Posted on 06/19/2002 3:26:43 AM PDT by kattracks
(CNSNews.com) - Promising that it will be one of the "most historic gatherings of African people in America," organizers of the Millions for Reparations Rally are demanding monetary compensation from the United States government and its citizens. The theme of the rally is: "They owe us!"
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny (BOND), and a critic of the rally, said, "If that many people have enough money to go to D.C. to march, then they don't need reparations."
The Aug. 17 event will take place in Washington, D.C. on the 115th birthday of the late civil rights leader Marcus Garvey. But Peterson said Garvey was an outspoken advocate of post-slavery self-repair for black people in America and would not support the idea of modern day reparations.
The Durban 400 and National Black United Front (NBUF), the lead organizers of the rally, claim their event is "simply an attempt to repair, to make whole, the descendants of the victims of the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade."
At the urging of the Durban 400 and other groups, the United Nations' 2001 World Conference Against Racism declared the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and the pre-Civil War slavery in the United States crimes against humanity.
NBUF National Chairman Dr. Conrad W. Worrill recently urged concerned "African people in America" to review and add to a list of nearly twenty atrocities that, according to Worrill, "they owe us for."
Among the atrocities on the list are the "Raping of African Women," "KKK Night Riders and Lynchings," "Mental Atrocities," the "Crack Epidemic," and "the 13th and 14th Constitutional Amendments."
According to Worrill, "The abolishment of slavery was really a constitutional scam and the 14th Amendment that allegedly made African people citizens of America was imposed on us. We were never asked if we wanted to be citizens."
But David Almasi, spokesman for the black conservative group Project 21, said those seeking reparations forget the benefits of living in America.
"What about the fact that now you're in America, the land of opportunity as opposed to being in Africa with malaria, dictators and things like that," Almasi said.
According to Peterson, "These organizations that are supporting this so-called Millions for Reparations are anti-American organizations anyway. They're communist/socialist organizations."
Peterson added that "so-called civil rights leaders" like Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan have encouraged a culture of dependency among African Americans instead of self-reliance.
Peterson said he especially wants to encourage white Americans to protest those calling for reparations and "not have the fear of being called a racist" for doing so. However, he said, "As long as you give into these people, there is no stopping them. There is no end to their destruction if we don't stand up to them with truth."
The "truth," Peterson said, is that reparations are "a bad idea in that it is divisive, it is racist, and it's another form of using black Americans to gain power and wealth."
E-mail a news tip to Michael L. Betsch.
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I wake up, I have clean water, available food, I can worship Whom ever I want and as a bonus no one is shooting at me.
But I'm sure the statement makes those who use it feel better. It never ceases to amaze me that the race issue on FR incorporates the language of the enemy. Those conservatives who criticize black people for listening to race hustlers often take what those race hustlers say as truth and apply it to every other black person. You've just done it. You are making their argument for them by saying what they think they are. We know better, however. If my cousin starts to call himself an "African in America," he'd get lauged out the house. I'd tell him, "You're an African in America, huh? Boy, you know damn well you're from Cleveland just like me!"
Last time. You can NOT go "back" to where you have never even been to in the first place. Period. End of story. A physical impossibility no matter who thinks what.
Dreamer, LOL. You know the media will use the infamous "MMM" math and estimate the crowd at over a million even they meet in a phone booth.
Also, I would not wish a 3rd world existence on anyone. Having visited 'the real' Latin America - interior Mexico and Honduras - I had my eyes opened by what true poverty really is. No running water, stick single room huts with no furniture, only a few huts in the village with meager electricity.... In suburban America, we consider poverty as 'no cable TV'. The true definition is something else.
NO!! That is the scary part. There are thousands of people demanding money because "someone of color, sometime, someway was a slave". Therefore, all people must pay them because they have some pain and psychological problems from the fact that MAYBE someone in their family (generations ago) was a slave.
See what I mean by "scary". They believe we owe them.
As I have said many times, I truly believe that every living American slave owner should pay every living slave.
It's crap like this that make people racist.
But again, provocative statements stoke the flames. If you give in, they've won. They control you if they can control your emotions. I believe that you are better than that.
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