Kujichagulia (Self-determination)

‘Kwanzaa and the Well-Being of the World: Living and Uplifting the Seven Principles’

Heri za Kwanzaa, Happy Kwanzaa to African people everywhere throughout the global African community. We bring you Kwanzaa greetings of celebration, solidarity, and continuing struggle for good in the world. Kwanzaa is a special season and celebration of our sacred and expansive selves as African people. It is a unique pan-African time of remembrance, reflection, reaffirmation, and recommitment. It is a special and unique time to remember and honor our ancestors; to reflect on what it means to be African and human in the most expansive and meaningful sense; and to reaffirm the sacred beauty and goodness of ourselves and the rightfulness of our relentless struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves and contribute to an ever-expanding realm of freedom, justice and caring in the world. And Kwanzaa is a special and unique time and pan-African space to recommit ourselves to our highest values that teach us to live our lives, do our work, and wage our struggles in dignity-affirming, life-enhancing, and world-preserving ways as we continue forward on the upward paths of our honored ancestors.

Concerning Kwanzaa, Race and Religion: Particular, Universal and Common Ground

This is a revisiting of an early and ongoing conversation about the shared meaning of Kwanzaa, its particular cultural message to African people, and its core values that speak to the best of what it means to be African and human in the world and for the world. It raises the constantly relevant issues of race and religion and how they relate, not only to Kwanzaa as a holiday, but also to us as a people.

‘Kawaida and the Current Crisis: A Philosophy of Life, Love and Struggle’

Clearly, the foundational and overarching concern and commitment of Kawaida is life—human and other life and all that is related to the respect, preservation, protection, development and flourishing of it. And likewise, it is concerned with and opposed to all that would threaten, diminish, abuse or destroy life. But to talk of human life and make it real is to talk of actual people. For history and current reality have shown that an oppressor can claim respect for life as a universal abstract, but hate, enslave, dispossess, terrorize and murder, singularly and in mass, actual living humans of various kinds and cultures.