karenga - Forum/Discussions - TheBlackList Pub2024-03-28T20:58:03Zhttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/feed/tag/karengaAmerica in Crisis Between Massacres and Myths: Seeking a Moral Compass and Commitment to Change, by Dr. Maulana Karengahttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/america-in-crisis-between-massacres-and-myths-seeking-a-moral-com2022-06-10T18:06:07.000Z2022-06-10T18:06:07.000ZSendMeYourNewshttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/SendMeYourNews<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}10562955872,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}10562955872,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="10562955872?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p>
<p style="text-align:center;"><em><strong>Dr. Maulana Karenga | 05-30-22</strong></em></p>
<p>America is in crisis, having become `a society against itself, moving from massacre to massacre seemingly with a mad hatter’s moral compass and a woefully insufficient moral commitment to clear a path to put the gun down as solution and salvation and stop the disabling and deadly violence against those different and vulnerable and even its chosen children. Indeed, America cannot at this critical juncture face the truth of itself and its history. It has turned to book banning and burning, and legislatively outlawing the learning of difficult truths. And it insists, at the point of the gun, on living with the lies about itself, others and the world.It is trapped in a “til death do we part” marriage to its founding and still functioning myths, a toxic mixture of hypocrisy, deceit and mendacity that sanctions, supports and justifies violence.</p>
<p>Haji Malcolm taught that among America’s “worst crimes are hypocrisy and deceit,” pernicious pretense and self-deception and deception of others. And Nana Fannie Lou Hamer observed that “there is so much hypocrisy in society. And if we want a free society we have to stop lying.” Society has to stop lying about what it has done and continues to do to others and itself at home and abroad. It must stop nicknaming the truth. Imperialism is not humanitarianism; capitalism is not concerned with human life or environmental justice but primarily with profit; invasion is not salvation; occupation of others’ land is not self-defense, but violent domination and resource theft; and there are no chosen or superior people, no manifest destiny, no prior perfect union trying to become “more perfect.” There was an oppressive imperfection from the beginning, exclusion, enslavement, genocide and injustice, covered over with conversation and paper claims of the rights of men, as they oppressed and killed the different and vulnerable in real life. Such hypocritical, deceitful and mendacious myths blind American society to the harm, suffering, injustice, death and evil it causes and the violence it imposes in this country and the world. And this willful or socially conditioned blindness makes America unable to see, concede and solve its critical, i.e., crisis producing, problems.</p>
<p>America, U.S. society, is in crisis, a society against itself; and the world is watching to see whether it can pull back from the brink, solve its problems and save itself or whether it will continue to deteriorate, doom itself and take the world with it. Indeed, as horrible, heinous and inhuman as the recent and previous massacres of innocents are, these must also be seen as symptoms of a larger societal sickness, a pathology of oppression. Nana Fannie Lou Hamer, observed that “America is a sick place and man is on the critical list.” She speaks here of a deep rooted moral, social and structural sickness America suffers which must be questioned, confronted and given a regimen of radically transformative treatment. It is a sickness rooted in violent and predatory feelings, thoughts and practices, masked in moral, religious, legal and efficiency language, and institutionalized structured policies, rooted in ideas and illusions which are central sources of so much violence, evil, injustice, injury, unfreedom and suffering in this country and the world.</p>
<p>No one can deny we need gun control and to rethink and reconstruct the role and use of social and commercial media, put a board in the backs of corrupt and cowardly politicians, and eventually remove them, push to pass legislation and engage in social activism to achieve these goals. But there is clearly a larger issue involved, i.e., the history and structural roots of American violence. We are focused now on the crisis of gun violence, mass shootings and massacres, but the larger problem is the pathology of oppression, racist, class, gender and other forms of oppression which carry within them seeds and sources of violence. We are rightly morally outraged and angered by the killing of children, elders and others by gun violence. But can we muster enough outrage and anger to protect them from it and other violence by not only pushing for the end of gun violence, but also violence imposed in other ways: sexual violence, social violence, educational violence, psychological violence and the slow-grind violence of poverty and its sustained suffering from inadequate food, water, clothes, housing, health, education and income, especially of children and peoples of color.</p>
<p>The country has an undeniable history of violence; it comes into being with predatory violence as a war of conquest and genocide, and continues with the Holocaust of enslavement, dispossession, coerced labor and the savagery of segregation, and culminates in an evolved structural violence of varied kinds, racial, sexual, economic, cultural and political. It is also expressed in predation against the earth, resulting in plundering, pollution and depletion. It is an aggressive and predatory misuse that has led to climate change, destruction of numerous species and their habitats, the new viruses and their variants, and increased flooding, fires, famine and suffering around the world.</p>
<p>The persistent and pervasive presence and practice of violence in U.S. society and abroad cannot be seriously doubted or denied. It is not only in mass and personal homicides and suicides, but in the movies and TV programs, in children narratives and tech killing games and military toys. It is expressed in a long history of sexual objectification and abuse of children in religious and secular institutions, and the in-home and institutional abuse of elders, the ill, disabled, the poor and the treatment of prisoners as disposable populations. And it is the way governments treat the mentally ill and homeless, the preference for force and punishment rather than treatment, and the continuing attachment to the official spectacle killing called the death penalty with witnesses. And it is the way the U.S. imposes itself in the world.</p>
<p>Indeed, it is no observation of minor importance that Nana Dr. Martin Luther King described his country as the “greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” And Imam Jamil Al-Amin noted that “violence is a part of America’s culture. It is as American as cherry pie.” In a word, it is embedded in the system and is the way the system understands and exerts itself, at home and abroad, and especially against the different and the vulnerable, particularly in racial and racist ways.</p>
<p>Here Nana Haji Malcolm’s definition of racism as “war against the dark peoples of the world” is instructive. For what we have witnessed in Buffalo and Uvalde is the playing out on a large scale of the systemic cultivation of the racist and generally depraved disregard for human life, especially when it comes to people of color. That the shooter in Uvalde was a Latino doesn’t alter the fact that American society is a source of his sickness, his unindicted co-conspirator, and his crime partner. Indeed, as we so often say: ideas don’t drop from the sky, grow from the ground or float in from the sea. They come from the society that values, teaches, promotes and practices them.</p>
<p>Thus, we say, we are American by habit and African by choice. We have to choose to be other-directed rather than committed to degraded forms of individualism. We have to choose “power with” rather than “power over,” and shared good rather than zero-sum concepts. We must practice mutual respect and cooperation, reciprocity rather than hatred, hostility and predatory violence. And this calls for cultivating and developing a new human sensitivity toward each other, interrupting and reversing our commitment to technological and animal substitutes for quality human relations and building a multicultural, multiracial progressive social movement for social and structural change. Together, as Nana Frantz Fanon teaches, “let us reconsider the question of humankind, … combine our muscles and brains in a new direction…” and dare to initiate “a new history of humankind,” free from violence as a social condition and a personal and collective practice.</p>
<p>Nana Dr. Martin Luther King says that America “must undergo a radical revolution of values.” “We must,” he said, “begin the shift from a thing-oriented society” to a “person-oriented society,” from concern for profit to commitment to people. Dr. King tells us that “Our only hope lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go out into a sometimes hostile world, declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism and militarism.” Moreover, “with this powerful commitment we shall boldly challenge the status quo and unjust mores,” in a word, the ideologies and structures of oppression and the violence they breed, sanction, support and practice. Thus, he says, “Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter – but beautiful struggle for a new world,” a new world of expansive human good and the sustained well-being of the world and all in it.</p>
<p> <span style="font-size:12pt;"><em><strong>Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Introduction to Black Studies, 4th Edition, <a href="">www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org</a>.</strong></em></span></p>
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<p> </p></div>Righteously Remembering Haji Malcolm: Becoming and Being Ourselves by Dr. Maulana Karengahttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/righteously-remembering-haji-malcolm-becoming-and-being-ourselves2022-05-05T22:05:17.000Z2022-05-05T22:05:17.000ZSendMeYourNewshttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/SendMeYourNews<div><p> </p>
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<p><strong><em>In this month and historical moment of remembering and raising up Nana Malcolm X as a mirror and model for us and the world, we must make sure it is righteous and rightful remembrance. Indeed, it must be a critical remembering that reaches back in the practice of sankofa, retrieving the best of his moral sensitivities, thought and practice and using them to ground our lives, inform our work and guide our ongoing struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves. For Haji Malcolm wanted us to become and be our beautiful Black and sacred selves through a righteous and relentless struggle to free ourselves from the various kinds of chains imposed on us by our ruthless oppressor. Indeed, he taught and Kawaida reaffirmed that our struggle at its heart is always to be ourselves and free ourselves. In a word, it is to be ourselves so we can free ourselves and to free ourselves so we can fully be ourselves.</em></strong></p>
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<p>Min. Malcolm X’s unchanging challenge to us as a people and persons to “wake up, clean up and stand up” is a constant and clarion call: to come into and cultivate an ever-expanding consciousness of ourselves and the world; to ground ourselves in the best of our ethical sensitivities, thought and practice; and to raise up and remain standing and struggling in the interest of a good world for us as Africans and for humanity as a whole. And on this another anniversary of his historic birth and coming into being, we honor him best by reexamining the instructive and enduring legacy he left and by trying to integrate it meaningfully in the forward focus and thrust of our lives.</p>
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<p>Haji Malcolm’s message is rooted in a liberation ethics, a critical reflection and practice of ongoing personal and social transformation which forms and frees our strongest selves,and directs us toward the good and expansive lives we long for and deserve. Nana Malcolm saw in us a great and ancient people, root and reflection of “the soul of Africa” and obligated to accept the awesome role of struggle, history and heaven had assigned us. He said, “I don’t think that anything is more positive than accepting who you are.” And this means accepting our fundamental role as a moral and social vanguard in this country in a still unfinished fight to expand the realm of freedom and justice in the world and acting accordingly. Haji Malcolm continues with a call for a moral grounding that upholds, in the most empowering and expansive ways, the African ethical imperative to always act in honor of the dignity and divinity within us.</p>
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<p>Within his third major focus, the moral challenge to stand up, Min. Malcolm stresses the transformative character and essentiality of practice, for he understands that practice proves and makes possible everything. Standing up in Nana Malcolm’s liberation ethics encompasses three basic practices: (1) bearing witness to truth; (2) living the truth of a recovered and reconstructed self, and (3) struggling to achieve a context of freedom, justice and equality indispensable to realizing the fullness of our personhood and the possibilities within us. To bear witness to truth is to teach and uphold the good and expose and condemn evil, to speak up in the midst of fear and silence, to refuse to go along and get along with oppression and oppressors and to reaffirm the right to a good life for everyone.</p>
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<p>Haji Malcolm's teaching on standing up, like his other teachings, is both rooted in and reflective of his own personal recovery and reconstruction. His experience teaches him that standing up is essentially offering one's life and death as a "testimony of some social value," in a word, being willing to live and die as a mirror and martyr for liberation and securing good in the world. This morality of self-sacrifice in the cause of liberation and a better society and world and humbleness about what one can do and has achieved are at the core of Nana Malcolm's ethical concept of standing up.</p>
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<p>Also, Haji Malcolm poses standing up as constantly steering and staying clear of things which would undermine our commitment to a rightful and righteously good life and our capacity to contribute to the struggle to achieve this goal. The personal battle to stay upright and committed to the struggle for the good is for Min. Malcolm a daily and ongoing challenge. But he believed that even as he had been able to stand up and sustain himself in the context of community, so can others with adequate self-assertion and support. Offering himself as an undeniable example of moral resurrection and rootedness, Min. Malcolm states that having made the commitment and passage, he can and must bear witness to its possibility and promise. For he says, "I myself, being one who was lost and dead, buried here in the rubbish of the West”, suffering from evil and ignorance, misled and manipulated was finally able “to stand upright, perpendicular. . .” and “for the first time in 400 years to see and hear." And it is this retrieved and reconstructed capacity to hear and see from a position internal to his culture and pointing outward towards the world that gave him a solid sense of history and the promise of personal and social transformative struggle.</p>
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<p>For Haji Malcolm, to stand upright here has three essential meanings. First, it is to stand in confidence and courage born of knowledge, knowledge of oneself in the historical and cultural sense and of the possibilities inherent in this grounding. Secondly, to stand upright is to stand in righteousness, free from vices and rooted in virtues which elevate and strengthen. And finally, it is to stand up courageously in practical struggle to transform oneself and society.</p>
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<p>This practical struggle which one is compelled to wage is essentially for freedom, justice and human equality, a context indispensable to human life and human flourishing. As Haji Malcolm states, "freedom is essential to life itself" and “to the development of the human being." Moreover, he continues, "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." It is this stress on the priority of human freedom as the grounds and context for justice, equality and human development that leads Haji Malcolm to argue the right to achieve "freedom by any means necessary."</p>
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<p>Min. Malcolm's ethical vision is rooted, then, in the concept of the human person’s capacity for self-transformation exemplified in his own personal passage from lumpen life to a life of righteousness, responsibility and self-conscious struggle. Thus, his fundamental lesson is his own life, the way he turned himself around, raised up, resisted and broke the racist restraints imposed on him and became a man among men and women, a leader among the leaders of the world, and a noble witness for his people to the world. It is this also which aided in grounding his faith in the masses and in their capacity to create progress, push their lives forward and lay the basis in struggle for a new world. Like Nana Frantz Fanon's wretched of the earth, the masses are for Haji Malcolm, capable of "the most drastic change," are "the most fearless" and "will stand the longest" in the struggle for a new world and a new history of humankind.</p>
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<p>Finally, Haji Malcolm reminds us, as we remember and honor him, that “a people is like a (person). Until it realizes its own talents, takes pride in its own history, expresses its own culture, affirms its own selfhood, it can never fulfill itself.” And it is only through our struggle to fully become and be ourselves and to remake society in the interest of good in the world is this fulfillment and flourishing possible.</p>
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<p><strong>Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of <em>Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture</em> and <em>Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis</em>, <a href="http://www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org">www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org</a>; <a href="http://www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org">www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org</a>; <a href="http://www.MaulanaKarenga.org">www.MaulanaKarenga.org</a>.</strong></p>
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<p>International African Arts Festival | 1360 Fulton Street, Suite 401 (4th Floor), Brooklyn, NY 11216</p>
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<p> </p></div>Kwanzaa's Meaning in the Midst of Pandemic: A Central Site of Reaffirmation and Resistance -- Dr. Maulana Karengahttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/kwanzaa-s-meaning-in-the-midst-of-pandemic-a-central-site-of-reaf2021-12-15T23:20:06.000Z2021-12-15T23:20:06.000ZTheBlackList-Publisherhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackListPublisher<div><p> </p>
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<em><strong>Dr. Maulana Karenga | 12-13-21 |</strong></em></div>
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<div>Each year at Kwanzaa we celebrate the good in and of the world. We celebrate the good of family, community and culture; the good hoped for and harvested, achieved and enjoyed, worked for, witnessed and brought to fruition. Moreover, we celebrate the good of life and love, of health, happiness and wholeness, and the good of the earth and the heavens and all in them. This we do in the best of times and even in the worst of times. And Kwanzaa, as a time of remembrance, reflection and recommitment calls for our commitment to reaffirmation of the good and resistance to all that seeks and tends to prevent, diminish or destroy it.</div>
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<div>Clearly, such a commitment to reaffirmation and resistance is valuable and useful in times like these, in the midst of a pandemic that has been so disruptive and disastrous to our lives. Indeed, it is added injury to the pathology of continuing oppression which marks, mars, overtaxes and too often takes our lives. Still, we cannot and must not despair or let ourselves be undone or defeated. And Kwanzaa's insistence on celebrating the good in spite of the dangerous, difficult and demanding times in which we now live our lives, do our work, and wage our struggles offers us an essential foundation and way forward.</div>
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<div>These troubled and troubling times of the pandemic called COVID-19 has clearly taken a terrible toll on our lives as a people, and indeed the world. But it has not undone or defeated us. In spite of vaccine inequity, vaccine misinformation and mistrust and no small measure of vaccine rejection for various reasons and continuing oppression in varied forms and places, we still radiate that legendary resilience, resourcefulness and adaptive vitality we are known for globally. But we know and have daily attention-demanding evidence that all does not come without costs. For still we suffer greatly, even though we wear our wounds well and take our losses without losing hope or faith in a future of expansive good gained in righteous and relentless struggle.</div>
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<div>Indeed, we are no novices or strangers to the disease, disaster and death dealing of evil, a deeply rooted and widely spread radical social evil. Whether we talk of the Holocaust of enslavement, the racist savagery of segregation, actual and anticipated deadly police violence or inadequate and inequitable health care that increases our chances for disease and death, we have known and know evil in its various forms and times. And we, as a people, have not only survived these hellish nightmares, but we have prevailed, developed and dared to continue hoping and working and building and achieving and striving and struggling to bring and sustain good in the world.</div>
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<div>So, let us reaffirm the good by reaffirming the goodness, sacredness and beauty of ourselves as persons and peoples. Kwanzaa teaches us, it is about reaching back, remembering and raising up the models and mirrors of excellence in our own lives and the lives of our people. It means being self-conscious, self-determining and rooted in the best and most beautiful of our own culture. It means putting aside the pathological language and imagery taught, peddled, pushed and podcast by the oppressor, breaking through the catechism of impossibilities assigned us and achieving goodness against all odds, all naysayers and no-doers.</div>
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<div>Indeed, we must constantly conceive and craft new ways to share love, beauty, life necessities, and other goods with each other, regardless of times and circumstances. And we must constantly expand our capacity to care, to share, to be other-directed while not sacrificing rightful self-care. For physicians must be rightfully concerned with their own health as they offer pathways of healing and wholeness to us. And the caretakers of loved ones and others must also rightfully take care of themselves so that they can better take care of others and enjoy their work and lives in good and meaningful ways.</div>
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<div>Here the issue of Africanness is central. For to reaffirm ourselves in the most rightful, relevant and rewarding ways, we must be clear about our primary identity as a people, as Africans, Black people, regardless of other identities we might have and feel strongly about. For our Blackness, our Africanness, our peoplehood, our community is our common ground. Indeed, in our other identities we can identity and find common ground with many others. But in our Blackness, our Africanness, we only share that identity and common ground with each other.</div>
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<div>And I say this realizing the claims of Black complexity and openness to many interpretations. But the designation and definition Black presupposes and posits a oneness, a unity of identity rooted in a particular history and culture; a singling out for oppression and a righteous and relentless resistance to it. Indeed, it is Black people who constantly question and contend about their Blackness; others don't find it applicable or useful. Kwanzaa is above all a celebration of Black people, a reaffirmation of their excellence and achievement, their soulfulness and sacredness. So, the question is not who can celebrate Kwanzaa, but who can celebrate Black people in all their excellence, achievement, soulfulness, sacredness and their struggle to be themselves and free themselves, and with others, self-consciously contribute to initiating a new history of humankind.</div>
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<div>In the context of oppression and the unfinished fight and struggle to be ourselves and free ourselves from domination, deprivation and degradation, reaffirmation of ourselves and each other is, itself, an act of resistance. In fact, it is a radically transformative act, especially when self-consciously linked to the overarching Movement. One of the things that distinguished Us and our comprehensive philosophy of Kawaida from other self-defined radical and revolutionary groups in the Sixties is that we strived and struggled for a radical transformation, not only of society and the world, but of self, society and the world. With Nana Frantz Fanon, we took the position that a new history of humankind requires a new man and woman to imagine and make it. Moreover, he taught "An authentic national liberation exists only to the precise degree to which each person has irreversibly begun his own liberation."</div>
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<div>Thus, reaffirmation of our Africanness and humanity in thought, feelings, speech and practice is a liberating act, an act of resistance to the anti-African and anti-Black systemic racism that would deny our humanity and right to be ourselves and free ourselves. Here the practice of the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) becomes a central site and source of both reaffirmation and resistance.</div>
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<div>To practice Umoja (Unity) is ultimately to unite in principle and actions that reaffirm our oneness and shared commitment to the good, to African and human good, and the well-being of the world. To practice Kujchagulia (Self-determination) is to reject oppression and insist in word and struggle on our right and responsibility to be ourselves and to free ourselves. To practice Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility) is to resist attempts to divide us and to work and struggle together in liberating ways to build the good world we all want and deserve.</div>
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<div> To practice Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics) is to reaffirm everyone's right to a life of dignity and decency and to struggle for equitable access to the shared and common good of the world. To practice Nia (Purpose) is to embrace the righteous vocation of the liberation and upraising of our people and opening the way for their flourishing and coming into the fullness of themselves. To practice Kuumba (Creativity) is to struggle against destructive tendencies wherever we find them and to practice serudj ta, the Maatian ethical imperative to repair, renew and remake the world, making it more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.</div>
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<div>And to practice the principle of Imani (Faith)) is to believe in ourselves and our people, in the goodness of life, of rightful relationships with the world and all in it, and in the righteousness and victory of our struggle. Here the personal and collective are linked in radically transformative initiatives to bring an inclusive, shared and sustained good in the world. And this is the essential meaning and motivation of reaffirmation and resistance.</div>
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<div><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of </span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, The Message and Meaning of Kwanzaa: Bringing Good Into the World</span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;"> and </span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis</span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">, <a href="http://www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org">www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org</a>; <a>www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org</a>.</span></div>
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<p><strong><span class="yiv6706662438footer-column">International African Arts Festival<span class="yiv6706662438footer-mobile-hidden"> | </span></span><span class="yiv6706662438footer-column">1360 Fulton Street<span class="yiv6706662438footer-mobile-hidden">, </span></span><span class="yiv6706662438footer-column">Suite 401 (4th Floor)<span class="yiv6706662438footer-mobile-hidden">, </span></span><span class="yiv6706662438footer-column">Brooklyn, NY 11216</span></strong></p>
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<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">The 55th Annual Kwanzaa Festival Celebration with Dr. Maulana Karenga, creator of Kwanzaa <a href="https://t.co/3vB6Bl2ALg">https://t.co/3vB6Bl2ALg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kwanzaa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kwanzaa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VirtualKwanzaa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VirtualKwanzaa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Karenga?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Karenga</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DrMaulanaKarenga?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DrMaulanaKarenga</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SendMeYourNews?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SendMeYourNews</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MaulanaKarenga?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MaulanaKarenga</a> <a href="https://t.co/PLqHtJfSiQ">pic.twitter.com/PLqHtJfSiQ</a></p>
— Kwasi Akyeampong @TheBlackList (@theblacklist) <a href="https://twitter.com/theblacklist/status/1473698065634713600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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<p> </p></div>Conceiving and Creating Kwanzaa in Struggle: Remembering and Reaffirming Its Liberational Originshttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/conceiving-and-creating-kwanzaa-in-struggle-remembering-and-reaff2021-12-09T16:50:10.000Z2021-12-09T16:50:10.000ZTheBlackList-Publisherhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackListPublisher<div><p> </p>
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<p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}9897091681,RESIZE_192X{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}9897091681,RESIZE_192X{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="9897091681?profile=RESIZE_192X" width="185" /></a></p>
<div align="center"><strong>Conceiving and Creating Kwanzaa in Struggle:</strong></div>
<div align="center"><strong>Remembering and Reaffirming Its Liberational Origins</strong></div>
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<div>Dr. Maulana Karenga | 12-06-21 |</div>
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<div>As December opens up expanded conversations and questions about the origins and practice of Kwanzaa in anticipation of its 55<sup>th</sup> anniversary celebrations by millions of African peoples around the world, it is good to remember and reaffirm its liberational origins in struggle. For indeed, Kwanzaa was conceived and created in the midst of struggle, in the transformative fire and force of the Black Freedom Movement. In 1965, the Year of the Revolt in Watts and greater Los Angeles, I was a graduate student at UCLA working on my doctorate in political science with a specialization in African Studies. But my mind and heart were turned toward the liberation struggle of our people. And the August Revolt signaled a turning point for both me and the Black Freedom Movement.</div>
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<div>For in the year 1965, the Revolt would mark a new phase of the Black Freedom Movement, from tis Civil Rights phase (1955-1965) to its Black Power phase (1965-1975). It is in this context that I, and many of my colleagues, felt a compelling need to leave the academy to join the Movement and hopefully contribute meaningfully to it. It did not mean we would totally distance ourselves from the life of learning and our colleagues who stayed or fail to see the academy as a critical site of struggle. On the contrary, it is taking the struggle to campus that opened it up for Black Studies and other Ethnic Studies, ending the uninterrupted racist reign of the Eurocentric self-congratulatory cultural narrative masquerading as an academic curriculum.</div>
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<div>The question for me and us who temporarily left the academy was one posed by our foremother Nana Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune. She said "knowledge is the prime need of the hour. But people will want to know what will you do with your knowledge?" And her answer was that we who have knowledge and continue to learn must "discover the dawn and share it with our youth and the masses of our people who need it most." And in a context of righteous and relentless struggle, this for me meant conceiving and creating something that would serve the interests of our people and our struggle and endure in meaning and relevance in our lives, our thought, and our practice. Also, Nana Haji Malcolm had called us to righteous and relentless struggle, pointing to the revolutionary youth around the world, and for us, offering the Simba liberation soldiers of the Congo as a special model.</div>
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<div>So, I first founded the organization Us, a revolutionary, cultural and social change organization to join the Movement and make our contribution as a collective rather than simply as a person. Also, since the beginning of my graduate studies, I had begun to develop a philosophy of life, work and struggle which I named Kawaida, a Swahili word that means for us tradition and reason, a rationally derived morally sensitive and a culturally rooted way of understanding and engaging self, society and the world. I defined Kawaida philosophy as "an ongoing synthesis of the best of African thought and practice in constant exchange with the world." By African I meant and mean continental and diasporan African, ancient and modern. And from this, I sought and seek to extract, pursue, practice and put forth the best of what it means to be African and human in the fullest sense of the words.</div>
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<div>It is from this philosophy and the extensive research I engaged in in African languages and cultures that I created first the Nguzo Saba and then Kwanzaa. And it is important to note and stress, I created both in the context of my organization Us whose advocates (members) were critical, even indispensable, to what I imagined, created and achieved. It is in Us in the midst of our collective work, service, struggle and institution building that the Nguzo Saba and Kwanzaa are conceived, created, introduced, discussed, developed, practiced, and eventually presented to the world African community.</div>
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<div>I created the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) as a Black value system, an African value system, a foundation and framework for being ourselves and freeing ourselves through striving and struggle. The practice of these principles was directed toward a constant striving and struggling for the good in the world, achieving and maintaining good and always becoming and being good. These values are communitarian, that is to say, they understand and engage the human person in community, related and relating in principled, purposeful and productive ways. Thus, they stress interrelatedness, togetherness, caring, cooperation, collaboration, other-directedness, and striving and struggle. We are to strive and struggle for the presence and practice of Umoja (unity); Kujichagulia (self-determination); Ujima (collective work and responsibility); Ujamaa (cooperative economics); Nia (purpose); Kuumba (creativity) and Imani (faith).</div>
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<div>Moreover, these principles and practices were introduced to offer a culturally and morally grounded guidance for the way we live our lives, do our work and wage our struggle. They serve as fundamental sources for grounding ourselves, orienting ourselves and directing our lives toward good and expansive ends. They offer liberating alternatives to vulgar individualism, mindless consumerism, degrading imitation of others, disconcern for others and alienation from the earth and our responsibility towards it.</div>
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<div>It is in imaging how I could best introduce and teach these Seven Principles, the Nguzo Saba, that I began to conceive and create Kwanzaa as a seven-day holiday. For each day of Kwanzaa is dedicated to each of the Seven Principles. Kwanzaa, then, becomes an act of freedom, an instrument of freedom , and a celebration of freedom. It is rooted in the fundamental Kawaida contention that freeing ourselves culturally is indispensable to freeing ourselves politically, that until we break the cultural hold that the oppressor has in so many of our minds, liberation is not only impossible, its unthinkable, unconceivable.</div>
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<div>Therefore, we argued and argue that cultural revolution precedes, makes possible, supports and sustains the political revolution. We saw and continue to see ourselves as revolutionaries, revolutionary cultural nationalists. And in spite of the willful distortions of its meaning, this position interprets culture not as the arts or any one aspect of a people's life. On the contrary, Kawaida defines culture as the totality of thought and practice by which a people creates itself, celebrates, sustains and develops itself, and introduces itself to history and humanity. Thus, as Nana Sekou Toure and Nana Amilcar Cabral taught, the national liberation struggle itself is an expression of culture. This is to say, it is an expression of a culture that calls it into being, supports it and sustains it.</div>
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<div>And we define cultural nationalism, Kawaida cultural nationalism, revolutionary and liberation nationalism, as thought and practice rooted in three fundamental propositions. The first is that the defining feature of any people or nation is its culture. Secondly, for a people to be itself and free itself, it must be self-conscious, self-determining and rooted in its own culture. And thirdly, the quality of life of a people and the success of their liberation struggle depends upon their waging cultural revolution within and political revolution without, resulting in the radical transformation of self, society and the world. It is as Nana Frantz Fanon proposed, bringing into being a new man and woman and starting a whole new history of humankind.</div>
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<div>So, Kwanzaa was and remains an act of freedom, as an act of reaffirmation and resistance, reaffirmation of ourselves and our right to be ourselves and free ourselves and in resistance to European cultural and political domination. It was and is an instrument of freedom, a means of creating critical free space for us to be our African selves, giving us grounding and guidance to be ourselves and free ourselves, return to our history and culture and build our community in good, meaningful and transformative ways. And Kwanzaa is and has always been also a celebration of freedom, a celebration of freedom from the negative conceptions of ourselves by a racist society, and freedom to see and sing ourselves in dignity-affirming, life-enhancing and liberating ways, and raise high and focus on the beauty, goodness, sacredness and awesome responsibility of being African in the world.</div>
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<div><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of </span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, The Message and Meaning of Kwanzaa: Bringing Good Into the World</span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;"> and </span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis</span><span style="font-family:'Palatino Linotype', 'Book Antiqua', Palatino, serif;">, <a href="http://www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org">www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org</a>; <a>www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org</a>.</span></div>
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<p><span class="yiv6904819910footer-column">International African Arts Festival<span class="yiv6904819910footer-mobile-hidden"> | </span></span><span class="yiv6904819910footer-column">1360 Fulton Street<span class="yiv6904819910footer-mobile-hidden">, </span></span><span class="yiv6904819910footer-column">Suite 401 (4th Floor)<span class="yiv6904819910footer-mobile-hidden">, </span></span><span class="yiv6904819910footer-column">Brooklyn, NY 11216</span></p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en" xml:lang="en">The 55th Annual Kwanzaa Festival Celebration with Dr. Maulana Karenga, creator of Kwanzaa <a href="https://t.co/3vB6Bl2ALg">https://t.co/3vB6Bl2ALg</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Kwanzaa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Kwanzaa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/VirtualKwanzaa?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#VirtualKwanzaa</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Karenga?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Karenga</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DrMaulanaKarenga?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DrMaulanaKarenga</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SendMeYourNews?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#SendMeYourNews</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/MaulanaKarenga?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#MaulanaKarenga</a> <a href="https://t.co/PLqHtJfSiQ">pic.twitter.com/PLqHtJfSiQ</a></p>
— Kwasi Akyeampong @TheBlackList (@theblacklist) <a href="https://twitter.com/theblacklist/status/1473698065634713600?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 22, 2021</a></blockquote>
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<p> </p></div>Reaffirming Our Africanness and Radical Tradition, 1960s: Liberation Coming From a Black Thing - by Dr. Maulana Karengahttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/reaffirming-our-africanness-and-radical-tradition-1960s-liberatio2021-04-07T20:16:27.000Z2021-04-07T20:16:27.000ZTheBlackList-Publisherhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackListPublisher<div><div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8770375491,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8770375491,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8770375491?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a>Part I. The Reaffirmation of the 1960s stands, after the Classical Period of Kemetic civilization and the Holocaust of Enslavement, as a third modal or decisive and defining period in our history. This period of our most ancient and ongoing history was a reaffirmation of our commitment to our Africanness and our radical tradition, that is to say, our liberation tradition. It was a self-conscious struggle to be ourselves and to free ourselves. We strove and struggled to be our beautiful Black selves without doubt and degradation, without restriction, constraint, penalty or oppression. And we struggled to free ourselves internally and externally from White racist oppression.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;"> The Nation of Islam and its leader, the Hon. Elijah Muhammad, challenged us to see and say Black with reverence and rightful respect, and to value this unique way we have emerged and asserted ourselves in the world. He called on us to rise from the grave of oppression and achieve our divinely determined destiny of freedom, justice and equality among the nations of the world. And his most capable representative, Min. Malcolm X, carried forth this message and augmented it with his own understanding of us, our struggle and our relationships with each other and other oppressed and struggling peoples of the world in righteous and revolutionary ways.</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">It was a time of calls and strivings to get “Back to Black,” to the beautifulness of who we were and are without needing to doubt ourselves, deny ourselves, condemn ourselves and mutilate ourselves, psychologically and physically. We said it and we meant it, “Black is Beautiful” and we declared that as sure as sunrise and day dawning, “Liberation is coming from a Black thing.” We knew too that we could not free ourselves if we did not be ourselves, i.e., claim ourselves and live our lives without disguise and self-degrading practices. We also knew we could not fully be ourselves unless we fully freed ourselves. And so, we took up the struggle and drew heavily on the best of our past history and current knowledge and practice to reaffirm our liberation tradition in thought, speech and practices.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">The reaffirmation of our Africanness and liberation tradition takes place in the midst of several defining realities that help shape the content, character and course of our struggle. We built not only on the best of our own history and culture, but also learned the lessons of struggle taught by other liberation struggles in the world. But again, we begin, continue and sustain our rootedness in our own ancient and ongoing history and culture of radical and revolutionary resistance. And in rightful commemoration of the mission and martyrdom of Min. Malcolm X, February 21, 1965, I begin with his lessons of life, love of his people and self-sacrificing struggle.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">After the NOI, clearly a defining feature of the Reaffirmation of the 1960s is the mission and martyrdom of Min. Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. Min. Malcolm’s self-defining and sacred mission was to urge and enable African people to “wake up, clean up and stand up.” He taught us to appreciate the essential beauty and ultimate sacredness of Black lives and Black people and the moral imperative to free ourselves from unconsciousness, behaviors unworthy of us, and all kinds and concoctions of oppression, internally and externally. Thus, he taught, organized and modelled a process and practice directed toward a </span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">critical consciousness</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">, </span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">moral grounding</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;"> and </span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">transformative struggle</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;"> that strengthened our capacity to develop our potential as persons and a people and build a self-conscious, self-determining and liberated community.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Moreover, Seba Malcolm, master teacher, taught us to pursue “freedom by any means necessary,” that is to say, first by any means the oppressor compels us to use in self-defense and in rightful pursuit of our liberation from oppression. And second, it is to say by whatever service and sacrifice necessary to advance our liberation. It is here that Hajji Malik models not only how we are to live for the struggle, but also how we must be ready to offer the supreme sacrifice for the struggle, i.e., our very lives. This means becoming a willing sacrifice for the liberation of our people, if it becomes necessary. This is the meaning of his martyrdom, then, a willing giving of his life so that we could live freer, fuller and more meaningful ones.</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Indeed, this is why we stress his martyrdom more than his assassination. For his assassination is what his and our enemies and the enemies of human freedom did to deprive us and our struggle of him. And we must righteously condemn and continue to resist them. But his martyrdom, his self-sacrifice, is what he did, giving us the awesome gift of his very life for our liberation. Thus, we of Us call the day of commemoration of his martyrdom, </span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Siku ya Dhabihu</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">, The Day of Sacrifice. And in the midst of all the fear and anxiety brought about by his assassination, we stood up, February 21, 1966, a year after his martyrdom, to honor him for the magnitude and meaning of his life and death for us and his revolutionary role as Noble Witness (</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">shahid</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">) for us, his people, and his faith Islam, and the world.</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Another defining reality in the shaping of the Reaffirmation of the 1960s was the Watts Revolt, a decisive turning point in our history and liberation struggle. Although our oppressor tries to discredit the revolt by calling it a riot, we immediately distinguish our revolt against oppression from riots, mob rampaging and violence without overarching political aims. On the contrary, </span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">a revolt is a collective act of resistance to the established order motivated by political aims and ideas to end oppression</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">. The Watts Revolt was an act of resistance against police violence, merchant exploitation and ongoing systemic racist oppression.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Furthermore, the Watts Revolt and all the other revolts which followed it were a fundamental and defining practice of Black Power. Indeed, it marked a line of historical transition from the Civil Rights phase of the Black Freedom Movement to the Black Power phase. And it was part and parcel of a long and continuous history of Black revolts and resistance from the Holocaust of enslavement and colonialism to Ferguson, Baltimore and beyond.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Also, an additional defining factor in shaping the Reaffirmation of the 1960s was the continental liberation movements. Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah, founding president of independent Ghana, spoke of seeking the political kingdom, political power, with a patient and persistent educating and organizing and learning from the masses of our people. And he taught pan-Africanism and African rising as a decisive power for good in the world. Sekou Toure, founding president of independent Guinea, urged full-reAfricanization as both a cultural and political practice. He stressed the essentiality of a cultural revolution that laid the basis for the political liberation struggle. Indeed, he defined national liberation as a cultural act itself, an act rooted in and required by a culture of resistance as Kawaida teaches.</span></div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"> </div>
<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;"><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">And there was Frantz Fanon, psychiatrist, revolutionary, representative and soldier of Algerian independence, whose master work, </span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">The Wretched of the Earth</span><span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:16px;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">, became essential and unavoidable reading. He taught us that each person bears the liberation struggle within themselves and that real liberation means not only the defeat of the colonial system, but also the disappearance of the colonized person. Thus, he stressed we must leave Europe where they are always talking about abstract man, and yet always colonizing, killing and enslaving real men, women and children. And we must, ourselves, rethink the questions of Africa and humanity and strive to initiate a new history of humankind and bring into being a new man and woman.</span></div>
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<div style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:normal;font-weight:400;font-size:14px;line-height:inherit;font-family:Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif;vertical-align:baseline;color:#000000;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:left;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px;background-color:#ffebc4;">Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of <span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture</span> and <span style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;font-style:italic;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;line-height:inherit;font-family:inherit;vertical-align:baseline;color:inherit;">Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis</span>, <a href="http://www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org">www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org</a>; <a href="http://www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org">www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org</a>; <a href="http://www.MaulanaKarenga.org">www.MaulanaKarenga.org</a>.</div>
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<p> </p></div>Dr. Maulana Karenga :Taking Down Flags and Tearing Down Walls: Some Seriously Needed Distinctionshttps://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/dr-maulana-karenga-taking-down-flags-and-tearing-down-walls-some-2020-07-19T16:08:38.000Z2020-07-19T16:08:38.000ZTheBlackList-Publisherhttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/TheBlackListPublisher<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}3828866567,RESIZE_930x{{/staticFileLink}}"><img class="align-full" src="{{#staticFileLink}}3828866567,RESIZE_710x{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="3828866567?profile=RESIZE_710x" width="710" /></a></p>
<div>This is a revisiting of an ongoing conversation beginning in 2015 about taking down symbols of oppression, especially Confederate flags, but also statues, murals and all public signs, symbols and celebrations of our domination, deprivation and degradation as a people and other people of color. My argument here, as then, is that these acts are necessary, but not sufficient, an important start, but not the end of the long, difficult and dangerous journey to a radical reconception and reconstruction of the source of these racist symbols, signs and celebrations, i.e., society itself.</div>
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<div>It is important to assert at the outset, in the interest of seriously needed distinctions, that a symbolic act of taking down a Confederate flag (or statue) is not the same as or a substitute for tearing down the walls of White supremacy for which they stand. Taking down the Confederate flag (or statues), like the Obama election, clearly has its symbolic value, and also like the Obama election, it can give us a rightful sense of satisfaction and victory, and then leave us with little else. For the moment did not lead to building a movement, and the single act assumed a separate meaning in and of itself. The election became, like the removal of the flag (or the statues) could become, the end rather than a means to further and complete the long and costly struggle for racial and social justice.</div>
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<div>Indeed, this symbolic act could end up, like the Obama election, benefitting others more than us and being peddled by the established order as: a substitute for serious substantive change; a sign and wonder of Southern redemption from the sin and savagery of racism; and self-congratulatory evidence of a country moving in earnest beyond its White supremacist past and similar present. Also, it provides the lulling illusion and Hollywoodish imagery of moving forward while standing still in places and spaces where it matters, i.e., in areas of wealth, power and status. Furthermore, it should be noticed that the Confederate flag (and statues), not racism, is now the prompt for discussion about the South and American society. The discussion of the flag minimizes the real problem of racism so that it seems it can be easily solved by simply taking the flag (or statues) down. But engaging racism, seriously, means tearing down racial walls of grossly unequal wealth, power and status that the flag symbolizes, celebrates and reaffirms.</div>
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<div>Moreover, the media conversation has shifted from lowering the flag to what this means for candidates, parties, and ultimately elections. And in the midst of this, our real interests are overlooked, lost or rendered satisfied and no longer relevant. Indeed, if history is any judge, the conversation will be diverted from what people are doing to us to what we are allegedly doing to ourselves that facilitates or even justifies our treatment and oppression. So, soon someone will be sent, if they are not already among us, to lecture us on internal reasons for our continued oppression, police and vigilante violence against us, the racial gap in wealth and power, and the degraded status we seem unable to escape or righteously improve, even when we deny our identity and sacrifice our dignity to appease, accommodate or just be accepted.</div>
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<div>But now, what is to be decided and done, now that the funerals and eulogies have been completed, the flags lowered, strangely folded respectfully and placed in museums of revised memory and the trash bins of a brutal and bloody history? Who is to raise the critical question about not just the South, but also about American society as a whole which has certainly not changed its oppressive and wicked ways of “whiteness”, simply by taking down a flag (or statues) symbolizing racial hate, savage violence, racist terrorism and undeniable treason?</div>
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<div>There is no one with a modicum of sense or sanity, honesty or intelligence who could deny that the Confederate flag (or statues) was always a symbol and reaffirmation of commitment to enslavement and oppression and racial segregation and racist terrorism, regardless of the unsuccessful attempts to cover it with conversations using less self-indicting language. And it is a telling self-indictment of American society for complicity and consent that it would exonerate its Confederate White brothers and sisters from the crime of treason; reintegrate even the unrepentant into the national government; embrace and honor their symbols and heroes even in the capital and military buildings and grounds; and allow them to return to modified forms of enslavement, segregation and racial savagery of innumerable kinds against Black people and other peoples of color. And we miss the mark if we fail to see and engage this racial and racist reality.</div>
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<div>Dr. Martin Luther King’s comments in his eulogy for the four martyred little Black girls, brutally killed in a racist bombing of the 16<sup>th</sup> Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, September 15, 1963, called attention to the fact that “these children—unoffending, innocent and beautiful—were victims of one of the most vicious, heinous crimes ever perpetrated against humanity”. And the racist massacre of the nine innocent martyrs at Emanuel AME in Charleston, S.C., who were equally innocent, unoffending and beautiful, was also a heinous crime against our people and humanity, (as is the continued savage police and vigilante violence).</div>
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<div>Dr. King goes on to say that “Yet they died nobly. They are the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.. So, they have something to say to us in their death”. Indeed, “They have something to say to every minister who has remained silent behind the safe security of stain glass windows”; to “every politician who has fed his constituents the stale bread of hatred and the spoiled meat of racism”, and to “a federal government that has compromised with undemocratic practices of Southern Dixiecrats and the blatant hypocrisy of right-wing northern Republicans”. And “They have something to say to every (Black person) who passively accepts the evil system of segregation and stands on the sidelines in the midst of a mighty struggle for justice”.</div>
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<div>Finally, Dr. King asks each and all of us—African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans and Euro-Americans—to hear the voice of the martyrs, saying to us “that we must substitute courage for caution” and especially “that we must be concerned not merely about who murdered them, but about the system, the way of life and the philosophy which produced the murderers”. Min Malcolm X had taught us before a similar lesson of seeing and confronting the American system as a whole, saying, “America is Mississippi. There is no such thing as a Mason-Dixon Line” (dividing North and South). It’s (all) America. If one room in your house is dirty, you got a dirty house. The entire house is under your jurisdiction”. And thus, it is your responsibility to clean up the whole house.</div>
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<div>As Dr. King and Min. Malcolm both taught, we are not to take substitutes for real freedom, justice and equity. Indeed, all the martyred mothers and daughters, fathers and sons say to us: don’t accept air sandwiches for the food of a dignified and decent life; or the flood of flowery words for the healing water of an actual liberating way forward. And don’t accept or mistake taking down a flag (or statues) for tearing down the walls of oppression over which the flag flew and still flies; over which militarized police and vigilantes, drones and other dreadful things hover; and over which a ruthless and self-righteous racial and corporate class still rules.</div>
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<div>Finally, our martyrs and all our ancestors say to us: “Continue the struggle. Keep the faith. Hold the line. Love and respect our people and each other. Seek and speak truth. Do and demand justice. Be constantly concerned with the well-being of the world and all in it. And dare help rebuild a righteous overarching Movement which prefigures and makes possible the good world we all want and deserve, and work and struggle to bring into being”.</div>
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<div>Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, <a href="http://www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org">www.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org</a>; <a>www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org</a>.</div>
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<div>07-06-20</div>
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<div> </div></div>Celebrate Kwanzaa in Brooklyn with Dr. Maulana Karenga. Dec. 27, 2011https://www.theblacklist.net/forum/topics/celebrate-kwanzaa-in-brooklyn-with-dr-maulana-karenga-dec-27-20112011-12-19T16:43:37.000Z2011-12-19T16:43:37.000ZSendMeYourNewshttps://www.theblacklist.net/members/SendMeYourNews<div><div style="padding-bottom:10px;background-color:#ffffff;" align="center"><div style="width:600px;font-family:verdana, arial;color:#000000;font-size:8pt;" align="left"><center><table id="VWPLINK" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" width="595"><tbody><tr><td style="font-family:Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#000000;font-size:8pt;" width="100%"></td>
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</tr><tr><td style="background-color:#670000;" bgcolor="#670000" height="20" width="100%"><table id="content_LETTER.BLOCK4" border="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align:left;font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#ffb426;font-size:8pt;" align="left" width="50%"><div style="text-align:center;" align="center"><b><span style="font-size:16pt;"><br /><br /> The New York Chapter of <br /> The National Association of <br /> Kawaida Organizations</span> <br /></b><div><span style="font-size:12pt;"><span style="font-size:12pt;">NAKO-NY<br /> on the 45th Anniversary Kwanzaa Celebration<br /><b>presents<br /><br /></b></span></span><div><span style="font-family:'Century Gothic', 'ITC Avant Garde', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#f2ee79;font-size:16pt;text-decoration:underline;">Dr. Maulana Karenga</span></div>
<span style="font-size:12pt;"><b>2011 Kwanzaa message<br /><em>"Kwanzaa & the 7 Principles</em><br /><em>"Sharing and Sustaining the World"</em><br /><br /> Tuesday (Kujichagalia-Self Determination) Dec. 27<br /> 5:30-9:30 pm at Boys & Girls H.S.<br /> 1700 Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y. 11213<br /><br /></b></span></div>
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</tr><tr><td colspan="2" width="100%"><a name="LETTER.BLOCK8"></a><table style="margin-bottom:10px;" id="content_LETTER.BLOCK8" border="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align:left;font-family:Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;color:#ffffff;font-size:8pt;" align="left" valign="top"><br /><img style="text-align:right;" src="http://i908.photobucket.com/albums/ac285/bornuimpu/th_UAD20MAIN20Finale2030020dpi20photo20HORZ20WEBcopy.jpg?t=1324154777" align="right" border="0" height="147" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="281" alt="th_UAD20MAIN20Finale2030020dpi20photo20HORZ20WEBcopy.jpg?t=1324154777" /><div><span style="font-size:10pt;">The Creator of Kwanzaa, Dr. Maulana Karenga will address his theme at this year's celebration.</span></div>
<br /><div><span style="font-size:10pt;">Dr. Karenga, is professor of Africana Studies at California State University-Long Beach. He is <br />chair of the Organization Us and the National Association of Kawaida Organizations. Executive Director of the African American Cultural Center and the</span> <span style="font-size:10pt;">Kawaida Institute of Pan African Studies. Dr. Karenga is also author of numerous scholarly articles and books including <em>Kawaida and Questions of Life <br />and Struggle; Maat, The Moral Ideal in Ancient Egypt: A Study in Classical <br />African Ethics</em>; Selections from the <em>Husia: Sacred Wisdom of Ancient Egypt; Introduction to <br />Black Studies</em>, 4thEdition; <em>Odu Ifa</em>: The</span> <span style="font-size:10pt;"><em>Ethical Teachings.</em></span></div>
<br /><div><span style="font-size:10pt;">Dr. Karenga is the creator of the pan-African cultural holiday Kwanzaa and the Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles) and</span> <span style="font-size:10pt;">author of the authoritative text titled <em>Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture.</em> He is also the subject</span> <span style="font-size:10pt;">of the newly released book by Dr. Molefi Asante titled: Maulana Karenga: <em>An Intellectual Portrait.</em></span></div>
<br /><div><span style="font-size:10pt;">Entertainment will be provided by Camden, New Jersey, Universal African Dance and Drum Ensemble and Charisa, the Violin Diva, Zahmu, vocalist and composer, and Q City Soundz.</span></div>
<br /><div><span style="font-size:10pt;">This event will take place at Boys & Girls High School, 1700 Fulton Street, 11213, in Brooklyn, <br />New York.</span><br /><br /></div>
<div><span style="font-size:10pt;">There is a $10 admission charge for adults and for seniors and children $7.00. For further information call (718) 789-</span><span style="font-size:10pt;">3264 or email nakoinfogroup@ yahoo.com.</span></div>
<div><span style="font-size:10pt;">Vendors should call (718) 479-4186</span></div>
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