The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan delivering a message of tolerance and compassion to the politically elected officials of the Detroit City Council, appealing to their sense of fairness and responsibility to protect the rights of their constituents, in Detroit, Mich. on October 9, 2002. Photo: Kenneth Muhammad

In The Name of Allah, The Beneficent, The Merciful.

Many American citizens will go to the polls to decide who will be the first president of the new century and the new millennium. I’m sure that most of you already know whom you will vote for. But there is a problem because, in the 1998 presidential election, 51 percent of those eligible to vote, registered to vote, did not take part in the exercise of voting for the president of the United States of America. The spirit in the masses of the people seems to be similar in this time period, in that the masses who did not vote, have not been electrified, have not been motivated to go to the polls and vote.

My appeal today is that I recognize the value of the vote, particularly among the Black and Brown people of the United States, or the African Americans or the Latinos or La Raza communities. Many people suffered and died and went to prison to give us that right. The problem is that we have voted and we have not realized from our vote what we expected. So we have lost the spirit to engage in this political exercise that is so very important in a democratic society. How do we get that spirit back? We get that spirit back by understanding what we are doing and why we are doing it and why what we do is in our best interest.

Corporate America is getting what corporate America wants out of this government that is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Corporate America has dollars and they vote or are represented as a bloc. That’s why they are heard. That’s why what corporate America wants is what drives the public policy of the United States, as well as the foreign policy of the United States.

Your vote is important, but if you vote as an individual, then you cannot compete with the power of corporate America. Therefore, what I am asking is that we consider that we must register those who are unregistered. But those who have registered and have said to heck with this (voting process), I want to invite you back because I believe we can make a difference if we go about it differently than how we have done in the past. Your vote as an individual is like a baby with candy in your hand. The bully can come and take everybody’s candy because all the babies won’t unite. But if the children united and said no, you can’t take my candy, then the bully would become humane.

We have to humanize the bullies that have taken the vote of the American people for granted, particularly the vote of the poor.

The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan We have come to a time of a very, very important event in American history, the presidential election.

I cannot tell you for whom you should vote. That should be on your conscience. But I will tell you that I am going to the polls and I will vote. My vote is my personal business, as is yours. It really makes no difference (who wins), because words have a way of coming out of politicians’ mouths because they are seeking the candy from the baby. So they say what is necessary to be said to extract the candy. What I am suggesting is that we mobilize the Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and the poor White into a force that says no candy unless we see real change. If those whom we have sent in the city councils, the state legislatures, to be mayors, to be governors and to the federal body of legislators don’t do our will, pull them down and send somebody in that will do the will of the people.

All of the problems that I have been hearing on my tour in preparation for the Million Family March can be addressed by a unified body. The unfair sentencing for crack cocaine and powdered cocaine … the cultural degeneracy that is being fed to the American people in the name of entertainment, we can address this. There is no such thing that says that we cannot censor what we don’t like. Maybe government can’t censor because of freedom of speech, but we are the real government. If something is distasteful to the majority of us, if something is poisonous to our children and their fragile minds that are being shaped by the institutions that govern our lives, and we don’t like it, then we, as a body, should have the power to correct what is being taught, what is being fed by the media. This is why mobilization needs to take place.

I am urging the Black, Brown, Red, Yellow and White that have registered to vote, get out, go to the polls and don’t worry about if your choice doesn’t get in. If we do what we say we should do, then whoever gets in will do our will, because we will become the power, rather than corporate America.

I recognize that it’s dangerous for me to be a voice that unites the poor. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered on his way to Washington with a Poor Peoples March, because the poor are the majority. It is on the backs of the poor that the rich and the government build their army, navy and their economic power base. Anybody who can electrify the poor, as it was in the Roman Empire with Jesus, becomes a threat to the powers-that-be. They always want to continue to keep the poor in ignorance, so that they can use the poor to keep themselves in the position of power and wealth. I intend, by the help of Allah (God), to be a voice for the voiceless poor of this nation and the world who are crying out.

I would love for those in power to see that power is really in the people who are enlightened to what their self-interest is. When there was an ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, and America and the nations decided that (Slobadan) Milosevich should go, they bombed and they bombed and they bombed and they bombed and they bombed and Milosevich still remained. But when the people decided that their vote was disrespected and took to the streets, it was only a matter of a few hours and Milosevich was gone. And the (television) commentator said what bombs could not do, the people did. It’s a wonderful lesson for America to learn. You have the greatest army in the world, but what your army will fail to do, I’m talking about inside (the country), the people will do, once the people are enlightened, organized and mobilized.

Start an economic development fund

On that day on the Mall, we inaugurated the Million Family March Economic Development Fund. The poorest condition of all of the families in America are the Blacks, not because we are poor; we are rich, but our poverty is a poverty of ignorance and a poverty of spirit. Anytime $550 billion can come through our hands in one year, we are not poor. But something is wrong with us that we are not using our own economic strength to our advantage. So our communities are the worst, in terms of the way they look. The institutions in our communities serve us, but not as well as in other communities.

At the Million Family March, there were those from every member of the human family that answered the call of Louis Farrakhan. Popularity, then, means that the people trust Farrakhan, otherwise they would not have answered my call. Banks are built on the basis of trust. If you trust me, then the next step is, I’m asking for money. Not for me; I said (at the March), let the million families or the five million, or the 10 million families in Black America—I’m dealing specifically now with our condition economically, but it will affect others—I’m asking our families between now and next October 16 to contribute $100 (per family) to the Million Family March Economic Development Fund. … The goal is one billion dollars by next October 16. If a million families give $100, that’s $100 million. If five million families give $100, that’s $500 million or half-a-billion dollars. We are moving toward the goal.

Since all the entertainers say they like Farrakhan, then I’m asking you, if Allah (God) blesses you to sell your records to the people, then we don’t want to put all the billions in the record company and forget our own company. Put some of what you have earned in the Million Family March Economic Development Fund. I think that’s our duty as a people, to do something to help ourselves. We will get no respect from others, going always with our hand out, when we have so much coming through our hands.

We are starting this, but we cannot let corporate America off the hook, because if only $5 billion of the $550 billion came back into our hands, then somebody is reaping big benefits from our money. I know that corporate America does nice things, like support the Congressional Black Caucus weekend or they support SCLC and PUSH’s conventions and things in the community like that. In other words, it’s the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table that we get. And, of course, they make brothers like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and others rich with endorsement contracts, but the masses of the people who buy what our leading sports persons are selling, we get nothing.

In church, there is such a thing as “tithing.” God is asking you to give back 10 percent of what you get. I’m going to ask corporate America to tithe and put your tithe into the Economic Development Fund. And if they say no, I think they will change their minds if we are so mobilized that we boycott just one corporate giant and bring it down. They know how to make examples of us when they want to strike terror in the hearts of others. They take one Negro and make an example of him. Don’t be afraid to make an example out of somebody that’s got his hand in your pocket and don’t want to give anything back in return. The way we punish a corporate giant is the same way we will punish our politicians.

Also, we can’t let the government off the hook, because the government takes tax dollars from us, but gives us inferior education. It takes tax dollars and gives us inferior service because we are not organized enough to demand from the government what the tax dollar should give to us. This is not reparations, this is only a little bit of justice. Reparations is another whole thing and we will get to that. The point is, when we start mobilizing like this, making a demand on these institutions, but first make the demand on ourselves, I guarantee you that if we work this right, by October 16 next year a billion dollars will be in the Million Family March Economic Development Fund.