This year and each year, the coming of Kwanzaa causes us to come together in celebration, remembrance, reflection and recommitment. And it also urges us to constantly study and learn the deep meanings and expansive message of Kwanzaa, not only in its grounding philosophy, Kawaida, and its core Seven Principles (Nguzo Saba), but also in its symbols.
Clearly, a critical and compelling task of our times is to remember, raise up and reaffirm in our sensitivities, thought and practice our culture of striving and struggle as a people, for the needs of our people, the character of the times and the current course of historical events demand it. And we must remember that we must come to the table and tasks of this urgent and demanding moment, not naked and in need, but fully clothed in our own culture.
No one can miss or mistake the deep and insistent anxiety, apprehension and righteous anger that precede and mark this coming presidential election. For its result will define the course and content of the conditions of life and struggle in this country for years to come and have a definite effect on the well-being of the world.
In the midst of our and other ongoing struggles for liberation, freedom, justice and other indispensable and indivisible goods in the world, I turn constantly to the sacred texts of our ancestors for grounding and guidance, for constantly deepening insight, urgently needed answers, and uplifting and liberating inspiration. This is especially important to me, to Us, in these difficult, dangerous and demanding times in which evil seems ascendant, shape shifting oppression appears ever-enduring, genocide is shamelessly “justified” by the would-be “superior” and “civilized,” and righteous resistance is denounced and outlawed on campus, in Congress and society. But still we must
In the midst of a system of oppression that would deny us recognition, rights and respect, we stand up to recognize and praise ourselves and declare our right to self-determination, self-respect and self-defense in pursuit of Black Power over our destiny and daily lives. And we dare to practice each of these in revolutionary defiance of our oppressor and our oppression.
We are again in the midst of August, a special month of commemoration and celebration of a tradition of righteous and relentless struggle essential to our self-understanding and self-assertion as an African people in the world. It is a month that offers hard and heavy evidence of our people in this country and around the world forming themselves and freeing themselves in struggle, in revolution, revolt and liberational resistance of varied kinds.
It is good to see the Kamala campaign centering on joy in the struggle to defeat those who would outlaw love, laughter and learning; arrest and lay waste the world; build segregation walls of steel and stone, hatred and hostility between persons and peoples; deny freedom and justice; and legalize narrow notions of shared and common good, favoring themselves and excluding others. And it is also good, exceedingly good, that we as a people, a Black people, an African people, are standing Malcolm straight and Tubman strong as a key vanguard and central source of resistance to this social
We are at a critical historical moment of the amassing, movement and meeting of progressive forces in this country to protect the people from Trumpian fantasies and promises of fascism, save and make real democracy, regain and defend freedoms, and lay the basis for achieving a future of inclusive engagement and shared good for all.
On this the centennial anniversary and celebration of the coming into being of Nana James Baldwin (August 2, 1924), beloved writer and teacher of the beautiful, transformative and lie-resistant truth, we find ourselves still struggling and working our way through the awesome responsibilities of what he called the possibility of our being able “to achieve our country and change the history of the world.”
There is a huge and understandable sigh and feeling of relief that President Joe Biden has decided not to run for president again and most likely lose to Donald Trump whose mind is amazingly mean-spirited and small and whose flaws are uncontestably numerous and negative to the health and welfare of the country.
As the country and the world experiences and resists the rise and expansion of rightist forces and their attempts to limit and deny freedom and justice, the seminal works of Nana Frantz Fanon come into sharp focus. Especially relevant here is his treatment of the psychology of liberation as both normative and necessary in the context of oppression and his insightful analysis on overcoming what he defines as “the pathology of freedom.” I read this as the pathology of unfreedom or the pathology of oppression which is a disease imposed on freedom and therefore creating a diseased and disabled freedom,
Havoc in the House, Douglass at the Door: July 4th, November 5th and Unavoidable Struggle As we mark the Fourth of July and treat an epidemic of anxiety about the outcome of November 5th, we would be well served by recognizing that annual hard knock and powerful presence at the door of the honored abolitionist, freedom fighter and most insightful activist intellectual, Nana Frederick Douglass. For by every metric of good sense and every measure of a good life, there is havoc in this house called America. It is a very dangerous and self-destructive disorder of rampant conflict, varied oppression,
Again, in the sacred tradition of our ancestors of ancient Egypt of writing letters to loved ones who have made transition and ascension, I reach out to you in writing in this the month of your lying down in peace and rising up in radiance in the heavens. It is one of those bridges of memory we build that supports and sustains us in dealing with the awesome ache of your absence and the persistent longing for your presence.
This is Black Music Month and we share again these sensitivities, thoughts and practice of Blackness as music and magic at the highest and deepest level. It is good to sing and celebrate ourselves, to dance in honor of the divine spark and specialness within each of us, and to rejoice in the midst of the sacred music we together make in the many ways we love, work and struggle to do and share good in the world. But our celebrations must always be rooted in and reflective of our own agency, our own image and own interests. And so,
This is a sankofa revisiting and reflection on our rightful remembering. The celebration of Juneteenth nationally took a new turn in its bid to become a nationally recognized Black holiday in 2021 in the context of the intensified struggle against police violence and systemic racism.