Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan can always be counted on to share his opinions, experiences, and advice to Black America.
When he delivered the closing remarks at the Dec. 12 online National Black Leadership Summit, Farrakhan shared the stage with activist and professor Dr. Cornel West and businesswoman Dr. E. Faye Williams, who helped organize the historic first Million Man March in 1995.
The focus of the event, presented by the Nubian Leadership Circle, was to discuss current issues facing the Black community such as the covid-19 vaccine, the election and Black unity. The Nubian Leadership Circle is an alliance of Afrikan/Black local organizations and leaders.
Here are five takeaways from Minister Farrakhan’s remarks at the Black Leadership Summit.
The lack of nutritious and healthy food is key to Black people being more prone to contract covid-19, said Farrakhan. “Now we have to survive because the death plan is in motion,” Farrakhan said. He claimed that Black people suffer from coronavirus more than others because of underlying conditions like heart failure, diabetes and obesity – conditions that he said are prevalent in the Black community because “they send the worst food” to zip codes with large Black populations, Fox News reported.
According to Farrakhan, Black people need vitamin D from sunlight to combat covid-19, not a vaccine.
“Do you know why the virus is not getting the Caribbean like it’s hitting America and Europe?” he asked. “Because we live in the sun.”
Farrakhan likened the covid-19 vaccine to contaminated water in Flint, Michigan. In 2017, a government-appointed civil rights commission found that systemic racism helped to cause the Flint water crisis.
The 129-page report stated that “historical, structural and systemic racism combined with implicit bias” played a role in the problems, which still linger in the city’s drinking water three years later, CNN reported.
“They gave free shots of toxic waste. Free,” Farrakhan said. “The same lead that’s in the water in Flint is in the water in Detroit is in the water in Cleveland. You watch. It’s in the water in Chicago,” he said.
Minister Farrakhan claimed that the vaccine was part of a plot by the devil.
“Now they’re getting us ready for the vaccine. Brothers and sisters, do you believe in Satan?” he asked. “How could you allow him to stick a needle into you saying he’s helping you?”
The Nation of Islam leader mentioned a proposal by former Democratic Congressman and presidential candidate John Delaney to offer $1,500 stimulus checks for people who get vaccinated.
“They’re offering you money now…to take a shot,” Farrakhan said.
“We have to create, in my judgment, an incentive for people to really accelerate their thinking about taking the vaccine,” Delaney told CNBC.
Farrakhan spoke of the need for unity among Black activists and organizations and recalled a time when he reached out to others in the 1980s.
“I had just come back from overseas and I knew that as a people we were struggling and I knew that we needed to pull our people together…and sit down to talk about the problems that we face and develop solutions for those problems,” said Farrakhan. He reached out to then-NAACP leader Ben Chavis to create an umbrella organization of Black leaders.
“I felt that the NAACP could be and should be the one to call our leaders and organizations together,” he said.
That’s how the National African American Leadership Summit started.
White supremacy in the U.S. is coming to an end, according to Farrakhan.
“Today…we’re coming into a level of consciousness that causes us to rise,” he said. “We’re influencing our babies, we’re influencing art, we’re influencing culture, we’re influencing science and technology. We are upsetting a world and that’s what disturbs me now. Because the enemy sees his fall in our eyes and that the end of white supremacy and its power over people of color is come to an end.”
Farrakhan spoke of the friendship the Nation of Islam (NOI) developed with the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Gaddafi offered financial assistance to the NOI at various times.
“Gaddafi said to me…we’re going to put the Nation of Islam in our national budget each and every year,” Farrakhan said. At one point (then-NOI leader) Elijah Muhammad borrowed $4 million from Libya to purchase a mosque in Chicago. “He paid him back at $75,000 a month,” recalled Farrakhan. “I borrowed $5 million to go into personal care products for the Nation and I put it in a Black bank.”
In 1996, Gadhafi pledged to give $1 billion to the NOI to “help America’s Black people,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
But the NOI’s formal application to the U.S. Treasury Department for permission to accept the donation was blocked by Bill Clinton administration officials. Libya was still under U.S. sanctions.
It was reported that the NOI planned to use the funds to bankroll minority-owned banks so they could make business and home loans, set up a charitable foundation and underwrite a nationwide voter-registration drive.
Gaddafi, the one-time African revolutionary, led Libya for 42 years until his government was toppled with the help of the United Nations and the U.S. under Barack Obama’s leadership. Gaddafi was assassinated in October 2011.
Farrakhan spoke of a business venture he wanted to start with some of the Gaddafi funds. “I went to Black companies (and said) let’s build personal care products,” he said. But the idea was thwarted when “the enemy…the great Johnson & Johnson products” learned of the venture. Farrakhan’s efforts were blocked.
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Farrakhan talked at the summit about the incoming president. “The biggest slap in the face to Trump was when the man he called Sleepy Joe became the president-elect of the United States of America and called a Black woman to his side,” Farrakhan said. “She ain’t no lightweight. Kamala Harris is a heavyweight and look at how white folks are thinking right now. — She’s a beat away from being the first Black (female) president.”
