Activist Devon Normand, wearing a suit, of The Village 337 flanked by family and supporters of 11-year-old girl during April 16 post-hearing conference. Photo: Albi Muhammad
Little Milan, the Black girl incarcerated at 11 years old in the fatal shooting of a 36-year-old White man Kamaran Bedsole, still languishes in a juvenile detention center in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana. (See The Final Call Vol. 43 No. 26, No. 30 and No. 33)
Half of that time will be in custody and the other on probation. Judge Roger Hamilton, Jr. sentenced her in May 2024, but family and activists continue to work for her release.
According to Milan’s eldest sister, Ah’Shiriya Washington, Milan’s academic performance has improved. “She’s doing well. Her grades are amazing. Right now, we’re just waiting on her hearing to see how everything can go,” she told The Final Call. Milan’s last hearing was in December, Ms. Washington said.
“I actually spoke to her last week,” said Angela Kately Eaglin, vice president of The Village 337, a collective of young leaders based in Lafayette, Louisiana. “She’s adjusting well to the environment that she’s in.”
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Milan was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and accessory to murder charges in Mr. Bedsole’s death in November 2023. The child is expected to testify against her 15-year-old brother, who was also charged with 1st-degree murder and has been held in Jackson Parish Juvenile Detention Center since his arrest on Dec. 5.
Also on Dec. 5, police arrested their 40-year-old mother, Sabrina Washington, 40. She was being held in Iberia Parish Jail on $400,000 bond for two counts of accessory after the fact. But Milan’s sentence was shocking to many.
“That sentence that she had gotten, the seven years, obviously hit us all like a ton of bricks. But we never believed she would do the whole seven years, and we still don’t believe it. Our prayer is that she’ll be released much sooner than the seven years, and we’re hoping for soon, maybe this year,” Ms. Eaglin said.
This photo shows family, activists, and residents standing outside a courthouse in New Iberia, Louisiana, to show support for an 11-year-old Black girl named Milan who was scheduled to be sentenced on April 16, 2024, in connection with a fatal shooting. Milan was sentenced in May and is still in custody. Photo: Rev. Wilfred J. Johnson/A New Chapter Push Coalition February 17, 2025
She said their fight is behind the scenes, as well as protesting at the courthouse, the juvenile detention center or at the Sheriff’s Station in Iberia.
In addition, Ms. Eaglin said they have submitted to Milan’s attorney, Ron Haley, a list of names from community members and church members who are willing to take her in if her family is not deemed to be fit at the time of her release.
“She has somewhere to go that’s safe and stable when that time comes, but overall, she’s doing better than what we expected, despite the circumstances,” she added.
Meanwhile, they are also working to get Milan’s mother and brother resources and work for their release.
“We are right now, very optimistic, and we believe in helping the entire family,” Ms. Eaglin said, adding, “just holistically treat the whole family.”
“We’re not naive as to how Milan got into this situation, and that’s an internal issue that we deal with in the Black community, outside of the public eye. But it is something that we’re working on,” she said. As for Milan’s brother, they are seeking the assistance of organizations that focus on incarcerated children, Ms. Eaglin said.
Ah’Shiriya Washington said the family is preparing for a long ride, waiting for their mother and baby brother’s cases to start. “The dates that we did have, they keep pushing them back so much, I don’t know when they’re going to start.
I’ve really, really been feeling like they’re going to try to hold them the maximum amount of time before they take them to trial. They’re trying to gather evidence to make something stick; at least that’s what it is looking like from my standpoint,” she said.
There is more to the case than meets the eye, added Ms. Eaglin.
“If anyone that’s going to read this article thinks that it’s just, ‘Oh, they did a crime, they picked them up, they threw them in jail. That’s just how it goes.’ No! They did their homework. They knew that these people were poor, undereducated, had been in the system … they knew all these things, and they knew they were going to get railroaded,” she stated.
This image from Jet Propulsion Laboratory shows NASA’s UAVSAR airborne radar instrument captured data in fall 2024 showing the motion of landslides on the Palos Verdes Peninsula following record-breaking rainfall in Southern California in 2023 and another heavy-precipitation winter in 2024. Darker red indicates faster motion. Image: NASA Earth Observatory
Land in the residential area of Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County slid toward the ocean by as much as four inches per week during a four-week period in the fall of 2024.
According to airborne radar used to measure the slow-moving landslides in Palos Verdes, researchers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California found that the decades-old active landslide has expanded, reported the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a research and development lab federally funded by NASA and managed by the California Institute of Technology on Jan. 3.
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In early Sep. 2024, entire homes in Rancho Palos Verdes collapsed or were torn apart as the landslides rapidly accelerated after torrential rains drenched Southern California over the past two years.
According to a Feb. 5 article on yahoo.com, “The region, about 25 miles South of downtown Los Angeles, has been home to historic landslides, but weather events after the remnants of Hurricane Hilary in the summer of 2023 impacted the region and caused the movement to accelerate. The area was put under a state of emergency in 2024 after record rains then caused some ground to give way.”
“In effect, we’re seeing that the footprint of land experiencing significant impacts has expanded, and the speed is more than enough to put human life and infrastructure at risk,” Alexander Handwerger, the JPL landslide scientist who performed the analysis, said in a statement.
Teams hailing from Detroit; Chicago; New York; Newark; Washington, D.C.; Houston; Atlanta, and Los Angeles, were judged on military posture, creativity, precision, degree of difficulty, appearance, and the voice of the (D.I.) drill instructor.
Categories and participants included: Jr. F.O.I. (Fruit of Islam) – Atlanta and Detroit; Jr. M.G.T. (Muslim Girls Training) Vanguard – Chicago, Washington D.C. and Atlanta; M.G.T. – Atlanta and Chicago; M.G.T. Vanguard – New York, Chicago, Atlanta and Houston; and F.O.I. – New York, L.A., Chicago and Newark.
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After an exciting and high-spirited competition, placements were:
Jr. M.G.T. Vanguard: Chicago (1st), Washington D.C. (2nd), Atlanta (3rd); Jr. F.O.I.: Atlanta (1st), Detroit (2nd); M.G.T. Vanguard: Atlanta (1st), Chicago (2nd), Houston (3rd); M.G.T.: Atlanta (1st), Chicago (2nd); F.O.I.: Los Angeles (1st), New York (2nd), Newark (3rd).
This year’s judges were: Nation of Islam Student Assistant Supreme Captain Abdul Azziz Muhammad, Student Mid-Atlantic Regional Minister Abdul Khadir Muhammad, Student Eastern Regional F.O.I. Captain Majied Muhammad and longtime drill competition participants Sister Tadarah Muhammad and Brother Leonard Muhammad.
The faces of some bright-eyed drill team members lit up as they smiled as their righteous competitors received 1st place medals from Student Supreme Captain Mustapha Farrakhan and Student Southern Regional M.G.T. Captain Dr. Nusaybah Muhammad.
Competitiveness permeated the atmosphere in Hall A on the grounds of The National Center, especially when the winning teams were announced, but so did support and adulation, as teams clapped for others when they finished their routines.
All of the drill teams showed up and showed out and participants expressed their gratitude and appreciation for righteous competition.
“I’m not going to lie. It is good to want it. Who doesn’t want to win? But at the end of the day, that’s never our goal, when we drill. … Everything was just very sentimental,” Brother Mustapha Muhammad, a member of Mosque No. 27 stated.
“I was able to extend my love that I have for him (the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan) through drill. And it’s really important,” said the 21-year-old.
Sister Gena Muhammad of Mosque No. 55 in Memphis, enjoyed this year’s drill competition. “It was lovely! Drill has always been our entertainment for Saviours’ Day, always the highlight other than the message on Sunday,” she said.
New York, F.O.I., 2nd PlaceNew York, VanguardChicago, Vanguard, 2nd PlaceNew Jersey, F.O.I, 3rd PlaceThousands of spectators attend the Drill Competition, often called, “exercise of the gods” on Feb. 22, Saviours’ Day Convention in Chicago.Photos: Abdul K Muhammad, Haroon Rajaee, Cartan XMarch 10, 2025 Drill Continue d from page 30Photos: Abdul K Muhammad, Haroon Rajaee, Cartan X Audience applauds during the Saviours’ Day 2025 Drill competition.Chicago, F.O.I.Mother Khadijah Farrakhan, First Lady of the Nation of Islam, attends the Drill Competition.Chicago, Jr. M.G.T., 1st PlaceD.C., Jr. M.G.T. 2nd PlaceAtlanta, Jr. M.G.T. 3rd PlaceDetroit, Jr. F.O.I., 2nd PlaceAtlanta, Jr. F.O.I., 1st PlaceChicago, M.G.T., 2nd PlaceAtlanta, M.G.T., 1st Place
Thirty officers at the Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Downey were indicted on charges of child endangerment and abuse, conspiracy, and battery impacting 143 victims between the ages of 12 and 18.
Twenty-two of the officers were arraigned on March 3 at Los Angeles Superior Court and the remaining will be arraigned on April 18, according to California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
The grand jury indictment alleges that the officers allowed and, in some instances, encouraged 69 fights to occur between youths at the facility, located 15 miles south of Los Angeles, from July 1, 2023, to Dec. 31, 2023.
“Some officers are even seen laughing and shaking hands with the young people involved,” said Attorney General Bonta. “Watching the video, the officers look more like referees or audience members at a prize fight, not adults charged with the care and supervision of young people. The officers don’t step in or intervene and don’t protect their charges,” he stated during a news conference on March 3.
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On or about December 22, 2023, two officers, Shawn Smyles and Taneha Brooks, “told new Detention Service Officers on duty that youth fights were going to occur in Unit L before any fights between youths occurred,” read the indictment.
On or about that same date, they told new Detention Service Officers “that they were not to say anything, write down anything, and just watch when youth fights occurred on that day in Unit L.” Further, Shawn Styles told the youths after the Unit L fights to refuse treatment when they went to medical to get treated by nurses, the indictment continued.
The indictment includes special allegations, including the vulnerability of the victims and the officer’s position of trust or confidence, which helped enable them to commit the offense, according to Attorney General Bonta.
Including those indicted were: Isaiah Goodie, Ramses Patron, Julian Lira, Vanessa Wattanachinda-Jones, Kenneth Silva, Robert Ford Jr., Rene Conant Jr., Lenton Abram, Cain Cabrera, Flor Sanchez, Jacqueline Rivera-Castillo, Sophea Kiet, Ariel Phelix Espinoza,
Chezzaray White, Timothy Gould, Raymond Ramirez, Eunice Huerta, Nancy Sostre, Diana Jacobo, Kenneth Haywood, Benjamin Cano, Robert Perkins, Enrique Alvarenga, Lafrance Davis, Angelina Medina, Jessica Juarez-Serrano, Sergio Magos and Randy Baca.
“These so-called ‘gladiator fights’ resulted in physical harm to youth involved and, if the charges are proven, were a dereliction of the officers’ duty to protect those in their care,” the attorney general stated, in a news release dated March 3. He announced the unsealing of the Feb. 13, 2025, indictment on March 3.
A leaked security video published in Jan. 2024 by the Los Angeles Times (The Times) shows eight probation officers standing idly by while a group of teens attacked a 17-year-old inside Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall, according to the news outlet.
According to the Associated Press (AP), Attorney Jamal Tooson, representing the 17-year-old and his family in a civil case against the county, called the indictment the “the tip of the iceberg” of a systemic problem in the probation department.
“There’s a “culture that promotes a lack of accountability, violence and policies that encourage officers to look the other way as evident in the video,” Atty. Tooson said. “The reaction of the children who were eating their lunch, they really didn’t seem shocked or surprised, which tells me this is a daily occurrence.”
Attorney Tooson represents several other families with children harmed at Los Padrinos, including one who was left with a traumatic brain injury after being knocked unconscious in a classroom, he said, according to AP.
“The current staff named in today’s indictments have all been placed on leave without pay. Accountability is a cornerstone of our mission, and we have zero tolerance for misconduct of any peace officers, especially those dealing with young people in our system,” Attorney Tooson’s news release stated.
The Final Call has contacted the Los Angeles County Probation Department for an interview and has not yet received a reply.
“It’s really sickening and appalling, what’s happening inside of these youth detention centers and I think the conclusion I reached very quickly is that children don’t belong in cages,” said Dr. Melina Abdullah, co-founder and director of the Los Angeles-based Black Lives Matter Grassroots, which is committed to ending state-sanctioned violence in all its forms—socially, politically, and economically.
It is the idea of not just locking children up but then subjecting them to dehumanized, slave-like conditioning, she explained. “When we think about the gladiator fights, where does that come from?” questioned Dr. Abdullah.
“I think about the ways in which enslaved people were treated and made to show their strength and had no right, no autonomy over their own beings and that’s exactly what’s happening in these detention centers.
We know that jails descend from plantations and police descend from slave catchers and so that’s what’s happening and then the question becomes what are we willing to do to save our children?”
Protesters march during a demonstration in support of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, March 10 in New York. AP Photo/Arhó Albi
Professor of Law and Founding Director of CLEAR at the City University of New York, Ramzi Kassem, speaks to the media after attending a hearing in Manhattan federal court addressing the deportation case of Mahmoud Khalil, March 12 in New York. AP Photo/Albert Arhó
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) urged universities around the country to reject any federal pressure to surveil or punish international students and faculty based on constitutionally protected speech in response to recent executive orders and other communications from the White House.
The orders attempt to pressure university officials to target students, faculty, and staff who are not U.S. citizens, including holders of non-immigrant visas and lawful permanent residents or others on a path to U.S. citizenship, for exercising their First Amendment rights, said the ACLU in an open letter.
It stems from President Donald Trump’s Executive Orders: 14161 (“Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats”/Jan. 20, 2025) and Executive Order 14188 (“Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”/Jan. 29, 2025) and related communications from the White House.
The ACLU letter came after President Trump threatened to stop all federal funding for any college, school or university that allow “illegal protests,” to imprison or permanently send back “agitators” to the country from which they came, and that “American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested.”
“It is disturbing to see the White House threatening freedom of speech and academic freedom on U.S. college campuses so blatantly. We stand in solidarity with university leaders in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus,” said Cecillia Wang, legal director of the ACLU and co-author of the letter.
“Trump’s latest coercion campaign, attempting to turn university administrators against their own students and faculty, harkens back to the McCarthy era and is at odds with American constitutional values and the basic mission of universities,” she said in a March 4 news release announcing the letter.
Mr. Khalil became the face of campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war which took root on Columbia University’s campus last spring. The father-to-be became a familiar, outspoken figure in a student movement that soon spread to other U.S. colleges, according to arraw.medium.com
On March 13, nearly 100 arrests were made at Trump Tower in Midtown after hundreds of Jewish New Yorkers and friends packed into the lobby to protest Mr. Khalil’s detainment, according to a WABC news report.
Nadia Abu El Haj, an anthropologist at Barnard College and Columbia University, speaks to the media after attending a hearing in Manhattan federal court addressing the deportation case of Mahmoud Khalil, March 12 in New York. AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah
Video taken that afternoon showed officers handcuffing some of the demonstrators associated with Jewish Voice for Peace—an organization that is critical of many of Israel’s policies regarding Palestinians, WABC reported. At least 98 people arrested face charges of trespassing, obstructing governmental administration and resisting arrest.
Columbia University became the hotbed of student protests of Israel’s brutal war on Palestinians, waged on October 7, 2023, under the guise of eradicating the resistance group Hamas.
Nationwide demonstrations began at Columbia University in New York City on April 17, 2024, in protest of Israel’s bloodshed in Gaza. After failed negotiations between students and college administrators, pressure was exerted to demolish the student campus encampments.
This is not the first time the university has been a hotbed of activism, such as the successful 1985 three-week student demonstration by members of the Coalition for a Free South Africa which forced Columbia into the movement that divested from South Africa against its anti-Black racial apartheid policies.
In December 2023, Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) called on Columbia University to withdraw financial support from Israel on behalf of a coalition representing 300 students and 89 student organizations.
On March 7, members of the White House Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced the immediate cancellation of approximately $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University citing the school’s alleged “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.”
Student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil on the Columbia University campus in New York at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on April 29, 2024. AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey
Before the arrest of Mr. Khalil, the Trump administration pressured Columbia University to crack down on reported anti-Israel activism among students and faculty, and he has threatened to go after any college that supports protests he deems “illegal,” noted AP.
Whether colleges and universities will enact measures to protect student protesters now targeted by the new federal policies by executive order remains to be seen. Particularly because some of the schools called law enforcement on peaceful student demonstrators, and allowed off-campus counter-protesters to enter campuses and violently attack student encampments.
Students across the country rose up to demand that their colleges and universities stop doing business with military weapons manufacturers who supply arms to Israel; stop accepting research money from Israel for projects that aid the country’s military efforts;
Stop investing college endowments with money managers who profit from Israeli companies or contractors; and have more transparency of funds received from Israel and how it is used, according to various reports.
Mr. Khalil, like many around the country, was leading some of the protests on the campus, daring to demand, “Free Palestine,” stated Dr. Melina Abdullah, co-founder and director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots based in Los Angeles.
It is not radical to say that Palestinians have the right to their lives, Palestinian children have the right to live, that they don’t get to bomb houses and genocide an entire people for the purposes of their own enrichment, she argued.
As of Feb. 3 the latest death toll stood at over 62,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza and the West Bank according to Al Jazeera. There are still thousands missing who are presumed dead.
“It’s beyond what our constitutional right is. It’s what our human obligation is,” Dr. Abdullah told The Final Call. Speaking up and organizing is imperative, not just as human beings in the United States, but “also what our religion, what our faith demands of us,” she added.
According to Dr. Abdullah, threats are also being sent to other students who are part of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP, which uplifts demands for freedom, justice, and equality for the Palestinian people) or any protest group.
“I think about my own child (Thandiwe Abdullah), co-founder of the SJP chapter on her campus at Howard University and about all of the students we work with and encourage to speak up in the face of oppression,” she added.
A crowd gathers in Foley Square, outside the Manhattan federal court, in support of Mahmoud Khalil, March 12 in New York. AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah
“It’s the duty that our faith gives us, is that we should speak up, but it’s also any human being should not just sit idly by as injustice happens. … We have to remember this is not just a one-person thing. This is what they’re planning to do and so we all have to stand together because what they can’t do is they can’t get all of us,” she said.
Dr. Ray Winbush, director of the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University in Baltimore, stated he is concerned about President Trump’s disturbing vision of turning Gaza into a “resort.”
It shows an absence of conscience, he said, adding, “How could you even think to build a resort area over the dead children and women and men of Gaza?”
Where it’s going to turn, Dr. Winbush said he does not know, but remarked the world is in an upheaval and it would take years to undo some of the damage. He shunned the idea that critiquing or criticizing Israel makes one “anti-Semitic,” saying the term has been misused, abused and co-opted by Israel.
Meanwhile, “These are smart students! And they saw a crime against humanity being committed against the Palestinians, and they rose up against it,” he said about their calls for top Ivy League schools—Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Brown—to stop funding huge amounts of money to Israel.
“They saw an injustice, and they wanted to cut off all aid to the perpetrator, which was Israel. … And their protest said, divest in Israel. We are not anti-Jewish. What we are is anti-atrocity and anti-criminal behavior toward Gaza,” he added.
Victoria Hinckley, a student organizer with Tampa Bay Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), was a senior at the University of South Florida when she was suspended and then expelled right before graduation for participating in demonstrations.
Despite her appeal being denied, she is fighting the expulsion through legal means, including a complaint with the Federal Office of Civil Rights. “But given how Trump is attacking that office now it’s not looking good, but we’re still trying to fight it back with other legal strategies,” Ms. Hinckely told The Final Call.
Already, the Department of Education has issued letters to 60 universities, alleging instances of anti-Semitism, and many had very strong campus movements with encampments, including USF, she said.
Being in harmony with The Thinking of The Creator generates electrical energy in the cells of the brain picked up by the blood and carried to every part of the body. So you can’t just eat well, we’ve got to think better.
So, the song says, “I’m going to change my way of thinking, I’m going to change my style, I’m going to change my walk and my talk…”–that’s an old song we used to sing. But when the Right Word in accord with the Right Time strikes your ear, if you let it enter it starts changing up the way you think. And once the way you think is changed, the way you think starts changing up the chemistry of the cells.
This is nothing but pure science–and if there are doctors, and scientists, and biologists and chemists in the house, all you have to do is take what Brother Farrakhan says from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, go and study it, and come on back and bear me witness that I have been taught by a Master Teacher.
We must change the thinking, for the scripture teaches “As a man thinketh, so is he.” This is telling you The Power of Thought. Thought shapes and reshapes matter, so the Honorable Elijah Muhammad was not just interested in getting you to eat properly, he wanted to change the way we think. In changing the way we think, he will then change the way we act. And if our thinking gets in harmony with the Will of God, gets in harmony with The Time, then our actions follow suit, and instead of showing loss, we will show gain.
Even though the world seems to be going contrary to the way we think and act, we will be steadily gaining and the world will be steadily losing because we are on time.
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When the Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, “we are gods,” he wasn’t making mockery. He was showing us our Divine potential if we fed that which is in us from Allah and allowed ourselves to grow spiritually. Like you feed your stomach to grow physically, then spiritually you’ll grow right on up into God. And this is why, beloved Muslims, Allah gives us the right to wear His Attributes. He has 99 Attributes, and when you put them all together, you have Allah.
Well, what about The People of God? If we wear His Name and manifest His characteristics and recognize that as God’s Names work together for the fruition of His Will, and His Name represents His Attributes and Characteristics, then if we wear His Name, manifest His Attributes, and we come together in unity under His Will and His Guidance, then we become Allah!
The Holy Qur’an says: “And We adorned the lower Heavens with Stars. And We made man and We know what his mind suggests to him. And had We wished to take a pastime from before ourselves, surely We would have taken it. Nay, We cast Truth at falsehood till We knock out its brain.”–“We” who?
Many of us are losing daily, hourly. We’re losing self-respect, self-worth. We’re losing our minds, we’re losing our families. We’re losing our loved ones. This loss is to bring grief upon the community that we may reflect again on The Time and act according to The Time.
Grammatical Correctness in Language
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad was not known as an English-language “scholar”; some say he didn’t speak well, but I was with him one day and he taught me a very profound English lesson.
The Most Honorable Elijah Muhammad
In The Problem Book of The Supreme Wisdom Lessons, which details the condition of Black people in a mathematical way, we are told to put our Mathematical Theology to work to secure benefit for ourselves, which are money, luxury, good homes and friendship in all walks of life. We are also told that if we don’t speak the Language well, we will not be successful.
Every discipline has its language, every skill has its language, and if we do not speak the language of our discipline or our skill well, we are not successful in communicating. Every time, every era has a language that is peculiar to that time. If you do not speak The Language of The Time, then you are not communicating properly, and you will not be successful. So in sitting with the Honorable Elijah Muhammad one morning, he said, “Brother, the English language basically is not spoken well when you speak and do not use grammatical correctness.”
In grammar, there must be subject and verb agreement: if the subject is in the present, then the verb, or the action, must be in the present, otherwise you don’t have subject and verb agreement. You are not speaking grammatically correct, and it impairs your success. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught us that as you use language to communicate your ideas, communicate your thoughts, you must speak in a way that your words, your thoughts, your ideas are clearly perceived by the one or ones to whom you are speaking. The less possibility there is for misunderstanding what you’re trying to communicate, the better it is that people will understand us.
What was Elijah Muhammad saying? The verb in the grammatical construction of the language represents the action; in other words, the “tense.” The word “tense” here means: Is it Present? Is it Past? Is it Future? Is it Present Perfect? Is it Past Perfect? Or, is it Future Perfect? These are the different tenses that you understand if you’ve studied grammar. But if you haven’t studied grammar, don’t worry about it; we’ll break it right down.
Look at the sentence “I am here”–the subject “I” is in Present tense because the verb “am” (be) is in Present tense. However, if I said: “I was here and I am here,” I would not be speaking grammatically correct. So what is Elijah Muhammad saying? If you and I live in The Present, our Action should be Present Tense. But if our actions belong to a Time gone by, then we are in the present, acting out the past–there is no “subject and verb agreement,” therefore we are not communicating properly and we are not speaking correctly. And when there is a lack of communication, there is a breakdown in social relationship.
The word “tense” has to do with time. When we are “out of time,” we increase t-e-n-s-ion (tension). When we increase tension because we are out of step with time, then we increase stress. And where there is tension and stress in our relationship because we are out of step with time, there is a cleavage (definition: “the act of a division or split”) apart, rather than a cleavage together.
“By the time, surely man is in loss. …” so Time is The Criteria. You are not a “slave,” but if your actions reflect slave mentality, then you’re not communicating properly and you begin to lose. If slavery was over, according to White folks words, with the “Emancipation Proclamation,” and we today in The Present are still looking to the Caucasian to provide us with our necessities of life, food, clothing, shelter, employment, education, then that action that we are involved in is an action that belongs to the past, to an era gone by.
You are in the present, but your actions are not proper; therefore, you are communicating well with the Caucasian, but you are not communicating well with one another because you are not speaking well.
Become Servants of Righteousness, not Sin
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said to us that it was divinely prophesied that we would serve America 400 years. We bear witness the 400 years of our servitude to America is up, and if it is up, we must adopt an action that corresponds to the time. If the Scripture teaches we will go into bondage to serve Satan and follow the path of sin and iniquity, and The Time given to Satan’s rule is up and The Time given to our service of Satan and sin and iniquity is up, then The Time demands another action: We must stop serving Satan and start serving The Lord of The Worlds.
We must stop being servants of sin and we must start serving ourselves in righteousness.
Now does that seem so strange or farfetched? If we have run out of the time given to evil to hold sway over the people, and the evil is steadily losing, how can we come into our own, following an out-of-date activity? Evil is an out-of-date activity because it will not permit us to communicate properly to one another. We cannot do evil to one another and communicate to one another. The Time given to evil is over, so doing evil will not bring results, it will bring deterioration, loss, ruin, disgrace and death. If our actions can be judged as evil, and we are out of The Time given to evil, then we are not communicating correctly.
Either we’ve got to go out with the evil world, or we’ve got to change our actions to be in harmony with The World of Righteousness that is coming in.
Now, God has not sentenced you and me to death, God has sentenced to death The Wicked–but we are practicing wickedness. The longer we persist in the practice of evil, the more the fate of the wicked becomes our fate. If God’s Truth and Righteousness condemns something that we are practicing, though we like it, we’ve got to give it up. We may like evil deeds, but if The Word of God in The Time of Right condemns the action that belongs to the old world and to the past, then we have got to make up our minds to correct our conduct by The Standard of Time.