American Airlines Captain, Dr. Gerald A. Higginbotham; affectionately known as “Captain, Dr. G”, is a man on a mission to effectively educate and empower individuals and communities to flourish; by closing the widening income gap between the rich and the poor, and to equip youth and adults to reach their highest potential.
Not an isolated or unexpected event, it came as an act of collective resistance to police violence and brutality, merchant exploitation and humiliation, and sustaining systemic racism
This is a sankofa retrieval of thoughts on an anniversary past that still reveals positions and principles as relevant and real as rain in monsoon season. And it is reflective of the deep and enduring commitment we of Us have to the priority of our people, opposition to our oppressor and oppression, and to a communitarian African way of life and thus to the unfinished and ongoing liberation struggle we must continue to wage to achieve this.
Nearly 1,200 people came to celebrate the many ways that civic engagement can transform communities for the better during the 27th Annual Empowerment Congress Summit on Jan. 19, during the Martin Luther King Jr., weekend.
But if there is any legacy or uplifting lessons left by the 60s, it is that we must resist these new forms of unfreedom and falsification of history and continue to wage struggles of liberation on every level of life. For these struggles are clearly the indispensable way we understand, free and fulfill ourselves and the aspirations of our ancestors. Indeed, these are struggles demanded by our inherent right to freedom, our natural need for justice and our irrepressible longing for a liberated life. And it is a struggle for and longed for life that yields ordinary and special spaces in which the human spirit is nurtured and constantly renewed, and we and other human beings know ourselves as sacred and at the center and subject of every day and hour of history we make.
The year 1965 began on an ominous and unsettling note—the assassination and martyrdom of Malcolm X, the Fire Prophet. Even in the white and winter cold of February, it was a sign of the coming fire. Indeed, it pointed toward the fiery fulfillment of prophecy which Malcolm, himself, had predicted. It was there, too, in the title of James Baldwin’s classic, The Fire Next Time. And it was the topic of countless conversations around the country. Baldwin had taken his title from a line in a Black gospel song which says: “God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water, the fire next time.” And this, for us, was the fundamental time of turning when the fire would be this time.
This is my standard column written to commemorate the Watts Revolt and to pay rightful homage to those who lost, gave and risked their lives to advance the struggle.
Clearly, the country and world have changed dramatically since we stood up in the 60’s and liberation struggles pervaded and engulfed the world