[lbo-talk] Farrakhan invites gay speaker to MMM

[Max B. Sawicky]

Rhetorically this is true, but it isn't mirrored (yet) in organization.
Evidently some kind of flap bounced the (black) gay speaker from the program
yesterday.  One of our local dipwads, the not-right Rev Willie Wilson, who
recently accused gay black women of destroying the black family because they
made too much money, had some kind of blow-up at a planning meeting.

At the kick-off event with the speech I cited, everybody said all the right
things, but there was no diversity in the speakers at the press event
further than including women.  No Hispanics, for instance.  How can anyone
talk about discrimination and poverty in the U.S. without talking about
Latinos.  No gays either.  No whites.

At the press event (I didn't go the rally; I watched some of it on C-span),
Farrakhan was the de facto maximum leader.  Obviously he's got baggage.  He
did pretty well shedding it.  He's an incredible speaker, head and shoulders
above the others.  Said the right things and all.  But he called J Jackson a
great man.  Then called Al Sharpton a great man, albeit with flaws.  (ouch)

To me Jackson is a spent bullet.  He refuses to organize anything except his
own media appearances.  Sharpton enlisted a gaggle of Republican Party
operatives - or vice versa -- to run his primary campaign.  Willie Wilson,
see above.

Some good people are involved too.  Cornel West, Julianne Malveaux.  Fits
and starts aside, there are grounds for optimism in general, since the
overall theme is on organization, not manifestation as an end in itself.
The vector is pointed in the direction of class as well as race.  Practice
has a ways to catch up.

mbs

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]On
Behalf Of Charles Brown
Sent: Sunday, October 16, 2005 10:50 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk] Farrakhan invites gay speaker to MMM

Seems like Nation of Islam is taking a left turn.  Farrakhan discussed Fidel
Castro's offers of 1586 doctors for New Orleans and 500 medical school
scholarships for racially oppressed U.S. students; there's a rumor that
there was a mesage from Cuban leader Ricardo Alarcon at the MMM event. F
also discussed Mao Tse-Tung's use of cultural workers as a model for the MMM
program. He didn't use the terms "class struggle" that I heard, but James P.
Hoffa did in endorsing the MMM.

MaX says Farrakhan may be channelling Malcolm X.

Charles
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <../attachments/20051016/b3a8cbc9/attachment.htm>