Hotep

History, Memory and Struggle: The Morality of Remembrance

Let us begin this sacred month offering tambiko, homage of rightful remembrance and profound appreciation of the way openers, lifters up of the light that lasts and tireless teachers of the good, the right and the possible. Let us say then, as it is written in the Husia: homage to you beautiful, Black and radiant spirits. You shall always be for us glorious spirits in heaven and a continuing powerful presence on earth. You are counted and honored among the ancestors. Your names shall endure as a monument. And what you’ve done on earth shall never perish or pass away. Hotep. Ase. Heri.

Choosing to Be African: Struggling and Striving Ever Upward

Again, this is in sankofa remembrance for our 53rd anniversary of our organization Us in righteous and relentless resistance. And thus, it is about reaching back, retrieving, reflecting, reconstructing and recommitting ourselves to a radical and righteous reconception and transformation of ourselves, society and ultimately the world as was our founding mission in those turbulent and transformative years of the Sixties. In the 60’s when we first collectively declared that we are an African people, we did not do so simply to reaffirm our historical source of origin and reclaim a history as old as humanity itself. We did it also as an act of self-determination, a reaffirmation of our right as the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles, say, “to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.”