carolina. The family is continuing to demand justice.”

“How can you have justice with no peace?” she asked. “People should examine or reexamine this, I believe we’re close to accepting the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s positions. We should follow his Teachings because we need our own territory where we can govern ourselves. There’s no other way to gain respect. We have to accept our own and be ourselves. He warned us and told us what would take place,” said Ms. Ali.

NOI Student Minister Demetric Muhammad agrees. “We need to overhaul how policing is done in our community,” said Minister Muhammad, a Memphis resident. “Often police officers have no organic connection or basis (to the community) and don’t know the cultural norms of Black life in America. What they know is only what they see in the movies or on TV. Implicit bias causes the heavy handed treatment of Black people. They need more retraining, learning Black history to get past the stereotypes of Black people as criminals and prostitutes.”

Min. Muhammad said Blacks are demanding that corrupt police are punished.

“We have to speak with one voice. It appears to be exclusively a Black community problem. Why don’t we hear police killing young Jewish or European immigrants or them going into ethnic enclaves and killing people?” asked Min. Muhammad, author of several books, including “How to Police the Black Community: Divine Guidance for Law Enforcement From the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan.”

“They know how to punish with money and voting and have the ability to communicate internally within their groups … and establish difficult relationships. They allow these communities to police themselves.”

“Like most of these issues, it comes down to unity. Min. Farrakhan and the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad have encouraged us to come together. We could overcome the difficulties if we could have the same type of unity other communities have. We can learn from immigrants. We can look at models to build separate but interrelated communities. The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad said unity is a more potent weapon than a hydrogen bomb.”

(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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From The Final Call Newspaper

The Signs of Distress, Confusion Plaguing Men and Nations by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan
- March 16, 2021




[Editor’s note: The following article is taken from a section of an hour-long message delivered by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Part 10 of his 52-week Lecture Series “The Time and What Must Be Done.” This message originally aired on Satuday, March 16, 2013. To order this message in its entirety on MP3, DVD and CD, visit store.fi nalcall.com. You can also call (866) 602-1230, ext. 200.]

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

Jesus told us of a lot of “signs” that would be spoken, and that would be fulfilled; and these signs would tell us “The Time.” Let us study what is written in the Book of Matthew, Chapter 24, verse 34: “Verily, I say unto you: This generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled.”

Question: How many generations have passed since Jesus preached those words? It has been 2,000 years, so how many “generations” have come and gone since those words were uttered?



Surely this prophecy could not have been talking about “the time of Jesus The Prophet,” that “this generation shall not pass till all these things are fulfilled.” Well, when you check what a “generation” is, according to the dictionary, it is a span of “30 years”; and if we calculate how many times “30” goes into “2,000” the answer is “66.666” times. Does that number “ring a bell”? It is The Number of The Beast—and The Hour of His Destruction has come.


So I can say in the Name of “The Great Mahdi,” Master Fard Muhammad, and in The Name of His Christ, “The Great Messiah,” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad: This generation shall not pass until every word that Jesus of 2,000 years ago spoke, and every word that Elijah Muhammad has spoken to us, shall be fulfilled.

My dear brothers and sisters, since we are on the subjects of “The Time and What Must Be Done” and “The Judgment,” we can study what some of the signs are by reading two monumental books by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad that you must have in your library: Message To The Blackman in America and The Fall of America. Please go to store.finalcall.com and order them.

The Fall of America is the best book that you could have in your library. White and Black and Brown, Asian: All of this affects us all. Every one of you “scholars” should get this book. All of you who preach The Gospel, whether you are an imam, whether you are a rabbi, whether you are a “leader” of religious groups: Get this book, and study it, because the Honorable Elijah Muhammad gives you the clearest exegesis of the scriptures that foretell “The Fall of America” and “The Destruction of this Present World.”

In the Book of Luke, Chapter 21, verses 25-26 teach: “There shall be signs in the sun and in the moon and in the stars; and upon the earth, distress of nations with perplexity. The sea and waves roaring, and men’s hearts failing them for fear and for looking after those things which are coming on the Earth for The Powers of Heaven shall be shaken.”

In Message To The Blackman in America on page 292, in the Chapter titled “The Judgment,” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad says that “the sun,” “the moon” and “the stars” are really causing great consternation (feelings of anxiety or dismay, terror or fright, typically at something unexpected) on the Earth.

From published reports we can hear of great “sun storms” (i.e. “solar flares”), where The Sun is belching out fire from 10,000-30,000 miles from its surface, burning the Earth and interfering with your communications. And yes, the sea and the waves are “roaring,” for the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is talking about “the seas” and what is happening; and the effect that The Moon is having on the waters.

It will get worse. And when the scripture mentions “men’s hearts failing them for fear”: What is the “No. 1 killer” of people in America? I have read that it is “heart failure.” What are you “afraid” of, America? Look up above your head: Look at the storms! Look at the tornadoes! Look at the hurricanes! Look at the water! Look at the fire! Look at the wind! Look at freezing cold! God is after us. Men’s hearts are failing them with fear for what they see coming upon the Earth.

And if you’ll read, or look at the news, “Are the nations in distress?” My God! There are 17 nations in Europe that were taking austerity measures to address their debt crisis—they are “in distress” because their economies are collapsing. I even read in a news article that France’s Labor Minister, Michel Sapin, was telling the French people that the country is, quote, “totally bankrupt.”


And there are scholars of economics in America that are warning that America is nearly “completely bankrupt” because the “Gross Domestic Product” (GDP) is under the “debt ceiling,” here you have over $16 trillion in debt that is swamping, drowning the GDP. Those are not “good” signs. Those are the signs of distress and affliction.

The nations of the Earth are in distress—with perplexity, which means “confusion.” Are the heads of our government confused? You mean you can’t sit down in a room and agree on “a way forward” to solve the problems of the American people? Yes. … The confusion that you wanted to produce, and have produced, among us: Now God is taking it off of us, and putting it on you. These are the signs of the end.

Study The Fall of America, Chapter 35, “America Surrounded with The Judgment of Allah” (page 154) and Chapter 36, “Four Great Judgments of America” (page 157).

In Chapter 35, he writes: “The four great judgments that Almighty [God] Allah is bringing upon America are rain, hail, snow and earthquakes. We see them now covering all sides of America, as the Holy Qur’an prophesies, ‘curtailing her on all her sides.’ And these judgments would push the people into the center of the country, and there they would realize that it is Allah (God) Who is bringing them and their country to a naught.”

What do you mean “pushing the people into the center of the country”? He told me to tell you, and he wrote it himself, that the coastlines—all of them—will be destroyed. And some of your own scientists are talking about “global warming” and the “melting of the glaciers”: This is not an “accident.”

You want to say that it’s what “we are doing to the environment, etc.,” and we have some responsibility, however The God of Heaven is doing this. And as these glaciers melt, the waters of The Pacific and The Atlantic Oceans are going to rise.

And as they rise, they will overspread, and destroy your borders in the East with The Atlantic Coast; in the West with The Pacific Coast, and in The South with The Gulf Coast. It’s happening now. But it will get worse as you continue your rebellion against God, and His Call of what you must do in order to escape “loss.”

And in Chapter 36, he writes: “To be plagued with too much rain will destroy property and lives. It swells the rivers and creeks. Too much rain floods cities and towns. … Rain makes the atmosphere too heavy with moisture causing sickness. Wind with rain can bring destruction to towns and cities, bringing various germs, causing sickness to the people.

It produces unclean water by the swelling of streams and destroying reservoirs of pure drinking water used for the health of the people. Rain is a destructive army within itself. Hail stones are also a property and life destroyer.”

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad wrote these words 40 years ago. And it is even greater today—showing you that a Man of God and His Word are never “outdated,” it is always “on time,” for in Chapter 35 he writes: “These are not the days of Noah, Lot and Abraham, nor are these the days of Moses. These are new times.

The enemy does not get away in punishing the righteous just because he hates them. Allah, the God of Righteousness, is with us and He just Laughs at those who try to fight against Him. He has destroyed whole nations with less than the power of rain, hail, snow and earthquakes. The Holy Qur’an has the record of people even being destroyed by gnats. …”

That’s how disrespectful Allah is of The Wicked: He will take something as small as a “gnat” and multiply it into the millions, and drive you to destruction. He does not have to “go to work,” as in get a “block of iron” or “a mountain,” and throw it on them. He just causes that which is with you to turn against you.

“The forces of nature,” he continues, “are great weapons as we see them in play upon America. Storms after storms of snow and ice are rolling in from the North and are pushing great drifts that are just covering up everything.” Well, the Holy Qur’an says that Allah (God) destroyed people with just cold wind. He froze them. … No wonder in the 2nd Chapter of the Book of Psalms God says that He will “sit in the heavens, and laugh at those” who are trying to fight against Him.
And I, too, laugh: Do you think that you can “get away” with fighting Allah (God)?
What will be your course of action?
Well, after hearing these things, the question I have to ask: “What are you going to do, America?”

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad is asking that you:

“Separate The Black Man and Woman,” because God wants to make a great nation out of us; and “Give us a good sendoff.”

Black Man and Woman: What should you do? Get busy! Let’s unite! Let us stop this wanton killing of each other!

The learned of our people; the professional people: Why don’t you look at The Program of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and unite with that Program to put the hands of our people to work, and the feet of our people moving in a free direction? You have the knowledge—but you’re using it in the storehouse of the wisdom of your former slave masters and their children. Black man and woman of intelligence: Let’s unite and do something for self.

But if you continue to rebel, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad warns of a heavy chastisement that you will be under, that will last one whole year. It’s written in the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, Chapter 9, verses 1-6 that in that year “you will seek death”—and you will not find it, for “death will flee from you.” It’s on the way. … So come on: “Buckle on your boots and shoes” and let’s go to work and do something for ourselves.
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From The Final Call Newspaper

Death by Zip Code: Housing Discrimination, Neighborhood Contamination and Black Life

By Anisah Muhammad, Contributing Writer
- March 9, 2021


A hole is seen on the wall and ceiling in Desmond Odom’s kitchen as he talks to The Associated Press about the lead in his tap water, Nov. 8, 2018, in Newark, N.J. a water leak forced Odom to hire a contractor and pay $2,000 to replace a lead pipe that burst, but he claims he and his family have stopped drinking the tap water because of the lead pipes in his home. Photo: AP Julio Cortez


Five years ago, Freddie Gray, a young Black man in Baltimore, was arrested for allegedly possessing a knife. A few days later, he died from injuries to his spinal cord sustained during his arrest and transport. But police brutality and misconduct are not the only dangers to Black life.

As a boy, Freddie Gray lived in extreme poverty and thus was exposed to significant amounts of lead, according to a recent University of Georgia report on “Racism and the Contamination of Black Lives” published in the Journal of African American Studies. In 2008, Freddie Gray’s family filed a lawsuit against their landlord after he and his siblings showed they had significant blood levels of lead. He lived in a community saturated with underfunded schools and food deserts.

“Gray lived in a community where he was slowly being poisoned by lead during his developmental years, and his parents never got the help they needed despite the documented evidence of lead poisoning,” the report says. “Gray is not an outlier; he is an all too familiar example of the Black experience in the United States.”

The study found that environmental racism and exclusionary housing policies and practices such as redlining create health problems in Black communities. The writers break down the definition of racism and its different levels. Racism can manifest through stereotypes, prejudicial beliefs, or discrimination, it says. Specifically, it defines environmental racism as a form of structural racism.

Flint residents protest the water quality in the city on Monday, Oct. 5, 2015, outside Flint City Hall in Flint, Mich. Tests have shown elevated lead levels in the drinking water after Flint began drawing and treating water from the Flint River. Photo: AP Danny Miller

“Structural racism is the policies and practices that normalize and legalize racism in a way that creates differential access to goods, services, and opportunities based on race,” the report says. “Environmental racism refers to policies, practices, or directives that result in advantages or disadvantages to individuals or communities based on race.” Furthermore, environmental racism includes harm caused by infrastructures that determine access and quality of resources and services.

“To understand environmental racism in the United States, we must discuss the nation’s history of housing policies and the ways they have impacted Black people,” the report says. Those policies include zoning ordinances, restrictive covenants, blockbusting, steering and redlining. It defines redlining as a practice used by the Federal Housing Administration to outline Black neighborhoods with red, making them ineligible for federally insured loans, according to the rating system used by the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation.

Angela McIver, chief executive officer of the Fair Housing Rights Center in Southeastern Pennsylvania, looked at every redlining map in the United States because she wanted to understand why Black people suffer so much in their communities.

“Why are the social disparities so prevalent amongst us? And the deeper I dig into redlining, the more I see that in a large part from the 20th century into the 21st century, therein lies the problem,” she said. “And looking at all of those redlining maps, they have commonalities when it comes to the red section. Oftentimes they’re referred to as risky, hazardous or dangerous.
Angela McIver Photo: Youtube.com/Daryl Lloyd

“Language that’s associated with us as people. Not as a status of our properties, but us as human beings,” she said.

She said the legacy and the practice of redlining is alive and well and that historically, Black people, Jews and Latinos were subjected to it. HOLC maps used a color-coded system, where green meant the neighborhood was best, blue was the next best, and yellow was declining. And then there was red.

“Today, if you take that 1937 redlining map of Philadelphia and you overlay that on a map that highlights all of our disparities, the wealth gap, the educational gap, health disparities, economics … access to resources, you will find that hardly anything changed from that 1937 map,” Ms. McIver said.

She said redlining still exists, but instead of physical maps being colored green or red, it’s done by zip code, neighborhood, algorithms and IP addresses.

“Where you sit from your home to attempt to do digital transactions, you’re being watched. They know exactly where your IP address is. And advertisements or the lack of will or will not come to you because of that,” she said. “Your zip code, when you put that into certain electronic platforms, will also steer you towards or away from things. It’s very widespread nowadays. So it went from being more low tech to high tech now.”

Ms. McIver explained that people are placed at-risk because of zip code.

“If we will look at one of my favorite zip codes to highlight in Philadelphia because it is in the heart of the redlining section, which is 19132. And you examine all the social determinants for 19132. It’s not because they’re bad people living in that zip code. It is because systemically over time people have not received fully all that they need,” she said.

She said redlining is an accumulation of things that happened in the past that haven’t been undone. “Where was the redress from there? Who got a check making them whole from that? It didn’t happen. But yet, people will shake their finger at folks who live in these neighborhoods and present the argument as if this is all on you,” she said. “And that’s not the case, the issue is that for the most part, we’re decent, kind people who are seeking peace and justice. We just haven’t revolted about all of this.”

Willie J.R. Fleming, co-founder and executive director of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, expounded on the idea of “death by zip code,” and he said most of the zip codes that fall under that phrase are Black communities.

“I say there’s a lack of police services in that community, there’s a lack of educational institutions in that community, there’s a lack of health facilities in the community. When I hear death by zip code, it makes me think about the food deserts,” he said.

According to 2014 research from Johns Hopkins University, racial health disparities could be due to differences in physical and social environments, including access to healthy food.

Mr. Fleming called Chicago’s efforts one of the biggest overhauls of public housing in the country, and it forced Black people into other communities. “One of the impacts of tearing down public housing in the country was we didn’t get rid of poverty,” he said. “We just relocated. We displaced poverty.”

He said housing discrimination means Section 8 housing choice vouchers being underutilized, and he explained that housing discrimination is rooted in American policy and that it’s not simply a housing crisis. “There’s a human rights crisis in America. This is not displacement. This is urban and economic cleansing,” he said.

“When we talk about housing discrimination, we talk about the ability for first time homeowners to access loans and lenders who will lend to them. And that’s when the terminology redlining comes in,” he said. “So we talk about discrimination on one aspect, that you can’t get a loan to buy a home. And then we talk about the aspect of not being able to not only get a loan, (but) not being able to get a loan in a particular community that’s non-African-American.”

He said housing discrimination not only applies to Black and Latino residents, but Black developers who want to develop affordable housing are also discriminated and redlined against.

In the University of Georgia report, the writers highlight three specific events to show the contamination of Black lives: toxic wells in Dickinson County, Tennessee; coke plants in North Birmingham, Alabama; and the water crisis in Flint, Michigan.

Latinos on the Southeast side of Chicago are facing their own crisis. It started when a metal-shredding company that was accused of violating air pollution and nuisance laws moved operations from a majority White and affluent neighborhood to the Latino-majority Southeast neighborhood. Activists are undergoing a hunger strike to protest the relocation.

“If they’re removing that industry in order to revitalize that community, what does it do to the community you put it in? That means that community does not experience that revitalization. That community is going to suffer the health impacts that that industry creates. And it also affects property values,” said Peggy Salazar, director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force.

“We become victims,” she said. “And also, in some ways, it becomes normal, because that’s what they do over and over again, so we kind of start to begin to normalize it.”

Ms. Salazar said land use and zoning policies need to be changed and community investment needs to take place.

“We want some revitalization and investment here, not dumping things that other parts of the city don’t want,” she said.

Mr. Fleming explained that all levels of government need to take the Fair Housing Act seriously, that there has to be equal protection under the law and that there has to be a greater penalty for housing discrimination. Ms. McIver said there needs to be a full commitment to right the wrongs of the past and to address the needs of the people.

“We’re talking about man-made situations that have been superimposed on people who, again, for the most part, are kind and decent and loving and who have not revolted from this but who are patient and waiting on what they believe are other decent human beings to, with the stroke of a pen or other provisions, help to change these outcomes for them,” she said.
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From The Final Call Newspaper

More than an idea: A Black movement to separate is happening now

By Michael Z. Muhammad, Contributing Writer
- March 2, 2021





“Separation is the best and only solution to the racism, violence, tyranny, and oppression plaguing Blacks in America.”

—The Honorable Elijah Muhammad



Saviours’ Day 2021 closed its first day of workshops with a timely panel discussion that included historic and current film clips demonstrating the progress made when the Black community separates from the enemy and unites with itself.



The plenary session was titled “The Best and Only Solution: The Separation Process has Started” and was moderated by Atty. Ava Muhammad, national spokesperson for the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and Nation of Islam. For the past several years, she has been crisscrossing the country holding town hall meetings educating the community on the importance of establishing an independent territory where Black people can build and thrive.

Such labor is bearing fruit for independence through self-determined and successful efforts in education, farming, business, community development, and policing. The plenary session Feb. 26 allowed for sharing of work underway to make Black people independent and to discuss plans moving forward.



The afternoon’s panelists included Donnie Muhammad, an educator from Raleigh, N.C.; Shahid Muhammad and his wife Shahidah, educators and new farm owners; Cheryl Mango of Petersburg, Va., and Virginia State University professor; Michael Muhammad, owner of MSGLG Farms; Abdul Akbar, businessman and community developer, and Cardio X, a law enforcement officer.

Separation has been an essential part of the Nation of Islam’s program. Point Number Four of What the Muslims Want states in part: “We want our people in America whose parents or grandparents were descendants from slaves to be allowed to establish a separate state or territory of their own, either on this continent or elsewhere, we believe that our former slave masters are obligated to provide such land and that the area must be fertile and minerally rich … . Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return, some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced. We believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced upon us by White America justifies our demand for our complete separation and a state or territory of our own.”

That separation process has begun.

“We’re not here tonight beloved because of failure. We’re here tonight because of success. Allah, God, never fails to keep his promise. At the forefront of the immeasurable volume of that work was done by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad is the demand that America let go of the descendants of her former slaves. Only if we leave will we be able to obey God’s command to us come out of her, my people,” said Student Minister Ava Muhammad in opening remarks.

Providing an historical context, Ava Muhammad noted that in June 2018, the Nation of Islam initiated a series of town hall gatherings around the country to discuss separation. “These town hall meetings were predominantly Black and, in some cities, such as Phoenix, Arizona, and Los Angeles, they included a large turnout of the indigenous people of this continent, the Red and the Brown,” she said. “We traveled with a team to 21 cities. And that team was made up of Muslims who not only volunteered to be part of this but paid their own way to help take part in this great day that our parents prayed would come. The final city that we held a town hall in was Detroit, Mich., last year as Saviours’ Day 2020 at the legendary Shrine of the Black Madonna. The meetings were paused due to Covid-19,” she said.

But, added Ava Muhammad, “The response to the town hall meetings has been overwhelming.”

“Saviours’ Day 2020 a year ago was entitled ‘The Unraveling of a Great Nation.’ Two weeks after Minister Farrakhan delivered that message; all hell broke loose in America. And she moved into the last days of her fall. It is in progress at this moment. The words of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad are now in force. He said to the Black man and woman, Allah will make you separate. We are past the mercy given to us by Allah and his Christ through the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s presence as a spiritual leader. He is now the commander in chief and the head of the new Black nation bringing in a new reality,” said Ava Muhammad.

With those words, the plenary session was off and running.

Using an astute attorney’s skills, Ava Muhammad established her case through video media, taking plenary participants back to the early 1900s when Black people built independent towns, banks, schools, and businesses. She demonstrated a precedent for success by showcasing past Black independent thought and unity.

In moving to the panel presenters, Minister Ava Muhammad linked Minister Farrakhan’s call to make our communities better and safer places to live. “And so when he said make your own communities, I kept thinking on that, our own communities are not these colonies called ghettos or ’hoods that White people have designated for us. Our own community is a community where we control everything from the dirt, all the way up to the education of our children, growing our food, our businesses. Adding reparations is really about land,” Ava Muhammad noted. “If you don’t control the land, somebody else is controlling you.”



During his presentation, Donnie Muhammad, a school administrator, discussed the role education must play in the separation initiative. “At the root of education, it intends to extract the light from the student, the light that is a divine gift that the student is already endowed with the use of mathematics, the use of reading the use of science to extract those great gifts,” stated Donnie Muhammad. He went on to explain how many educational options are available with school choice.

Shahid Muhammad, the famed “Math Doctor” who teaches at the Muhammad University of Islam in Chicago, shared how he and his wife, Shahidah, were able to acquire farmland in New Buffalo, Mich. They own Al Jana Farms. “It is our desire, my wife and I, to transform those five acres into a paradise and garden for our children, in particular. But for really all of our people, it’s going to be an educational center with agribusiness teaching botany,” said Shahid Muhammad. “These learning labs will teach our children science, technology, arts, engineering, and mathematics. We plan to have hiking trails, walking trails, obstacle courses, with plans to teach cultural dance, meditation, agroforestry, water purification. We plan to use every square inch to make a profit and be productive.”

“Many of us are in effect alive and sensible enough to know that coming to terms with our oppression does not have to mean further assimilating into oppression,” pointed out Dr. Cheryl Mango, a history professor at Virginia State University, in her presentation.

“In fact, since the NOI popular campaign against what many may call the irrationality of chasing what’s often a mirage of equality, the community has witnessed an uptick and a turn inward, meaning depending on self to secure liberating freedom where ownership and control do not come from asking others who control you,” Dr. Mango said.

Perhaps the most impressive presentation of the evening came from Michael Muhammad, owner of the 22-acre MSGLG farm located in Pennsylvania. He initially set out to buy a small one-acre farm, and Allah (God) blessed him mightily.



Michael Muhammad brought down the house with his story about how he purchased two cows and put them in his SUV back seat with his children after buying the farm.

“We only saw an acre in our mind, and Allah increased the reward because we stepped out on some faith,” he said. “I tell you, Believers. This is our time. It’s our time.”

“This is in 2020, the whole year was filled with the pandemic, but we’re not experiencing the impact because Allah wanted us to know this was our time. This was our moment. This belongs to us. Some Believers who got inspired—Brother Sultan and his wife, Sister Khadijah out of Muhammad Mosque Number 12—said: ‘Hey, I want to buy some land.’ And we went out and bought some land about eight miles up the road because I wanted some hay.

“And I literally just wanted to buy some hay, but come to find out, the property that was selling the hay was also selling the farm itself. And I said, ‘why would I buy hay when I could buy the farm?’ But I didn’t want to go in by myself.” He, Sultan Muhammad their families came together to buy the farm. Because of the pandemic, the mortgage payments on the farm have been held in abeyance, said Michael Muhammad.

Akbar Kurt Muhammad, a Chicago-based community developer, gave a moving story about how he was inspired by Minister Farrakhan while incarcerated. The owner of several successful businesses, he is in the process of developing the community around Mosque Maryam. He is in the process of developing a city block, where he opened a laundromat. The Woodlawn neighborhood where his business is located is considered a food and health care desert. His vision is to rebuild the block and connect it to health care, financial literacy and entrepreneurship, food and nutrition, and agriculture. His not-for-profit Salaam Community Wellness Center, a health care facility, hopes to connect the best of non-Western medicine with the best of Western medicine, including acupuncture, yoga, deep breathing, tai chi and meditation, among other tools.

The Wellness Center also will serve as a training site for master’s degree level social work student interns to provide virtual and on-site case management for patients with limited transportation or who are better served in their homes. Another building will house entrepreneur training where participants will learn how to write a business plan, pitch ideas to investors and do a feasibility study, among other trainings. A dine-in restaurant that focuses on serving nutritious food will be part of the complex. The restaurant will be supplied with vegetables from a community garden that will be planted on an adjoining vacant lot. The garden will also serve as a source for agricultural training and an area for meditation. Akbar Muhammad already operates nine self-service laundry facilities.

Brother Cardio X, a police officer in Harvey, Ill., discussed the importance of a different kind of policing as essential to a new way of protecting Black people. He called for a more human approach but said our communities will need security. He currently works in a majority Black city and interacts with people using knowledge and the respectful manner learned in the Fruit of Islam. He said the way he conducts himself has been well received. And he doesn’t tolerate brutality. While arresting a shoplifting suspect, a security guard punched the man, said Cardio X. He immediately arrested the security guard.

In wrapping the session up, Ava Muhammad closed with video clips of believers all over the country who are buying land, farming, establishing independent schools. The separation process has truly begun in earnest.

 

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FARRAKHAN FILES DEFAMATION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ADL

FARRAKHAN FILES DEFAMATION LAWSUIT AGAINST THE ADL
REPLAY: October 28, 2023 explanation of The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s DEFAMATION lawsuit against the ADL et al.

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Farrakhan on neo-cons, Iraq and the war on terror

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