Why the People Marched through River Oaks in Houston

 ‘Why march through River Oaks’ in Houston, Texas, they ask? Because the Trayvon Martin case has awakened something within justice loving people as Emmitt Till’s murder did some 58 years ago. Critics of the recent march in River Oaks say ‘they (River Oaks) didn’t have anything to do with the death of Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman’s acquittal’ in Florida. Wrong, dead wrong! The same corrupt judicial system that acquitted George Zimmerman after he racially profiled and murdered Trayvon Martin in Florida operates in same manner in the City of Houston, Harris County, and the Southern District of Texas in the Federal court system of the United States. If it looks like a duck…well you know the rest.

Nothing written herein is meant to negate or denigrate the great civic, philanthropic, and humanitarian contributions of the River Oaks community to our city, state, nation, or world. Without their generous support of the arts, education, poverty eradication, disaster relief, and good governance, this city would be worst than it is. However, the good takes care of itself; together we must correct the wrong. No amount of charity absolves those who choose to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the injustices taking place in a system that protects and benefits River Oaks. Honestly, can anyone name a candidate for any federal, state, county, or at large city elective office of both major parties that doesn’t seek and receive some financial support from River Oaks?  Simply put, River Oaks funds many of our tormentors and upholds the institutions that mistreat us. How should we respond?

Not all, but too many, in River Oaks and other affluent communities in Houston have allowed themselves to fit the unfair stereotype of a sushi eating, Galleria shopping, Caramel Macchiato (hold the whip cream) drinking, jogging in the park, and walking the poodle down beautiful tree lined streets carefree people - while the police profile, beat, and kill us, the criminal courts railroads us, the civil courts rob us, and the family courts take our children unjustly. We imagine you enjoying life at the county club while your neighborhood captains of industry de-industrialized America sending our jobs overseas and your political operatives weakened our state and federal environmental laws thereby destroying the once pristine Texas environment. Bond referendums notwithstanding, state and county government has built more prisons and jails in Texas than neighborhood public schools with your permission. You have also “gamed” the tax system to escape paying a fairer share of taxes despite having the privilege of living in the most prosperous state and nation on earth. Is this fair?

 

River Oaks, why did you sit back and watch Wall Street gut our 401K’s, home equity, and pension funds while your wealth increased tenfold? Why have some of you sat silently while the American middle class was hollowed out as honest hardworking people toiled 40 or more hours a week without receiving a living wage, healthcare, and having to collect food stamps? Why when we have in Houston, Texas the greatest medical center in the world, do the poor have to sit at Ben-Taub for 5-6 hours to see a doctor? Why let the poor and working class people wait at 8,000 METRO bus stops without shelter in triple digit heat, cold, and rain while our transit agency’s “General Mobility Fund” is siphoned off by cities and the county for non transportation purposes and so that you can drive your fine automobiles? Is this neighborly?

Why is River Oaks seemly indifferent to the rising cost of higher education in Texas and the lack of jobs waiting for poor and blue collar children after getting a degree and accumulating a mountain of debt? Did you know that poor children with better grades than the less intelligent sons or daughters of River Oaks have less of a chance of finishing college and receiving a job? We thought Houston was a meritocracy? Why no outcry as the Voters Rights Act of 1965 is being gutted and voter suppression laws are passed without so much as an editorial or rally on your part? Your silence on these issues is deafening and borders on immorality. Should we remain silent just because you choose to?

Do you know why, despite the dire predictions of the socialist and revolutionary communist in the United States, this country has yet to devolve into apocalyptic class conflict? It’s because through both economic depression and recession there has been a tacit agreement between the rich and the poor that is as follows: If the rich will use their capital to create decent paying jobs, keep open the pathway to the middle class prosperity in the form of consumption with reasonable access to credit, then, the poor will allow the rich to collect large bonuses and live “the American Dream” without disturbing their peace. That’s the deal - and you who pull the strings, not government, broke it. Now, fix it!

The glue that held our society together is now seen as a mere illusion of inclusion, which is: if the poor worked hard, played by “the rules,” offered their sons and daughters to fight, bleed, and die in foreign wars to defend American “freedom,” and pursued a “good education,” then they too would be treated fairly by “the system” and have their bite at the apple of prosperity. This particular line of thought has been sold to two generations of Black people in America for the last 50 years. Although some have done well, the condition of the masses of Black people and the poor has gotten worse. This cannot be laid at the foot of River Oaks or anyone else. Our problem is disunity, distrust, allowing River Oaks and downtown to fund our politicians’ coffers, and our refusal to pool our own immense economic resources to create jobs and decent neighborhoods for ourselves. Do for self and stop blaming rich white people for that we can and must do for ourselves. This is our challenge, we must correct the wrong. Pharaoh has let us go; it’s time for us to let him go!

 

Now back to River Oaks! Hear us -we don’t want anybody to give us anything, just open up the door, we can get it ourselves. We are not marching in River Oaks and elsewhere for a new government program, a hand out, your sympathy, or out of envy over your prosperity. We are marching for JUSTICE and restoration of the tacit agreement between the rich and the poor with an added enforcement clause. That clause reads: “If there is no justice, there will be no peace or business as usual in the City of Houston.” This is not a threat-it’s a solemn oath. Oh, by the way, please stop wasting your time and money buying guns at gun shows, pressuring politicians, law enforcement, and so called “respectable” Black leaders in our community to do something about “those people.” There is nothing in the universe that can stop an idea whose time has come and a people backed by God who are determined to bring that idea into fruition. It would be like trying to stop a tsunami with a Dixie Cup.  It’s up to you River Oaks and Houston to join us as we seek life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness for ALL and justice for the Trayvon Martin’s of the Houston, Texas and the world.

Robert S. Muhammad is a Student Minister in Houston, Texas and serves as the Southwest Representative of the Nation of Islam. He is a radio talk show host, Urban Planner, and candidate for PhD in Urban Planning and Environmental Policy. He can be heard on KPFT 90.1 FM each Wednesdays at 3pm CST and followed on Twitter @dotsconnector

The Time and What Must Be Done: Houston, Texas

As Salaam Alaikum,

Dear Brothers, Sisters, Friends, and Supporters:

On June 4, 1972, during the Theology of Time lecture series, The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad said: "The resurrection of Jesus means the resurrection of justice among you and me, that's what it means."

 

Today, the death of Trayvon Martin has struck a nerve in justice loving people in America and around the world. We applaud the efforts of Minister Quanell X, Krystal Sonia, Kofi Taharka, Jolanda Jones, Bishop James Dixon, and countless others for their stand for our people.

There is a mood on the streets and among the Joshua-Caleb generation that despite the so-called progress that has been made in race relations, the people realize it will take another 450 years for Black America to close the gap of wealth, education, health, and life expectancy disparities. They are waking up to the fact that the political, economic, and social system has been "gamed" so that they have little or no chance to advance.  The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is

laying out a context for our current condition and the root of the thinking of those who hate our very presence and would exterminate us if it were not for Allah's(God) intervention.www.noi.org/thetime

Today, we must multitask. We must continue to demonstrate for justice while we continue to deal with the pathologies that plague our communities. Let us begin with simple things, like peacefully settling our differences within our families and communities. Love ye one another and stop the killing! Stop spending 95% of your money with people you blame for 95% of your problems. Pool your resources and create jobs for Self! Purposely seek out businesses and professionals who share your worldview and that support our struggle for justice and equality. Circulate your dollars within our own community! Put public officials on notice that we expect as much attention to our needs as the lobbyist that visit them receive at City Hall, Commissioners Court, Austin, and Washington, DC. Set an agenda and judge them by the standard we, not our enemies, have set for them!

 

To all Black leaders, real or imagined, we better not play with the people today. To do so is to take our lives in our own hands. The condition of our community bears witness against our collective stewardship. No matter what the sycophants around us are telling us about how great we are, LOOK at our community! Our leadership is only as good as our results. Let us set aside our egos and ask Allah (God) to remove envy, jealousy, and rancor from our hearts for the sake of God's chosen people. What are we willing to sacrifice for our people's redemption? Please don't say we would give our lives if we won't subordinate our arrogance and egos for the sake of operational unity. If we don't learn from history, we will certainly repeat it. Thank you for reading these words.

May Allah bless us with the light of His understanding.

 

New Stewards of the Earth Part III

      The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day 2013 keynote address was a monumental paradigm shift in the approach of Black leadership toward true liberation and salvation for Black people in America and throughout the Diaspora. The foundation of Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint is more than saving and investing money. The underlying solution to the multiplicity of economic, political, social, and physical problems facing humanity in the 21^st century can be summed up in two words: spirituality and morality.   

       The Minister’s spiritual insight regarding our economic plight is backed up by proven scholarship. Preeminent Black psychologist Dr. Naim Akbar wrote the following in his observations regarding Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint: “The brilliance of the Program is that the Honorable Elijah Muhammad prophetically and insightfully sees that Black people have come under the influences that represent deterioration in our self-determined and morally-guided behavior. And the result of this behavior is that our economic condition will similarly decline as we become increasingly like the immoral role models that are before us.” Dr. Akbar went on to conclude: “Implementation of the Economic Plan becomes achievable only with a preliminary transformation in the minds of Black America.” This is made perfectly clear by the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as he painstakingly revealed the immoral and perverse manner in which we spend our money and how we are being manipulated into doing so.

The Minister said: “Scientists have studied our spending habits, and our buying habits; so they know how to market their goods to us! And their data shows that we spend far too foolishly and recklessly; and we spend our money on products and services that are leading to our own self-destruction. We have to cut back on the things that are killing us! That’s what makes Dr. Naim Akbar’s words to us so fantastically wonderful, because we have to “attack” the condition of our people morally and spiritually in order for us to become strong economically! It cannot be just economics with us – we have to attack “The Spiritual Problem” and “The Moral Problem” that facilitates our economic demise.” The Minister offered some sobering statistics from Target Market News: The Buying Power of Black America 2010 (16^th edition) to back up his premise.

Here is the mirror of truth the Minister put before us: Blacks spend $3.3 billion a year on tobacco, $3 billion on whiskey, wine and beer, $2.8 billion on non-alcoholic beverages, $3.1 billion on leisure time spending, $3.5 billion on toys, games and pets, $19 billion on telephone services – (54% of Blacks own a “smart phone”) $10 billon gift buying,  $29.3 billion on clothing, $65.2 billion on food, $23.6 billion for healthcare, while only spending $321 million on books. He also estimated that the Black share of the $100 billion a year spent on gambling in America is $13 billion. The Minister focused like a laser on the root of our problem stating: “When we analyze all of this, we have to agree that our whole way of thinking about money has to change…so regardless to what religion we belong to: Our religions are obviously not informing us on how to spend our money. So we think we are “God centered” while we are financially illiterate. The problem is that we are not really “God centered.” How can this be, given the level of religiosity in the Black community?

We have been “conformed to this world” following occidental, westernized, industrialized, northern hemisphere practices rooted in Aristotelian-based scientific philosophy that finds no intrinsic value in nature except that it can be used for man’s pleasure. This utilitarian and hedonistic philosophy undergirds the made man’s approach to nature, politics, economics, and human relations. His scientific approach to nature is amoral and his usurious banking system and valueless fiat money is immoral.  The ‘wicked husbandmen’ are destroying the environment and enslaving the entire human race with debt. What the modern day Apostle Paul, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has called us to do is to “be transformed by the renewing of our minds.”

As Muslim followers of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, we must exhibit “quickness, fast moving, cleanliness - internally and externally - right down to the modern times.” Our modern Islamic thought and practices as it relates to the environment, whether as farmers, ranchers, or businessmen, should be based on Quranic principles. Fazlun Khalid, in an essay entitled Islam, Ecology, and Modernity: An Islamic Critique of the Root Causes of Environmental Degradation identified four principles that form the basis of an Islamic model “to help human beings to function within the natural pattern of creation.”  He identified: Unity (Tawhid), Creation (Fitra), Balance (Mizan), and Responsibility (Khilafa).

Here are some scriptural references for each principle:  the Unity Principle - Holy Quran 112:1-2 and 25:2; Creation Principle - Holy Quran 30:30; Balance Principle - Holy Quran 55:1-13; and the Responsibility Principle Holy Quran 6:165 and 24:55. As the new stewards of the earth destined to replace the wicked husbandmen, we must now forge a new relationship with our natural and built environment based upon the eternal principles found in our faith tradition. We must also lay the base for our own banking system or medium of exchange rooted in equity, justice, and actual value, not usury which is forbidden by the Holy Qur’an in Surah 2:275-276.

 In Romans 8:22-23, Paul writes: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” Celia Deane-Drummond wrote in Eco-Theology: “The proclamation of the good news [Gospels] cannot be detached from concern about the natural world in which people are placed: people and planet form an interwoven community that needs to be considered together, rather than separately.” In other words, our Christian family members also have scripturally mandated ‘new stewardship’ responsibilities to the creation. Time is dictating the agenda of what must be done today. Who will heed the “final call” and accept the universal mission of stewardship being proclaimed by the National Representative of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad?

Are we the new stewards to replace the ‘wicked husbandmen’? We certainly can be if we follow Allah’s guidance coming through the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and recognize that our problem is moral and spiritual before we attempt to implement Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint to end poverty and want.

The New Stewards of the Earth (Part II)

Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan

In the Holy Quran 3:190, Allah (God) revealed: “In the creation of the heavens and the earth and the alternation of the night and the day, there are surely signs for men of understanding.” The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day 2013 keynote address ushered in a new phase in our present 25,000 year cycle of history. What the Minister brought forth in his talk to us and the world regarding Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint was on time and exactly what must be done. Do we grasp the magnitude of the duties and responsibilities the Minister and the Two that back him have put before us?

            Reflect on his words. “Now, it’s clear that their [wicked husbandmen’s] stewardship is what has led to the condition of the earth today, and it demands a new steward…if God gives us [the] kingdom, and makes us stewards over creation: what kind of stewards are we going to be?” Again, the Holy Qur’an 7:34 says: “And every nation has a term; so when its term comes, they cannot remain behind the least while, nor can they precede (it).”  We are witnessing the old world going out, as a new world is coming in, just as the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us.

Why has the old world been sentenced to death? Because the made-man’s arrogant approach to science in his mastery of nature is without reverence or respect for the Author of Nature. The present world rulers have set themselves up in “the temple of God, showing himself that he is God” as it is written in II Thessalonians 2:4. His anthropocentric (man centered) approach to development without regard for environmental impacts has created a socio-ecological system that is unsustainable and without resiliency. In other words, the current practices of mankind will end and they will be unable to bounce back from the catastrophic consequences of their misguided stewardship. Therefore, there must be new stewards placed on the earth. We have now been placed in the valley of decision. Will we accept this phase of the mission?

Student Regional Ministers Robert Muhammad and Abdul Sharrief Muhammad

In Proverbs 1:5-6 it is written: “A wise man will hear, and will increase learning, and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels to understand a proverb, and the interpretation; the words of the wise, and their riddles.” Materialistic consumerism has replaced Christianity as the religion of the West and will soon replace Buddhism in the Far East. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said to us: “We must start teaching the babies, and begin to regenerate a culture of purposeful saving and investing.” It is imperative that we curb our media driven appetite for the latest gadget or consumable product. The Minister pointed out, “… there is no end to what we can do, if we start putting them nickels, pennies, [and] dollars together.” Therefore, our primary objectives are to control spending, while increasing saving and investing. The meaning of the Minister’s weekly series The Time and What Must Be Done is: we must change, adapt or perish! “Surely Allah never changes not the condition until they change their own condition” Holy Qur’an 13:11.

MGT of Muhammad Mosque No.45 Houston, Texas

Professor William Rees of the University of British Columbia states: “…mechanical assumptions must give way to dynamic analysis. The role of science shifts from facilitating the restructuring of nature to helping people adapt to natural variability.” He states further, “Understanding and coping with change is at the heart of resilience thinking.” In order for Black people to be resilient or bounce back from our terrible condition of poverty and want - change or adaptation is required.

Make Our Neighborhoods decent places to live

The first two of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s five ‘basic principles’ he outlined before giving us ‘the details’ of his Economic Blueprint were “Recognize the necessity for unity and group operation (activities) and Pool your resources, physically as well as financially.” This is what planning and management experts call an “inside-out” or “asset-capital based” approach. It focuses on looking at the glass half full rather than the glass half empty.

            Instead of focusing solely on our needs, problems, or deficiencies, we must now reorient our thinking to focus on our strengths, assets, and community capitals. In order to be successful, we must organize ourselves, associations, and institutions in our community to attract the resources we need to bring into existence what we desire. We must identify the human, social, cultural, economic, political, physical, and environmental capital-assets in our midst.  The Minister reminded us: “The enemy will never recognize us as an equal if we are in a begging position! We’re gonna have to get up and go to work, and do something for self!” It is as our Eternal Leader, the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad told us: “Help self first, then others.” 

Fruit of Islam Muhammad Mosque No.45 Houston, Texas

Genesis 2:5 says: “And no plant of the field was yet in the earth, and no herb of the field had yet sprung up; for Jehovah God had not caused it to rain upon the earth: and there was not a man to till the ground.” As it was in the beginning, our first order of business after organizing and pooling our resources is to acquire land for agriculture. The Minister made it crystal clear when he told us: “In order to build a nation, we had to give our people a vision of what it’s going to take. And we have to have land and there is no compromising this.” Today, we must now feed, clothe, and shelter ourselves.

          Are we the new stewards to replace the ‘wicked husbandmen’? We certainly can be if we follow Allah’s guidance coming through the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, organize, pool our resources, and implement Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint to end poverty and want.

The Time and What Must Be Done: Planning for Resilience in Our Region's Transportation Network

             Of all of the areas that must be properly managed in order for a plan to be successfully executed, four stand out:  Human, Budgetary, Material, and Time resources.  When it comes to land use and transportation planning, there comes a point when high level human skill sets, economic sagacity, and innovative material technologies cannot bail us out of certain situations because we just simply run out of time.

                I raise this issue to continue the debate about our regional transportation network in terms of its sustainability and resiliency. Land use and transportation planning are inextricably linked. We measure time in ten and twenty year increments when we discuss transportation and projected land uses.  My concern is that we are running out of time to plan a 21^st century regional transportation network, because we govern our actions by 20^th century cultural and political values. Using a decade as our  metric, it appears have we boxed ourselves in and may have not given ourselves adequate time to make the necessary adaptations, adjustments, and changes needed to sustain our current transportation system or guarantee that our network bounces back after a catastrophic event or series of events.

                Our region’s public policy has shortchanged and continues to shortchange public transit. This is because we have been lulled to sleep by relatively inexpensive gas and oil. So too, has globalization been made possible by an abundance of inexpensive fossil fuel energy. But what happens when the price of gasoline skyrockets, military conflict, or natural disaster makes individual automobile use and the supporting roadways impractical?  Have we built redundancy into our regional transportation and land use planning regime? This goes beyond Smart Growth for sustainability. There are those who argue that ‘sustainable development’ is an oxymoron, particularly as it relates to our never-ending green-field development of the hinterlands. Are we prepared to make a transition to other transportation and land use options should it be made necessary by unforeseen events?

To plan, finance, and build bus terminals, transit centers, and rail lines requires years and decades. The same is true with road construction. However, no sooner than the concrete dries on our highway and roadway expansion projects we have spent years and decades to plan, finance, and build, they are rendered obsolete due to latent demand.  When our cheap energy subsidy comes to an end, we will be clamoring for more transportation options. Yes, even in Texas, where every cowboy and cowgirl loves his or her own horse, riding the stagecoach is a nice option to have every once and a while. Without a serious, sober, and sensible plan to build regional transportation network resiliency through redundancy in the form of multiple options, we are going to find ourselves out of time and out of luck. Start now, and in ten to twenty years we will be grateful that we did recognize the time and what must be done.

The New Stewards of the Earth Part I

In the Gospel according to Matthew 5:5, it is written: “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” During his Saviours’ Day 2013 keynote address, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan reintroduced the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint for the purpose of ending poverty and want. Minister Farrakhan’s speech was multidimensional and multilayered in its construct. It was a clarion call for new stewards of the earth to come forth to save humanity from the economic, political, social, and ecological hell the ‘wicked husbandmen’ have created during the last 6,000 years.

 The Holy Qur’an 24:46 states: “We have indeed revealed clear messages. And Allah guides whom He pleases to the right way.” The Honorable Minister Farrakhan’s speech was multidimensional because it was both metaphysical and material. He called us to a “moral and ethical rebirth” in stewardship of our personal and collective environmental resources. He admonished us to “become human beings rather than beasts and serpents that are destroying human life from the womb to the tomb.” In his message, the Minister reintroduced us to the morality of thrift and savings versus uncontrolled spending and consumption. In Proverbs 15:5, it is written: “A fool despises his father's instruction: but he that regards reproof is prudent.” Minister Farrakhan’s Saviours’ Day keynote was also multilayered. He reminded us that building a multimillion dollar national economy requires each individual wage earner to commit to saving five cents a day, thirty-five cents a week, or eighteen dollars and twenty cents a year. A new collective macro-economic reality is built on a foundation of individual micro-economic discipline. Common sense is needed for these uncommon times in order to end poverty and want.

 

Allah (God) states in the Holy Qur’an 55: 5-9: “The sun and the moon follow a reckoning, and the herbs and the trees adore (Him), and the heaven, He raised it high, and He set up the measure, and keep up the balance with equity, nor fall short in the measure.” Mankind has indeed fallen short of the measure and has not been equitable. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan used the illustration of the human body to show us a “perfect distribution of wealth.” He said “Every system has its individual function and they work together for the common good of the whole.” The human body is not a capitalist system where a few organs own everything, but a socialist system that “makes every cell comfortable…and none of your organs react, because all are being fed what they need” declared the Minister at Saviours’ Day. Obviously capital is needed to acquire the means of production (land) necessary to end poverty and want; but the distribution of the wealth derived thereof will be according to the needs of the society. No man, woman, or child should go to bed hungry or be without education. No man, woman, or child should be naked, out of doors or without basic healthcare.

     www.twitter.com/louisfarrakhan

For anyone who would attack Minister Farrakhan for stating that the human body and a just economic system is a socialist, be forewarned. For followers of the Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad, socialist means “to advocate a society of men or groups of men for one common cause” not Marxism. Socialism did not originate with 19^th century European economic-philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In fact, in the Communist Manifesto and later writings, Marx and Engels criticized earlier 19^th century socialists Henri de Saint Simon, Charles Fourier, Robert Owen and others for a morality based “utopian socialism” that did not advocate the necessity of class struggle or political revolution to implement their ideas of equity and justice. These socialist believed that people of all classes might voluntarily adopt a societal plan if presented in a logical and convincing manner. What Minister Farrakhan presented on Saviours’ Day was so plain, even a fool could understand it.

 Marx and Engels’ “scientific socialism” - based on a materialist and physicalist world concept, the eventual struggle between the proletariat (working class) and bourgeoisie (owner class), abolition of all private property and state ownership thereof, industrial and scientific progress of modernity without regard for destruction of the environment, the critique of capitalism without acknowledging the transatlantic slave trade from 15^th to 19^th centuries that created modern European capital, and the rejection of Allah (God) and religion - is not what the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan is advocating. The Nation of Islam will not adopt an immoral, ahistorical, inequitable type of socialism imposed by force like that which eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

In the Holy Qur’an 68:7-8, it is written: “Surely thy Lord knows best who is erring from His way, and He knows best those who go aright. So obey not the rejectors.” What Minister Farrakhan proposes is a new stewardship of the earth based on morality and equality. For him and we who follow his guidance, “equality means to be equal in everything,” particularly in reaping the benefits of one’s labor and sacrifice while not ignoring the needs of the less fortunate in society. For the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, “every human need is a human right.”  The poor, elderly, and disabled must be cared for.

Allah revealed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in the Holy Qur’an 2:29 “He it is Who created for you all that is in the earth.”  The new stewards must care for every creature on Allah’s earth and the environment that sustains all life. For they understand Who is the real Owner of the earth. The new stewards of the earth don’t have to reject modernity, just immorality. Nor do they have to abandon private property, just the greed and lust for filthy lucre beyond their needs. The earth’s air, water, land, animals, vegetation, and people need a new righteous, loving steward that reflects Allah’s love.

Are we the meek that shall inherit the earth and become its new stewards? We certainly can be if we follow Allah’s guidance coming through the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and implement Muhammad’s Economic Blueprint to end poverty and want.

Time to Stop Wasting Time

Our successes and failures bear witness for and against us. The condition of our community bears witness to our refusal to advocate a common cause. My difference with you has subordinated our common cause. The ego of "I" has subordinated the "We" of collective consciousness. Why must we use so much of our time and intellectual energy addressing such anti-revolutionary, anti-Black, anti-God and Goddess, mundane, myopic trivialities rooted in minds starved for attention and suffering from low self esteem and self loathing. Let us who willingly follow the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan double our efforts to get after the lost and found; mentor and protect the new converts from hypocrites and agents; stop profligate spending and be found working to pool our resources to assemble land to do urban gardening and agribusiness. "I" am the problem, "We" are the solution.