Our people came into being in the midst of righteous and relentless liberating struggle, and there is a radical history to know and honor here. In this struggle, we remolded and remade ourselves through a triple resistance of opposition, affirmation and aspiration.
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.
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.
In this month of our founding 58 years or 232 seasons ago, it is important to reaffirm that our organization, Us, from its inception, has understood itself as a revolutionary organization, more specifically a revolutionary cultural nationalist organization.
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
As Juneteenth, now federalized as Juneteenth National Independence Day, takes its place as the main focus among the many emancipation celebrations in this country, it is good to reflect on it and reaffirm constantly its central and sustaining meaning and message for us.
The current and increasing embrace and touting of artificial intelligence was preceded and made possible by the earlier progressive production of the artificiality of life, that is to say, the undermining and diminishing of what it means to be human and natural in all its complexities.
As always, the marking of this year’s Earth Day and Earth Month offers us and humanity as a whole an important invitation and opportunity to focus and reflect on our relationship and responsibility to the health and well-being of the natural world. This is not only because we are to constantly demonstrate through priorities and practice our appreciation of the intrinsic value of the earth, but also because the health and well-being of the world is deeply and inseparably linked to that of our own and the whole of humanity.
Whatever other lessons we glean from the targeting, accusation, indictment, trial, trashing and conviction of Mark Ridley-Thomas and the dual response to all this by us and others, we know it’s more complex and questionable than is suggested by the deceptive and disarming phrase “justice has been served.”
It is the sacred teaching of our honored foremother, Nana Fannie Lou Hamer, that there are two things we all should care about “never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over. And in revisiting this teaching and our homage to Nana Dr. Carter G. Woodson, we seek to honor this sacred obligation. Again, so we might remember and raise up, pursue and do the good. For he is indeed one of those mighty bridges who taught us where we came from and offered us an unbreakable bridge to carry us
In this month of remembering, raising up and reflecting on our awesome making and movement through history, it is good to remind our ourselves, society and the world of the sacred agency of our people. For this is central and essential to our identity, purpose and direction as persons and a people.
The end and beginning of the years always find us in a critical period of transition in which, responding to the mandates of our moral tradition and the human urgencies of our history as African people, we are compelled to continue forward and turn our best New Year wishes into our most committed work.
One of the most critical tasks of our times is to reaffirm, deepen and expand our culture of struggle as a people, with its rich talkings and sacred teachings and its lived and uplifting experiences of “storm riding,” “blooming in the whirlwind,” and daring to “specialize in the wholly impossible” in the midst of the most savage and brutal situations of oppression history had to offer. Indeed, it is as ethically imperative as it is compellingly essential, for it is an anchoring, defining and ongoing project and practice of constantly struggling for African and human good and the well-being of the world.
Since the transforming struggles of the Sixties, it has been for us in the organization Us, both a reaffirmation of our commitment and a reenforcing reminder to begin our day with the centering thought and declaration: “it is a good day to struggle.”
Without a doubt and with no real reason for reservation, Frantz Omar Fanon stood out for our organization Us and remains as a model and mirror of the revolutionary thought and practice which we committed ourselves to and dared.