Former Georgia Congresswoman McKinney delivered the following speech at Janes Memorial United Methodist Church, in Philadelphia, November 6, two days after Mayor John Street’s re-election victory.  The event was sponsored by the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA), the Germantown Community Organization, and other pro-reparations groups.

First of all I want to thank Reverends Blanks and Hatcher for allowing us to have this session here at Janes Memorial and to especially thank State Representative John Myers and the organizations that helped to sponsor this event.

Secondly, I'd like to thank all of the people of Philadelphia for their support over the years.

You know that my political problems have been going on for a long time. In 1996, it was then-Councilman John Street and your Congressman who helped the Philadelphia Freedom Riders come to Georgia to help me campaign when the good ol' boys thought they could redistrict me out of office.

The good ol' boys in Georgia have been trying to get me for so long.  And they finally hit upon the solution, to use one of our own to do their dirty work. And it worked.

So now they're celebrating because they think they've won.

They found a black woman Republican who is more loyal to them than to us; encouraged her to run as a Democrat in the Democratic Primary, and then 48,000 Republicans crossed over and voted for her on Election Day.

In each of my previous uncontested primaries, I normally got about 48,000 votes.  So the Republicans had it figured out just about exactly what it would take to put my opponent on top.

Now, no one in Georgia had seen a crossover vote of such magnitude.  Many people thought no way would I have any trouble at all against a no name candidate who was being funded by the Israel Lobby and Republicans.  In fact, many blacks in Atlanta knew that she only had her heralded judgeship because I had filed a lawsuit against the state of Georgia protesting the dearth of black judges elected from the highly gerrymandered to keep us out – judicial circuits – of that day.

So, you could say, I shook the tree and she picked up the fruit.

And so today I'm supposed to talk about reparations and politics in the black community and my experience just about says where we are in a nutshell.

We shake the tree – the activists in our community--and then the opportunists come along and pick up the fruit.

And the question I ask you tonight, is how long will we allow that to continue?

How long will Ward Connerly, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Clarence Thomas be allowed to speak for us?

But the sad fact is that they are not the only ones; and their prominence speaks volumes about politics now in the black community.

We are plagued by malevolent public policy being made in black face and these people strut on the world stage and the world thinks that they represent you, and me, and our children.

How can we give them the impunity to act in our name?

You might say, "oh no, they don't act in my name."  And to those who say that, let me say this.

Public silence is consent.

On December 3rd, 1964, Mario Savio, standing in front of the Berkeley arch made famous by his Free Speech Movement said:

 "There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part; you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop. And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

Now, I'm about 40 years late at Berkeley arch, but I read those words and know that they're as true today as they were 40 years ago.

That there comes a time when we have to say no to the machine.  Because anything less is consent.

Well, for ten years in Congress, I put my entire body against the gears and the wheels and the levers--against the entire apparatus of the machine.  And I tried to stop it.

I tried to warn the American people of the dangers that I saw emanating from this Administration.  But, just think about it:  Katherine Harris, Florida's Secretary of State who participated in the illegal disfranchisement of innocent black and Latino voters was rewarded with a Congressional seat and I was taken out of one.  Were it not for what happened here on Tuesday, I would think that my experience is what's in store for black America.  But Philadelphia, you give me hope.

I would like to commend the reparations community for the tremendous organizing that it has done all across the country--and globally.  Now, actually, the reparations movement is the true grassroots infrastructure for a much-needed, top-to-bottom restructuring of black politics in America.

Our established freedom organizations increasingly don't organize and our representatives in large measure increasingly fail to represent our struggle for freedom.

Our leadership increasingly looks like it was ordained to look by the progenitors of the Counter-Intelligence Program, COINTELPRO, against our community.

For it was in 1965 that the CIA inked its version of regime change for the black community when it wrote:

". . . somewhere in the Negro movement, at the top, there must be a Negro leader who is 'clean' who could step into the vacuum and chaos if Martin Luther King were either exposed or assassinated."  In other words, they were going to pick the next black leader once Dr. King had been taken care of.

In 1968, one month before the murder of Dr. King, the FBI wrote:

"A final goal should be to prevent the long-range growth of militant black organizations, especially among youth.  Specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed."

So I'm not surprised that Hip Hop rap degenerated to thug and gangsta glorification in a music industry not owned by us or our children.  Or that Tupac threatened to march his six million fans to Capitol Hill to protest the conditions in the ghetto.  And don't forget, Tupac was no ordinary young, Hip Hop singer; he was steeped in the black power movement by his Black Panther mother and Republic of New Africa father figure.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in NSC Memorandum #46 that it was US policy to promote "sharp social stratification of the black population" including the promotion of policies that would hinder reuniting them.  In addition, it was US policy "to support the nomination at federal and local levels of loyal black public figures to elective offices, to government agencies and the court.  This would promote the achievement of a two fold purpose:  first it would be easier to control the activity of loyal black representatives within existing institutions;" and second, the idea of an independent black political party would be nixed.

So we shouldn't be surprised that many of us are disappointed by our black leadership.  That's the way it's supposed to be.

Regime change is nothing new.  It's been done to us from the time of FBI spying on Marcus Garvey in order to discredit him.  So when John Street joins the illustrious black leadership that has been spied upon by the US government it means that he has not cowered before their might and that he stood up like a proud black man. 

Like Garvey, and Malcolm, and Martin.

And so, now you know.  The best way to thwart the plan that they have for us is for us to take a stand.  And that's what you did on Tuesday.

Can you imagine, white men sitting around a table trying to figure out a way to entrap Mayor Street.  That's what happened.  And you stopped them.

Can you imagine a man in the Street Administration losing his job because he wants to get more city contracts to black people in a town that's 50% black.  Well, as you know, that also happened.  And the idea that black people deserve some of the economic pie in Philadelphia is not dead because on Tuesday, you took care of that.

And so our demand for reparations also got a boost on Tuesday.  Because you fought back.

Reparations, not only for the transatlantic slave trade, but also for the Jim Crow trains and the segregated buses, for the poll taxes and the white primaries, for 100 years of lynchings, and the white water fountains.

For the dogs and the water hoses, bombed out churches, and four dead little black girls.

For all the so-called informants who made a buck by betraying black people and helped pave the way for the current bumper crop of Uncle Toms and sell-outs paraded before us, making a mockery of the civil rights movement.  We demand reparations.

For all the unarmed black men killed at the hands of rogue police.

For a black community terrorized by crack cocaine that didn't exist until the CIA got involved with drug traffickers who helped fund its illegal war against the Nicaraguan Sandinistas.

For all the blacks who are disproportionate--disproportionately in the military, disproportionately poor, disproportionately sick or unemployed, or underemployed, or undereducated. 

For a criminal justice system that is criminal for its injustice. 

For all the targeted black men who have been shut up or shut down merely because they dared to speak about black power.

For all the countless victims of COINTELPRO, documented by the government and for which no one has been punished. 

For all this and more, we demand reparations.

On Tuesday, the people of Philadelphia made a gigantic stand against the marginalization of our people.  Now is not the time to celebrate, but the time to get busy.  Because just as sure as they came after the Mayor, they will come again to defeat black ballot power in Philadelphia.

Don't give up.  Don't give in.  And most certainly don't give out…because your leadership is needed all over America.  You have become a beacon signaling that we can overcome.  With our vote.