05/27/2007
IWDM Study Library
A Memorial Day CPC Meeting - Chicago IL 
Pt 2

By Imam W. Deen Mohammed
To really jeopardize or compromise your principles, it doesn't come then. No, Allah is going to see if you keep your principles. Doing hard time. Now, after you prove to yourself for G-d knew in the beginning. You don’t have to prove to G-d. But G-d wants the people to see that you survive this time period of trial and suffering and you kept your honor, you kept your values, you stuck to your good character, you stood by your principles even though time was hard and you were not getting anywhere.
Then when G-d decides, He just open doors. Doors just opened big. Big doors just open for you, wide open. Well, that's where we are right now. That's where we are right now. I used to sell just to survive. My father put me out of Temple of Islam or the Nation of Islam. It wouldn't give me a mere penny and wouldn't let my mother give me a penny. I never asked him though. I respected the law. He told me I was put out and I wasn’t supposed to be supported, I went to look on my own. Anybody who say they can't find a job, they just ain't fit for a job. I don't care what the conditions are in this society, you can get you a job. You're just lazy and you want something for nothing.
You want it to come without you make any effort. That's right. “Look at the terrible unemployment and look at the terrible lazy people.” You make your own employment. You ain't got to wait for nobody to employ you. You make your own employment. That's what I did and I had my father's teaching to help me. He didn't teach us to lay down because the man won't hire you. He said, "Make a job for yourself." How many times have you heard those words from the Honorable Elijah Muhammad's mouth? Make a job for yourself. That's what I did and I took care of my wife, Shirley, and our first child, our oldest child, Laila.
They didn't have to be put on the streets and they weren't suffering and crying and we didn't go on welfare. No, we did not go on welfare. Never. My pride, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad put in me was too big and my mother too. Build up pride in me. It was too big for me to go out and go to the government and say, "I need you to help me take care of my wife, Shirley, and my baby Laila." No, I'll get the money and I got it. I wash windows. I found out I could wash rugs without a machine, I got me a big brush like a big commode brush, that big. Bigger than a baseball. Like a 16-inch baseball or bigger.
I got me detergent and I whip the water up and I use nothing but the detergent with my big brush. Then I clean that rug and got that money and walked out the door of that house where I did it feeling good. I could do the James Brown, "I feeeeeel good." What do the scriptures say? No son of Adam enjoys anything as much as he enjoys the money that he earned with his own effort, with his own labor. Any man in here that take pride in earning his own money, I know I can get an amen from you. No, your manhood doesn't feel good if everybody taking care of you but yourself. Everybody taking care of you but yourself.
That makes your manhood inside of you. It just shrinks, and shrink, and shrink out of sight. I'm asking you to follow my lead. I do believe I got enough support to do it. I don't want any of you all to be hurt. Follow my lead in getting rid of this organization, we call CPC, ComTrust and trusting me, number one, because I'm your leader and I'm the one who accept to honor your rights, your property, your investment, your rights. I personally accept to honor that. You may say, “How are you going to pay all these people that's got investment?”
I don't expect to pay all those people but the number of you all that will hold me responsible to give you your money back. Those who got money in there, I’m going to show them how to invest it through me. And I go overseas and come back and make money on money and they will start realizing some dividends for the first time. We've been set back but I see a way to overcome it and actually benefit in a bigger way than I've ever imagined. I couldn't imagine that you could go to somewhere and get super 140s for less than $50. I couldn't imagine it but now I know it's real.
Right now, I have four or five, five trustworthy business persons with money. I have five and that's enough for us to start. We're going to go over with what they got but I think before I make the trip we'll have five or ten more. It won't be five when I go, it's going to be more than that. And I'm going on what is reality. Most of them in the community don't even know about the change and how we want to conduct business to make our investments grow and pay off for the investor-owners. They don't know about this change. As they hear about it, I'm going to hear more from all of them to say, "I got money. I want to invest money."
I know what you're thinking. "What about the money that we invested already?" It's possible you are going to be able to use some of that real soon. But we have long ago ran out of cash investment. In fact, I wouldn’t hold cash investment. What sense doesn't make for your leader to get money invested from you all and it piles up to a $100,000, $200,000, and I give it to some bank so they can go to Dubai or somewhere else and give us about 2% of dollars? Two cents on the dollar. Sometimes, one point some cent on the dollar. Sometimes nothing. That's right. They just give you a service. Your money in the bank and it earns you nothing.
By the time they give you all those charges, for checks bounced and other things, you're actually losing money having your money in the bank. Not everybody, but many are losing money by having it in a bank. That's a better choice than putting it in a shoe box. Three houses just burned down in Markham, all at the same time on the same day. You can imagine what happened to those shoe boxes if they were there. I'm strongly against us avoiding using the institutions. These institutions are the safest way. Society wouldn't have evolved such institution if they weren't better for society.
Use the bank but be wise like the businessman that have his head on right. You don't just leave your money up there in the bank. You see an opportunity to make your money grow, you take that money out and you invest it in something that will grow and then put more back in the bank. You want the money to keep coming out of the bank fast. In the bank out to investment. Yes, the money came and I invested it in property. I didn't do it without appealing to our investors just like I'm doing now. At a meeting with more persons about twice, two or three times this crowd, I told the investors that it might be good to go into real estate. Right away, a sister. She jumped in her seat. She said, "Brother Imam, that's really the way to go. Real estate." The crowd supported me going into real estate. Then we bought the facility. Now, somebody wants that facility. It's in Markham, little town with an African-American mayor. They tax business so much if it's small, they drive you out of Markham. They drove a white man out of Markham that owned the property we got right now.
He told me, he said, "Mr. Mohammed, you ought to see if you can get them to lower the tax." He said, "Because we couldn't stay here with the taxes. One facility taxed twice a year. One payment that we'll be making the first part of the year, the first half we pay 14,000 and something dollars." They figured you can't stay there. You're poor, you're not making anything. They figured a poor man ain't going be able to stay there. So, what they do? Sell the poor man a piece of property that he can't manage under the strain. He failed to pay his taxes, they get the property right back and sell it to another, and get the property right back. No, you got the wrong fellow here.
Even without Warith Deen Mohammed. Wallace, he's made of a different material. No, you're not going to get our property for nothing. We'll stay right there. If I have to, I told him I'd campaign all over the state for us to pay those taxes until I get somebody to buy the property for the right price and then invest somewhere else. Where we're going to go? Right across the street. Okay. Now, when you made me president CEO and when I went downstate, Illinois, and got that paper with my brother, Rafah, my partner for a long time. When I went and gotten that paper, that paper said the managers represent the partners.
I'm represented as a manager because that's what you expected. I needed another manager, he's on as a manager. Got two managers. We might have put a sister on here lately. No, we didn't do it. We went down to arrange for it but the concept change came up so we won't be doing that. In fact, Rafah, you ain't going to have no significance either once we make change this concept. Your only significance will be your credit for standing by your leader all these years, and making sacrifices and not asking CPC to pay you anything. Have I ever got a paycheck from CPC, brother Rafah?
Rafah: No, sir.
IWDM: Have I ever charged CPC anything?
Rafah: No, sir.
IWDM: That's the kind of leader you got. Do you think it's easy to find a person that will be in charge of that money and property and everything and not take something for his service and his time? You don't know how many hours I spent just working with papers, working with obligations of the business, working on advancing with mental hours. Creative thinking that I spend to make these things happen. I will not take a penny for it until every other investor can get some. When every investor can get some dividend, then I'll take something, maybe. Look like Allah has blessed me so much, I'm charitable.
I'll probably say, "No. They need it more than I do. I won't take anything." Now, when it gets to be a multi-million-dollar company or a multi-million-dollar business effort, you can bet I'm going to get some share out of it. That's right. If nothing but to give some of the other people that I think deserve something, something. I'll take it and share it with them. Don't take me for a fool, now. Ain't no fools here. No, indeed. No, “sufahaa” here. Sufahaa is out there somewhere he ain't in here. Ain't in this man, no indeed. Allah has blessed me with wisdom and business intelligence. I got that from watching my father over the many years. Business intelligence.
No business you go into is guaranteed not to have some loses. I trusted that our community will be so happy to have a halal business, especially with the management or with the supervision of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed. I just thought they'll just be so happy to come. They organized to make it a failure. Yes, they did. They organized not to make it succeed, they organized to make it a failure. And I just gave up. I began to see that Allah just doesn't intend to help people when they're fighting against the hand that's working for them.
Allah don't help you. Allah sees you struggling for people and they back-biting you and putting things in your way, Allah will take that person from the people. He took the business from us. He took the business from us. Yes, it was the will of Allah that we went out of that business. He took the business from us. Thanks be to Allah, we got a situation now that doesn't require the people at all inside the Muslim community to support it. No, I don't know about you but I saw a hand back there who want to get into business. I'm telling you what I'm going to do, I'm going to Christians, I'm going to people in the public. I'm going to show them this great deal and they ain't going to look at me like you do.
They're going to say, "Mr. Mohammed, I have $5,000. Can I invest $5,000 in the purchase of those suits?" Now, if he invests $5,000, he can get back $15,000 guaranteed, almost. Yes, guaranteed. We're going to minimize cost. Cost is going to be minimized. We're going to go to cheapest ways. We got a brother here, brother Sheriff worked for the airline for a long time. He tells us how to get to fares reduce drastically, considerably. I mean amazing, amazing reduction in the cost to travel abroad and throughout the United States because of this brother.
He ain't the only ones that work for airlines now. Anyone that worked for airlines, you don't have to be still working for them either. He's retired. Still getting the benefits. That's one cost reduction. Now, how many of you all say you'll invest, raise your hand one more time. You don’t have to stand up. I don't give you this news for you to sit there and register nothing. I gave you this news to make you feel better, so you'll have faith that it's working and working well. Not only that, we are the friends and the special child, like Muhammad the prophet. He was that special son of the Quraysh.
Imam Warith Deen Mohammed, special son of the Turks, the Turkish government. Yes, I am. Special son of the Turkish government. I think I better get that old flag we used to have and pull it out of my case accidentally when I go back and talk to them. Pretend I'm looking for some papers and pull that flag out of there. No, I'm not that kind of person. I like to see it on film but I'm not that kind of person. I would enjoy seeing it on film if it was made into a movie or something. It could be a lie.
I still would enjoy it. Seeing Warith Deen Mohammed pull out that old freedom, justice, equality Crescent flag looking just like the Turkish flag. Pull it out and let that go on the desk first and then pull my papers out from under there. Then say, "All right. This is what we are trying to work out."
All right. I think I'm about to round this up. Oh, no. The last thing I want to tell you that you know we got a piece of property in Markham on 159th Street next to McDonald's. It extends all the way over to Richmond. We've been held there for several years, started around 2000 or 2001. Now, it's approaching 2008. For all those years, one excuse behind another, something has blocked us.
We haven't been able to build-- Pasha with his Malcolm Shabazz Organization Development company. He made more progress than anybody. At least he dug a hole. The hole was dug and the environmental engineer’s office sent two people down or they came on their own from Chicago. Now the ones in the suburbs, the real environmental engineers because the ones up in Chicago, they're not the real environmental engineer.
They're just the office that's over the whole department in Chicago area. They have the power but the ones who really look at the situation and say yes or no to it, they are in the south side, they're in the suburbs. We went there and visit them. I told them what I represent, what I stand for, what kind of community we are. I impressed them and they signed off saying that they approved. Okay?
Now, that was at least five years ago. Was it brother Rafah? It has to be about five years ago. Now, here it is 2007, in the time that elapse, from that time until now, we had one African-American developer, disappoint us, had to get rid of him, he was a Christian. Next property developer came in and he was stopped by engineers. Chicago stopped him. I didn't give up. I ask brother Rafah, go behind Imam Pasha and see what you can find, see what you can do. He went and got a favorable response from the people in Chicago. The office that's over all of it in this area. One thing occurred the behind the other.
Looked like they were giving us a song and dance too, right brother Rafah? Finally, they said if I come up, meaning, representing of the company. If I come up with $6,000 and agree to do the things that they're going to obligate us to do, to build the project, they will clear us to build. They cleared us because we sent $6,000. They kept it for almost six weeks or more, maybe close to two-month. We don't know what happened to our $6,000. They're not responding to us or anything. Naim Muhammad, you all know him?
Naim Muhammad. He said, he checked and they had to check who's on the desk. They didn’t even know the check was on his desk. He went there and the check was on the desk. He came back and told us that, so they acknowledge that the check was there. Since the check was old dated, they wouldn't accept it. They sent that check back to us, we sent another check for $6,000 which they accepted.
We finally got clearance to begin work on the site. The local government was also difficult. Some of you went to the hearings to support us, but finally, the board realized that they should support that project, that we were good people, the leader lives in Markham, resident of Markham. A number of things transpired. I think they also got somebody big, came from state of Illinois and sat in. They tell me that they thank that person sat in on the hearing. I guess they didn't want that person to hear their dirty work, so they approved us. The board approved it. It was the board members that was giving us the problem at that point.
Anyway, we finally approved, got the permits from Markham to build. Got a developer that had impressed me. Looked like he was a clean and honorable person. Now, I tell you what his uncle said in my presence when I was telling him what we wanted him to do. This is the developer, I said to him, "We want you to do this here and that there and we understand. You say you got financing? If you haven't got financing, I can get financing." I can. I could get finance but he volunteered, "No, we won't need a penny from you. I got all the financing you need. I can get financed for this and any other project."
I'm standing there with him outside at the site. He's sitting in his car, he can't use his legs, very little. He can lift him up but he can't walk on his legs. He's in a wheelchair and he drives but he's in a wheelchair. Anyway, he's there and I'm talking to him and his uncle says, "Imam, he already got two legs off or something like that or missing. We take his arms if he doesn't cooperate." Those are the words of a criminal.
Anyway, I looked at the developer and I said, "I'm dealing only with you." I say, "You have to be the boss." He said, "I'm the boss." They kept us on the hook all this time. Been more than a year now, isn't it? The boss told me, the developer, that they would have the property up in two weeks, six weeks, to two months or so. That's what the first thing he told me and it was supposed to happen before the winter.
Winter came, nothing happened. Spring again but, nothing happened. We constantly trying to get him to respond. Got to the point, he didn't even return my calls. At first, he returned my call but others, sometimes he wouldn't return their calls. He will return my call. He even stopped returning my calls, so I began to suspect that somebody that want to block us, got to him and gave him some money to sit down on a job and do nothing.
I can't prove this but if I ever get enough evidence, somebody going to pay. Right now, I don't have evidence to actually take him to court. I don't have enough evidence but we are looking at taking this situation to an attorney and have the attorney tell us whether we got a case against him or not. Right now, I think we do. I think we got a good case against him.
I asked him for an agreement. Never did it. Just kept putting off, kept putting off. I say, give me some kind of timetable. Tell me when you start and when you finish. Didn't give that to me which tells me that he never intended to finish it. Somebody paid him off or somebody offered him something, he was holding up and most likely been paid off now. But, here's the good news, yesterday, I learned that a person who got a property up for sale on the other side of the street, he has a property there. There used to be like a Goodyear, a tire sale and some minor auto mechanic work. I understand that he owns that property. Now, this comes after big pressure. We contacted some big people or some people who contact big people for us. We know some big people came into the picture on our behalf. Working behind the scenes on our behalf. The word now is that this person wants to buy our property. That property that’s just been sitting there. Something he said that make me think we are in a good bargaining position.
He said that he gets along well with the engineers or something like that. He gets along well with the environmental engineers. They already cleared it for us. You get along well with them? I'm not going to share my thoughts with you. It wouldn't be wise to share it with this audience. I'll close this by telling you that yes, we lost big with the Halal meat processing. We lost big. We have lost big with that hole in the ground just staying there because if we had the business, we got inventory. Lot of you don't know this. We have put a lot of money into inventory. All that has happened in the last maybe six weeks or more.
Maybe two months almost now. We got garments for ladies, men, women and some for children. Enough to stock the store if it will go up tomorrow we've got enough to just put it up and stock the store. Stock it beautifully. We got Islamic artifacts. If we had that store right now, the strip mall right now-- what we wanted. We thought about a restaurant but it's just too easy to have losses. Since the suit business came in and looking so good. I said, “we need all this space for something that we know will sell and it won't perish. It won't be spoiled next week or next month.
It's sitting in their inventory and stay the way it is. It wasn’t going to spoil or nothing. Why buy something to set up a business to deal with some perishable when you got much more profit coming from the business suits. That was the business suits that we're getting from the Milan, Italy. That was good. It's good. Paying about right at $100. You can sell it retail for $330 or more. What businessman would turn down something like that? Now, we're talking about buying it for $50 and selling it for 300 or more. Maybe 400, 500. Easy. 499, easy. I know I'll pay for it. 499 for these suits, retail. I'll pay it quick. You get it for 50.
Nothing but a fool would turn down something like that. Or either a person that just hate you so much and want to see you fail so bad, they've cut their own throat to deny you their support. To keep from seeing you successful. There are people like that. They will actually destroy themselves and their family just to see a person that they don't want to succeed fail. That's insane but they do it. They are insane. Insane with jealousy and hate. Envy, jealousy, and hate. That's the situation we are in right now. Look what I'm saying. We most likely will sell the property that we process meat in. If we don't sell it, fine.
Why I say fine? Because we take all that freezer out of there and we take all the meat processing equipment out of there. It will be a beautiful place as wholesale/retail office and inventory. It will be beautiful. We're not pressed but the person who wants to buy it from us, they're pressed. They need to expand and they need our property. They offer 250 with it stripped all the equipment out, freezer out. They don't want that. They can't use it. They say the condition is the agreement is that you get all that equipment out of there including the freezer get it out of there and then we'll buy the building itself and give you 250.
We had an appraisal of 400,000 but this appraisal work for the Nation of Islam for Farrakhan and knowing the Nation of Islam and Farrakhan, I'm sure that he's an appraiser that it will go up and over what the value really is. So, when Mi-Jack, the business next door to us told me that they had our property appraised, saying the most it was appraised at was 250. They don't have to be telling the truth now. They seemed like truthful people but they don't have to be telling the truth because that developer seemed like a truthful person too when I first met him. Anyway, they said that they couldn't accept to pay more than $250,000 for the property once they stripped that-- I looked at the situation.
I know how much we pay for it. We pay about $300,000. That meant the freezer, we bought the freezer. We bought the place as a meat processing place. When you take all that out, it ain't going to be 3,000. When they said 250, I didn't argue with them but property appreciates as long as you keep it up. It doesn't depreciate. It appreciates, value appreciate. It should be worth more than what we paid for it. That's for sure. We're talking about four or five years later. All right. I took all that into consideration, then I said, "Okay. If we can sell the freezer and equipment- one piece of equipment, we paid $100,000 for." That’s the sausage equipment.
It is the Rolls Royce of sausage making equipment. It hasn't been used much. It hasn't been worn out or damaged or anything. I considered that I said, "Well, if we sell under these conditions, we can't get $100,000 for it. It is used. If we get 50 or 60 and then we get something for the other pieces of equipment, I'm looking at 100,000 or more. You add 100,000, just say 100,000. Add $100,000 to $280k." Because when he said, "$250k." I said, "No, as low as we can go is $280k." His business manager didn't accept it. They were both there together but the boss said, "Well, if you are selling it at $280k, you got an agreement."
He will buy it at 280. Add 100,000 to $280k which I hope we get from the freezer and the equipment in there. That will be 380, right? That's almost $400,000. It looks good to me. I'm sharing it with you because you are investors. When I’m sharing with you, I'm sharing it with all the investors. See a big business like we have, like we trying to conduct. You don't need everybody to say that we met and we had a quorum or we came to a decision. We can do that. That's what I'm doing right now. This is a big business you're doing right now. This is going on paper. That we did have our meeting.
Before I conclude, I want to see how many of you investors support what I'm advising. To open the door for big success. Not right now. I'm going to have to conclude this. To open the door for a big success without the risk that we have now of the government coming in and saying, "It's not proper. You didn't set this up properly." Now, the property that we have on 159th that they've been holding up, the good news came yesterday. The next-door neighbor might be ready to buy that property. If they buy that property at the price that is fair, they going have to pay us for all the taxes we paid all these years, they have to be put in to the price. All these taxes that we were paying all these years with no chance to get any income from the property so all that's lost. Somebody is responsible for holding us at bay and causing us all that big loss so somebody got to pay. We are going to tell them our price and right now I'm not going to share with you right now, that wouldn't be wise business to tell you right now. I got to go talk to the businessman and see what he says then after I got back, I'll tell you what we presented to him and tell you what he's settling on if he's settling on anything. All right?
One of our brothers have worked hard with me to find out what's going on, what's behind it. He's not rich, he got children, he got a family. I volunteered and told him that when all this is settled, I'm going to give him a nice handsome fee although he shook his head and said, "I didn't do it for that." I'm going to give to him. I know he got children and grandchildren and he need money. We are going to give him a fee. That's right. I've got to give him the fee. I'll give to him out of my money. I'll sell something to give it to him. I'll sell my car or something to give it to him if you don't agree with me. He deserves it, he's going to get it.
I'm looking at his need that's what I'm looking at and I'm looking at his service that he volunteered. In a situation like this, you're putting your life on the line. Look here, they have a speeding truck hitting out there in the street and kill him. Make it look like an accident, hit and run or something. This business world is dangerous. You all don't understand it's dangerous, very dangerous. They kill each other. I mean, white folks, they kill each other. You all think it's easy, it's not easy, but Allah is my protection. I don't fear a thing, no fear of anything. No indeed. I could go out there and sleep on the street tonight and have people walking around me.


