By Chinta Strausberg, Chicago Crusader
Fed up over the continued debate over the size of President Donald Trump’s inaugural crowd, versus attendance at President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, Father Michael L. Pfleger on Sunday said it’s not only time out for lying, but it’s also time for Black genocide to end as well.
Pfleger called out White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who accused the media of lying about the inauguration’s small crowd size. Spicer was livid when the media visually compared President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration crowd size to Trump’s. The visual showed Obama had more people attending his inauguration.
An outraged Spicer said Saturday in a press statement “The media was engaged in false reporting…. this was irresponsible and reckless.”
The dispute was reminiscent of 1995 when Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan was engaged in a media war over the number of people attending the Million Man March in D.C. Farrakhan’s people said two million people attended the historic event. Mainstream media contended that there were much fewer than that.
Turning to a different topic, Father Pfleger said he fears any involvement of Trump coming to Chicago to deal with the violence, because he has indicated that he would send in the military to quell such violence. “We don’t need the military,” said Pfleger. “What we do need are resources.”
Pfleger praised the thousands of women who marched against the Trump administration the day following his inauguration. “Go ahead, ladies. Stand up and let them know we ain’t going no where…drawing the line (and saying) not on my watch.”
Referring to the past weekend’s violence in Chicago, Pfleger said “we can’t turn a deaf ear and blind eye to the continued escalation of violence. In less than 24-hours three killed and 23 shot, more than one an hour shot. We have to be just as angry as we are about Washington, D.C.”
“As we cover Trump’s lies, and the massive turn out of marches, why are we silent about a bloody weekend in Chicago,” Pfleger said.
With such turbulence, both physical and governmentally, he said, there is a danger of losing hope. “An enemy always desires us to lose hope. It’s a tactic of the devil to try to make us lose hope because once you lose hope, you ain’t got nothing ….
“When you put your hope in people, you will be disappointed,” Pfleger said, including putting your hope in family and friends. “When you put your hope in places, or in people or in things, you can expect to be disappointed because everything else will fall except God….”
Pfleger led a song, “Trouble doesn’t last always” and asked the church to put their hands on their self and declare, “I am equipped and created to handle the turbulence in my personal life and in the world in which I live. I will overcome. I am standing on the rock, and when the winds have finished blowing and the sands have settled down, I’ll still be standing.”
