The Million Man March and the Madman Who Led Them to Washington

I will take my stand to watch, and station myself on the tower, and look forth to see what he will say to me, and what I will answer concerning my complaint. And the Lord answered me: "Write the vision; make it plain upon tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its time; it hastens to the end - it will not lie. If it seem slow, wait for it; it will surely come, it will not delay. Behold, he whose soul is not upright in him shall fail, but the righteous shall live by his faith."
- Habakkuk 2:1-4

For reasons that are inconsequential at this time, I happened upon the book of Habakkuk from the Old Testament about a week before the event that was billed as the Million Man March. It really struck a chord; I could relate to the prophet Habakkuk and his anger over the prosperity being enjoyed by the wicked, insincere leaders of his day (around 600 BC) at the expense of these leaders' more righteous followers.

My first thought was "That's Louis Farrakhan!" My passages lend an eerie relativity to last weekend's frolicking on The Mall. In fact, verses 7-19 of chapter 2 seem to speak directly to or of Farrakhan himself:

Will not your debtors suddenly arise, and those awake who will make you tremble? Then you will be booty for them. Because you have plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you, for the blood of men and violence to the earth, to cities and all who dwell therein. Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house, to set his nest on high, to be safe from the reach of harm! You have devised shame to your house by cutting off many people; you have forfeited your life. For the stone will cry out from the wall, and the beam from the woodwork respond. Woe to him who builds a town with blood, and founds a city on iniquity! Behold, is it not from the Lord of host that people labor only for fire, and nations weary themselves for nought? For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. Woe to him who makes his neighbors drink of the cup of his wrath and makes them drink, to gaze on their shame! You will be sated with contempt instead of glory. Drink, yourself, and stagger! The cup in the Lord's right hand will come around to you, and shame will come upon your glory!

You get the idea.... such a warning, yet so many followed. And why not? They've had no place else to go and it is, indeed, a sad state of affairs in America, as former Virginia governor Doug Wilder said, when the only "leader" your average throng of blacks has to turn to is a venom-spewing con-man who represents every ounce of injustice against which Black America has spent its 130-plus years of freedom railing against. Yes, it's sad that they just couldn't do it on their own; they've had more than 30 years – since Martin Luther King's speech in 1963 to get their shit together, but they couldn't find the mirror until one was held up in front of them.

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It's a shame that so many of the participants willingly confirmed the message while condemning the messenger. Well, gang, that does not excuse what each and every attendee contributed to the legitimizing of Louis Farrakhan. Yes, this was definitely his party. And it's continued to be his party, as he has gained further exposure with his "lawsuit;" a joke that would have been comical had it not been so misguided. Think about this: Farrakhan filed a lawsuit against the Washington DC Parks Service for miscounting the number of attendees. The punch line is not difficult to figure out: The good minister has neglected to recall - if, due to the confines of his own private, demented world, he ever knew - that, on a local level, Washington DC is a city managed by blacks, from the mayor's office, down.

Anyhow, it's been a week now since the march took place; and three days since I completed my own lonely march. I waited purposely for three days after Farrakhan's little sit-in to hold my own gathering. This was, of course, as a nod to Christ's rebirth on the Third Day. What with Farrakhan's supposed background, I'm desperately trying to get into the whole religious aspect of the thing. And I figured that the spirit and will and fire which had been sucked out of the bellies of the one group of people who have single-handedly kept the black community from totally disintegrating in the past three decades, might be restored - resurrected, if you will - via my own shindig. I'm speaking, of course, of America's black women. Though they were invited to my march, they didn't show, which made for a lonely walk from the steps of Congress to the Lincoln Memorial. Obviously, unlike Louis, I needed greater name recognition. I wonder what the reaction of the country might be were I to have had David Duke call for all white men to gather on the Mall for mass atonement for all those bad things they've said and done in the past. Who could complain, given what transpired on that same hallowed ground just one week ago?

Right. So, needless to say, I wasn't invited to this affair. I considered crashing the thing, but those guards that Farrakhan surrounded himself with scared the hell out of me. The outbreak of violence would not have been difficult to predict had some mouthy, white reporter from Chicago come strolling into this very private affair. And I wanted no part of that. Despite my own personal reputation for violence, I really don't like it at all. I don't even care to view it on television. But for those who made the trip, I give them credit, as they really had no reason for being there. For the most part, I would guess that those who did show their faces are respectful of their wives, earn a living and teach their kids manners. No, the ones who needed to show are the fourteen-year-olds playing with guns down at Cabrini Green in Chicago.

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The question – to what degree will this event impact the present and be remembered in the future? The answer is Barely Any and Even Less. In an age in which news and entertainment have become intermeshed to the point of confusion, it's easy to separate the 1963 march led by Martin Luther King as news, and therefore, history, and the Farrakhan Debacle as one man's own soon to be forgotten PR ploy de jour.

And what will become of the temporarily mainstream Louis Farrakhan? Well, it's damn near a sure bet that his fate lies in the words of the obscure book of Habakkuk, however deep in the magma of the language one must dig to yank, from the darkness into the light of day, the Truth. Yes, that one may be a little difficult for the faint of heart to decipher. However, in an old rock and roll song performed by guitarist Ritchie Blackmore's creation, Rainbow, the fate of Farrakhan is made brutally clear.

During those Rainbow years, the late '70s, Blackmore's singer was a dwarf by the name of Ronnie James Dio who today stands tall as one of the genre's most honest, most prophetic lyricists. Digest the accompanying words of doom and truth from a tune called "Stargazer," and consider for yourself that, indeed, his time has come. Then, in the direct and blinding light of last week's events, read Dio's words again, and find solace in the fact that Louis Farrakhan may one day go the way of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI.

High noon, oh I'd sell my soul for water,
Nine years worth of breaking my back,
There's no sun in the shadow of the wizard,
See how he glides, why he's lighter than air.
Oh I see his face!

Hot wind, moving fast across the desert.
We feel that our time has arrived.
The world spins, while we put his dream together.
A tower of stone to take him straight to the sky.
Oh I see his face!

Where is your star? Is it far, is it far, is it far.
When do we leave? I believe, I believe, I believe.

All eyes see the figure of the wizard,
As he climbs to the top of the world.
No sound, as he falls instead of rising,
Time standing still, then there's blood on the sand.
Oh I see his face!

Where was your star? Was it far, was it far, was it far.
When did we leave? I believed, I believed, I believed.

In the heat and the rain,
With whips and chains,
To see him fly,
So many die.
We built a tower of stone,
With our flesh and bone.
To see him fly,
But we don't know why,
Now, where do we go.

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"The righteous rise with burning eyes of hatred and ill-will.
Madmen fed on fear and lies to beat, and burn and kill."
- Anonymous