EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY HARD KNOCK RADIO, 29 OCTOBER 2010.
"Well, it’s just to realize that nobody should be encouraged to try to replace or fill somebody else’s shoes. People should be encouraged to grow within their own shoes."
"Well, I don’t have the answer and a lot of people today, most of all the people are looking for the next Malcolm Xs, the Martin Luther Kings, the Medgar Everses and George Jacksons and Jonathan Jacksons, but we shouldn’t be looking for them. What we need to realize is that whatever it is that attracts us to these great men is a mirror reflection – it’s something that we possess in ourselves – so look within yourself. Each person is like a grain of salt, so was the building block of civilization. Focus not on what the next man is or isn’t willing to do but focus on what you’re going to do."
"Basically, I believe that this is the land of smoke and mirrors. You know this is one big magic show. And it would appear to be as if our people have made progress since the Malcolm Xs, the Martin Luther Kings and so forth, but it’s really an illusion, that we actually have taken a large leap backwards in terms of the consciousness of the people."
"We came through an era, like the civil rights era, where people were coming into their own, they were proud to be who they were, they were rocking the Afros, they were throwing up the power fists. You had artists who were making songs like “I’m gonna say it loud: I’m Black and I’m proud.” You had people protesting the Vietnam war.
Now you fast forward to now and look we have our own people killing each other, brothers out there that would sell crack to your mother or your pregnant sister. What our people do now and a majority of our youth and the actions that they take constitute war on our own community. Many of our youth right now aren’t even aware of what was happening 20 years ago or 40 years ago and it’s not that long ago.
I mean my peers, my age group I can’t talk to the majority of people my age and they understand the political and social dynamics of this country and what happened, the United States federal Counter-Intelligence Program [COINTELPRO] and within a 10-year period how many assassinations took place, just within a 10-year period, from Malcolm X, to Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Tupac. They even assassinated their own president, Kennedy, so that’s what happened.""Absolutely. I can’t say specifically like I know this is exactly what happened, but what I will say is that many people when they meet me say well wasn’t your grandfather killed by his own people? Didn’t the Nation of Islam assassinate your grandfather? And I have to tell them it’s unfortunate that so many people view it like that but no I do not hold the Nation of Islam accountable for my grandfather’s assassination.
I feel like they were pawns and what happens is that the United States, the same people that assassinated my grandfather are the same people who assassinated Martin Luther King, the same people that assassinated Medgar Evers and the majority of our leaders. It wasn’t different groups of people; it was all the same group of people, the United States government.
But you’re never going to see a person from the CIA with a suit and a tie and a bag that says CIA walk up to you and pull the trigger. What they’re going to do is get somebody that looks like you to infiltrate and carry out the dirty work so even the men that pulled the trigger, they were nothing more than pawns; they were puppets.""Yes, so the reason is because the mainstream media, they don’t have the best interests of the people at heart. The mainstream media has the best interests of the corporate businessmen, the government and the politicians and that’s why they’ll keep these injustices localized. They’re not going to report an injustice that’s going on in Oakland to the brothers and sisters in New York and they’re not going to report an injustice going on in New York to the brothers and sisters in Chicago and Florida and so forth, so it goes to show that they don’t have the best interests of the people.
And I remember when I was in prison, I was in a maximum security prison in New York, I was in the box upstate, and it was 23 1/2 hours lock down. And when you reach a certain level, they give you a pair of headphones and you could listen to CNN. And we were listening to CNN and later on we’d get a half hour rest and the back of our cage would open up and we could step out and talk to the brothers out there. We couldn’t see them but we could talk to them, and it’s been like that for years where you could be talking to a brother and never see his face.
And many people would be surprised because they think everybody behind this wall, which is what they want you to believe, is an animal, a gangster or thug, cold-hearted, cold-blooded, which just isn’t the case. Some of the most intelligent brothers I ever met in my life have been behind that wall and these concentration camps within the belly of the beast.
And the brothers would have a dialog with each other and they would debate and they would go about it in a respectful manner. And the most controversial topics were that of politics or religion and some of the things that the brothers would talk about not long after 9/11 had taken place. And the brothers would go back and forth and I would listen to them, and what I noticed was that if it was a different opinion, a different viewpoint, it was the exact same information that they got from CNN.
So that got me to thinking, well, what about the people that’s on CNN, what about these people that control the information that gets out to the people? That’s pretty dangerous because now the people are able, through their media outlets and institutions, they’re able to manipulate and mold their opinions and viewpoints on the masses on a large scale. And to the extent of the type of clothes that you like to wear, the type of cigarettes that you smoke, your taste in women, your taste in men, how you relate to people, they can manipulate and mold and program these things through the media. That’s how serious it is.""A lot of times many people focus too much on differences and I believe we need to focus more on our common ground. You know, like the United States government, they’ll go to a place like Iraq or other places within the Middle East and these are people who majored in Middle Eastern studies and they speak Arab and they’ll go and bomb a mosque and pretend to be Shiite and then they’ll do the same thing and they’ll go to bomb another mosque and pretend to be Sunni. And the Shiite and Sunni begin to fight each other not knowing that there are outside forces pulling the strings. And we’re going through the same thing, Bloods and Crips and all these sort of things so we need to focus more on the common ground."
" I don’t know, to be honest with you. I don’t know, but it means a lot to me. It weighs a lot on believers, like when a person first takes their shihata and all your sins are forgiven and since the time I can remember taking my shihata up until now I have a lot of sins that I need to be forgiven, so my intentions are real sincere with this hajj.
I know it had such a profound impact on my grandfather when he came back. I know a lot of people that have come back from hajj and I’ve seen different effects. Everyone speaks about this holy experience, but I’ve seen some people come back and within the next month or two they’re back to their old ways. But I’ve seen others come back and really change their life, so I just hope that it will do the same for me."
"Well, what I can say to that is that if you put Muhammad, Jesus and Moses all in the same room, do you think they’d be debating and arguing with each other? No, not at all because they were all on this team, they were all prophets of God, they all had the same message. But it’s us; we get this message confused."
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