Minister
Louis Farrakhan delivers
A message to the
grassroots
[Editor�s Note: The following
edited excerpts are from a message delivered by Minister
Louis Farrakhan on November 1, 1998 at the "Get out the Vote:
a Message to the
Grassroots" rally at Tabernacle Missionary Baptist Church in
Chicago. Religious
leaders, politicians and community activists attended the
ecumenical event.]
 In
the Name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.
I came here
tonight to talk about the electoral process and the Black vote.
In the book of Revelation, it reads, "And the nations were
angry, and thy wrath is come, and it is the time of the dead, that
they should be judged," or given justice. The nations were
angry. All the nations of the earth today are angry. And the book
says, "and thy wrath is come." If you can look at what
is happening globally and then focus in on what is happening in
America, it is obvious that the God of nature is angry.
Now dear brother and sister politicians, our people are angry
and they are hurting. You and I may meet in this beautiful place
and go home to a beautiful home or a descent meal but our people
feel a sense of hopelessness and despair. On BET television the
other day, host Tavis Smiley said they called a number of persons
asking them about getting out the vote. He said 70 percent of the
Blacks that he called said they are not voting because it doesn�t
seem to change anything. You call it apathy.
Mrs. Clinton came here yesterday and stood with our brother,
the Rev. Jesse Jackson, at Operation PUSH and she said we must
vote because our future depends on it. I�m sorry, but my future
doesn�t depend on a vote. My future does not depend on a
benevolent white person in the White House or in the mayor�s
mansion or in the governor�s mansion. We must get past looking
to a benevolent Caucasian to save us. They have not saved us and
they will not save us because they can not save themselves.
�
I would love for us to go to the polls. Vote for those persons
that you feel have done and will do as good as they can for us.
But I want all of the politicians and political hopefuls to
realize that politicians have never delivered the people of God.
David was a prophet and a king. He was political but his
spiritual side overpowered his political side, so his politics
were governed by his relationship to God. If you are just going to
be solely a politician, then you can only go so far because the
political system is a system of white supremacy. If the system is
a system of white supremacy and you don�t change the system,
then you must try to fit in the system and extract from the system
what you can for yourself and your people. But you must know by
the reality of the system that there is only so much you can
extract out of that system for yourself and your people because no
matter what power you have, you are still powerless.
�
Wasn�t it Frederick Douglass who said, "Power concedes
nothing without a demand?" Power isn�t going to concede
anything with a demand if the demand is not backed by power. You
are not dealing with a moral system; therefore, you cannot appeal
to the morality and the heart of mercy in a system that is
merciless. I don�t have any illusion about telling you to vote.
You should vote for those whom you feel will do good for us, but
remember, the good that they do is limited by the system that they
are in.
So the question
becomes, how do we empower our politicians to make them
stronger and better in their desire to serve their people? All of
our politicians are good. But the system will make you like itself
unless there is a pool of Siloam (Bible) that you can take a bath
in. When we, the Muslims, enter the electoral process, we are not
entering this to be like what we see. I would be a hypocrite if I
told you we are going to get out the vote and it is going to be
business as usual. Our people are angry and they will hurt those
of us in leadership who deceive them and play games with their
true aspiration for real liberation.
According to the polls, the 1996 presidential election was the
lowest turnout for a presidential election since 1924. It dropped
by approximately six to eight million votes from 1992 to 1996.
America is going all over the world selling them on democracy, and
the hallmark of democracy is that we have the right to elect and
select those who would lead us. But now we in America, the
American electorate, are dropping out of the most important part
of being in a democracy�the voting process.
Now how can we change this? I want to talk to the pastors who
are supposed to be the freest people because we have congregations
that support us. Nobody in the state should feel that they have us
in their hip pocket. You are God�s man and God is universal. You
may be the pastor of Cosmopolitan, St. Sabina, Fernwood or Mosque
Maryam. These are small congregations, but you are speaking for a
big God. When you are speaking for big God, how could you just be
concerned with your little congregation that you would sell out to
get a little crumb here and a little crumb there. You are God�s
people, and when you speak for God you don�t speak just for your
congregation, you speak for the suffering masses. Whether they are
in your church or not, they are your congregation if you truly
represent the God of heaven.
I just
can�t speak for Muslims. It is not Muslims who are aching
alone. Our people are aching and they need us to be a strong
advocate for their suffering. You have to stay free in order to
keep them strong and clean. But if you (pastors) get bought out,
how are they going to stay straight and the men and the women of
God have been corrupted? We are the watchmen on the wall. You
(political leaders) are too. You watch with a political eye, we
watch from a spiritual eye, but we are supposed to be the watchmen
for the people that vote for us. The sad thing is the people vote
but they don�t give you politicians the money to run your
campaigns. So here comes big business seeking to buy you off. They
say, how are you judge, alderman, congressman, reverend? What can
I do for you today reverend? You must be strong enough to say,
"you can�t do anything for me." You�ve got to be
like Jesus. When Satan took him up on the mountain and showed him
all that Satan had, Satan said, if you would just bow down to me,
I will give you all of this. We have to be careful about who we
bow down to. When you (pastors) get in your congregation and talk
about a powerful Jesus who sits at the right hand of the Father
with all power in His hand, but then you go with your hat in your
hand to the governor, mayor, or president begging for some crumbs,
then you have sold your God cheap and you make the white man
downtown disrespect all of us.
�
All of us need something and God knows that the mayor can
help us all in some small way. The governor can help us, the
president can help us, but at what price? God is God. And if you
say God is able, and He has power over all things, then why don�t
we trust Him? All I�m saying is we have to be better leaders as
ministers of God. I�m speaking of myself and you and us. I�m
not trying to hurt anybody�s feelings. We have to help our
politicians.
�
At the Million Man March we said we wanted to
create a third political force, taking Republicans, Democrats,
whatever persuasion you may be, we have got to form a force for
the year 2000 so that we can leverage our demand with power to
extract from the governing bodies what is in the best interest,
not for a few of us, but for the broad mass of our people. I know
that we benefited from Rev. Jackson�s presidential campaign in
1984. That man was so inspired of God that he electrified the
whole world of people of color because we saw our brother stand
toe-to-toe with the best of them and he came out on top. But when
our brother went to the convention with this anti-Semitic label
hanging on him, they put him in a weakened position so that he
couldn�t put pressure on the party. So what we got were crumbs
from the master�s table. He ran again four years later and did
much better. He registered more people for the Democratic Party
than anybody had ever done, and what did we get out of it? We got
Ron Brown, Governor Wilder, Mayor Dinkins, new congress persons,
sheriffs, state legislators, but that�s a few positions at the
top. What did the masses get? What about the old lady that stood
in the rain to vote, what did she get? The joy of seeing a Black
face as mayor of New York but a mayor that was more concerned with
what was happening in the Jewish community than what was happening
in the community that sent him the power? But then we lost our
mayor in New York by 60,000 votes. We lost a mayor in Los Angeles.
We lost our mayor here in Chicago, Mayor Harold Washington.
But I have got
to give Mayor Washington credit. Some of you want a vote and
you know that God has blessed me with the people, but you won�t
even ring my doorbell. You can�t even sit down and have a cup of
coffee with me and say, Brother Farrakhan, could you help me. You
want my help but you don�t want white folk to know that you want
my help. But not Mayor Washington. Harold Washington knocked on my
door. Harold Washington came in my dining room and sat down and
broke bread with me. And Farrakhan had never voted. He said,
"Brother Farrakhan, I need your help." I said,
"Congressman, you have my help." He stayed with me for
40 minutes, had a little breakfast and left. But he left a mark on
my heart. And while everybody was condemning me, they kept putting
the microphone in Mayor Harold Washington�s face, and the mayor
never once condemned Louis Farrakhan, not one time.
�
We are going to form a political wing that monitors
everybody that we send to any official position. Since you come
from us, your service should be to those from whom you come. The
way you vote should be important to us. Every 90 days we must call
a town meeting. You have got to come back from Congress, you have
got to come down from the judges chambers, you have got to come in
from the state senate, and you have got to sit down with your
constituents and tell us why you voted this way and how you want
us to help you to do your job better. Tell us how much money you
need so that big business people that want to give you money to
control your vote and tell you how to vote, you can tell them you
are not interested in their money.
The Million Man
March was not a Muslim thing. It was Muslims, Christians,
Nationalists, Hebrews and others working together. That�s what
made it happen. It was a family working together. And so my dear
family, when you leave here, go tell our brothers and sisters that
it�s a new day, it�s a revolution. Tell them that we want to
create, not only a political revolution, but a spiritual
revolution in America. I pledge to our political brothers and
sisters our support, our love and our desire to help you be as
strong as you want to be and to put power behind your demand.
Nobody is going to take the Black vote for granted again. May God
bless you that are running for re-election; may He bless you to be
re-elected. May He bless you once re-elected to fight for justice
for those who are deprived. Take no mean price for justice,
because every time we fail to do justice we set up judgment on
ourselves and on others.
We are going to start organizing from this day forward all over
this country. We are going to get our people registered and we are
going to hold our vote and leverage it to get out of those who don�t
want to give us anything that which they cannot afford to hold
back if they want to be in power.
Thank you for listening and may God bless you as I greet you in
peace, As-Salaam Alaikum.
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