Malcolm X

DESTINATION WATTS THEN AND NOW

 Watts is a historic place. It’s where oppressed people from the Deep South and, more recently, from around the world, have come to start a new life in fabled California. They fled the remnants of slavery, Jim Crow, the Klu Klux Klan, lynchings, and corrupt political and legal systems. They fled oppression and political exclusion and came with great hope in search of a new life. 

Symbols and Insights of Kwanzaa: Deep Meanings and Expansive Message

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. It invites us all to study continuously its origins, principles and practices and it teaches us, in all modesty, never to claim we know all that is to be known about it or that our explanations are only for those who do not know much about its message and meaning.

Taking Tuesday in Stride: Waking Up Wednesday Still in Struggle

As we wait for the final results of the 2020 election, I refer us to the article I wrote in 2016 under similar circumstances. And the point remains, whatever happens, the struggle will and must continue. No matter how things go down Tuesday night, we must wake up Wednesday morning still in struggle and reaffirm without unrealistic hope or paralyzing horror, that there is still much to do and it is up to us to do it. For indeed, as we always said, the time is now, there is no other; struggle is the way forward, there is no alternative; and we are the ones, there’s no avoiding it.

Lifting Up Lowery, Vivian and Lewis: Living the Legacy, Freeing the People

Clearly, there are several lessons to be gleaned from the legacy of these freedom warriors and workers for a new society and world. And the first is to rightfully locate them in Black history among their people, our people in the midst of an unfinished and ongoing Black freedom struggle. Indeed, there can be no correct understanding, appropriate appreciation or honest emulation of their lives and the lives of all those who preceded them and made them and us possible and of those who were their co-combatants, unless we place them all in the context of their people, our people, Black people and our struggle.

Righteous and Relentless Struggle: Again, Reflections on the Principle and Practice

Even without understanding it in the depth that would come later, we were in, 1965, a new generation building on centuries of sacrifice and struggles of all those who preceded us, those who cleared firm and sacred ground on which we stood and still stand and who opened essential and upward ways on which we would continue the unfinished struggle for liberation and ever higher levels of human life.

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.” 

Message from Minister Malcolm on ALD: Silencing the Guns of Pandemic Oppression

Our annual reflective and resistance-focused celebration of the birth and life of Min. Malcolm X, May 19th and African Liberation Day, May 25th, finds us confronting an especially dangerous, difficult and demanding time. It is a taxing time of dealing with two global interrelated challenges: the pandemic of COVID-19 and the pathology of oppression in which this virus and other natural diseases and social sicknesses are rooted and replicated. Indeed, the pathology of oppression is a pandemic itself, i.e., a world-wide disease or social sickness clearly harmful to human life and even the well-being of the world.

Black History: Its Meaning, Message and Forward Motion Dr. Maulana Karenga

As we contemplate various ways to celebrate Black History Month, we must ask ourselves how do we pay proper hommage to this sacred narrative we know as Black History?  How do we think and talk about this, the oldest of human histories and about the fathers and mothers of humanity and human civilization who made it? And how do we honor the lives given and the legacy left in and on this long march and movement through African and human history?

Symbols and Insights of Kwanzaa: Deep Meanings and Expansive Message

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. It invites us all to study continuously its origins, principles and practices and it teaches us, in all modesty, never to claim we know all that is to be known about it or that our explanations are only for those who do not know much about its message and meaning. For each year each of us should read and reread the literature, reflect on the views and values of Kwanzaa and share conversations about how it reaffirms our rootedness in African culture and brings us together all over the world in a unique and special way to celebrate ourselves as African people. One focus for such culturally-grounded conversation is on the deep meanings and message embedded in the symbols of Kwanzaa which are rooted in Kawaida philosophy out of which Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba were created. Indeed, each symbol is a source and point of departure for a serious conversation on African views and values and the practices that are rooted in and reflect them.