Lessons Learned from the Mission Statement ... read more »

This is in remembrance, reflection and uncompromising reaffirmation of our people and their radically transformative struggle. There is so much damage done to memory and mission in our lives and to our sense of self by large and small concessions to the constant call to let go and move on regardless of what is lost or left behind. We sacrifice so much in our rush to forget, stay in style or keep in harmony with the official writers and rulers of society. ... read more »

In the midst of the pandemic of COVID 19, the ongoing pathology of racist oppression and lying imposed as a way of life, the sacred charge to us by our honored foremother, Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer (October 6), to constantly question and radically transform America is both urgent and enduringly relevant. She taught that justice and freedom require truth and “if we want America to be a free society, we must stop lying” and stop people’s lying from going unchallenged. Indeed, we must speak truth to the people and speak truth to power ... read more »

Now, at the heart of the pursuit of the Seven-Fold Path of Blackness, i.e., Think Black, Talk Black, Act Black, Create Black, Buy Black, Vote Black and Live Black is the overarching goal to bring good in our lives and the world. It is to remind us of the centrality of ourselves in our own lives, our own history and the ongoing ethical imperative to constantly repair, renew and remake ourselves, our communities, our people and the world, making them all more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited and encountered them. ... read more »

As we continue to mark, celebrate and commemorate the 55th Anniversary of the founding of our organization Us, 6205 | September 7 | 1965, I want to continue to draw from some of our early ideas and practices and discuss and demonstrate their current and enduring relevance. ... read more »

Now the interrelated moral imperative to be ourselves and to free ourselves is intimately related to our commitment as advocates of Us to the principle and practice of unbudging Blackness and the deep-rooted and irreversible embrace of Africa as our moral ideal. To talk of our Blackness, again, is to talk not simply of our color, i.e., our appearance and genetic makeup, but also and most defining in distinctiveness, our culture and our self-conscious practice of it. In a word, Blackness at its core is about culture and consciousness and commitment to constantly maintain, cultivate and expand both without dismissing or diminishing respect for our color in its various shades as identifying attributes. ... read more »

Since I first conceived Us as a vanguard organization and called its founding meeting in the wake of the August Revolt and the martyrdom of Min. Malcolm X, we have been committed to three overarching and interrelated goals: cultural revolution, Black liberation and the radical reconception and reconstruction of American society. ... read more »

The recent wave of walkouts and walkaways from playing and practice in protest against the savage shooting of Jacob Blake, first by the Milwaukee Bucks and followed by others in solidarity, i.e., the NBA, the WNBA, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer, is clearly worthy of rightful notice, prolific praise and a good measure of celebration. ... read more »

Now, it is Min. Malcolm who said, “There are signs for those who would see,” those who look for signs of the times to understand where we are in history and “where we fit in the scheme of things” in the time in which we live, work and struggle. And if we read the signs rightly, every sign is an indication of obligation to understand and act in definitive ways. Thus, we cannot see and hear the whirlwind and not know the obligation Marcus Garvey left us as a legacy to free Africa and Africans everywhere. Nor can we see the transformative fires of today’s struggle or remember those of the past and not realize their significance as signs and obligations of fierce, righteous and relentless resistance. ... read more »

Part 1: In our awesome and exacting history in this country, the month of August is a time of remembering and recommitment to prophesies, promises and practices of whirlwind and fire. Indeed, it is good to remember and reflect deeply on the fact that, as a people, we were born, baptized and built up in the transformative waters, whirlwinds and fires of righteous and relentless struggle for liberation and inclusive good in the world. It has been a historic, heavy and ceaseless striving to free ourselves, be ourselves and create conditions for us and all to live lives of dignity, decency, development and flourishing. And now in this time of the pandemic COVID-19 and the ongoing pandemic and pathology of oppression, of police violence and vicious systemic racism, we find ourselves pushed against another wall and defiantly pushing back in countless ways. Indeed, even when we do not realize it, we are the whirlwind and fire, the ongoing source and instructive symbol of critical transformative struggles in this country and the world.  ... read more »

As the pandemic of COVID-19 continues to ravage our community and the country, the pandemic of the pathology of racist oppression continues to claim its victims among us also. And this is not only because of the inequalities in our life conditions, health access, working needs and circumstances, and other structural disadvantages, but also because Black people and other people of color remain targets of racist violence. One of the latest cases is from Aurora, Colorado, August 2, where the police targeted, stopped, terrorized and humiliated four Black girls and a mother, out to get their nails done at a salon. Not satisfied with drawing guns on the children, 6, 12, 14 and 17, causing them to fear for their lives and call for their mother and sister, the White officers, men and women, ordered them out of the car, handcuffed them, except the 6-year old, and forced them all to lay face down on the parking lot pavement. The repulsively transparent lie told for this unjustifiable act of targeting and terrorism was that the police mistook the family’s SUV for a stolen motorcycle with the same license plate number but from another state.  ... read more »

We come into this August conscious of its meaning as an honored month and central site of 400 years of righteous and relentless resistance. It is both a month and a monument to a series of significant events in our history: our arrival and beginning resistance in the U.S. (1619); the history-changing Haiti Revolution (1791); the audacious revolts of enslaved Africans led by Gabriel and Nana Prosser (1800) and Nat Turner (1830); and the critical founding of the Underground Railroad (1850) involving Nana Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and numerous other freedom fighters dedicated to increased resistance to the Holocaust of enslavement and the liberation of our people.  ... read more »

The Ethnic Studies requirement bill, AB 1460, which will reach Governor Gavin Newsom’s desk this week, will help determine not only the quality of higher education and campus life for decades to come in the CSU system. But it will also shape the quality of life conceived and built by students who will benefit from that education and use it to ground, enrich and expand their lives with mutually beneficial relations of learning, life, work and service. This bill, AB 1460, requires each graduating student to take ONE three-unit class in one of the Ethnic Studies disciplines – Native American, African American, Latino/a American and Asian American Studies. And all people who value the lives, learning needs, culture, history, intellectual traditions and life experiences of peoples of color and the indispensable and enriching contribution Ethnic Studies makes to creating an inclusive quality education should support this bill. Likewise, Governor Newsom should surely sign it when it reaches his desk.  ... read more »

Clearly, there are several lessons to be gleaned from the legacy of these freedom warriors and workers for a new society and world. And the first is to rightfully locate them in Black history among their people, our people in the midst of an unfinished and ongoing Black freedom struggle. Indeed, there can be no correct understanding, appropriate appreciation or honest emulation of their lives and the lives of all those who preceded them and made them and us possible and of those who were their co-combatants, unless we place them all in the context of their people, our people, Black people and our struggle. ... read more »

Indeed, it is a clear and constant given that if we are to achieve real justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and all the victims of this racist violent democracy called America, to paraphrase Min. Malcolm, then we have two interrelated objectives that must be achieved. They are: radically reimagining and rebuilding America; and sustaining the struggle on every level which will make this possible. And key to all of this is holding the ground we’ve gained, building on what we have and fighting fiercely to move forward, day by day, year by year and battle by battle until victory is clearly won. ... read more »