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 Askia At-Large
Askia Muhammad
Columnist Page
Friday, November 12, 2004; Page 18
Farrakhan-Jackson Radio Summit: Interview of the Year
I don’t know a reporter who would not jump at an opportunity to interview Min. Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam, nor do I know one who would pass up an interview with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Those men, after all, are the two pre-eminent leaders among Black people in America today.
Well then, imagine talking to both men, together, live in a studio, at the same time. Well, that’s just what happened when a rare political summit took place on November 5th, just three days after Election Day 2004, at Chicago’s WVON-AM radio, the “Voice of the Nation.”
The conversation--it was not simply an interview, according to convener and talk show host Cliff Kelly--amounted to the African American “State of the Union.”
“On this day we are more than just a radio station. We are the voice of a nation of people, The Talking Drum,” Melody Spann-Cooper, president and CEO of Black-owned WVON radio told listeners. “We are telling our story today, for tomorrow, with the most influential leaders of our modern times.”
The broadcast was carried live on more than 50 radio stations and it was re-broadcast that evening on “The Bev Smith Show” on the American Urban Radio Network (AURN). This writer was there in the studio, witnessing it all, taking it all in.
The principals were certainly up to the task, continuing for the first time in public the series of private conversations they have been having with one another over the years. “In spite of what happened this past Tuesday, we believe that everything is in divine order. That Bush’s re-election is not really bad for us, but if we look deeper it is good for us,” Minister Farrakhan explained in his opening.
The Muslim leader referred to the Biblical text about “the dry bones in the valley.” The bones just wouldn’t come together after they heard the word, he explained. “But when the winds began to blow on the bones, the bones stood up in that valley, an exceedingly great army.
“The winds of poverty and want and joblessness and hunger and nakedness and war and revolution, those are winds, and President Bush is an instrument, blowing a lot of these winds,” said Min. Farrakhan.
“And so I feel that his election, though hurting some of us, will be a wind that says to all of us that we cannot depend on a benevolent Caucasian in the White House to solve our problems. But the Rev. Jackson and I and Black leadership and all of us need to come together, because our unity will solve 95 percent of our problems and give us power to leverage that unity to solve the problems of our people all around the world.”
The Rev. Jesse Jackson picked up on the election outcome: “While 90 percent of African Americans voted for Kerry over Bush and Bush won this time, we need not be in perpetual despair, in the sense that there were some victories this past Tuesday.” He added, “In 1965 we marched for the right to vote in Selma, Ala., we had three Blacks in Congress: Mr. Nix from Philadelphia, Mr. Dawson from Chicago, and Adam Powell from New York. Now we have 43,” and a Black member in the U.S. Senate, Barack Obama who won the election in Illinois by a 50 percentage point margin over Republican Alan Keyes.
“We need not hold our heads down as if we are powerless and as if we made a mistake. We did the right thing. We did it in grand style and our presence will not be denied,” the Rev. Jackson continued.
The historic program came about after a member of the WVON management was approached by a senior citizen at a live broadcast from a Black-owned McDonald’s restaurant earlier this year. Both the Honorable Elijah Muhammad (as well as Min. Malcolm X) and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.--the mentors of the two guests--had both appeared on WVON in the past, Mr. Kelly explained.
“The tragedy for me Cliff is that we’re losing so many lives,” The Rev. Jackson continued. But the deaths are occurring only among the poor he said. They are “trapped in a back-door draft. Looking at a front-door draft because there are not enough troops. We are paying a billion dollars per week. We’ve got first class jails, second class schools. We are engaged in the wrong war,” said the Rev. Jackson.
Mr. Kelly continued, “Based on the things he’s done and the people who are dying as a result of these lies [about weapons of mass destruction], going after Saddam Hussein, as somebody mentioned would have been like (Pres. Franklin D.) Roosevelt after Pearl Harbor attacking Sweden. There is no connection there. People need to know that. Somebody even suggested the way to do it is to file articles of impeachment against this man who’s in the White House,” Mr. Kelly insisted, and that was just in the first 15 minutes. |
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