Reverend Osagyefo Sekou's speech at the Chicago Teachers Union's Martin Luther King breakfast... The speaker, just returned from Palestine, compared the plight of the people of Palestine with the plight of black people in the USA...
The main speaker at the January 15, 2016 Martin Luther King Jr. breakfast, sponsored mainly by the Chicago Teachers Union, was the Reverend Osagyefo Sekou. During his remarks, the majority of the members of the audience cheered and were greatly moved. But until now there has been no complete report of his remarks.
Rev. Sekou.Rev. Osagyefo Sekou introduced himself by stating that he had just came back from Palestine and that the Palestinian people are similar to the blacks in America. Sekon contined noting the similarity: �the demonization of everyday people and the dignity of their resistance.�
�I come from the working class," He stated In Arabic which he later translated, "I am a peasant.�
Sekou described the town and his family. �I come from a town called Zion, Arkansas, 11 houses and 35 people. My grandfather was the Elder James Thomas. I am the third generation of ordained Elders in The Church of God in Christ.�
Sekou then introduced a �sister fellow freedom fighter who has organized 750 Arab women in Chicago and is facing the brutality of the American judicial System and we will defend her.�
Sekou then addressed the youth in the audience, which included students from Jenner Elementary School. �We have high expectations of you!" he continued. "You are not simply here because you are smart, because there is a long tradition of blacks that have been smart but did not have opportunity. W.E.B. DeBois got a degree from Harvard, but could not teach there. It is not because you are smart but because you have been a part of a noble tradition of struggle that willed you here.
"Some slave on some plantation prayed you into existence," he continued to cheers. "Some black woman who scrubbed floors in Chicago prayed you here. You are the substance of what they hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. So we have high expectations of you to be part of this rich and noble tradition.�
Sekou then talked about what he calls "the Age of Ferguson" and his opinions about "Black Lives Matter."
�It is for us to understand that in the moment while we are in the Age of Ferguson versus the age of Black Lives Matter," he said. "....because Black Lives Matter is a prayer supplication in which only historians will be able to determine whether this is really the age of Black Lives Matter."
He went to some length to describe his distinction: "We are in the age of Ferguson by this I mean that some poor blacks in a town most of us never heard of, put their bodies on the line...�
Sekou listed three distinct features of this "age":
-- The occupation of public spaces in Ferguson, Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring and the economic Kafuffle of 2008.
"It is a rejection of the neo-liberal formation that occupies the colonization, individuation of..." (privatization, yelled from someone in the audience.) �Occupy public spaces and global management. We have to understand the assessment that we are in a global economic crises. These young black often queer women are in leadership. Let�s be clear about that for our Sanctified folks in this room. I understand that you might not understand gay, Lesbian, bi-sexual, or transgender. I understand you may not clearly have a theological frame to understand what it means for a young person to struggle with sexual identity but let us be clear, comprehension is not a requisite for compassion. These young, gay 23 year old leaders took to the streets. They kept alive the best prophetic tradition in America. It is interesting if not ironic that these young women would not be allowed to preach in our pulpits but they embody the best example of Jesus."
He went on: "My understanding of the age of Ferguson is the occupation of public spaces and the rejection of traditional leadership. You see Al Sharpton can�t come on the street and rally at Ferguson because the new team of leadership is not preoccupied with cufflinks and bowties and who is going to lead people we don�t understand. You must be willing to listen to your leadership. I understand the occupation of public spaces and the rejection of traditional leadership."
"The third feature is to call in question the very American system those past generations struggled to become a part of," he continued. "These young people are asking what it means to be an American? What does it mean to be a Democracy? What does it mean to be a part of the most powerful empire in human history? They are calling these questions because they fundamentally understand, �Something is not right. ��The white folks rely on what we�ve been saying for the last 400 years, �The system is working just fine. Just not for the majority of us.�
�Beginning in the era and time of the death of our son Travon Martin, and part of our struggle is to wrestle with the thorn of existential angst, part of being black in America is trying to make sense of an institution which is preoccupied with the discipline of our bodies. ..Three black women introduced the phrase black lives matter which shows that the stating of the obvious is a revolutionary act.�
Sekou reminded the Martin Luther King breakfast audience that we need to be honest with young people. He said that as he travels around the country every person over 40 tell him that they marched with Martin Luther King over the bridge and all the churches supported the movement.
He stated that if all those people were on the bridge that they said were, the bridge would have collapsed.
He noted that less than 10 percent of the Back Conservative churches supported the movement.
We have to be honest with our young black people. Sekou said that there was violence in the sixties -- someone threw a rock which hit Martin Luther King on the head and other violence. In fact the Non-violent movement,� depends on violence. We depend on the state to engage in a criminal form of violence to make a moral drama, prick the conscience of the nation. The question is whether the Nation still has a conscience.�
Returning to the theme he has opened with, Sekou pointed out that the same policies that work against Palestinian babies work against the children in Ferguson. The same forces killing children in Palestine are the same forces at work here. The same company that supplied tear gas to Ferguson was used on the people of Palestine. The company, GS4, runs the prisons in Palestine. The Israeli tactics used against the Palestinians were used in Ferguson.
Sekou continued: "I�m being clear; I�m not being anti-Semitic. All governments are immoral including the United States of America. The task of prophets is to remind America of its moral compass. It�s saying to the nation that it has gone astray.�
After the speech, CTU President Karen Lewis stated: "I got complaints about Rev. Wright and now this. The statement I liked the best was the one about Jesus who was a Jewish Palestinian. I read that his hair was wooly, not like the Jesus you see in European churches. Sometimes people don�t like hearing the truth.�
By: seth leeds
racism
whenever someone says "I'm not a racist/an anti-Semite/etc. you know for certain he/she is. I don't think this is somewhere we ought to tread. The Palestinian people have a right to self-determination as do the Jewish people in Israel. The leaders do NOT have the right to speak about driving the Israeli's into the sea. This has been the theme of the Palestinians for decades and is still NOT being refuted. To live in peace with neighbors is what Israel wishes. Are their tactics always correct? No, but they do NOT call for the destruction of 6,000,000 more Jews. It was done once, but NEVER again. This is what the Palestinian leaders want. Israel wants to exist. The leaders of the Palestinians want to end Israel's existence. This is NOT the same as African-Americans are treated or up against here in America, sorry. These are NOT equivalencies.