Farrakhan reprise: The Million Chiclets March 2015

By William PLEASANT

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said Wednesday (June 24, 2015) he plans to hold a Millions for Justice march in the nation's capital this fall, 20 years after the Million Man March.

During a speech at Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Washington, Farrakhan said he intends to hold the rally Oct. 10 on the National Mall, site of the October 15, 1995 rally.

The NOI leader was ostensibly coronated Prince of the Negroes
by the corporate media at the 1995 Million Man March.

"This is the time our people must see our unity," Farrakhan said. "Let's make 10/10/15 a meeting place for those who want justice, for those who know what justice is." Hmmm. That is an interesting mobilizing target. Are those people who want justice and those who know what justice is mutually exclusive groups. If they are not, then why do they need to meet? Just askin, y'all...

Ousted NAACP executive director Benjamin Chavis, who helped organize the original Million Man March, said he is optimistic that this year's turnout will be "in excess of a million." He said the event's success would be measured more by the political and socio-economical impact it has on communities.

Washington DC 1995: Can bigger mean better in 2015?

In 1995, Louis Farrakhan and his followers managed to stage a monster gathering of Black men on the lawn of the US Capitol. The domestic and international media stood in awe as the religious cult leader urged Black men everywhere to atone for their moral and political failures, and dedicate themselves to an erstwhile revolutionary path to Black Liberation.

In fact, Farrakhan's four-hour sermon on Black sin and Black redemption (atonement) became such a media sensation that even then president Bill Clinton stepped in for a bite. Speaking at the University of Texas-Austin (October 16, 1995), the US president declared, "Well, today's march is also about pride and dignity and respect. But after a generation of deepening social problems that disproportionately impact black Americans, it is also about black men taking renewed responsibility for themselves, their families, and their communities. (Applause.) It's about saying no to crime and drugs and violence. It's about standing up for atonement and reconciliation. It's about insisting that others do the same, and offering to help them. It's about the frank admission that unless black men shoulder their load, no one else can help them or their brothers, their sisters, and their children escape the hard, bleak lives that too many of them still face..." (THE WHITE HOUSE: Office of the Press Secretary, For Immediate Release October 16, 1995)

Pres. Bill Clinton shows what 1 million Black marchers really meant in 1995.

Flushed with media fame and politically endorsed by no less than the leader of the free world, Farrakhan went on a global whirlwind tour as the world's most famous Black non-entertainer. Dictators and presidents from throughout Africa and the Arabs states lined up for a photo-op with the new and improved Shining Black Prince, most notably Nigeria's military strongman Sani Abacha who soon afterwards put the progressive indigenous opposition intellectual Ken Saro Wiwa to the sword. 

Indigenous Nigerian activist/writer Ken Saro Wiwa, murdered by
dictator Sani Abacha on orders from Royal Dutch Shell Oil Co. in 1995.

Likewise, Sudan's Black, arabophilic dictator Omar El-Bashir had only hugs and kisses for the Nation of Islam leader, as he merrily went about conducting  genocidal military campaigns against the Nubian people and various non-Muslim tribes in South Sudan. Farrakhan had tea with the late Libyan leader Colonel Muhammar Khadafi, leading to a false rumor that the ruler of the oil-rich nation was ready, willing and able to lay a wad of cash (some said $1 billion) on Farrakhan and his revolutionary Black atonement movement. This, of course, provoked a stampede of Black businessmen, entertainers and outright grifters who had stood on the sidelines of the Million Man March to join in coronating the New Black Prince, in hope of being first in line when their new-found royal majesty  began to dole out Khadafi's donation money. Needless to say,  Khadafi's check for Farrakhan somehow got lost in the mail.

Omar El Bashir's ethnic cleansing campaigns 
against non-Muslim and blackskin Sudanese killed millions.

Riding Farrakhan's media tidal wave, Bill Clinton at the University of Texas  echoed Farrakhan's sad assessment of Black America. "And blacks are right to think something is terribly wrong when African American men are many times more likely to be victims of homicide than any other group in this country," the president explained. "When there are more African American men in our corrections system than in our colleges; when almost one in three African American men in their 20s are either in jail, on parole or otherwise under the supervision of the criminal justice system -- nearly one in three. And that is a disproportionate percentage in comparison to the percentage of blacks who use drugs in our society."

Clinton went on,"Now, I would like every white person here and in America to take a moment to think how he or she would feel if one in three white men were in similar circumstances. And there is still unacceptable economic disparity between blacks and whites. It is so fashionable to talk today about African Americans as if they have been some sort of protected class. Many whites think blacks are getting more than their fair share in terms of jobs and promotions. That is not true. That is not true. (Applause.)The truth is that African Americans still make on average about 60 percent of what white people do; that more than half of African American children live in poverty. And at the very time our young Americans need access to college more than ever before, black college enrollment is dropping in America."

Was Bill Clinton a closet Fruit of Islam? Not likely. But he and Farrakhan share the same hokey Democratic Party political ideology, dripping with the moralistic and boot-strapping-as-social-progress harangue of the southern Baptist Church. And they both produced the same political/social outcomes for Black people in 2015. You see, Bill Clinton's 1995 description of the Black American horror show has either remained the same or worsened in depth and ferocity since 1995. And now, 20 years later, Louis Farrakhan wishes again to enlist, as Ben Chavis said this week, "in excess of a million" more Blacks behind a patently failed political movement. What is the utility of staging another Million Chiclets March?--Million Chiclets because the 1995 event amounted to little more than an assembly of atomized wads of gum to be politically chewed and spat out by Farrakhan and ultimately the Democratic Party.

Farrakhan's reasons for staging an encore of his hit 1995 performance in Mr. Charlie's backyard are apparent. The sun is setting on Farrakhan (82) and the NOI cult. The cadre of Nation of Islam stalwarts, as well as its sympathizer base, are rapidly aging. The group is socially contracting. Moreover, the NOI has been consistently upstaged in theatrical militance by the New Black Panther Party and other secular formations over the past two decades. Ironically--ideologically speaking--the NOI reached its Promised Land with the 2008 election of Barack Obama, by magnitude the ultimate act of Black-for-Black "unity" and utter political capitulation to the Democratic Party in the history of the United States. Needless to say, a large fraction of Black people see the fruit of that "unity" and they are not very impressed today. 

In the April 2015 Baltimore Uprising, many younger protesters 
viewed the NOI as riding shotgun for the police.

Therefore, the central question here is why would Black Americans, after 20 years of further social and political decline, waste one neuron of brain matter considering going down a dead end to but another dead end with Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam?

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