America is in crisis, having become a society against itself, moving from massacre to massacre seemingly with a mad hatter’s moral compass and a woefully insufficient moral commitment to clear a path to put the gun down as solution and salvation and stop the disabling and deadly violence against those different and vulnerable and even its chosen children.
In this month and historical moment of remembering and raising up Nana Malcolm X as a mirror and model for us and the world, we must make sure it is righteous and rightful remembrance. Indeed, it must be a critical remembering that reaches back in the practice of sankofa, retrieving the best of his moral sensitivities, thought and practice and using them to ground our lives, inform our work and guide our ongoing struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves.
Clearly, one of the most important early voices calling on us to be in harmony with nature, to share the good of nature, and to rightfully use the planet’s resources is Dr. George Washington Carver. And in memory and honor of him and in marking this year’s Earth Day, I revisit below some thoughts on his life and work.
Nana King, in defining his first practice of service, phrases it as “trying to love somebody,” which is a linking of two of the central pillars in his self-understanding and self-assertion in the world.
Now the liberational and expansive concept of Nana Ida B. Wells’ “womanly woman” and her mission and meaning begin with a critical questioning. She asks, “What is or should be woman?”
This offering is in rightful homage and deep appreciation, not only for Nana Ida B. Wells-Barnett, but also for the awesome and audacious women of Us, the Malaika and Matamba, the Simba and Senut who created and put forth in thought, dialog, discourse and practice what we now call Kawaida womanism.
It is a fundamental tenet of Kawaida philosophy that practice proves and makes possible everything, that is to say, practice brings it into being, makes it real, relevant and worthy of the name and quality it claims, whether it is love or life, parenting or peace, teaching or learning, art or ethics, science, religion or righteous resistance.
Indeed, the essential and ongoing conversation with our history is at the same time a continuing conversation with our culture, a constant search for ever more expansive and enriching ways to be African women and men in the world.
The global struggle to secure the exoneration of the Honorable Marcus Garvey is an urgent and compelling one.
This year’s Black History Month theme, “Black Health and Wellness,” opens space for us to call into focus our self-determined and self-sustaining ways of knowing, working and struggling to achieve, protect, promote and sustain our health, health care and healing in a society which is the source of so much of our preventable sickness, needless suffering, and underserved deaths. And thus arises the undeniable need for righteous and relentless struggle, not only to achieve justice and end oppression, but also to achieve a comprehensive radical racial healing.
In the midst of our rightful celebration of the life and legacy of Nana Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., it is important to note that no honor is more important, no action more essential than reclaiming his life and legacy as our own as a people.
Each year at Kwanzaa we celebrate the good in and of the world. We celebrate the good of family, community and culture; the good hoped for and harvested, achieved and enjoyed, worked for, witnessed and brought to fruition.
The meaning and mission of manhood, especially Black manhood, is an ancient and ongoing question, for it is not only about a presence, but also about a process and practice, and not only about just being, but also about constantly becoming. In a word, it is about ever striving and struggling to be our best and come into the fullness of ourselves as men, African men and human beings.
It was 26 years ago, October 16, 1995, that we stood firmly together, 2 million plus strong in Washington, D.C. Called to action by Min. Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam and the critical juncture and demands of our history, we declared our commitment to assume a new and expanded responsibility in life, love and struggle. Below follows an excerpt from the Million Man March/Day of Absence Mission Statement focusing on the shared responsibility of Black men and women in holding themselves responsible, as well as the government and corporate world, and raising issues insightfully and compelling current.
The U.S. must stop imposing on Haiti its imperialist system of domination, deprivation and degradation