Farrakhan delivers personal responsibility message

By Amanda Dale

Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan speaks at the National stadium last night.
Photo: Akil Simmons
From a paradise island to armed forces killing in the streets, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan painted a dark picture of what Bermuda may become if citizens do not accept personal responsibility.
Minister Farrakhan addressed a crowd of up to 1,000 people at the National Stadium last night, invited by the Emperial Group to talk on 'unity in the community'.
Flanked by representatives from the Nation of Islam, the Minister spoke for two hours on the problems facing Bermuda and how its people must forego materialism, sexual temptation and greed.
Each citizen must accept their responsibility as a "stakeholder" in the nation's future, he said.
Minister Farrakhan last spoke in Bermuda 11 years ago, in 1998, and described this visit as "coming home".
"I'm honoured to be back in Bermuda where my mother grew up, where my grandmother and grandfather are buried, and where my uncle, cousins, the Mills, the Mannings, the Manchesters are, so I feel that I'm really coming home," he said.
"When I heard about the growing problem with your young people in gang conflict causing the loss of life, the maiming and beating of one another, I knew that I had to come because this is what is going on in America, in every major city, and throughout the Caribbean and Africa."
The Minister said there was now a "great divide" between the younger and older generations.
"There is a great divide now between the youth and their elders and some of us as elders don't know anymore how to reach our youth and we think our youth are really a lost generation," he said.
"Our young people are really the best generation we have produced and they are rejecting leadership and are disconnected from their teachers, their parents, their politicians and the general leadership of the nations.
"You have to realise not that there is something wrong with our children but there may be something wrong with us, that our children are rejecting our leadership."
Minister Farrakhan recognised the social problems in Bermuda, such as the difficulties faced by many families in keeping a roof over their head.
"We have men and women working two or three jobs to pay a $1500 a month rent or a mortgage into the thousands of dollars," he said. "If the people are groaning it's because they are under a tremendous burden."
He said he had met with gang members on the Island and they had told him the gang problem started ten years ago.
Minister Farrakhan said: "Once you opened the television and became cable ready then all the degeneracy of the US and other places began to flood into Bermuda.
"If you bring garbage, filth, debauchery, murder and violence, and the X-Box games of violence, how then can the children escape this, when a mother in Bermuda has to work three or four jobs?"
Speaking on recent violence in Bermuda, he said: "When a human being snatches a chain off another because the chain means more than the human who is being violated, and when that human is stabbed to death, that is not the act of a civilised person, that is a savage act.
"And when people from one part of town can come into town and get beaten up by others, they don't see the relationship to one another they see where they live. You may live in St. George's, in 42nd Street, in Somerset, and in other places. You mean these places where you live define who you are?
"Are you telling me a chain around your neck, bling bling, and this is what makes you who you are? The car you drive, the house you live in, the clothes you wear? We've become so materialistic, thinking gaining more and more is what makes a great human being.
"But once a thing makes the person, the person becomes a thing."
He said: "Unity in the community is just a slogan, we will never realise it unless we do the work of cleaning the house from the top to the bottom.
"Are we talking about the Prime Minister (Premier), our Governor, the Crown? I am saying that all of us have been affected by a system.
"There is no way we can produce unity in the community unless there is a willingness to sacrifice from the top to the bottom."
He said: "All of us are stakeholders in the future of Bermuda.
"This is your nation. Seventy percent of this nation is black, this is your nation. You are a stakeholder and we have a responsibility that each of us must put on our shoulders."
Minister Farrakhan also called on the pastors and educators of the country to instill change.
"Dear pastors you are the spiritual key to heal this Island. If you would come out of the church and come onto the street where the problem is and minister unto them," said Minister Farrakhan.
He added: "The shepherds should come together and stop the divisive war among the denominations that's gang warfare on another level."
Addressing those in education, he said: "How are we educating the children of Bermuda? Are we giving them standards which just came out of Manchester, England? A colonial education is not what we need. You need an education away from your colonial masters and to make you think outside of the box."
He said: "Most of the young people I'm talking to they don't look like they are being educated properly."
The Nation of Islam leader also said: "To those in authority, something is wrong here when these young people can get drugs and guns and they don't own ships."
The Minister said: "Do we want to see the people rise because the guns are coming in? Somebody is bringing them in, and the drugs. You think those gangs want to fight and destroy each other? As I talk to them they want this to die.
"If Government doesn't step up to the plate and educators don't give them an education that awakens their talent, soon it will be the army and the Police. And if revolt comes, the Queen will send the armed forces here as they once did to kill our children in the streets.
"We are all stakeholders so everyone has to do their part to make Bermuda better."
Minister Farrakhan said: "You can make Bermuda a real paradise or leave it as it is and suffer the consequences. The choice is yours."

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Information Researched By: Sister Anonymous