Posted on 06/19/2002 12:32:04 PM PDT by fight_truth_decay
(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
Ya gotta love this guy..........
It was great to read the more conservative blacks responses. Sometimes I feel like me, JC Watts and Allen Keyes are the only conservative thinking blacks around. Oh there is that radio guy out of Denver as well.
Ken Hamblin -- The Black Avenger.
-PJ
AMERICA. LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT
Unless it rains, it's a good bet that August 17th will be so unspeakably hot that it would actually be unhealthy to stand out in the Mall, in a crowd, under the hot sun. The Farrakhan "Million Man March" of six years ago, in much milder October, attracted less than a million - considerably less depending on who you believe. I might add that stories that circulated (including some printed in the local papers) immediately after the Farrakhan March spoke of widespread shoplifting and theft at nearby food markets and vendors, presumably by March attendees who felt themselves somehow privileged not to pay.
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