In the sacred tradition of our ancestors, I write you again this letter in loving memory and reaffirmation of your enduring meaning to me and all of us, reaching beyond time and space to share and shape together this moment of specialness as a sign and mirror of the goodness of it.
Again, this year we wish for Africans everywhere throughout the world African community “Heri za Kwanzaa. Happy Kwanzaa.” And we bring and send greetings of celebration, solidarity and continued struggle for an inclusive and shared good in the world.
Kwanzaa is a time of celebration, remembrance, reflection and recommitment. It requires these practices throughout the holiday. But the last day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to deep reflection, meditation on the meaning and measure of being African and how this is understood and asserted for good in the world in essential, uplifting and transformative ways.
We must never forget and do not forget the oppression and righteous resistance of other oppressed and suffering peoples of the world, the Haitian people, the Uigurs of China, the Rohingya of Myanmar, the Yemeni and others, and Africans almost everywhere, including us. But Palestine presents us, as a people, with a special moral challenge in this their hour of great and urgent need for support against the genocidal war being waged against them by the government of Israel.
Surely in these times in which there is complicit silence and active support for the radical evil of genocide waged through war by Israel and aided by the U.S. against the Palestinian people in Gaza, we, as a people, must find ourselves firmly and rightly in the ranks of the international resistance to it.
The unfolding genocidal campaign by Israel against Palestine and the Palestinian people is clear to everyone. The Palestinian people and their representatives have appealed to the world to intervene and stop this genocidal war against them, pointing out the crimes against humanity being inflicted on them by Israel’s indiscriminate and sustained bombing and the denial and use of food, water, medicine, medical supplies, electricity and fuel as weapons of war.
As we of Us close out the month of our reflective commemoration and significant celebration of 58 years and 232 seasons of our culturally grounded and love-driven struggle together with and for our people, it is useful to discuss some of our key concepts and central motivations. Clearly, the name, concept and practice of being Us is central to how we understand and assert ourselves in the world.
As we commemorate the 1963 March on Washington, if we remember and reason rightly about our most massive marches in Washington, the threatened “thundering March” on Washington in 1941, the March on Washington in 1963, and the Million Man March in 1995, we realize that they have similar and interlocking lessons, aims and aspirations rooted in our centuries-old and ongoing righteous struggle for freedom as a people
At this hour of urgency and needed liberative initiatives in African and human history, and in this month, Black August, the site and source of such instructive memory and intensified movement, the name, life and legacy of Nana Marcus Garvey looms large as a model and mirror for our assessing and achieving our liberational goals in moving ahead in these rough and exacting times.
It is Haji Malcolm who taught us that there are signs for those who can, want and have the will to see, and if we read them rightly, there are signs of the times that offer foundational lessons from the past and instructive evidence of an emerging future of renewed mutual caring, community and struggle for us as a people. I speak here of the solidarity and collective resistance in Montgomery demonstrated by Black people in defense of Damieon Pickett, a Black man, against the unprovoked and unjustifiable aggression by a group of Whites, male and female, attacking him en
The emerging age of the centrality of artificial intelligence in our lives unavoidably raises the question of the increasing imposed artificiality of our lives, not only in terms of the mediating and problematic role of machines, screens and devices in our relations with each other, but also our conceptions of a good life, a good person and a good society.
The barbaric and savage enslavement of African people in this country and indeed, around the world tenaciously asserts itself as a unique and defining moment in the history of humanity, regardless of recent attempts to falsify, minimize, marginalize, distort and deny it.
Let us pause and bow our heads and raise our hands in rightful remembrance and praise for our beloved sister, freedom fighter, pastor, professor and political leader, reparations advocate and activist, and radio and TV host of “Wake Up Detroit,” a helper in time of need and “one who comes at the voice of the caller,” the Most Reverend Dr. JoAnn Watson who came into being April 19, 1951, and made transition and ascension on July10, 2023.
At the outset, let me begin by reassuring us and our opponents that regardless of the recent racist ruling of the Supreme Court to end affirmative action, this is not the end of our life or our struggle. Indeed, we have clearly weathered worst winters of White racism and supremacy and have repeatedly stood up defiantly in the coffins of oppression designed for our social death and continued our awesome and toll-taking march toward freedom.
Whether we discuss emancipation in June, independence in July, revolt and revolution in August, Kwanzaa and cultural and political liberation in December, or achievements against the odds, resilience and resistance in February, the issue, imperative and urgency of freedom and struggle are always with us. Indeed, it runs like a red line through our most ancient, awesome and humanity-revealing history.