Hon. Marcus Garvey

Garvey’s Whirlwind; Watts’ and Ferguson’s Fire: Signs and Obligations of Our Times – PART 1

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. 

“Honoring Black Resistance in August: Pursuing Liberation thru Love and Struggle”

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. 

Maintaining the Meaning of Juneteenth: Staying Focused on Freedom

The celebration of freedom is to be encouraged and applauded everywhere and all the time, and the celebration of Juneteenth, June 19th as Emancipation Day, is, of necessity, no exception. For freedom is so essential to our lives, our concepts of ourselves and our understanding of what it means to live and flourish as human beings. In this context, Min. Malcolm X makes freedom the most essential value in his ethical insistence on freedom, justice and equality as non-negotiable needs and rights of the human person. Thus, he states that “freedom is essential to life itself” and equally, “freedom is essential to the development of the human being.” Moreover, he says, “if we don’t have freedom we can never expect justice and equality.” For “only after we have freedom, does justice and equality become a reality.” 

Essential Teachings of Messenger Muhammad: A Careful Kawaida Reading

In re-remembrance and reflection on the Hon. Elijah Muhammad’s contribution to our self-consciousness and self-assertion as a people in that critical time of turning and overturning we call the Sixties.This is a careful Kawaida reading of some of the essential teachings of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad in rightful remembrance and respect of his life and work in the wilderness of oppression and illusion in this country, in this the month of his birth, (October 7, 1897—February 25, 1975).

Holocaust, Haiti, Ferguson and Watts: Honoring Our People Through Struggle

The month of August for our people is a special month, full and overflowing with commemorations of our awesome march and movement through human history in our ongoing quest for freedom, justice, expanded human good and the sustained well-being of the world. This year and month mark the 400thyear of our brutal insertion in this country, enslaved and in resistance. And so, we must mark it, not simply as the time of our beginning savage oppression, but also as the time of our resistance and forming ourselves into a community of struggle, righteous and relentless struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves and build the good society and world we all want and deserve to live in.

Maintaining the Meaning of Juneteenth: Staying Focused on Freedom

It is this ethical insight and emphasis on the priority of human freedom as the condition and context for justice, equality and human flourishing that leads Min. Malcolm to argue the right to pursue and achieve “freedom by any means necessary.” This phrase is not a claim to do even the unethical but is a cornerstone in his ethics of self-defense against oppression, his reaffirmation of the right of resistance and his call for a courageous commitment to give all that’s necessary to be free men and women, and stand upright and worthy among persons, peoples and nations of the world.