VIDEO: Cleaver on Katrina: Hezbollah did a better job than U.S. Gov’t
Filed Friday, September 8, 2006 at 12:00 PM
PUB DEF is reporting this week from Washington D.C. where we are attending the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 36th Annual Legislative Conference.
This afternoon, Kansas City Congressman Emanuel Cleaver II hosted a session on “The Evolution of the Black Church and the African-American Political Experience”. Cleaver’s co-panelists included former Congressman Rev. Dr. Floyd Flake from New York; Rev. James T. Meeks, a state senator from Illinois; and the very popular Bishop T.D. Jakes, whose non-denominational Dallas church boasts a membership of greater than 28,000.
Cleaver stressed what he said is the need for black politicians and religious leaders to work together. He told a room of several hundred — mostly black — people that no matter what their religious, economic, or other demographic differences, they all face a common foe in racism.
He told a story of a rabbit who was walking along when suddenly he was shot at. The bullet narrowly missed him and he darted into the first hole he saw. Inside the hole was another rabbit. That rabbit asked the first, “What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s shooting at me!” he answered.
“Why?” asked the second rabbit.
“I have no idea.”
“Well, I’ll go have a talk with him. Wait here.” And the second rabbit calmly stepped out of the hole and walked towards the hunter. “Sir, why are you shooting at my…” Boom!!! The hunter’s rifle sounded off, again barely missing its target. The rabbit darted back in the hole.
“That guy’s crazy!” he said. “First he shot at you and now he’s shooting at me!”
“I don’t think you get it,” said the first rabbit. “He’s not shooting at me or you. He’s just shooting at ‘rabbit’.”
“Friends, what’s happening is happening to all of us,” said Cleaver.
He pointed to the images of blacks starving and begging for water in front of the Superdome in New Orleans as evidence of African-Americans being in the same second-class boat.
“One day after Hezbollah discontinued bombing Israel, Hezbollah was passing out $12,000 checks in Lebanon,” said Cleaver. “[And] we couldn’t do it in New Orleans.”