The Final Call

Minister Farrakhan Speaks At 'Sacred Ground' Memorial Site Honoring Nipsey Hussle

By The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan | Last updated: May 20, 2019 - 10:43:57 PM

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[The hip hop artist, visionary, entrepreneur and community builder Nipsey Hussle, who was born Ermias Asghedom, was shot and killed in the parking lot in front of The Marathon, located in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles. Nipsey owned the plaza where the business was located which is situated near the intersection of Slauson Ave. and Crenshaw Blvd. Thousands of supporters and fans of Nipsey visited the site in the days after his death to pay their respects, leaving candles, photographs, flowers, cards and other mementos to honor their fallen hero.  The onsite memorial dubbed “Ground Zero” as people whose lives were impacted by “Neighborhood Nip” traveled from near and far to the location. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan visited “Ground Zero” April 10, 2019 along with Western Region Student Minister Abdul Malik Sayyid Muhammad (formerly Tony Muhammad) and delivered words of comfort and guidance to a hurting community. Below is an edited transcript of that message.] 

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

As-Salaam Alaikum.  My dear brothers and sisters, what a joy it is to be standing on sacred ground.  The man who made this happen is not just an ordinary man because ordinary men don’t think like he thought; ordinary men don’t do like he did. He was a man that God sent this way and he rose up out of a culture that nobody would think that greatness would come out of.  It’s like the Bible says about where Jesus was born … “Can any good come out of Nazareth?”  Can any good come out of the ‘hood?  And Nipsey answered and said here am I, send me.  

I thank God for Brother Minister Tony and the work that he and the Believers did last Sunday to show a demonstration of love for Ermias Asghedom.  Ermias, I like that name but, Nipsey is great too because in the original language in Eritrea is a ‘homie.’  Nipsey means ‘homie’—one of the brothers that never forgot his roots.  So, all of you that love him, you cannot let his legacy die.  He called it a marathon.  And you know a marathon is no lightweight jog or sprint.  As Jesus said it “the race is not to the swift or even to the strong, but the race is to those who can endure to the end.”  

What our brother has done God has called him back to Himself.  He’s like somebody that God lent to the world; like he lent you and me to the world.  You can’t stay forever because life must fade and fade away and ultimately the flesh will die and return to the earth but where you come from (listen to me carefully)—where you come from you can’t return to God if you didn’t come from God. 

So that spirit that is in you the energy of your life you must use it like Nipsey used his.  He used it in song, but his songs had meaning.  He used it in what he did with his life.  His life had meaning.  And on this hallowed ground practically every set, every member of what they call a gang; leaders showed up here on this site and pledged to make their peace and to keep the peace.  

The scripture says, “Blessed are the Peacemakers.”  So, you can’t keep what you haven’t made.  So once the peace is made then the peace must be kept.  And the enemy does not want peace.  The enemy wants to keep this killing of one another going because as long as we keep killing one another, he can maintain power in what we call the tyranny of White supremacy.  We can end all of that if we end our self-hatred.  There’s no reason for you to hate yourself.  You are a direct descendant of God Himself.  So, each time you look at yourself in the mirror, you’re looking at a part of God.

And when I look at you, I see God.  So how do you talk to God?  How do you walk with God?  How do you embrace God?  You embrace Him like you know you’re talking to God.  You don’t scream at God.  You don’t punch God in the face.  You don’t knock God out because God got juice.  What am I saying?  I’m saying you’re the people of God and Nipsey showed you and me the way.  He was a part of gang life you know that he never denied that, he smoked reefer, me too.  I didn’t come down from heaven.  I came up from hell just like you and I read or heard something that Nipsey said when Charlamagne Tha God asked him— ‘You still smoking reefer, brother?’ He said ‘naw.’  He said, ‘you put reefer down?’  Yes.  He said, ‘why you do that?’  And Nipsey said because I got to keep focused.  I don’t need anything that will take me away from focusing on what we have yet to do; the road that we have yet to travel; the race that we have yet to run. I got to stay focused.  Then they asked him, but will you ever smoke again?  He said well when I get angry and I want to beat somebody up I’ll smoke a joint.  

But seriously, brothers and sisters, I used to be in show business and when I was in show business, I smoked reefer.  And in those days’ ganja wasn’t like it is today now.  You all have got some stuff I don’t know what that is.  They tell me that stuff that we’re smoking today … oh yeah that’s what they call it; they call it the (ooh wee).  I cannot afford no (ooh wee).  I got to keep focused, brothers and sisters and so do you.  

The peace that was made here you have to remain focused so that the enemy won’t cause it to go backwards.  Nobody that loved your pain wants that pain to stop.  They want to see you high.  They want to see you at war with each other.  They want to see you killing each other and they love it when we’re burying the great minds, the great future that is ours.  

Do you know that every time you say a prayer, if you got somebody in your family that died from cancer, from AIDS, from breast cancer, from other diseases, do you know you would like to see that end especially when it takes somebody that you love?  So what do you do?  In a moment you fall down on your knees or you stand up straight and you ask God to help us in the scourge of cancer, the scourge of diabetes, the scourge of obesity and where do you think the answer is coming from?  It doesn’t fall down out of the sky.  The answer is coming from the womb of one of these young or older women.  

These are what you call simple women meaning they are not thinking that they are great but what their womb is producing if you kill it, you may be killing the answer to your prayers.  Because from your womb came all the prophets.  From your womb came Jesus and Moses and Abraham.  From your womb came Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Tony Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan; from the womb.  

So look, man, we got to protect our women.  We have to respect our women.  We have to know how precious her womb is and know that the next leader like the mother of Nipsey and the father of Nipsey produced a giant.  You got giants coming up young. We’ve got to protect them.  You don’t know who you brought into the world but they’re smarter than most of us.  At two years old they’re computer savvy.

I’ll tell you a little story about my daughter and her husband.  The husband is a computer giant and a computer user and so he has his computer.  He would come home and all of a sudden, the computer was messed up like somebody was doing something with it and he accused my daughter who is his wife.  ‘What you doing messing with my computer?’  She said ‘I didn’t touch it.’  He said somebody touched it.  So what they did, they watched the baby.  The baby just crawled on over to the computer, turned it on and broke the code and opened that man’s computer and then turned on the stories that he liked.  They were behind looking at who was messing up that computer; it was a child less than two years old.

Do you know what you’re producing?  A new world is on the horizon that the enemy does not want you to see or to produce.  So, keep the peace that you are making.  Don’t go backward, go forward.  And I say this with all humility that Brother Tony and the work that Brother Tony and the FOI and MGT—how many of you were in the MGT and the FOI that marched out here on Sunday?  May I see your hands?  

Let me tell you something. I saw that and I have never seen anything in my life so beautiful.  You sisters showing the world what Elijah Muhammad and his teaching does for Black people who want to become great.  I saw the brothers marching in their uniforms and we gave the world a picture of what a civilized man and woman; a fearless man and woman look like.  And all over the world, the world got shook.  They watched it and by the millions they are viewing it.  And I said to myself … boy did they make my job a little easier because you gave the world a view of where we’re going.  The cleanness of our bodies, the cleanliness of our minds, the brightness of our skin, the light that is in our faces is the light of God.  You don’t have to die so soon.  

What?  That’s right.  But the life that you have is a gift from God and it’s your duty to preserve it and protect it.  So please let the blue and the red come together.  The Black and the Brown, the Red, the poor White—come on, you raggedy too and the same people that messed us up messed their own people up.  Eight-five percent of you are poison animal-eaters; don’t know the law of cause and effect.  You’re being used by 10 percent whether it’s 10 percent White, 10 percent Black there’s a small percentage that control the masses and God wants the masses of all to be free.

So let’s get busy, let’s not have this again.  These represent all the slain.  Is that right?  This represent people who are remembering their son, their brother, their uncle, their father, their homie that got shot down.  We can stop that.  But now I see that the police are talking.  We never saw nothing like this.  We didn’t know you all were like this.  Somebody lied to us about you all.  

Like your poor little brother here—you can’t even go in the restroom if I’m in there because they swear you’re going to get a Farrakhan disease and come out talking trash.  They’re terrified not because I’m a hater; they’re terrified because I’m a lover and I’m a lover of life and the people of God.  And every human being that is struggling we love them like we love ourselves.  

So the Black and the Brown we’re not having us fighting each other because that makes the enemy happy.  We’re not going to fight and kill each other because that’s what makes the enemy happy.  Nobody stands to gain by the slaughter of our brother Nipsey.  He didn’t gain, we didn’t gain, the enemy gained because he said if this Black man can tie us together with high technology—if this Black man can put out a documentary on Dr. Sebi; if this Black man can rise above gang culture and the red and the blue come together as one, you’ll produce a change in America, you’ll produce a change in the world and you will be the author of that change and the beneficiary of what comes from that change.

So may God bless you, may God keep you, may God grant you knowledge, wisdom, understanding and power that we may put Satan to a perpetual life and make a better world for all of us to live together in peace.  

Thank you, Brother Tony, and thank you members of the Nation; thank all the brothers and sisters of the Rollin 60s, the Hoover, all the gangs … all the gangs.  Thank you all. Let’s make this pledge.  Everyone that died did not die in vain.  Every one that was slaughtered on the streets of Los Angeles did not die in vain.  How do you mean that, Farrakhan?  Because so many have died—we’re sick and tired of burying our great men and women—it’s over.  And we got to put it to rest and make our nation rise again.  Thank you, brothers and sisters.  As-Salaam Alaikum.