Here’s a youtube of a great speech. Ed Rendell, then Philadelphia mayor, now a giant supporter of Hillary Clinton, going to a black church 10 years ago and praising Minister Louis Farrakhan, who sat nearby on the dais. At that time, there had been racial unrest in the neighborhood of Gray’s Ferry, and Rendell needed the Nation of Islam to help pacify the situation. Rendell said he had been warned that he was "running a great risk sharing this platform," but it did not stop him.
The greater risk, the mayor said, was not to talk about racism in America. "We know the terrible toll that racism has taken… All of us have to learn to live together."
Wow. Rev. Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, too, and was cashiered. Jimmy Carter just talked to Hamas in the same spirit. He has been marginalized and "vilified," as Ghada Karmi, an Englishwoman, said last night at the Brecht Forum. The world grows smaller by the second; yet anyone who dares to talk to our "enemies" is said by the neocon bitterenders to be softheaded and "kumbaya." Rendell is right: We have to learn to live together.
