This year and month marks the 58th anniversary of the founding of our organization Us, September 7, 1965, 58 years and 232 seasons of righteous and relentless struggle in the best of summers and the worst of winters, the flourishing of springs and the witherings of autumns.
We come from a culture where drums talk; songs and singing lift us into the heavens and sustains us on earth; sculpture, painting and carving come alive; and dance is a creative link and life-line to the Divine.
The brutal public judging and killing of Mr. Jordan Neely, a poor, homeless, mentally-ill Black man in New York City, offers again life-and-death evidence of the need to expand the discussion and solution concerning gun violence to include the American culture of violence itself.
This is in homage to Nana Harriet Tubman: African woman, Black and beautiful woman; fierce and fearless freedom fighter; womanist warrior for all the people, up all night with her weapon on her knee, waiting for the day to dawn; the relentless and transformative fire that finds and makes a way for itself wherever it goes; thunder-while-sitting-and-thinking-freedom; broad-shoulders ancestor, tall and unmovable like a mountain; honored leader, tireless liberator, and inexhaustible light, opening and making clear the way to freedom and an uplifted life for our people and an expanded and inclusive realm of freedom in this country and the world.
This is the month for celebrating the miracles and wonders we call Black women, that other half of our community which makes us, as a people, whole, these equal and most worthy partners in life, love and struggle to bring good in the world.
Every holiday of every hero or heroine we celebrate is, at the same time and in equal measure and meaning, a celebration of our people, indeed a celebration of ourselves. Indeed, whether we believe they are chosen and raised up among us by heaven or history or both, they find their foundation and footing, their mission and meaning in the lived experience, the cultural values and practices and the historical and ongoing struggles of our people.
In the tradition of our ancestors, again and at the beginning of this new year of our people 6263 AFE, we pause and pay rightful homage to the beautiful, strong and unbreakable bridges, past and present, that carried us over.
Kwanzaa was conceived as a special time and space for celebrating, discussing and meditating on the rich and varied ways of being and becoming African in the world.
The histories and holidays of the oppressed, colonized and enslaved are, of necessity, different from the history and holidays of the oppressor, the colonizer and the enslaver. Likewise, their interpretations of those histories and holidays also differ, for they are lived and learned from different standpoints.
The recent revelation of the racist rant, irrational reasoning and inequitable reordering of the political map of Los Angeles by a group of Latina/o city council and labor leaders offers useful insights and lessons in racial, racialized and racist sentiments, thought and practice in American politics, regardless of the local and Latino context in which it occurred.
It is no accident of history, or inscrutable reason to be discovered, nor the result of an organized effort that Black people in overwhelming numbers understand and engage reparations first and foremost as the just and urgent receipt of direct cash money payments for damages done and justice due.
On this the 57th year and 228th season of our coming into being as an organization, it is morally imperative and historically necessary to pay rightful homage to the righteously royal women of Us who have made Us and all we have dared and done possible.
Since the Sixties, we of Us have understood, engaged and embraced Blackness as a very serious and sacred way of being and becoming in the world, an African way, a unique and equally valid and valuable way of being human with all its rich and varied possibilities and worthy of the highest respect.
This is tambiko, sacred words and water offered in remembrance and rightful honor of three Simba/Saidi of Us, three Lions of August and all-seasons soldiers: Nana Sebati Wasifu Tangulifu, Nana Omowale Tambuzi and Nana Robert Tambuzi.
The year 1965 began on an ominous and unsettling note — the assassination and martyrdom of Nana Malcolm X, the Fire Prophet. Even in the white and winter cold of February, it was a sign of the coming fire. Indeed, it pointed toward the fiery fulfillment of prophecy, which Nana Malcolm, himself, had predicted.