Category Archives: Organizing the Diaspora

Discussions about how to organize, educate and mobilize the Diaspora.

The Forked Tongue Files of Electoral Poly-Tricks: November 2024

The country holds its breath as Election Day approaches. The major candidates hold massive rallies in a last-ditch effort to mobilize voters in their favor, even as they confidently predict victory for themselves and their followers nervously watch the early vote totals and crunch the latest poll numbers. People in the electorate struggle to sort out fact from fiction in the face of a constant onslaught of disinformation (complete with “deep fake” videos and posts on X), they speculate among each other about the latest developments, they argue in favor of their preferred candidates, or they debate the merits of participating in the electoral process at all. For someone trying to understand the political intrigues and make an informed voting decision, things can get quite confusing.

In the final week leading up to the November 5 general election, the main antagonists decided to give the public a little push, making their “closing arguments” in an effort to secure as many votes as possible by providing a peek as to how they plan to move the country forward (or backward).

One Last Appeal to the Voters

On Sunday October 27, former president Donald Trump held a rally at Madison Square Garden (MSG), at which a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as “a floating island of garbage” among other racist and otherwise xenophobic remarks from a variety of speakers (https://www.npr.org/2024/10/28/nx-s1-5167948/the-offensive-rhetoric-used-at-trumps-madison-square-garden-rally; https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-madison-square-garden-rally/680424/). Trump acolyte and political advisor Stephen Miller continued the authoritarian language (“America is for Americans and Americans only”; https://forward.com/opinion/668440/miller-trump-madison-square-garden-immigrants/) he had used to threaten opponents of the Trump administration years ago when Trump was in the White House. And Trump himself, when asked later to apologize for the rally’s more divisive and xenophobic rhetoric, instead tried to disavow any knowledge of such hateful rhetoric and insisted that the event was an “absolute lovefest”, reminiscent of his insistence that the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol was “a day of love”. Critics and analysts compared this event to a Nazi rally at the same Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Square_Garden). Trump’s MSG rally came within a week of former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s manic and misogynistic “Daddy’s home and you’ve been a bad girl” screed at an October 23 Turning Point Action rally in Duluth, Georgia (https://newrepublic.com/post/187485/tucker-carlson-daddy-trump-spanking-speech). The level of vitriol at these rallies led Puerto Rican musician Nicky Jam, who Trump had referred to as a “Black music superstar” and misgendered as “she” at an earlier rally, to withdraw his endorsement for Trump, stating that Puerto Ricans “deserve respect.”

On Tuesday October 29, vice president Kamala Harris derided Trump as “deranged and unhinged” at a rally she held on the same grounds where Trump had delivered his January 6, 2021 speech that had helped incite the insurrection and attack on the US Capitol, and made what has been billed as her “closing argument” in which she formally asked for the votes of the American people. She touted the planks of her agenda designed to protect women’s reproductive rights, provide tax breaks to middle class and working families, and lend an ear to those who disagree with her policies, in contrast to Trump’s claims that he would seek to prosecute and imprison those who oppose him as “the enemy from within”.

Propaganda and Scuttlebutt

Harris has been derided by her political opponents for her supposed lack of intelligence, a claim that frankly does not hold water, as well as her alleged support for “putting ‘illegals’ up in five star hotels” (a charge that has been repeatedly disputed) and providing sex-change operations for prisoners (a charge made repeatedly with carefully selected video snippets in commercials approved by Trump). Others have questioned her Blackness, spurred on by Trump’s claim at a National Association of Black Journalists event earlier this summer that Harris, a graduate of Howard University and a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority “suddenly became Black”, and she has been pilloried by some in the Afrikan-American community for allegedly not planning any policies that would specifically benefit Black Americans. While these claims have also been disputed, and she has herself increased her outreach to Afrikan American groups and announced a number of policies (homeowner credits, child tax credits, assistance in starting small businesses) that, if implemented, would assist Black voters, this has not convinced a number of her critics whom it has been alleged have held her to a higher standard of proof than her Republican opponent.

Meanwhile, Democratic supporters point to Trump’s embrace of international autocrats (Viktor Orban of Hungary, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, Kim Jong Un of North Korea, former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, former Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte and Russia’s Vladimir Putin); his romanticizing of historical dictators (his former Chief of Staff, John Kelly, recently recounted Trump’s comments that he wished he had “Hitler’s generals” working for him); his comments about being “a dictator for one day”, getting rid of the Constitution and jailing his political opponents; and the policies that have been directly espoused by Trump (which many of his supporters claim is their motivation for voting for him): mass deportations, a return to “stop-and-frisk” policing, elimination of the Department of Education, expansion of the ban on abortions that was started by the Supreme Court’s striking down the historic 1973 Roe v. Wade case on June 24, 2022, and an increase in “drill baby drill” oil exploration in deep water locations, Indigenous territories and protected ecosystems among others. Project 2025, the “Mandate for Leadership wish list” produced by The Heritage Foundation, is most often referenced in this regard; its 922 pages are an intimidating read for many, but a more abbreviated version can be found on Trump’s own Web site in his Agenda 47, or his “promises to the American people”.

Check out The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 here: (https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf)

Read Donald Trump’s Agenda 47 at his Web site here: (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/platform/)

Read the Democratic Party’s political platform here: (https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTER-PLATFORM.pdf)

Blotting Out Third Parties

In the meantime, the voices of Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein and independent candidate Dr. Cornel West, both of whom have made reparations for the descendants of enslaved Afrikans, environmental stewardship and justice for Palestinians currently cowering under a genocidal assault from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israeli Defense Forces major planks in their presidential agendas, are being silenced by the mass media’s obsession with the two-party race between the Donkey and the Elephant. And the platform of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), whose candidate is Claudia De La Cruz, gets even less attention, to say nothing about that of the Libertarian Party’s Chase Oliver.

Read the Green Party platform here: (https://www.gp.org/platform)

Check out Dr. Cornel West’s platform here:. (https://www.cornelwest2024.com/platform)

Read the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s platform here: (https://votesocialist2024.com/about-the-candidates)

The Libertarian Party’s platform can be found here: (https://www.lp.org/platform/)

Historic (and Ahistoric) Implications

To be sure, this election carries historic implications even if one’s tunnel vison keeps one focused only on the two major political parties and their standard bearers. Kamala Harris may yet become the first woman US president in history, accomplishing the feat that former First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had failed to accomplish in 2016 (though she actually did beat Trump by several million votes, losing only because of the slave-era Electoral College and its arcane method of allocating a disproportionate number of electoral votes to the southern states). Harris would follow former president Barck Obama as the second president of Afrikan ancestry (her father is Afro-Caribbean) and make history again as the first president of East Indian ancestry (her mother was East Indian). Meanwhile, Trump would establish a somewhat dubious historical precedent himself, becoming the first president (or one of the first) to win the White House, lose it somewhat resoundingly in the following election, then win it back later; he could also become the first president who had been impeached twice and indicted for a number of felonies (including inciting an insurrection) before and after winning the White House a second time.

The implications of this election have been emphasized (some would say hyped) in classic dualistic, good-vs.-evil fashion. Some examples:

  • Abortion (“pro-choice”) versus anti-abortion (“pro-life”): women’s reproductive rights versus going back to the days before Roe v. Wade when women bled to death in alleys, only this time dying because of a wider ban on reproductive care of practically any kind, including in cases pf rape, incest or when the life of the woman is in danger. (Anti-abortion activists might consider this a reasonable trade-off, while abortion-rights activists have recently pointed out that in some states, a woman is not allowed to abort a pregnancy until she is literally at death’s door; a compromise might involve protections for a fetus past an agreed point in a pregnancy but not cause undue risks to the health of the mother.)
  • Environmental stewardship versus a return to “drill baby drill” and the elimination of electric car mandates, though Harris has herself stated that she will not stop hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”, which is a particularly devastating procedure involving injection of toxic chemicals into the ground to facilitate extraction of natural gas.
  • Establishment of a legal pathway to citizenship for immigrants versus mass deportations. Trump supporters accuse Harris of trying to import millions of illegal immigrants and use them to illegally vote her into office. Opponents of Trump point to the singularly cruel practice of separating children from their families during his presidential term. Between 500 and a thousand of these children still had not been reunited with their families as of earlier this year, and critics have stated that, concerning the Trump administration policy, “the cruelty was the point.”
  • Police review boards versus “stop and frisk” and qualified immunity for police officers who abuse citizens. Despite Trump’s attempts to paint the January 6, 2021 insurrectionists, who had injured numerous Capitol Police that day, he continues to support the brutal actions of police across the country, at least when they brutalize “others” (Afrikan Americans, immigrants and the “libs” that he and his supporters want to “own”).
  • Expansion of voting rights versus voter suppression in the name of “ballot security” and “stopping voter fraud” (cases alleging this, largely in Afrikan American districts, have been dismissed in courts across the country).
  • Embracing democracy versus supporting international autocrats, living and dead, including Adolph Hitler.
  • The Death Penalty. While this issue has not received as much attention as perhaps it should, it must be pointed out that, when the execution of Marcellus Williams was debated in the Supreme Court in September, the six Republican-appointed justices (Alito, Thomas, Cavanaugh, Coney-Barrett, Gorsuch, Roberts) voted to execute him, while the three Democratic-appointed justices (Sotomayor, Brown-Jackson, Kagan) voted to block the execution. As a result of the Supreme Court decision, Missouri’s Republican governor Mike Parson, attorney general Andrew Bailey and the Missouri Supreme Court proceeded with the execution of Williams on Tuesday, September 24, over the public objections of the victim’s family (who simply did not want him executed) and the original case’s prosecuting attorney (who was now convinced Williams might have been wrongly convicted). This is somewhat consistent with the trend among Republican governors, presidents and judges in favor of “hang ’em high” capital punishment regardless of evidence of possible innocence. (https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/09/supreme-court-allows-marcellus-williams-to-be-executed/)

Dr. Ron Daniels, founder and president of the Institute of the Black World (IBW), posted a commentary (Democracy in Danger: Black Led Rainbow Wave to the Rescue – Dedicated to Rev. Jesse L. Jackson on His 83rd Birthday, by Dr. Ron Daniels, October 8, 2024) that essentially urged readers to go to the polls in unprecedented numbers to support Harris, based largely on the critical need to prevent a Trump presidency that could usher in a dark chapter in the United States of autocracy, repression and White Supremacist terrorism. (Read the article here: https://ibw21.org/commentary/vantage-point-articles/democracy-in-danger-black-led-rainbow-wave-to-the-rescue/?sourceid=1041761&emci=86dbe1e0-9c85-ef11-8474-6045bda8aae9&emdi=8889e938-bd85-ef11-8474-6045bda8aae9&ceid=10955336)

Electoral Poly-Tricks

As we have mentioned above, all of this has obscured information on the other “third party” candidacies of Dr. Cornel West, Dr. Jill Stein, Claudia De La Cruz and Chase Oliver. As a result, we careen into election season with limited to no knowledge about our full plate of options. Some would say that this helps to crystallize the real issues because the likelihood that anyone other than Harris or Trump will win the election is practically nil. Still, it has been stated often that a well-informed populace is necessary to a healthy democracy, and in many ways we as an electorate are often anything but well-informed. This article is admittedly late to the party, since a large percentage of the electorate has already voted early or by mail, but those who plan to go to the polls on Election Day and have time to follow some of the above links might gain some perspective that they did not have before. Our concern is that people go to the polls with some perspective, and that we think before we make a knee-jerk voting decision.

On Saturday, October 12, a Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting was held at the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT) on Harford Road in East Baltimore. The panel included Dr. Ausar Winkler, a trauma expert, counselor and founder of TNAT; Bro. Everett Winchester, co-president of the UNIA-ACL Division 106 Barca-Clarke in Baltimore; and Bro. Nnamdi Lumumba, founder of the Ujima People’s Progress Party (UPP), which is building a Black worker-led political party in Maryland. The topic of the Town Hall was “Electoral Poly-Tricks”, designed to discuss the community’s understanding and approach to the electoral process and not to hold a candidate’s forum or push any particular political platform. The panelists discussed their different political positions, whether they involved the community’s specific issues, reaching out to the grassroots or supporting third parties. The attendees, in person and on Zoom, expressed their support for Kamala Harris (most importantly to “stop Donald Trump”), their interest in candidacies like those of Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Jill Stein, their unfamiliarity with the issues proposed by PSL’s De La Cruz, or their ambivalence about voting altogether. (It was acknowledged that the attendees would be less likely to vote for Trump or even the relatively conservative Libertarian candidate, Chase Oliver.) They also stressed the need for us as Afrikan People to do a better job of connecting the activists with the grassroots community and to establish our own Pan Afrikan Agenda, linked with an independent political organizing body, separate from Democratic, Republican or other outside influence, built to represent the people’s needs. (Read our report on the October 12 Town Hall here.)

Our take at the October 12 “Electoral Poly-Tricks” Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall was, and is, this: choose to vote or choose not to vote, but as long as one is working in some way to lift up our community, their personal belief should not be denigrated. It comes down to a personal choice whether one votes for Harris, votes for a third party, votes for Trump (though it appeared no one in attendance was voting for Trump, and his platform, with all of its self-professed misogyny, racism and autocracy, does seem to us to be completely inimical to Pan Afrikan uplift) or chooses not to vote at all.

We recognize that, for some, they see little difference between Harris and Trump: both will allow extractive industries to continue, both oppose reparations for enslavement, both will support Netanyahu and Israel even as their actions in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and now Iran skirt international law and even break it altogether. Some of us will refuse to support imperialism from either a Harris or Trump administration, and that principled stand is honorable. Others, however, see the differences, many of which have been listed above, but most importantly, the embrace of international dictators and domestic White Supremacist terrorists by Trump, and the efforts to eliminate all form of reproductive freedom by the Republican Party in general, which has become a political party in full thrall to the Orange One.  Those who are focused on these contrasts see “stopping Trump” and preventing the United States from plunging into a possible full-blown dictatorship that could endanger the entire planet as Priority One, to be pursued before any of the other issues that we have with both political parties can even be confronted.

Whatever your motivations are and whatever your political calculus is, the important thing is that you think about your voting decisions and not simply make them by rote, for convenience or out of pure emotion. Know why you are casting a ballot for one candidate or another, or refusing to cast a ballot at all. But also know this: whoever becomes the next president of the United States is not your savior, especially if you are a person of Afrikan descent. We all hailed Barack Obama as our hero when he was elected in 2008. The Rev. Jesse Jackson cried on camera. We danced in the streets, jubilant that Our Hero had won and would sort everything out. We were in a Post-Racial America, the pundits said. Then the drone attacks in Afghanistan increased. Then the whistleblowers were increasingly prosecuted instead of heeded. Then the 2009 follow-up review sessions of the 2001 World Conference Against Racism were minimized and even snubbed. Then, in March of 2011, Libya, once one of the most literate nations in the world and the African Union’s largest single benefactor, was bombed into the last century by the US and NATO, and Muammar Gadafi, the onetime Pan-Arab supporter of terrorist organizations who had apologized for his past, made reparation to the survivors and families of the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, pledged to suppress Arab terrorism and converted to a position of Pan-Afrikanism, was killed by rebels in Libya as a result of the US and NATO strikes, resulting in Libya becoming the basket case it is today and its military arsenal falling into the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Labat (ISIL) and Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the abductors of the Chibok Girls less than a year later. These things occurred under the Obama administration, and we can expect other objectionable actions by the US to occur under a Harris administration, or even a West or Stein administration, and certainly under a Trump administration.

The point is this: a “president of the United States” is going to do “president of the United States”-type things. Some of those things will be reprehensible, and we must be ready to fight them. No matter what decision you make in this election, know that you will have to be ready to resist and fight whoever wins, even the candidate you support. Our great mistake as a people has been that we either go to sleep when “our hero” is elected, expecting them to handle everything for us, or we run and hide when “the enemy” wins, waiting for the storm to pass in four years, instead of asserting our Constitutional right as American citizens to use our voice and leverage our right to free speech to oppose those deeds that go against the people and against truth, justice and righteousness.

Vote or don’t vote. But do something to lift up your community, and if you do vote, know who and what you are voting for, know what the consequences will be of your decision, and be ready to continue to organize our community for the time that we will need to raise our voices. For rest assured, that time will come.

 

 

 

 

Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition Holds “Electoral Poly-Tricks” Town Hall in East Baltimore

On Saturday, October 12, 2024, the “Electoral Poly-Tricks” Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting was held at the Temple of New African Thought, located on 5525 Harford Road in East Baltimore. The purpose of the Town Hall was not to present a candidates’ forum where political hopefuls would subject us all to their political platforms and their long lists of promises of what they will do for our community; it was planned as a discussion among us as a community about what motivates us to participate, or not participate, on the electoral process and to make the voting decisions we make. We believe we succeeded in meeting that goal.

Sis. Tomiko, cultural anthropologist and founding director of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), conducted the Libation to open the meeting. Bro. Cliff, Maryland Facilitator of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), member of the North America Regional Coordinating Committee of the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM) and Moderator of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC), then went over the meeting plan for the Town Hall and explained the history of the Pan Afrikan Town Hall Meetings from 2007 to the present, after which he and Sis. Tomiko introduced the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC), the organizers of the Town Hall, and its cooperative coalition organizing strategy that includes the Seniors Advocacy Network, the Ubuntu Domestic Violence Collective and the Afrikan Women’s Defense Collective.

Bro. Cliff introduced the theme of the meeting: “Electoral Poly-Tricks”; proposed some questions to consider and assumptions we make as citizens when we go (or don’t go) to the polls. The aim of the Town Hall was to inspire the community to think when we go to the polls and to look ahead, after the elections, to build our own independent Pan Afrikan political infrastructure.

The Panelists present at the meeting were:

  • Bro. Everett Winchester, Minister of Information for Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL) globally and President of the Division 106 Barca-Clarke (named for General Hannibal Barca and Dr. John Henrik Clarke) in Baltimore
  • Bro. Nnamdi Lumumba, co-founder of Ujima Peoples Progress Party (UPP), which also is participating in the National Black Radical Political Convention (NBRPC), where he serves as Executive Secretary
  • Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler, founder of Temple of New African Thought (TNAT) Holistic Wellness Center, race-based trauma expert, social scientist, scholar-activist, counselor, educator, professor and podcast host
  • Two more Panelists, Baba Khalid Raheem (New Afrikan Independence Party and National Black Radical Political Convention, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) and Baba Charles Barron (former city council member and independent Pan Afrikan activist, also with the National Black Radical Political Congress, New York City, New York) would join the discussion later over Zoom.

The panelists begin by sharing their general views

Bro. Everett Winchester described the electoral process as “very difficult”. We look for what feels good to us, the “lesser of two evils”, but not what gets us power. We should know every elected official in our community so we can know who to pressure to ensure we get something in return for our vote. Other geographical jurisdictions and ethnic/racial communities get more from their candidates because they are better organized to wield power than we are.

Bro. Nnamdi Lumumba’s organization, UPP, is geared around de-mystifying politics and building power in the electoral arena. The purpose of politics is to make decisions, make policy and determine who gets resources. Elections have a particular part in this. We use ideas from Western Europe which doesn’t really have democracy (more like an advanced, refined version of feudalism) and from the United States which doesn’t have real democracy either, having built itself by enslaving and exploiting others, most specifically our ancestors and our Sisters and Brothers in Afrika and the Global South. The process of real democracy is working together cooperatively. Maurice Bishop’s Grenada pursued this goal before it was destabilized by US and other foreign intervention. In the United States, we only talk about democracy when we are told to vote every two, four or six years. The intent of elections is to wage a nonviolent struggle for control of the state, to replace the warlords’ historical ways of violence and bloodshed. Control of the state is important because it means control of the courts, the police and the legislatures that decide what resources get deployed for the people. We don’t look at it that way so we come across as beggars during election season.

Dr. Ausar Winkler noted that we only look at politics through the lens of electoral politics. Political statements are made everywhere, including our choice in clothes. We all believe we are doing the right thing, even those who are voting for Trump. There is the White Supremacist Republican Party and the White Feminist liberal party, the Democrats. The most radical you can be (without being punished) is what the White Feminists prescribe in the Democratic Party. We need to have more nuanced and sincere discussions, including “what is my body”. We also have to look at the man, woman and child and not get caught up in White Feminist attitudes.

Bro. Everett noted that the system was not meant for us; it was meant to keep us down. In a race for economic power, resources and education, Dr. Claud Anderson says we are in last place. We need to come together and start demanding things; until then, others are making decisions for us, including decisions that impact our Sisters and their bodies. The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey said everywhere he went in the world, Black people were on the bottom, and Bro. Everett sees this today. This system was not meant for us, and we need to come together and fight for those things our people need.

Bro. Nnamdi started talking about some of the assumptions we make. We assume that we have to vote for one side of White Power and White Supremacy or the other; capitalism, theft of land, and exploitation of others are built into that choice. Winning power is not always the same as winning elections. Elections are held to determine control of the state. If we don’t have that available to us, winning power over our own local community becomes part of the struggle to win power over our lives. Putting leadership that is always ignored up front. Building power in the community between elections. We have to address and dismantle the assumptions that are built in.

Dr. Ausar noted that most Black men are not voting for Trump, despite what some in the media (and even our own community) like to claim. Most vote Democratic and are for reinstating Roe v. Wade, but the media makes it seem otherwise. Black men and Black women generally agree (both around 68%) in favor of Roe v. Wade. More White women than White men do. How do these issues show up in our houses, our living rooms? But we unfortunately tend to believe all types of things and don’t analyze the propaganda. Many of us don’t have time to read as much as we need to if we want to cut through the propaganda. We need to have more frequent, deeper, and more thoughtful conversations around these issues and we need to collectively make these decisions, including looking at why our Sisters even need to have abortions.

Bro. Nnamdi noted that Sisters are an extremely consistent and reliable voting bloc. And those who say Kamala Harris is not Black (a notion that was largely triggered by Trump’s claim at this summer’s National Association of Black Journalists convention that “she suddenly became Black”) are falling for the flim-flam and vicious lies propagated by White racists. “She is an Afrikan. She is an Afrikan. She is an Afrikan.” Whether she serves our interests or not is another discussion. And we cannot ignore the concerns of our Sisters. If we are going to talk about democracy, the majority (Sisters) must be heard. We cannot live in a world where half our intellect, labor and voices are ignored. We cannot allow White Supremacy to take half of our voice and labor. But this is nothing new. This has been done to us throughout history.

Bro. Everett, as the father and grandfather of Black women and girls, stated that we must make sure the Black Woman is nurtured correctly and is heard. Most teachers are women, and women tend to be better educated. Our problems should be discussed and solved together as Black Men and Black Women and not separated. Whatever his wife feels, that’s his opinion. Whatever we feel collectively is his vote. Mama Earth is the Lady President of UNIA-ACL Chapter 106 Barca-Clarke, which is reflective of this philosophy.

Dr. Ausar feels decisions regarding the man’s body as well as the woman’s should reflect the needs of the community if we’re going to get into regulating the woman’s reproduction by our community. Men’s reproductive behavior should be as regulated as women’s.

Community Comments and Interactive Discussion

There are people in our community who “fall through the cracks” and are still often not seen by the “phenomenal” organizations and hard-working activists in our community. The people in the cracks need to be better seen by the activists with all these organizations we have.

Bro. Everett said we need to create our own political entity. UNIA-ACL is more than just a flag. There is a government aspect. It’s there for all of us, hence the “Universal” part of the name. We can start to govern ourselves in our community.

Bro. Nnamdi noted that civics are no longer taught in schools. People in power take advantage of people who do not know. Introducing political education to our communities is an objective of UPP.

Dr. Ausar noted that we are indoctrinated into the system so we believe that what we learn in academia is the most revolutionary you can be. Henry Louis Gates noted going into the mainstream academic and political institutions with Afro combs and coming out eating caviar.

It was noted that protecting our families is more important than just the politics. One suggestion was to “take the woman off the market”, deny the services of our Black Women to the system. We all need to be in recovery because of the “isms” we have all been put through.

It was stated that government is important. Much of the support for Kamala Harris is primarily to prevent Trump from regaining the levers of power. The reason this country is not in rebellion (though it should be) is largely because Trump has been allowed to run for president when he really should be in prison.

Bro. Nnamdi noted that White Supremacy is in crisis. Kamala Harris is another chess move in this larger game between political action committees. We need to be in control of the candidates, the political action committees and the campaigns. In France, the right wing has denied their election. This is one example of how fascists are coming to power in response to White Supremacy’s crisis, trying to keep the power they have stolen. Trump’s plan was written in 2021 by a think tank. The ideas of Project 2025 are already being implemented in state capitals across the US. The plan is already written so he is only the icing on the cake. This is organized repression which must be met by organized resistance, which we largely lack because we are not truly organized.

Bro. Everett noted that we need to be honest about who we are as a collective. Harris says she has no specific agenda for Black people; if she says she does she will lose the White vote. Trump represents White Power and is unashamed to show it. Until we have someone who is from us and about us, ready to fight for us, our voice is muted.

Sis Tomiko mentioned the different political parties that are running (Green Party, Party of Socialism & Liberation, Libertarian Party, Dr. Cornel West’s independent campaign). Which ones should we look at?

Bro. Nnamdi said UPP has not endorsed any party, but the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s (PSL, with Claudia De La Cruz running for president) positions are interesting. The Green Party’s (Dr. Jill Stein as the presidential nominee) positions are well thought out, and the National Black Radical Political Convention, being held on October 26-27, has supported Dr. Cornel West’s efforts. You can also write in candidates; he has written in Mumia Abu-Jamal for president numerous times. If you have to hold your nose to vote, what does that do to your consciousness?

Bro. Everett noted that we are the First People, we are phenomenal. We need to go from asking for a piece of the pie to demanding the whole pie. In the Park Heights neighborhood, we see the Black side and the Jewish side that get different quality of services. We need the whole pie. We need to learn our history in our schools. We don’t learn about Garvey, we don’t control what we learn in our schools.

Building Our Own Black Agenda?

Bro. Nnamdi noted that even when we could not vote we had a level of organization and activity. Public school education came from Black Republicans way back when that was a progressive party. For the Jewish community, the ideological glue was often Zionism. Where is our ideological glue? Where is our ability to punish those who make decisions that go against us? National politics is so often out of our weight class.

Dr. Ausar acknowledged that we all want to see the best for our people. There are individual people in political positions that wish and mean us well. We often miss each other’s arguments though. Some of us are trying to survive under the status quo (things staying the same, wanting to make things better but not rock the boat too much to avoid repercussions) while others are speaking from a liberation framework about top-to-bottom revolutionary change. Some friends of ours who are in political positions want to do things and say things but are afraid to do so. Many of our people are suffering in deplorable conditions, more so than some Third World countries. What is going to liberate us? People working in the system too often call the revolutionaries insane, idiotic and crazy. People are beating up on third party politics. Dr. Ausar is all about third parties and wants to support them so they can reach 5% of the popular vote and gain some of the perks of reaching that status.

Baba Khalid Raheem greeted the meeting panel from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania over Zoom. Before the 1960’s we had just a handful of Black elected and appointed officials, less than 200. Now we have more than 2000, but one might think we still had only 200. The numbers have not equated to political power. We gave our political power to one of the two major parties. First we went to the Republican Party, but then they sold us out in the 1870’s in the Hayes-Tilden Compromise. Then they sold us out again in the Civil Rights era. Now we must develop our own independent political parties. Most of us are regular working-class people or working in the gig economy. We need to develop a political agenda and organization that represents our situation as a people, and stop just going along with the Democratic Party. We must break that culture and move to another level. The New Afrikan Independence Party and the National Black Radical Political Congress are important organizations he is working with.

It was stated that in Baltimore we have a closed primary system that limits the ability of independent political candidates and parties to win in elections. Most of the Afrikan organizations represent the tip of the spear but are out of touch with the largest voting constituency, Elder Black Women. Pan Afrikan activists need to get in touch with the grassroots community organizations. There is a Baltimore directory that lists the neighborhood organizations’ meeting dates. We also need independent freedom schools like what we once had with the Soul School Institute and the Timbuktu Center.

Bro. Nnamdi noted that the number of independent voters has grown every year, which is going to change the game. Primary elections are won by a minority of voters, and general elections are often run unopposed by the winner of the primary. We don’t seem to realize that the winner of the primary did not win the overall election, and we need better civics education so we can realize that and use that to our advantage.

The two-party system that controls Maryland’s politicians has a sitting governor and presidential candidate that are party to an ongoing genocide in Gaza, even making it illegal in some cases for businesses to boycott Israel. Cooperation Jackson (Jackson, Mississippi, founded by Ancestor Chokwe Lumumba and now supported in part by his son, Jackson mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba) has been responding to economic extraction and racism through three pillars: anti-imperialist political candidates, people’s assemblies where the community comes up with a collective people’s agenda and selects their representatives, putting economics behind politics and rejecting individualism (which would be nothing more than resorting to capitalism in blackface) in favor of cooperative economics. We can build something like that here.

Professors and scholars talking only to professors and scholars will miss the people in the cracks. These issues that impact us have been talked about for over 77 years at least, and some of us act as though this is something new. There is information about food distribution centers and other sources of community help that our activists and organizers have been unaware of or have even ignored.

Bro. Everett said that UNIA-ACL has reached out to numerous community organizations and last year held a Town Hall that invited community organizations. Earlier today, they participated in a community clean-up. Whenever we start moving as a community we should adopt a Race First consciousness. We need to start talking about what is impacting our community so we can invest, strategize and build together. If Kamala Harris is not doing anything for our community (a claim which has been disputed by others), that is on us for not putting the pressure on her to do for our community if she wants our support.

Bro. Nnamdi noted that Cooperation Jackson’s (Jackson, Mississippi) model is anti-capitalist and thus is different from, for example, Dr. Claud Anderson’s model. With regard to Pan Afrikan organizations reaching out (or not reaching out) to community groups, Bro. Nnamdi is also on the board of a local community organization, and connecting is hard. Pan Afrikan activists cannot just “stick and move”, visiting a community organization and then moving on to the next one; they have to “stick and stay”. They must be able to remain involved with those communities and be prepared to dig in with them.

Dr. Ausar urged us to remember that this work is exhausting. We become tired and it’s easy to start pointing fingers, and we must fight the urge to do that; most of us mean well. We are tired, and organizing is hard. We need to be able to re-charge our bodies, and we need to listen to each other and realize the ways in which we can get triggered when we are all talking at each other instead of talking to each other. We need to evolve our ideas so we don’t get confused by the Black capitalist agenda.

Sis. Tomiko noted that many of those in the meetings of activists and foundations on a larger scale are not Pan Afrikan activists but are people who work in foundations and have jobs with them. Often there are only a few real Pan Afrikan activists in these larger meetings.

Bro. Cliff noted that activists simply don’t have the people to be everywhere. He mentioned a meeting he had on behalf of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) about 15 years ago with the then-director of a local community organization umbrella group to try to reach all of the neighborhood organizations where people of Afrikan descent live. SRDC sought to reach out to the people in our community groups to get their involvement in building our own Pan Afrikan Agenda back then, so we could use it to build unity, pressure local politicians, develop self-help initiatives and take our grievances with the United States to international organizations like the African Union and United Nations. We did not know who all the organizations were and how to contact them, so meeting with this umbrella organization seemed to be a good place to start to get some direction and advice. The director told us to go talk to the Continental Africans instead of the Black community organizations, clearly not understanding what SRDC’s objectives were despite having been told. There are assumptions we make about each other and we judge each other prematurely, which stifles our efforts to move forward.

Baba Charles Barron, former New York City Councilman, joined the Zoom as a panelist. He came out of the Black Panther Party movement and ran for public office and beat the establishment Democratic machine that was backed by president Barack Obama, Congressmember Hakeem Jeffries and current New York mayor Eric Adams. He and his allies won city and state assembly seats. They overcame the Negro Democratic Party structure for 21 years. They established schools, secured the freedom of three political prisoners and brought economic programs to the community. They stopped gentrification, opposed landlords, pursued a reparations agenda and built a community center that the community will soon own. Mainstream Negro politicians, on the other hand, saw their neighborhoods gentrified. Now he is working with the National Black Radical Political Congress with Bro. Nnamdi and Baba Khallid. Revolution will happen from the bottom up, not the top down. He is backing the independent candidacy of Dr. Cornel West for US president.

Bro. Nnamdi stated that Baba Barron ran as a Democrat but built an independent infrastructure that took control from the mainstream Democrats. You can run as a Democrat if you are ready to build that independent infrastructure and take control from the Democratic Party on behalf of the people.

Mama Earth stated that we don’t have enough patience and compassion with one another. Many of us in our organizations are going through a lot ourselves and we can’t always run after all the other organizers and activists. Some of us don’t have enough time to handle all the responsibilities we have on the organizational as well as personal level. We need to come together and build with each other so we can do what we must do collectively without becoming overwhelmed. We can’t do it alone. We have to do it together in a united front.

Everyone has something going on in their organizational as well as personal lives. We can all do only so much by ourselves. If we center too much on ourselves, we run the risk of losing the “I Am Because We Are” perspective that is so important to our ability to move our people forward.

Kamala Harris, whatever our criticisms of her may be, is seen as vastly different from Donald Trump, who we already know is damaging to the country and world as well as to the already-destructive mindset of many of his followers. Until a revolution takes place, many of us will support Kamala Harris if for no other reason than to defeat Trump.

Bro. Nnamdi noted that Baba Charles Barron will be a participant in the NBRPC conference. Visit https://nbrpc.org for more information. Also, he understands and respects the support for Kamala Harris, but his refusal to support a political party that is participating in genocide should be respected also. The Biden-Harris administration is participating in the genocide of Gaza through its support of Israel, and he chooses not to support them. Although he was not here to tell anyone who they should vote for, he is guided by the conviction that “Afrikan people can live without imperialism.” We need to organize ourselves to make this happen.

Sis Tomiko stated that she heard an Indigenous activist on WPFW-FM (Washington, DC) state that a number of Indigenous activists were planning to sit this election out because they will not support genocide.

In answer to a question about obtaining agricultural visas for Black Farmers and Urban Farmers like in the Park Heights area of Baltimore, Bro. Everett noted that UNIA-ACL has agricultural gardens in Curacao and Liberia. The League of Nations acknowledged UNIA as a government on the days before it became the United Nations and had instituted a procedure where UNIA was a place to go to obtain visas until UNIA came under attack by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) COINTELPRO.

An attendee on Zoom commented that we must get out of the Democrat-Republican mindset and build our own political base. “You are the ones doing the work.” We must stop inviting people from the outside that just want to talk about what they’re going to do but do nothing but represent the lobbyists and corporations that fund them. We must choose our own candidates and leaders. Baba Khalid Raheem invited them to join NAIP, UPP or NBRPC. In Pennsylvania, there are also closed primaries. The New Afrikan Independence Party has run candidates for mayor of Pittsburgh and for county council seats and got up to 12 percent of the vote, from people who were not in the New Afrikan Independence Party. Similar efforts have been undertaken elsewhere in the country. A Race First approach sounds good but we must be principled first, else we will be drawn to Black politicians who do not share a revolutionary Black perspective and could sell us out to our enemies.

The need for independent candidates was emphasized, and perhaps Bro. Nnamdi can take the lead here. We should put our money behind candidates who can meet our needs. Run for office like Baba Charles Barron did in Brooklyn.

Do We Have an Agenda of Our Own?

Bro. Everett commented that it must be an overall community-uplift objective. Resources, educational system and businesses need to be looked at, and a candidate or a party needs to look at these and include the community. Race First is about doing what will benefit our Afrikan family even if the supported candidate is not an Afrikan themselves. Other cultures move by looking out for their communities: Jewish, Asian, Latino. We must start looking out for each other. Vote for and support those things that are in our favor.

Bro. Nnamdi stated that we need to have an assembly to talk about what our agenda will look like, realizing that we are not monolithic and will have different ideas. We also need the infrastructure to make it happen and a democratic structure for our community to have a voice, and no room for an imperialistic agenda. Our existence will always be in peril as long as White Supremacy and imperialism are allowed to continue to exist.

Dr. Ausar noted that we must discuss in a sincere manner, and places like this must be healing spaces where we can have these conversations. We say we are the choir, but we’re not. We are the ones who actually need healing. We’re struggling and we don’t know how to get along with each other. If we don’t learn how to coexist and to disagree and debate in sincerity and love, we are in trouble. The whole “Kamala or not” argument is a case in point, assuming that no one here is going to vote for Trump. We can’t just see ourselves as the “special ones” going out to heal the community when we need healing ourselves.

Bro. Cliff made three points. (1) We need healing as Dr. Ausar said; he used now-Ancestor Mama Iyaluua Ferguson’s statement after Imam Jamil Al-Amin/H. Rap Brown was convicted and sentenced; “People say we’re preaching to the choir. If we’re a choir, we’re damn miserable. We were supposed to save him.” (2) We need to vote strategically, whether we vote for a third party to support it long term or vote for which candidate we are ready to fight for the next four years. People cried in joy when Obama was elected but got mad when he did things we could not stand, such as prosecuting whistleblowers, ignoring the World Conference Against Racism review sessions, increasing drone raids in Afghanistan and bombing Libya into the previous century, things he did because he was the president of the US and not just for us. No president is going to have an agenda just for us; whoever wins, we must be ready to fight, but we have failed to fight, either waiting for our hero to fix things or hiding from our enemy. We must organize between elections, not just every four years. (3) We need to build an independent Pan Afrikan political organization, a grassroots community council, and our own Pan Afrikan Agenda which will be regularly reviewed and updated to create a cooperative agenda, steps which we have refused to take so far. People in attendance here and on Zoom made important comments and they must be involved in building a cooperative, comprehensive Pan Afrikan Agenda that we all can embrace.

We will hold more of these Town Hall Meetings in the future, including sessions to build that cooperative, comprehensive Pan Afrikan agenda. We asked those in the chat and those in attendance here to provide their contact information so we can reach out to them and work on building from here.

UPP had copies of its official publication, The Progress Report, on sale on the back of the room. Also in the back, Diasporan Soul Kitchen was open for those who wanted to purchase some excellent, tasty and healthful food and drink.

We will provide updates to our ongoing efforts to build that Pan Afrikan Agenda. Watch this space for more information and insights on the US elections, which are presently upon us, and how we as Afrikan People can organize ourselves to weather whatever storms spring from the election results. Groups at the regional, national and Diaspora levels are making connections to try to build a broader, collective, cooperative unity. The Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) will seek to be part of these efforts to bring our people together on the local, national and global levels.

“Electoral Poly-Tricks” Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting, Saturday, October 12, 2024 in East Baltimore

Coming up on Saturday, October 12, 2024 at the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT), the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) will hold our third Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting of the year.  Our theme will be a look at the electoral process and how we are approaching it as a community, and we have named it the “Electoral Poly-Tricks Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting”.

We invite you to come out and join us for this free community event, and let others with whom you live, work and socialize to come out as well.  This event is for the entire Pan Afrikan Community as we continue our work to build more unity in Black Baltimore, Black Maryland and the larger Pan Afrikan World.

Important Details

“Electoral Poly-Tricks”
Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting
Saturday, October 12, 2024, 12:00 Noon – 5:00 PM
Temple of New African Thought (TNAT)

5525 Harford Road
Baltimore, Maryland 21214

Be sure to enjoy delicious, healthy food and snack items from TNAT’s Diasporan Soul kitchen, available for sale during the Town Hall.

See attached flyer for more details.

Our objectives

We plan to have a panel of local community activists from TNAT, the Ujima People’s Progress Party, the Baltimore UNIA-ACL Barca-Clarke, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle and more, to discuss this election season with the community.  We also invite important organizers and activists from the Pan Afrikan Community across the US and the Diaspora to join in via Zoom as well (Zoom link is available by emailing Bro. Cliff at cliff@kuumbareport.com).  We hope to share diverse viewpoints, provide some progressive analysis of the political environment, and, we hope, generate ideas on how we can better organize our community from the ground up to stand up, make our voices heard, and work for our interests.

We hope to discuss how we look at the electoral process, what things we tell ourselves that motivate our voting decisions, and how we can move away from what seems to be a dysfunctional habit of waiting four years, holding our noses to vote between what are often two or more questionable candidates, and then waiting another four years to go through the same dance all over again.

This election season is considered to be more critical than most.  We have Kamala Harris, an incumbent Vice President who some of us have questioned with regard to her Blackness, even complaining that she has claimed to be pursuing no policies that will benefit our community.  Some of us criticize her record as a prosecutor in California, some have grown weary of what they say are a litany of broken promises from her Democratic Party, and there have even been concerns that some refuse to support her simply because she is a woman.  Then, there is her main opponent, Donald Trump, a Republican ex-President who has often made bombastic statements, and who many of us consider a sexist, a racist, a liar and a wannabe dictator, yet still seems to command the respect of a considerable percentage of the US electorate.  All the while, we ignore independent party candidates, from the Green Party’s Jill Stein to the Socialism and Liberation Party’s Claudia De La Cruz to the candidacy of Dr. Cornel West, all of whose policy platforms deserve more examination than they have gotten as most of us have become obsessed with the Democratic Donkey and the Republican Elephant.  There are those who see the Democrats and the Republicans as “two wings of the same buzzard” (a quote I have used myself), and see no difference between them.  Others point to issues from the death penalty to abortion to the environment and insist the differences couldn’t be starker.  Still others see no value in the electoral process and choose not to participate in voting at all.

Some of us see this election as the most critical in history, and thus look at non-voters with disdain or even disgust.  Some of us see those who continue to participate in what they see as a broken system that was never meant to serve our interests as suckers for the system.  Still others see our participation, or not, as doomed to failure as long as we continue to behave the way we do without thinking and without strategy, influenced by innuendo, rumor, gaslighting, base lies and appeals to our emotions and prejudices.

This Town Hall Meeting is not intended to tell you who to vote for, or even whether to vote at all.  It is to present an opportunity for us to discuss, as a community, what feelings we have regarding voting, why we vote (or don’t vote) the way we do, and how we might be able to move from a community that waits for political aspirants to come to us telling us what they are willing to “give” us to a community that has developed our own Black Agenda that we can take to political aspirants and challenge them to meet our needs.  It all starts with our making a commitment to listen to each other, to think instead of simply react to what we hear and see, and to organize our communities on the ground, because no matter who becomes the next President of the United States, we as a community must learn to better organize and fight for our interests as a people.

We invite you to come out and join us. 

Again, that’s Saturday, October 12, 2024, 12:00 Noon – 5:00 PM at the Temple of New African Thought, 5525 Harford Road in East Baltimore.  If there are any questions, feel free to contact Bro. Cliff by email at cliff@kuumbareport.com.

“The R-evolution Is Black Love” Interviews Baba Nati of Baltimore Bookstore and Institution Everyone’s Place, September 26, 2024

 

The anticipated day has finally arrived.  Sis. Tomiko, host of “The R-evolution Is Black Love”, heard every Wednesday at 3:00 PM ET on Hand Radio (https://handradio.org), traveled to West Baltimore’s Penn-North neighborhood, site of the 2015 Freddie Gray Uprising, to iconic Black bookstore and institution Everyone’s Place to interview its co-founder and co-owner, Baba Nati Kamau-Nataki.

Their lively discussion covered topics from the history of Everyone’s Place to the large and eclectic collection of books available there to the current status of Black-owned bookstores and of writing and research in general, particularly as it impacts the Black Press and the education of Black youth and Elders alike.

For audio of the interview, click below. 

For the video of the show, the following link should be active at least for a while:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/fwtruvraq2zjeeuo8k706/Everyone-s-Place.mp4?rlkey=hjneyzxrsl9c30p0cmoynmsno&st=5zjvm51z&dl=0

You can also catch the audio for this and previous shows on our Media Page.

“The R-Evolution Is Black Love” features Health Food Proprietor Coy Dunston of Secrets of Nature (Washington, DC)

The Wednesday, August 28 edition of “The R-Evolution Is Black Love” features Baba Coy Dunston, proprietor of Secrets of Nature in Washington, DC. Sis. Tomiko, host of “The R-Evolution Is Black Love”, interviewed him at his location about his introduction to healthy foods and the struggles he has endured to continue to promote healthy choices for the people. The program airs at 3:00 PM Wednesday, August 28. “The R-Evolution Is Black Love” can be heard every Wednesday at 3:00 PM on HANDRadio, https://handradio.org.

Following is a brief profile for the August 28 program:

Understanding the dire need for healthy food options, Coy Dunston, 76, opened up his shop in 1980 with the mission to save lives.

His passion for nutrition started in 1980, as a recent graduate of Antioch Law (now University of the District of Columbia David A. Clarke School of Law).

“I took a break to go home just to see my mother,” said Dunston, who was born and raised in Louisburg, North Carolina. “She was complaining about itching and had gone to the doctor.”

Days later she was diagnosed with cancer at Duke University Hospital and was released for denying chemotherapy treatments.

“I felt an obligation to do something, I wasn’t going to wait for her to die. I started researching,” Dunston shared. “One day on the drive to D.C., I stopped to fill up my gas in Richmond. There was a guy there distributing an informational pamphlet about reversing disease and how to get well.”

Intrigued, Dunston attended the meeting advertised after seeing the words “Nature’s sunshine” on the paper. He was determined to learn more about the organization’s methods.

“I thought ‘Wow, this has to be a message to me.’ I was flabbergasted; I had not heard of anything they were talking about. I immediately got involved. My mother and I started fasting, taking the herbs and doing the things you are supposed to do,” he said. “She lived for 10 years after that. That’s how I got involved in this business.”

Proven successful in this new lifestyle, Dunston set out on a fast track to educating the masses on healthy options, starting “Yours Naturally” on 16th and K streets NW with the knowledge needed to provide treatments to cure illnesses and ailments. He promoted a strict regimen of “no dairy, no sugar, no meat.”

“But the question was ‘where are you going to get that,’” said Dunston. “This was the 1980s, no one was selling vegetarian food like that back then.”

“I was there about 10 years and around the eighth year I moved around the corner to The Washington Post’s building where I saw an opportunity to open up a kitchen, my first kitchen,” he continued.

The meals created were served lovingly and filled with natural nourishment — a stark difference from Dunston’s diet while being raised as the son of a sharecropper.

After the broadcast, the program can be listened to below and on our Media Page.

The video of Sis. Tomiko’s interview with Baba Dunston should be available for viewing at this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2xttw7qaakpt06jsyqzhe/Revolution-is-Black-Love-Secrets-of-Nature-video.mp4?rlkey=fnhmg8vo738le6yd7ha3cye1h&st=ao8x5swq&dl=0

Garvey Day 2024 in Various Parts of the Diaspora

This Saturday marks the birthday of The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey (17 August 1887 – 10 June 1940), the founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL).  All around the world, Afrikan People celebrate his birth on this day.  Below we share the announcements of just a few of the commemorations of The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey on this day.

Panama City, Panama

First, in Panama, where local activists and Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) Facilitators Ras Bukie and Empress Yesury Nurse, longtime adherents of Garveyism, are holding a commemoration at then statue of Marcus Garvey that they had led the effort to have erected in a public park in the area of Panama City.  The event is scheduled to begin at 9:00 AM Eastern Time (US).  See the flyer below for details, including a Zoom link for those who would like to participate online.  The text of the flyer is in Spanish here, but the link should be easy to follow nonetheless, and English speakers will also be present at the commemoration.

Baltimore, Maryland’s Garvey Day Celebration

Baba Charlie Dugger has held cultural and educational events in the Baltimore, Maryland area for several decades through his organization Camp Harambee (The People), including the annual Marcus Garvey Day celebrations of the birthday of the Pan-Afrikan giant and founder of the Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League (UNIA-ACL). Now Baba Charlie Dugger is sponsoring the 2024 Garvey Day celebration, in West Baltimore’s Harlem Park, as always.  The commemoration starts at 12:00 Noon and is scheduled to go until 7:00 PM.  See the flyer below doe details.

Harlem, New York

New York is where the historic UNIA Convention was held which had drawn upwards if 25,000 participants (Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association – Black History Month 2024), in an era ling before we had social media and Web sites to inform the populace.  A special commemoration is planned in Harlem.  This year, Harlem is again hosting its Garvey Day celebration.

“Black August” Black Women’s Defense Cooperative Town Hall Set for Saturday, August 24 at TNAT in East Baltimore (Updated)

UPDATE: A list of confirmed presenters has been added.  See the updated flyer in this post for details.

Black August is here.  This is an important time of year for the Black Struggle and for Pan Afrikan Organizing, and there is much to inspire us and to shake us out of our collective slumber in the month of Black August.  The Haitian Revolution began on August 22, 1791.  Nat Turner’s Rebellion was launched from August 21-23, 1831 in Southampton County, Virginia.  We celebrate the birthday of The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey on August 17, 1887.  (We will share the announcement of Marcus Garvey Day in Baltimore, Maryland, which is organized every year by Baba Charlie Dugger and Camp Harambee The People, when that announcement is made.  The anticipated date for Marcus Garvey Day in Baltimore is Saturday, August 17, the actual birthday of The Honorable Marcus Garvey.)  We also remember Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson, who was assassinated on August 21, 1971.  And so much more.

“Black August began in the 1970s to mark the assassination of the imprisoned Black Panther, author, and revolutionary George Jackson during a prison rebellion in California. It is a time of reverence to honor political prisoners, freedom fighters, and martyrs of the Black freedom struggle. This month, we celebrate all the political prisoners who have helped us understand that prison is political and that our collective freedom depends on abolishing the state’s capacity, through incarceration, policing, and surveillance, to disrupt communities and diminish principled struggle against the unjust status quo. The month of August is also rich with the history of Black resistance outside, from the Haitian Revolution to the Watts rebellion and the Ferguson uprising. Black August is a reminder of the power in unity, and a mandate to continue joint struggle.”

– from Black August – A Celebration of Freedom Fighters Past and Present | Center for Constitutional Rights (ccrjustice.org)

“As detailed on the Black Collective website, ‘Black August is honored every year to commemorate the fallen freedom fighters of the Black Liberation Movement.’ Rather than simply being retrospective, the month is intended to be forward-looking, encouraging participants ‘to call for the release of political prisoners in the United States, to condemn the oppressive conditions of U.S. prisons’ and to engage in other liberation-aimed political activities.”

– from Blavity News and 5 Things To Know About Black August: An Unforgotten Part Of Black History (yahoo.com)

“Black August was first established in the 1970s by incarcerated Black activists who were fighting against systemic racism and oppression in the United States. These activists wanted to create a month-long tribute to the Black freedom fighters who had come before them, and to draw attention to the ongoing struggle for Black liberation.

“Today, Black August is celebrated in various forms by communities and organizations across the United States and around the world. It is a time to reflect on the rich history of the Black community, and to celebrate the strength, resilience, and creativity of Black people in the face of ongoing challenges and struggles.”

– from The Origins and Principles of Black August: Understanding its Significance | Black August (black-august.com)

The time is now to get to work organizing our community.  In fact, the time has been “now” for as long as we have been aware of the concept of time.  But many of us have been asleep or hunkered down in our homes and our safe spaces, especially since the onset of the COVID Pandemic.  Now it’s time to come out of our safe spaces and get back to organizing.  We’re following up on our recent July 13 Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting in Baltimore to continue the momentum that we’re building post-COVID. 

Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting: Saturday, August 24, 12 Noon, Temple of New African Thought

The next Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) will be held on Saturday, August 24 at the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT), 5525 Harford Road in East Baltimore.  The Town Hall is scheduled to begin at 12:00 Noon and will conclude between 4:00 and 5:00 PM.

The topic will be the building of the Black Women’s Defense Cooperative, featuring presentations from Sisters of Pan Afrikan (Black) Communities of Baltimore, Philadelphia and the surrounding area.  Issues concerning personal self-defense, community defense and security, and general emergency preparedness will be addressed.

For more information, email cliff@kuumbareport.com.

Below is a “printer-friendly” version of the flyer:

 

 

 

Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition Holds Pan Afrikan Town Hall at Temple of New African Thought in East Baltimore

July 13, 2024 saw the “rebirth” of the effort to bring out, organize and harness the voice of the Pan Afrikan grassroots community so that our voice can be included in the larger effort to bring that Pan Afrikan voice to the World Stage.  The first Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting since 2019 (post-COVID) was held at the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT) at 5525 Harford Road in East Baltimore.  The meeting was organized by the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC), a broad coalition of Pan Afrikan organizers and activists from the areas of spirituality, culture, economics, education, political organizing, law, prison outreach, grassroots organizing, revolutionary Pan Afrikanism and more.  (More on the Cooperative Coalition can be found on this site under the heading “Spokes of the Wheel”.)  These activists hail mainly from Baltimore City, but several are also located in Laurel Maryland, Randallstown Maryland, Washington DC and Virginia, with occasional participants from Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Chicago Illinois, Detroit Michigan, South Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Panama.  The Cooperative Coalition hopes to spark similar efforts across the United States and throughout the Diaspora, either as local Cooperative Coalitions that then link together or by expanding directly from Maryland into a national or global Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition.

The plan for the July meeting is to regain momentum for these Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meetings throughout the entire global Pan Afrikan community that had been dissipated when the COVID pandemic struck in 2020, and to move the work of organizing our community forward once again, led by the voice of our grassroots communities.

Purpose of the Town Hall

The Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meetings, originally organized in Baltimore starting in the summer of 2007 by the Maryland Organizing Committee of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) under the direction of the SRDC Secretariat, brought together members of the grassroots Pan Afrikan Community to bring out, organize and harness the voice of the community so that we can be included in the larger effort to bring that Grassroots Pan Afrikan voice to the World Stage.  SRDC had started holding these Town Hall Meetings in California, New York, Ohio, South Carolina and Washington State in 2006 and early 2007, with other groups doing similar work in Central America and Europe.  The overall plan for the Town Hall Meetings was to accomplish the following goals within our local communities:

  • Explain the strategy of bringing our voice to the World Stage
  • Discuss the role of the African Union (and, later, the United Nations and other international organizations) in the pursuit of that strategy
  • Discuss issues that are important to the local community and show the connection of those issues with the international work
  • Build a Local/State Pan Afrikan Agenda with the Community
  • Have the Community nominate & elect a Representative Delegation who will be able to speak for them (Council of Elders, Representatives, Observers)
  • Discuss how the Representative Delegation can work with other Delegations from throughout the Diaspora to bring a voice from the people to international gatherings of the AU, UN and other bodies

The effort in Maryland was designed to bring that local voice to SRDC’s national gatherings (Summits) with other local communities across the United States and elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere.  The local Pan Afrikan Agendas would come together to form a larger Pan Afrikan Diaspora Agenda, which would then be taken to the African Union, the United Nations and the Organization of American States (OAS) through civil-society organizations they have established to hear the concerns and the ideas of “non-state actors” from our grassroots communities.

The Town Hall Meetings in Practice

From 2007 through 2017, Maryland averaged about one Pan Afrikan Town Hall Meeting per year, plus an annual Kwanzaa presentation when SRDC was invited to participate in weeklong Kwanzaa celebrations by the Baltimore-based Pan African Liberation Movement (PLM), a strong Pan Afrikan grassroots organization in the Baltimore area.  These meetings continued in Maryland despite occasional indifference from several African Union officials, the United Nations’ failure to effectively respond to those it considered “stateless” (Afrikan Americans, for example, do not possess an official state of our own, even though we often refer to ourselves as “a nation within a nation”) and the resulting discouragement among Afrikan Diaspora populations that often resulted from the lack of progress toward our organizational goals.

In 2017, SRDC “cranked up” the frequency of the Town Hall Meetings, with five in the second half of that year which resulted in the formulation, with the community who attended them, of a Maryland Pan Afrikan Agenda document and the establishment of what would become the Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE) in January of 2018.

In 2018 and 2019, MCOE and SRDC held seven more Town Hall Meetings in which guest speakers made presentations to the community on political issues, international meetings if the United Nations and the history and legacy of Pan Afrikan organizing.

The COVID Pandemic, with the constant reports of family, friends and celebrities falling ill and sometimes dying from the disease, the overrun hospital emergency rooms , the stressed-out medical personnel and the sense of insecurity and paranoia that gripped the populace, interrupted the momentum that had been built up from those Town Hall Meetings, as public gatherings as a whole were curtailed in favor of occasional virtual meetings over Zoom, Google Meet and other online providers.  As a result, the progress gained by the steady in-person Town Hall Meetings was slowed until COVID was essentially brought under control.

Sis. Kim Poole and Sis. Tomiko.

The year 2024 brought a renewed focus on holding in-person Town Hall Meetings, either because the pandemic had lessened in its severity, or because better treatments had been developed to render COVID less deadly, or simply because the people became tired of the isolation that had been endured over the previous three to four years.  In-person gatherings from African Liberation Day and Race 1st Rallies in West Baltimore’s Lafayette Square Park in the summers to Town Hall Meetings co-sponsored by the Maryland Council of Elders (MCOE) and Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) since the fall of 2023 began to bring out the community again.  At this point, the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC), which had been meeting over Zoom for just over two years, began holding the Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meetings once again, this time as a cooperative effort of SRDC, Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), The National Black Unity News and other organizations and activists with whom we have been meeting over the previous two-plus years.

The July 13, 2024 Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall officially began the process of picking up where the effort had left off in 2020.

The July 13 Town Hall

This event, as was mentioned above, took place at the Temple of New Afrikan Thought (TNAT), located on Harford Road in East Baltimore.  We thank Dr. Ausar Winkler for making TNAT available for this important community event, as he has for several Pan Afrikan organizations in the area. 

The event started with a brief introduction of the Central Committee of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition:

  • Sis. Tomiko is a Cultural Anthropologist specializing in systemic & institutional identities, culture of racism, historical & generational trauma, healing paradigms & models.  She is the Founding Director of Aging People in Prison-Human Rights Campaign (APPHRC), which works for the release of aging men & women incarcerated in US prisons.  She is the Principal Organizer of SOLITUDE, an international human rights think tank studying the impact of intergenerational incarceration and loss of human resources to Black women of African descent in the US over the last 500 years.  In November 2023, she led a delegation to the Organization of American States Inter-American Human Rights Council (Washington, DC) to discuss the impact of the last 40 years of mass incarceration on Black Women.  In April 2024, she led another delegation of experts to the Third Session, UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in Geneva, Switzerland.  She is a major supporter and champion of the Community Defense Proposal and the Emergency Preparedness Plan.  She is also an Executive Committee member, Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition.
  • Baba David Murphy is the Publisher of The National Black Unity News, founder and manager of the Black Information Portal and widely known as the “Networker of Networks”, supporting journalists, columnists and podcasters through the paper, its associated Web site, and regular podcasts.  Baba Murphy is also a Founding Member of BlackMen Unifying BlackMen, a grassroots organization that has built unity among Black Men through monthly breakfast meetings at Black-owned establishments for over nine years, as well as an annual event to honor Black Men who have made major contributions to the community.  He is a member of the Maryland Council of Elders as well as the National Black Council of Elders, bringing information, wisdom and guidance to the Pan Afrikan community in Maryland and across the country.
  • Bro. Cliff Kuumba is the Maryland Facilitator of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) which seeks to elevate the grassroots voice of the Pan Afrikan diaspora to the world stage through international organizations such as the African Union, United Nations, Organization of American States and independent Pan Afrikan Conferences and organizations; is a member of the North America Regional Coordinating Committee of the Pan African Federalist Movement (PAFM) whose mission is the building of a federalized Afrikan Continent (55 Afrikan nations, Afrikan countries in the Caribbean and Central America, and Black populations in countries around the Diaspora) as the United African States; and is the moderator of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition and serves with Sis. Tomiko and Baba David Murphy on the MPACC Central Committee.  Bro. Cliff is also the Editor of KUUMBAReport Online.

Several special presentations were also made:

Baba Bomani Uhuru Jihad Shakur and Dr. Ausar Winkler, Proprietor of TNAT.

Baba Bomani Uhuru Jihad Shakur is a Conscious New Afrikan Citizen living in the New Afrikan Population District of Dr. John Henrik Clarke Town.  He is a New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist, New Afrikan Propagandist, New Afrikan Ourstorian, Author, Poet, Advocate of New Afrikan Political Prisoners, New Afrikan Prisoners of War, New Afrikan Political Exiles, Captured New Afrikan Citizens and Political Prisoners/Prisoners of War from the Black Liberation Movement.  He is the Vice Chancellor of George Jackson University, Acting Spokesperson for George Jackson University, Host of George Jackson University Radio and a member of the Black August Organizing Committee.  Baba Bomani has been a Conscious New Afrikan Citizen since 2002, as well as various associations in other organizations and collectives.  He has traveled from the state of Georgia to be with us today and share some of his knowledge, experience, expertise and wisdom. 

Baba Bomani’s presentation stressed specific provisions we all need to be ready to make in response to an emergency, such as:

  • “Bug-out bags” so that important documents and supplies (food, medicines, identification, clothing, defensive weapons) will be at a person’s fingertips in the event of an emergency requiring an immediate evacuation
  • Alternate sources of power: battery, solar cells
  • Provisions in case of emergency (Food, Medical supplies. Tents, blankets and other provisions) stored in the home or on the premises in case of the collapse of the power grid or isolation from food sources
  • Phone trees and communications to look out for each other

Baba Thomas Ruffin, Esq.

Baba Thomas Ruffin, Esq. is a Washington, DC-based lawyer who has regularly lent his legal expertise and personal time to the pursuit of justice, in particular for the efforts to win the freedom of a number of Political Prisoners that resulted from the US government’s efforts to destabilize and destroy the Black Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.  He serves on the board of directors of the International Association of Black Lawyers, and he is the legal counsel for the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Progressive Change, which is chaired by local activist and Elder Rev. Annie Chambers in East Baltimore.  Baba Ruffin has been a participant in the building of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition since its founding in January 2022, and has made strong contributions to the development of the Coalition over that time, including the proposal for a Cooperative Community Defense Plan, which he traveled from Washington, DC to share with us. 

The essence of his proposed Cooperative Community Defense Plan includes the following elements:

  • License, certification and training in defensive weapons to respond to terrorist or vigilante attack
  • Adequate provisions in case of an emergency that causes a disruption to the electrical grid or to food and water access
  • Property: where to go in an emergency?  Identifying safehouses and similar locations 75-250 miles from the location of an environmental or civil defense emergency
  • An up-to-date passport in case of the need to leave the country in response to a national emergency or civil defense disaster
  • Phone trees and communications to look out for each other

Mama Marcia Bowyer-Barron.

Mama Marcia Bowyer-Barron is a longtime Baltimore City Resident and member of the New Shiloh Seniors Community.  She is a member of the Maryland Council of Elders which was founded in December 0f 2017.  She has been a contributor to the mission of the Maryland Organization of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), and she is a participant in the building and advancement of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition. 

“MotherMarci”, as many of us in the Maryland Pan Afrikan community call her, gave a presentation about the plan to build a Pan Afrikan Senior Advocacy Network to accomplish the following objectives:

  • Basic Needs of Seniors: Shelter, Food, Clothing, Phone
  • Health and Medical Care, Response to Senior Emergencies
  • “Buddy Care”, Regular Well-Being and Status Checks
  • No Senior should be suffering or struggling with poverty, homelessness, illness or isolation
  • Lift Our Seniors from “Survival Mode”
  • Senior Entrepreneur Expos
  • The intent is also to replicate this program in other areas.

Baba Leon Waters, appearing from New Orleans via Zoom.

Baba Leon Waters is the curator of the community-based Louisiana Museum of African American History, based in New Orleans, Louisiana, and the founder of the Hidden History Project, www.hiddenhistory.us.  Baba Leon Waters has educated the New Orleans community and Afrikan history students about the historic 1811 Slave Revolt, sometimes referred to as the “German Coast Uprising”, considered the largest slave revolt in US history, which took place from January 8-10, 1811 on the east bank of the Mississippi River and swept through seven plantations covering three modern-day parishes in Louisiana.  Baba Waters is a direct descendant of the Afrikans who led and participated in the Revolt, as recounted in the book On To New Orleans: Louisiana’s Heroic 1811 Slave Revolt by Baba Albert Thrasher, available at www.hiddenhistory.us.  Baba Waters has led numerous 1811 Slave Revolt tours in which the path of the revolt is followed as a reminder to participants of the importance of resistance to enslavement and tyranny.  Baba Waters was also instrumental in the organizing of the largely-Afrikan community in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, riding out the storm when it hit in September 2005 and then gathering together local activist organizations to fight against the forced removal and gentrification efforts that were taking place, particularly in New Orleans’s hard-hit Lower Ninth Ward.  Together with Baba Malcolm Suber and Baba Kali Akuno, Baba Waters helped organize the week-long September 2007 Hurricane Katrina Tribunal, which brought together an international panel to hear analysis and testimony about the city, state and country’s failure to adequately prepare for and respond to the hurricane, as well as atrocities that took place in its wake.  Baba Waters still lives in the New Orleans area and continues to bring knowledge and a commitment to struggle to the community.  He wrote an essay about his experience in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the effort of the local and national political ruling class to use the disaster to reshape the area through gentrification, “State Terror and White Supremacy Triumph ‘Temporarily’ in New Orleans”, which can be read here.

Baba David Murphy.

Baba David Murphy, who we introduced you to at the beginning of this article, spoke about the importance of building an independent Black Media network as the Publisher of The National Black Unity News.  The degree to which the lack of positive images of Blackness in the media had built up his feelings of anger as a young man, and the community healing he has witnessed as a result of his work with The National Black Unity News and the work of other providers of constructive, positive information for the people, were and are a constant motivation for him to continue with his important work.  The newspaper is currently published quarterly, and it serves as an outlet for numerous commentators, Black businesses and podcasters that include Bro. Vernon Streeter of Unity TV and Mama Kim Williams and Mama Cynthia Jahi, who assist homeowners facing financial difficulties with their business.

The holding of this Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting is important for a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important of which is that it marks a return to a level of community engagement that we had not seen in over three years.  TNAT has been host to several important community events over the last year, from the UNIA Barca-Clarke Chapter No. 106 in Baltimore City, from the Pan African Liberation Movement (PLM) and from a number of other organizations and individual activists.  TNAT also features the Diasporan Soul Cafe, which offers a variety of delicious dishes that take one back to the communities of Afrika and the Caribbean, including curry dishes, ginger beer, sorrel bisap and vegan meals that are sure to please the palate.  Music from Afrika and the Diaspora soothes the soul, while a variety of books, Afrikan masks and health items rouse the spirit, spark the intellect and lead one to a sense of balance.  When you are in East Baltimore, be sure to check out the Temple of New African Thought, get some nourishment from the Diasporan Soul Cafe and stimulate your mind by interacting with others or checking out one of the events that are held in the space.  The Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition will be scheduling more Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meetings in the year 2024 and beyond, and the Temple of New African Thought will surely be an important meeting place for us and for other organizations, a prominent fixture on the Pan Afrikan community landscape.

UPDATE: Maryland Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting Set for Saturday, July 13 in East Baltimore

The Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC), in cooperation with Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC), the George Jackson University (GJU) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), will hold our first post-COVID Pan Afrikan Community Town Hall Meeting at the Temple of New Afrikan Thought, 5525 Harford Road in Easy Baltimore, on Saturday, July 13 from 12 noon to 4 PM.  

  • We will briefly introduce the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition.
  • We will share ideas for a Community Cooperative Defense Plan.
  • We will discuss issues of Emergency Preparedness and how the community can be ready to respond to emergencies.
  • We will explain and discuss the process of organizing and establishing our grassroots voice on the world stage that was started by SRDC in 2007, continued until COVID and will be resumed this year.

Confirmed guests include:

  • Baba Bomani Uhuru Jihad Shakur, George Jackson University, Host of George Jackson University Radio, Black August Organizing Committee (Emergency Preparedness Plan)
  • Baba Thomas Ruffin, International Association of Black Lawyers and the Maryland Coalition for Justice and Progressive Change (Community Cooperative Defense Proposal)
  • Baba Leon Waters, Louisiana Museum of African American History, New Orleans Historian of the 1811 Slave Revolt and Hurricane Katrina Tribunal
  • Rev. Mother Marcia Bowyer-Barron, Maryland Council of Elders, Pan Afrikan Seniors Advocacy Network
  • Baba David Murphy, Publisher of The National Black Unity News, Maryland Council of Elders, National Black Council of Elders, Founding Member of BlackMen Unifying BlackMen

Other Important Information

  • Free admission; Diasporan Soul Cafe at the Temple of New African Thought will be selling healthy delicious food on the premises.
  • For more information, contact Bro. Cliff at cliff@kuumbareport.com Also, announcements concerning the Town Hall and the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition can be found on the Web Site of KUUMBAReport Online, https://kuumbareport.com and of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC), https://srdcinternational.org.

Several Pan Afrikan Community Events for Baltimore, Frederick and Washington, DC in June

One of the principal goals of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) is to facilitate our organizations supporting each other by supporting their events, or at least helping us all avoid conflicts between our events when possible.  Beyond that, the hope is that we will develop greater respect for each other and work together so that our efforts in our community will all be successful.  A large part of that is simply being aware of the events and programs we are all sponsoring in our community.

In service to that specific goal, this post is to announce several upcoming Pan Afrikan community events in the Baltimore Maryland, Frederick Maryland and Washington DC area coming up in June.  The list of events may be updated as we learn about more events that are being held, and we also plan to make a similar announcement about events in the Washington DC-Maryland area coming up in July.  Here’s what I have on the list so far:

  • Saturday, June 15: Maryland Council of Elders and Black Alliance for Peace Town Hall, Douglass Memorial Community Church, 1325 Madison Avenue, Baltimore, MD, 1 PM to 3 PM.
      
    The Black Alliance for Peace Web site (Baltimore Town Hall: Youth Organizing Youth: Rising Up Against Repression — The Black Alliance for Peace) describes the event as follows:

    Youth are heavily impacted by decades of worsened material conditions, which hinder their quality of life. Where young residents attempt to exercise autonomy and help shape a changing society, they are met with disregard for their legitimate concerns. Actions against youth in the city, state and region are some of the most punitive. Reliance on curfews, racist legislation and the constant surveillance of our youth disrupts any collaboration on solutions to the problems all African/ Black youth face in Baltimore. Heightened sensationalized media coverage further compounds the issue.

    Join the citywide alliance for this youth/ student led town hall for discussions on how to support to their efforts to create conditions to forge an alliance of student and youth organizers throughout the state.

    Masks Required. Masks Provided. Food & Refreshments Available. Childcare provided. (doors open at 12:30pm)

  • Saturday, June 15: Camp Harambee The People Fatherhood and Manhood Celebration, Greenmount & 24th Streets, Baltimore, MD, 1 PM to 6 PM

    Baba Charlie Dugger and Camp Harambee The People have organized, supported and run important community events in Baltimore for over 50 years.  A veteran educator, he has consistently sought to bring messages of positivity and self-awareness to youth and Elders alike in the Baltimore area.
     
  • Saturday, June 15: Suns Of Reawakening 7th Annual Juneteenth Freedomfest, Mullinix Park, Frederick, MD, 12 PM to 7 PM

    We became aware of the Suns of Reawakening and their Juneteenth event at the recent African Liberation Day commemoration in West Baltimore this past May 25.  Western Maryland has an important Afrikan and Afrikan-Descendant community that has, in many circles, gone unnoticed.  We hope that this event will make more of us aware of this community of Black Maryland and help us all to expand our knowledge and build a more cohesive and organized Pan Afrikan community.
     
  • Saturday, June 29: Street Law Soldiers Unity Festival, Fort Lincoln Park, 3201 Fort Lincoln Drive Gazebo #2, Washington, DC, 12 PM to 7 PM

    General T’Shaka Sankofa of the Street Law Soldiers, Washington DC (Facebook) sponsors regular Unity Festivals in the Washington, DC area.  Street Law Soldiers has chapters in Washington DC, and elsewhere across the US.

If you have an event scheduled for June that is not on this list, and you would like it to go out to our emailing list, feel free to send us the pertinent information, along with a flyer and contact information, and we will see about putting it together with other events in a future post as well as in the next group email we send out.  If we are to truly start building unity in our community, it starts with us recognizing the positive events we all are sponsoring, producing and promoting, helping make the people aware of these events and programs, and supporting them when we can.  Of course, when several events are happening at the same time, we can’t attend them all, but at least this way we can all be informed about what our various organizations and activists are doing for the sake of the people.