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Farrakhan Campaigns In Atlanta for The Second Million Man MarchBy Maynard EatonSpecial to the NNPA from Atlanta Voice “I have been rejected and hated without a cause” – Louis Farrakhan ATLANTA (NNPA) – It was a memorable, if not historic event. Muslim Minister Louis Farrakhan – an admired figure with the masses of African Americans but often perceived as a divisive ogre who is routinely shunned by whites and black leaders – was lovingly embraced by the Georgia Association of Black Elected Officials (GABEO) during a rousing Friday speech hosted by the Atlanta Life Financial Group, the first of his four consecutive Atlanta appearances. The Nation of Islam leader labeled the famous Atlanta Life building a “sacred place” and a disturbing reminder of the strength and success of the black business community during segregation. “It is one of the few remaining landmarks of what black people accomplished under segregation, but lost a lot during so-called integration,” Farrakhan told an estimated 200 African American politicians and invited guests. He said that owners of black insurance companies, bus companies, motels, restaurants “would turn over in their graves to know that everything that we built to serve our own needs is now gone.” Farrakhan laments that other races are allowed to profit from the black community “without putting anything back. This is sad.” While the magnetic Farrakhan has always had a high profile and been held in high regard by working class and low income blacks, his reputation has often been sullied by being labeled as a hate-monger and anti-Semite because “they are scared to death of a black man who will not compromise” his values and virtue, he said. The Muslim leader has been considered so controversial that he has been banned from speaking on black college campuses. This past weekend was the first time he has been allowed to speak at an Atlanta University school since 1980, for example. “I am not a bad person. I have done nothing but good for black people for 50 years of my life,” he said to a standing ovation. “They know what I have in my mouth and what I have in my heart will free our people. They don’t want you listening to me.” GABEO president Atlanta state Rep. Tyrone Brooks believes black America is now truly listening and responding to Farrakhan’s message. “All of these Christian ministers who fought him 10 years ago are now supporting him. Those who did not understand the call of the Million Man March are now on board,” he said. “That is just profound.” Unlike many other black business leaders in the past, Atlanta Life president and CEO Ron Brown says he has no qualms about a backlash for supporting Farrakhan and allowing him a forum. “He’s bringing a message that if anyone is against that message, I don’t need to be dealing with them anyway.” Farrakhan prophesized that as a people “we are programmed for extinction” and that the masses of blacks are on a “death march into the oven of social deterioration, broken homes, broken marriages, broken minds, broken spirit evolving from a string of broken promises by government and leadership.” That’s why the spiritual savant campaigned passionately in Atlanta and is crisscrossing the country to garner widespread support for spearheading a return to our nation’s capital on October 16 for the 10th Anniversary Commemoration of the Million Man March – a remarkably successful congregation of some two million black men that captivated Black America and shocked the world because it was such a peaceful, positive, powerful and productive protest – and one pessimists said could never be done. Farrakhan says this time; this “mobilization” – which has already reportedly been endorsed by the NAACP and the African Methodist Episcopalian Church (AME) – will by necessity focus on men and women. “The enemy has socially engineered a change in the natural relationship that God structured for men and women,” he preached. “Women today don’t really need men.” The wife, in effect, has become the man of the house, he lamented. “They have to work to maintain their children and also the men that are in their lives. That’s really a change – a man at home watching (soap operas) ‘As The World Turns’, changing diapers waiting for his working wife to come home. What we have to do is turn this around so that as men we can find our place in life, and women their place (so that) we complement each other rather than become antagonists.”