Transcription
Now, it seems to me that I want to ask some questions, and I hope you will be ready to respond properly. I think that we should form a Ministry of Health and Human Service. Think about this: since Jesus said, “Those who would be chief among you, let them be your servant,” then we in leadership and our organizations are not to master the people, but to serve the people. [Applause] So if such a disaster comes again, we need a Ministry of Health and Human Service to look after the health needs of the Black, the Brown, the Native American, and the poor. And I’m asking all of our doctors, when we go back home, let us form a Ministry of Health and Human Service that we can use to serve the needs of the Black, the Brown, the Red, and the poor of this nation.
We need a Ministry of Agriculture. The Black farmers are suffering. We need to unite our Black farmers, make their land productive, and tie that land to the needs of the city. A Ministry of Agriculture, because farming is the engine of every nation, and we need to provide for ourselves the things that we consume. And this will cause us to want to build supermarkets in every city. This will cause us to want to build canning factories and frozen food factories, so we can take our product from the ground and can it; take our product from the ground and freeze it and put it into our own supermarkets. This we can do; it’s not a big thing; it’s just we need to think out of the box. A Ministry of Agriculture.
We need a Ministry of Education. Let’s unite all of our educators, because the Western system of education has run its course and is no longer worthy to hold our children or America’s children. We are calling on our educators to provide a new educational paradigm. And if our educators formed themselves into a ministry, a service, then we will be able to re-educate our children and others and make a productive people.
We need a Ministry of Defense. Did you hear me? [Applause] They are born soldiers, but they’re in the wrong war. They’re fighting a war in the streets of America against each other, or they’re fighting in an unjust war overseas in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to bring our boys home and put them into the Ministry of Defense so we can defend our communities rather than destroy our communities. Young men, come on, and let’s set up the Ministry of Defense in every city and every town.
We need a Ministry of Art and Culture. We applaud the hip-hop community, the new leaders of young people all over the world. [Applause] But I want the young generation of artists to know there’s a bigger purpose than popping our fingers and shaking, you know what? There’s a bigger purpose for art and culture. Mao Zedong, on his long march throughout Chiang Kai-shek, but he had a billion people whose lives he had to transform; many of them were victims of opium, drugs, prostitution, like we are. But what Mao Zedong did was he went to the cultural community, and they accepted his idea, and then through song, through dance, through poetry, through drama, through documentaries, through movies, through books that were written, the idea of Mao Zedong became the idea of a billion people, and China became a world power on the base of the culture and the artistic community. If we had a Ministry of Art and Culture in every city as we create this movement, we could say to our young people, “What is the idea of the time, and are you reflecting that idea in your songs, in your dance, in your music?”
We need a Ministry of Trade and Commerce. Do you think that a Millions More Movement shouldn’t be involved in the development of Africa, the Caribbean, and Central America? Look, brothers and sisters, if we started feeding ourselves—look at the billions that we spend on food—but we need clothing, and we need shelter. Look at our clothes; they’re made somewhere else. Look at our shoes, our tennis shoes; they’re made somewhere else. Suppose we’d pull some of the money that we spend foolishly; we could set up factories in Africa and in the Caribbean. That’s a labor market that is a little cheaper than the labor here, but if they made our clothes, then we could open up clothing stores all over America, sell cheaper than the market, and then capture the market of the people, and all will buy clothing from us because it’s better and it’s cheaper. Africa can be a source of shoes and clothing and lots of things that we might not be able to make in America successfully. So we need a Ministry of Trade and Commerce that can link the struggle here with Africa and the Caribbean, Central and South America. We have a market of merely 90 million Black and Brown; that’s a huge market. Let’s tap that market, and we won’t have to beg others; we’ll be able to do it ourselves.
We need a Ministry of Justice. We need to look at the conflicts in our own community. We don’t need to go to our slave masters to solve our problems. We need to have a Ministry of Justice in every city that deals with the conflicts among us, that we solve it among ourselves through our Ministries of Justice.
We need a Ministry of Information. We need to gather all the Black newspapers, all Black radio, Black television, all magazines into a Ministry of Information, because if we have enough money in our ministry, we send our reporters wherever we want; the truth. We do not wish to be subjected to the Associated Press, arthritis, or to UPI, or to the news-managed news of America and the world. We need to be where the action is so that our people will get correct information. We need a Ministry of Information.
We need a Ministry of Science and Technology. And lastly, we need a ministry that deals with the head, the spirit of our people, where we collect our spiritual leaders of Christianity and Islam and Judaism and all other religions and come up with the spiritual teaching that will transform our lives by renewing our minds, that we may destroy the Willie Lynch syndrome in Black people in America and throughout the world forever.
Now, I’m asking you, would you agree, pray that we should have a Ministry of Health and Human Service? Raise your hand, please, uniting all our doctors and health professionals. Do you believe that we should have a Ministry of Agriculture? Raise your hands. Do you believe we should have a Ministry of Education, looking after the educational needs of our children? Do you believe that we should have a Ministry of Defense? [Applause] We have to do something to help ourselves. Do you believe that we should have a Ministry of Justice, a Ministry of Information, a Ministry of Science and Technology, a Ministry of Culture, and lastly, a ministry that unites the spiritual community that we may impart spiritual values to our people? All of you who agree with that, please let me see your hands, from here all the way to the Washington Monument. Let me see those hands. If we don’t organize, we won’t get anything but what they wish to give us, but the more we organize, the stronger our organization, the more demands we can make.