Perhaps the “state of emergency” that several local and national organizers and activists have called for throughout this latest Age of Trump and MAGA is finally sinking in. More and more, Black People are expressing an urgent need to build “unity” among our people.  This has sparked debates on social media and in face-to-face gatherings, often centering on questions such as “Who shall we unite with?” and “What shall we unify around?” While these questions are often posed by “armchair revolutionaries” and those who love to criticize and condemn the work of others as a convenient dodge, cop-out or stall tactic to avoid being asked to actually do the outreach and building that will be required to unify and organize the people, some in the Pan Afrikan activist community are taking these questions more seriously. These more serious organizers and activists are beginning to see the need not only to resist the “rolling coup” as some have characterized this regime in the United States, but to find ways to build that resistance movement together instead of continuing to “go it alone”. They are taking the push for Pan Afrikan unity more seriously than perhaps we have been giving them credit for.

Earlier this year, longtime Baltimore-area community activist and co-founder of BlackMen Unifying BlackMen, Baba Bill Goodin called for the observance of an annual National Black Unity Day every March 8. In preparation for this, and to build up public awareness and interest, he also called for several Unity Discussions to be held in a number of Black-owned and Black-operated establishments across Baltimore City.  These gatherings were conceived to provide an opportunity for organizers, activists and “just plain folks” to get together and talk about basic concepts of unity: what it is, why it is important, why some wish to prevent and destroy unity efforts, and how we can seek to build unity among the people in general.

As of this writing, the Unity Discussions have been held on April 30, May 21 and June 16, 2026, with more to follow.

The panels for the two Unity Discussions in April and May, and the more open Unity Discussion in June were moderated by Mama Danise Jones-Dorsey, an anti-poverty activist who is originally from Kentucky but is a longtime Baltimore resident.

Simultaneous to all of this, several Revolutionary Pan Afrikan and Black Nationalist organizations have commanded greater notice from the community.  Last September, the Pan African Liberation Movement (PLM) in Baltimore held a Race First Convention, the Baltimore UNIA-ACL has pushed forward with community events and podcasts, the Temple of New African Thought (TNAT) has continued its work to heal the grassroots community, and town hall meetings, panel discussions and community gatherings have begun to take place with greater urgency.

An important and significant example of this awakening was the Panel Discussion to commemorate the 101st birthday of Minister Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz/Omowale which was held at the Masonic Lodge on Eutaw Street near downtown Baltimore, hosted and moderated by Mwalimu Locy Lumumba of The Organization WOMAN (Working, Organizing, Making A Nation). The purpose of this gathering was to discuss more complex ideas of unity, specifically how different Pan Afrikan and Black Nationalist organizations might overcome those things that keep us divided and come together to form a cohesive movement and revive the Black Struggle in “Amerikkka”.

We’ll discuss these gatherings in this article.

April 30, 2026: Unity Discussion, Pikes Cinema

The panelists for the first Unity Discussion, held on April 30 at the Pikes Cinema on Reisterstown Road in Pikesville, were Bro. Everett Winchester, President of the Baltimore Chapter of the UNIA-ACL, Division 106 Barca-Clarke; Bro. Bill Dent, community activist; Bro. Dayvon Love, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle (LBS), who helped establish the Maryland reparations panel; Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler, founder of Temple of New African Thought (TNAT) and licensed trauma therapist; Bishop James Winslow, founder and leader of Power House World Ministries at North Avenue and Belair Road; and Baba Avon Bellamy, writer and minister.  Mama Danise Jones-Dorsey served as the panel moderator.

This was an all-Black male panel, largely because, as Ms. Jones-Dorsey stated, “Brothers have been under attack” for most of our history, and thus it was thought that we would hear from the Brothers about the definition of unity and how we can bring it about.

To begin the April 30 Discussion at the Pikes Cinema, Ms. Jones-Dorsey posed the First Question for the panel: “In your opinion, in your work, what is the definition of unity?” We summarize, and in some cases quote, the panelists’ answers below.

Bishop James Winslow
Power House Ministries owns almost the entire 1900 block of Belair Road. He grew up in this neighborhood and came back to help lift it up to where it once was. Unity is “bringing the family together, making it profitable for all of us, not just some of us. … It was beautiful when I was a kid,” with stores all along the street.

Baba Avon Bellamy
“Unity is when a group of people join together and decide that they want to work with each other to improve something for all of the people involved in that community.”

Bro. Dayvon Love
He acknowledged many in the room who “had a hand in raising me” and had helped him develop as a man and an activist. “Unity … is our ability as a people to collectively move in ways that benefit the masses of our people. … That concept itself is not complicated, but putting it into practice and operationalizing it, that’s the part that’s complicated.”

Bro. Bill Dent
“For me, unity starts within the family. … It has to be a meaningful and purposeful collaboration … fostering dialog and collaboration.”

Bro. Everett Winchester
“Unity isn’t an idea. Unity takes work, so the question is not do we want unity, [but] are we willing to work for it. I think unity as we say in the UNIA is Race First.” Coming together for community uplift, to support Black businesses like the Pikes Theater, etc.

Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler
“We have to deal with those emotions inside of us if we are truly to achieve that. … Unity is the ability to coexist and work together in spite of our differences in a way that strengthens each other through those differences.”

Audience comments
Baba Ishaka-Ra-Hannibal-El looked to the examples of the Million Man March and his experience in the Marine Corps as examples of unity. Only about 3% of Marine Corps members actually fight, with the vast majority handling critical support roles. “It takes all of us, everybody bringing their skills” to the task before us.

Rev. Mother Marcia Bowyer-Barron, affectionately known as “MotherMarci”, mentioned “community cohesion” as a key element in our unity.

Baba Kaleb Tshamba, historian of West Baltimore’s Arch Social Club, the oldest Black private social club in the United States, stated the need for our coming together and establishing a Black Agenda.

A written comment stated that “unity is about the collective and not about the individual.”

“When people have been through a traumatic event … when they are able to return home it’s less likely that they will become traumatized. When they are not able to return home they become traumatized. … We were not able to return home to Mother Afrika. … [at least] mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.” — Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler

Ms. Jones-Dorsey stated that, in her opinion, “the unity of the Afrikan person has been deliberately undermined since we were stolen from the continent. There has been a deliberate undermining of unity since we were stolen from Afrika, The family was attacked … men, women and children were under attack and separated.”
Ms. Jones-Dorsey posed the Second Question for the panel: “Why is unity under attack as you defined it? What is the prize for the opposition. … Your definition is under attack from powerful forces. Why is it important to [resist] that?”

Bishop James Winslow
“In every area of life, we are being divided. … I have one assignment, you have another assignment, you have another assignment, but all three of our assignments bring us to the same common theme. But we are not working together because we think that ‘if it’s not me in charge, if I’m not being recognized, if I’m not being seen, then I don’t want anything to do with it. I can’t support this Brother.’ And that is the problem with us. That’s what’s keeping us, as a Black People, divided. Separated from what God has really called us to do.”

Baba Avon Bellamy
“The first thing we have to ask ourselves is why is it important to the enemy to keep us from being unified? … Why does this man go through so much trouble … They have whole think tanks that are set up by billionaires just so they’ll know what we’re thinking and how to make us not think that … because that’s the thing they look at and fear. … Nobody ever steals from a poor man. Now, let’s go look at what they stole, and who they stole it from. Number one, they stole education from us. … They didn’t invent anything except for the Patent Office. … They invented the Patent Office so they could steal all the stuff [from us]. … You can go through our society and find out repeatedly, over and over, all of the ideas that have come out of our heads, that people have made billions and trillions of dollars on and continue to do it to this day, because they know better who we are than we do.”

“America is a settler colony, and part of the challenge sometimes is that many of us have bought into America as being a social political economic order capable of delivering justice to Black people. And so much of the messages that society gives us tricks us into believing in America, and as a people we need to walk away from that mythology.” — Bro. Dayvon Love

Bro. Everett Winchester
“They’re still dividing us. Light skin-dark skin. Field Negro-House Negro. Democrat-Republican. East coast-west coast. Bloods-Crips. They keep us divided. And it’s strategic … and now it’s even at the global scale. ‘I don’t like the immigrants. I don’t like the Afrikans.’ … The people in power know [if we] unite globally it’s going to be a problem. If you look like me, if you’ve got that melanin in your body, we’ve got to work together.”

Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler
“Power, domination, fear, control. … When people have been through a traumatic event … when they are able to return home it’s less likely that they will become traumatized. When they are not able to return home they become traumatized. … We were not able to return home to Mother Afrika. … [at least] mentally, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.”

Bro. Bill Dent
“There is power in numbers, so when we collaborate with each other, and we come together, we become more powerful. So there is a specific reason as to why they want to keep us divided. … They’ve made us believe that we are powerful [acting as individuals]. … What they have to do is, they play with our minds and make us believe that operating as individuals is okay.”

Bro. Dayvon Love
“One thing John Henrik Clarke once said is that one of the challenges that Black people face is this notion of eco-starvation. That we live in a society that tells you you’re worthless, that you’re a criminal, that you have no value. You seek opportunities to affirm yourself, and there are ways that our collective consciousness has been impacted in a way where many of us are seeking recognition of our humanity. And our enemy plays on that by elevating individual people and feeding people’s egos, feeding people’s sense of themselves. And I’m always careful not to pathologize that, because I recognize that comes out of legitimate feelings of worthlessness that society has conditioned into us. And so, being able to have compassion while also recognizing the limitations, having compassion for the fact that that feeling of worthlessness is a legitimate feeling that we need to have a proactive program in addressing ourselves to. … The second thing … America is a settler colony, and part of the challenge sometimes is that many of us have bought into America as being a social political economic order capable of delivering justice to Black people. And so much of the messages that society gives us tricks us into believing in America, and as a people we need to walk away from that mythology. … John Henrik Clarke once said information about the world is colonized. … One of the lessons that I have learned is that even though there are folks for whom their worldview instills a belief in America, I recognize there are folks who believe that who also want to do good things for Black people. … In extending that kind of grace … has endeared people to curiosity about the perspective that I have. … Very few people have experienced wielding power that is not based on being sanctioned and approved by White folks … based on Black people’s collective unity. … Many of our people have never seen it. Many of them can’t even imagine it. For many of them the plantation is inevitable. … So part of it is showing people, in small steps, that this can work.”

“There is power in numbers, so when we collaborate with each other, and we come together, we become more powerful. So there is a specific reason as to why they want to keep us divided. … They’ve made us believe that we are powerful [acting as individuals]. … What they have to do is, they play with our minds and make us believe that operating as individuals is okay.” — Bro. Bill Dent

The next Unity Discussion was set for Thursday, May 21, at Power House Ministries’ Event Center at 1932 Belair Road.

May 19, 2026: Black Nationalism Celebrates Minister Malcolm X

The 101st Birthday of Minister Malcolm X/El-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz/Omowale was observed with a Panel Discussion at the Masonic Lodge at 1307 Euraw Street in Central Baltimore. This event was organized, convened and moderated by Mwalimu Locy Lumumba, founder of Working, Organizing, Making A Nation (WOMAN).

The event began with a drum call.

After a prayer in the tradition of the Ancient Afrikan (Egyptian, or KMTic) MDW NTR, Mwalimu performed the Libation.

Baltimore area lawyer Baba Leslie Kenyatta Howard performed “African Violet”, a song by jazz and folk music saxophonist/singer-songwriter Terry Callier (May 24, 1945-October 27, 2012).

Music was provided for the event by veteran DJ Baba Tony Culcha of the UNIA-ACL Division 106 Barca-Clarke.

After a piece of music by a jazz violinist accompanied the assembling of the invited panelists, the discussion began.

Several selections were read by local poet and panelist Mama Laini Mataka from several of her works of poetry.

Mwalimu posed several questions to the panel.

The first question was to the Sistas on the panel about the roles taken by Ancestors Amy Jacques Garvey and Clara Muhammad in the UNIA-ACL and the Nation of Islam while their husbands were captured and incarcerated by the system. He asked whether or not history has treated these strong women fairly, and if this was an indication that the level of “inequality toward Black women in particular and women in general needs to be totally eradicated.” Mama Mwangaza Michael Bandele stressed the degree of “partnership and loyalty” that existed between the women and their men, and the need to regain the sense of balance between men and women. Mama Laini Mataka noted the roles that girls and boys accepted, and the disregard this culture has for the idea of “women as warriors” and that any such inclination to embrace that idea by our women was either misinterpreted, twisted or misconstrued as evidence of homosexuality. A result of this culture teaching this mindset was that “Black men aligned themselves more with White men when it came to how to treat women rather than aligning themselves with Black women in dealing with racial issues.” Mama Yaa Kenyata remembered the proverb that “until the lion has his own historians the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Until we write our own stories, this patriarchal society will continue to marginalize “the role of the Black woman and what she’s supposed to do in the movement and how visible she is supposed to be in the movement … [T]here are certain times when women are put to the front, but most often women are leading from the back. … [W]e understand that role of being the backbone … we also adopt European ways of thinking of how women are supposed to be presented. … [We need to realize that] when a Black man is being put up front, then we are too. … We are the ones that are nurturing the movement. … There is no movement without Black women.”

“[T]here are certain times when women are put to the front, but most often women are leading from the back. … [W]e understand that role of being the backbone … we also adopt European ways of thinking of how women are supposed to be presented. … [We need to realize that] when a Black man is being put up front, then we are too. … We are the ones that are nurturing the movement. … There is no movement without Black women.” — Mama Yaa Kenyatta

Comments from the audience reinforced much of what the Sistas had said, while also opening up discussion about the role the imposition of non-Afrikan culture plays in our interpretation of women’s roles in today’s society and how we must embrace our Afrikan roots to resist the undue influence of Eurocentric thought.
Moving on to the “evolutionary phase” of the panel, Mwalimu asked Bro. Ogun Lumumba about his thoughts on the evolutionary phases that shaped Malcolm’s life that stood out for him. Bro. Ogun saw Minister Malcolm’s growth as a young man beginning in the Nation of Islam, but the culmination being his creation of the Muslim Mosque Inc. and the Organization of Afro American Unity, in which “his political mind was never shut off” and he began “his true political awakening” that we never got the chance to see because his fire was cut short at such a young age. Bro. Everett Winchester spoke about Minister Malcolm’s roots in the UNIA through his parents and the teachings of The Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey. Minister Malcolm’s mother was an officer in the UNIA as well as his father. Bro. Everett referenced the autobiographies of Minister Malcolm and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (Giant Steps) as well as the influence of The Honorable Elijah Muhammad as part of the Minister’s path toward Black Nationalism and revolutionary thinking, “coming full circle” and “finishing off with his own knowledge and his own superiority.” Baba Imhotep Fatiu spoke about Minister Malcolm’s foundational ideas around Black pride, self-determination, economic interdependence, global awareness, Afrikan unity and nation-building, which was “rooted in an understanding of what it meant to be Afrikan and Black.” He referenced Minister Malcolm’s quote that “history is best qualified to reward all research. That’s throughout his entire developmental process, because he studied history. … not only in the United States but throughout the world. … That’s what makes Malcolm, in my opinion, the epitome of Pan Afrikanism in this time period … because Malcolm is the first Black leader that was represented on the Continent as an ambassador of people who weren’t even a government. … He was just a person like you and I. It was because of what he represented and how the power emanated from him that allowed him to be that. His foundation was Afrika, his foundation was Black through and through. … In the world we live in, phenotype is important. … Everything in Malcolm was rooted in Blackness. … In the world we’re living in … there’s only one ideology that truly frightens these people. … And that has been Pan Afrikanism. See, for me Black Nationalism is naturally birthed inside Pan Afrikanism. … So naturally, Pan Afrikanism is nationalistic. That is an ideology that has frightened these people and still frightens these people to this day. And we have to come to understand that.” He mentioned five aspects of the internal awareness that we must reproduce within the Black National Psyche: Black consciousness, Black identity, Black solidarity, national feeling and national response. This gets us to a national spirit and an understanding of the national struggle that can give birth to a national movement and get us to Black liberation and a national Black body politic. He closed by noting Minister Malcolm’s commitment to “bring our case to the UN.” Baba Olatunji Mwamba spoke about Minister Malcolm’s commitment to the study of history, and how he had said that Minister Malcolm was destined to move away from Islam because of its historical imposition on Afrikan people by the Arab world, a contention backed up by his own extensive research. He cautioned us that we must “stop being lazy, open up some books and read them,” including several heavily researched books of his own. He echoed the words of Mama Marimba Ani who said that your culture is your immune system. “And the reason that we’re haphazard and scattered and so damn crazy is because we don’t know what our culture is.” And our culture permeates how we behave toward each other, our music, our food, our clothing and how we look at the divine. “Who told you that Judaism, Christianity and Islam were better than what we were born with before they came into Afrika? Who told you that? Somebody had to impose that on you, and to make you believe that somehow their God was better than ours.”

“That’s what makes Malcolm, in my opinion, the epitome of Pan Afrikanism in this time period … because Malcolm is the first Black leader that was represented on the Continent as an ambassador of people who weren’t even a government. … He was just a person like you and I. It was because of what he represented and how the power emanated from him that allowed him to be that. His foundation was Afrika, his foundation was Black through and through. … In the world we’re living in … there’s only one ideology that truly frightens these people. … And that has been Pan Afrikanism.” — Baba Imhotep Fatiu

Community comments centered around reaching out to the youth and the people in the neighborhoods and the streets who “don’t have to be cultured; they just have to be us.” “We have to meet them where they are,” as Baba Olatunji noted. Baba Kenyatta made reference by Malcolm’s Organization of African American Unity and more contemporary efforts to follow Malcolm’s order to reach out to the world stage and to link Pan Afrikanist thought with neighborhood organizations. He also admonished those Pan Afrikanists who don’t attend neighborhood meetings but still consider themselves to be “the tip of the spear” as “armchair revolutionaries” who need to start attending these neighborhood meetings and provide some leadership there if they are to be taken seriously as organizers of Afrikan people. Bro. Cliff Kuumba mentioned the work of the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (SRDC) in reaching out to the world stage and the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (MPACC) and its plan to bring those grassroots, political, media, Pan Afrikan and other groups together and to share their knowledge with each other. Baba Imhotep cautioned us all to avoid the temptation to manifest our “hurt and pain” through accusations about what organizers are not doing and tear each other down, and instead realize that no one can be everywhere or do everything and that our organizations are doing much work in the ways that they can. We need to “reframe how we see us” and “develop a positive attitude toward the victory of our struggle.” We must change “how we think about ourselves, how we treat each other, how we relate to one another and what we know about one another.” Another audience member noted that “the thing that you see to do is the thing that you ought to do,” that rather than criticize each other about what we are not doing, we need to commit ourselves to filling the voids that we see and expect others to fill.

“[S]top being lazy, open up some books and read them” — Baba Olatunji Mwamba

The third phase dealt with “the politics of it all”, what a serious application of methodology through politics actually looks like, and Mwalimu first called on Bro. Dayvon Love. Bro. Dayvon started with two examples of Malcolm’s methodology having concrete impacts on the political landscape. Baba A. Peter Bailey, a confidant of Minister Malcolm’s, spoke about a conflict in the UN, some time after Malcolm X’s assassination, around White nuns facing hostility in the Congo and US intervention in the Congo on behalf of the White nuns. The ambassador to Guinea had responded by saying that, if the US responds with military intervention on behalf of White nuns in the Congo, then Afrika should respond with military force to defend Black people facing brutality and terrorism in the southern United States. This challenge so shocked the attendees on the UN floor that the issue of intervention in the Congo was not brought up again. This was important “in concretizing the political impact that Malcolm X had” through his meeting with Afrikan diplomats and heads of state despite not being a head of state himself. That was a lesson in “how to actualize what political power is.” Minister Malcolm’s experience in the NOI, and his establishing mosques wherever he went and what the NOI was able to do in those communities he visited, had much to do with his ability to build a political base and be received by Afrikan heads of state as he was. A second point comes from Malcom X’s Message to the Grassroots, “one of the most important public addresses in the 20th century.” Before the March on Washington became what it became, “there was grassroots political activity locally that was bubbling up around the country.” People disrupting airports by “laying on the tarmac” to stop flights and “shut the country down” and similar tactics of direct action to block the state’s repressive policies led to philanthropists pulling the leaders of the major civil rights organizations together, forming the Commission on Civil Rights, putting resources into an effort to take the Black freedom struggle from the grassroots to the “grass-tops”, funding civil rights elites and traditional nonprofit organizations to become the spokespeople for Black political activity, the institutionalization of leaders selected by White folks and imposed on us “that served the interests of the Kennedy Administration more than it served the interests of the Black community. … Politics I think too often among Pan Afrikanists, we see it as a place to retreat from. And I think that that instinct is a reasonable instinct. Politics is a toxic landscape … But the problem is that withdrawing from the political landscape cedes all of that power to our enemies. … What politics is, is the contestation for power and resources. You don’t have to pledge allegiance to America. America is a settler colony. America is not redeemable. And unfortunately, too many of our people have internalized this notion that we need to believe in America and make America better. And I’ll say, from a Pan Afrikanist perspective, that we learn from Malcolm. That this society is not redeemable. We cannot go to the criminal’s court to get them to convict a criminal. So, for us as a people, we need to engage politics from a vantage point that we’re contesting for power and resources. It’s a site for warfare. … Part of the challenge … is that all of the things … that are necessary for our people to thrive, are all controlled by our enemy. … So as we’re engaged in the political warfare, simultaneously, building the institutions that are structured from Afrikan perspectives and worldviews, such that we can replace the system that currently presides over us with systems that we control, own and operate in ways that are commensurate with what it means to be a person of Afrikan descent.”

“Politics I think too often among Pan Afrikanists, we see it as a place to retreat from. And I think that that instinct is a reasonable instinct. Politics is a toxic landscape … But the problem is that withdrawing from the political landscape cedes all of that power to our enemies. … So, for us as a people, we need to engage politics from a vantage point that we’re contesting for power and resources. It’s a site for warfare.” — Bro. Dayvon Love

Mwalimu’s next question centered around what practical unity should look like in today’s time despite organizational differences, and what we should have learned (but did not learn) from Minister Malcolm’s words and example.

Bro. Cliff answered the second part of that question first and then moved to the first part, beginning with four words that we identify with Minister Malcolm: “by any means necessary”, meaning that we must utilize whatever means we can to engage the struggle and lift up the people. “Not one means, not this means over here but not those means over there. Any means. Which tells me that, as Bro. Dayvon has already hinted at, we need to be able to fight the battle on multiple fronts. We can’t cede any territory to the enemy.” This is a lesson that we seem not to have taken seriously, and thus we act “like a one-trick pony”. This becomes clear when people insist that it’s all about political mobilization, or economics, or that revolution is the only solution. “The only solution to me is all of them together. … when two or more organizations come together, we often demonstrate what I might call barriers to optimal effectiveness. I’ve been to numerous meetings with other organizations, no one in this room by the way, and when I start to explain what SRDC’s organizational mission is, I barely get two minutes into it when the person from the other organization cuts me off and says ‘you shouldn’t do it that way; you should do it this way.’ It doesn’t make sense to me that, if I’m meeting someone from another organization with another perspective, another mission, that I would tell them that they need to stop doing what they’re doing in their way and start doing it my way. I can’t think of a better way to insult someone’s ten, twenty, thirty years of dedicated service than to tell them ‘stop doing it the way you’re doing it and do it like I tell you’. So, one of the characteristics of an effective, large-based organizing of our people … is to let go of what I consider to be the four most dangerous words in Pan Afrikan organizing. Those four words are ‘I Have The Answer’. And I’ve heard people say that too. … ‘I know what we have to do, I’ve got the answer; everyone must follow me.’ And to me, that is one of the things that shuts down the efforts of our organizations to come together and unify. … Another thing that we would do well to do … is to start listening to each more to understand where everyone is. Sometimes we listen to each other in an effort to look for an opening where we can score points. And instead, [we need to] listen to each other so that I can understand what it is about your mission that is important and how my work can help your organization to move forward and vice versa. … The other mission that Malcolm gave us 62 years ago … he said ‘When you take your case to Washington DC, you’re taking it to the criminal who’s responsible. It’s like running from the wolf to the fox. They’re all in cahoots together. They all work political chicanery and make you look like a chump before the eyes of the world.’ That was the thing that told me it has to not be just about domestic politics but it also has to be about reaching out to the international community, and this is where international Pan Afrikanism, in my mind, comes in. This is where Bro. Everett’s UNIA comes in. This is where the work of SRDC will come in as far as getting our grassroots voice out to the UN, the AU, the Organization of American States, the UNIA, the Pan African Federalist Movement and all these other world bodies that can then give us the vehicle where we can exert external pressure on Uncle Sam to match the internal pressure [of domestic politics, economics, culture and grassroots action]. It has to be all of those plans, all of those ideas together. … I think of a chess game. You’ve got different pieces, they move differently, they have different strengths. The one who wins is the one who makes them work together.”

“[O]ne of the characteristics of an effective, large-based organizing of our people … is to let go of what I consider to be the four most dangerous words in Pan Afrikan organizing. Those four words are ‘I Have The Answer’.” — Bro. Cliff Kuumba

Bro. Everett Winchester stressed that emotional unity and organizational unity are “two different things. When we all say ‘Race First’, or ‘we need to get along’ and ‘we need to work together’, that’s emotional unity. But organizational unity is putting those things in place. One of the great things about these panel discussions, Bro. Bill Goodin has one Thursday on unity, we all love each other, we all want to work together. That doesn’t mean we have to be a part of the same organization. I’m a character guy. Some things I may not agree with you on, I can’t get with you on that. That doesn’t mean I don’t have your back when the fight goes down. We’ve just got to figure out what we agree with, and go with that. When it comes to Malcolm, I think of the ‘we’. Somebody mentioned ‘we’. The ‘we’ is not always in the room because the ‘we’ … may not be in the Pan Afrikan community. … The ‘we’ is the people in my basketball program and my football program. We’ve got like 100 kids in my basketball program. They’re not going to be here because they’re not ready to accept Pan Afrikanism, and that’s okay. But I got them off the street. They see me, how I move. And for those two hours that they’re in the gym, or those two hours that they’re playing football, I got them off the street. They see role models. So, people always tell me ‘I want to address you as President Everett.’ Man, the highest form I tell those young boys you can call me is Coach, or Brother Everett. That’s the highest form of acknowledgement to me. So I think we just need to come together and figure out what we do have in common. It’s okay, we can’t work with each other on every thing, but the people on this panel, the people in this room, I know we do the work. I see you at almost every event. So it’s not us, we have to reach out to the other people. And we may not be able to push Pan Afrikanism on them. But we can tell them who we are. Our stories, how to build, how to be a better person. Help them stay out of those streets for a couple of times. … We’ve got to understand where these kids are coming from. … Everybody here has great solutions, everybody here has great ideas, but organization is building schools, getting a political program together. … Political power, that’s what Malcolm was talking about. Controlling our own … building our neighborhoods, that’s what he was talking about. So we can talk about it all day, but now I’m asking for solutions. How do we get these politicians to get on board with our vote? How do we do that? Let’s not say ‘Don’t vote’, because they come to you every election time wanting your vote. That’s for a reason. So we’ve got to talk, like Malcolm said, [about] political power. … We’ve got to reach out to them but we can’t preach to them. We’ve just got to give them love and figure out ways so we can bring them together.”

“When we all say ‘Race First’, or ‘we need to get along’ and ‘we need to work together’, that’s emotional unity. But organizational unity is putting those things in place.” — Bro. Everett Winchester

Bro. Dayvon Love answered a question from the audience about challenges faced in doing this activism work. “In a society that is structured on settler colonialism, capitalism and imperialism, part of the challenge is that our access to resources to sustain ourselves is often reliant on the benevolence of those that run the society, White folks and their institutions. One of the things that they have done is they establish charities [such as the 501(c)3]. They primarily serve as tax shelters for major corporations, and that allows them to park their money, to make money off of their money. But they are technically non-profits, they are charities. The challenge is that, while (c)3’s are the easiest to get funded, they have the most restrictions in terms of the capacity to participate in politics. And so, part of the challenge we have is that people who start non-profit organizations [are] very well meaning, but in terms of the kind of political warfare you need to be able to engage in order to make folks in elective office do what you need them to do, you are often restricted as a result of the very structure of it, and if the enemy decides that you’re being too political, they can weaponize the IRS against you [and] say that you’re operating outside of the (c)3 structure. So that’s important, because when we think about politics and sometimes when people think about doing something good for the community, the thought is ‘let me start a non-profit.’ That is a non-political solution to problems that are inherently political. … [I]n LBS, I’ve had to develop an entrepreneurial approach to be able to sustain the organization so that none of those strings apply to me, so there are ways that I can fully go after elected officials, unapologetically, in ways that other folks cannot to the point that I can impact them getting re-elected, can impact their policy agenda moving forward, those are the kind of metrics that determine whether politically you are effective. And I think one of the challenges is [that] the (c)3 structure, as the primary vehicle for political organization, has created a dynamic where we do not have the ability to be a formidable political force under the (c)3 status. It requires other kinds of formations … the (c)4’s, the LLC’s, S-corps. There are a variety of different configurations of an entity, but that is a conversation that I rarely ever hear in the [radical] political world [where we] tend not to think about the question of how to generate resources [but] it is foundational if we are truly to do politics in a way that we are formidable and can actually be a threat to the system.”

“[O]ne of the challenges is [that] the [501(c)3] structure, as the primary vehicle for political organization, has created a dynamic where we do not have the ability to be a formidable political force under the (c)3 status. It requires other kinds of formations … but that is a conversation that I rarely ever hear in the [radical] political world [where we] tend not to think about the question of how to generate resources [but] it is foundational if we are truly to do politics in a way that we are formidable and can actually be a threat to the system.” — Bro. Dayvon Love

Bro. Cliff spoke about multiple fronts in the struggle as pressure points: Wilmington, North Carolina’s Fusion Government, a progressive political structure that was destroyed by right wing White terrorism (one pressure point); the Red Summer of 1919 in which three dozen Black grassroots communities including Elaine, Arkansas which were destroyed, again, by right wing White terrorism; the Greenwood district of Tulsa, Oklahoma (Black Wall Street), destroyed by police violence and military-style assault (another pressure point for us); and the Black Panther Party with its multi-faceted programs, which was defeated by a combination of media demonization, military-style attack, infiltration by agents provocateur and simultaneous prosecution of Panther leadership from coast to coast (military attack, media, infiltration and law, three pressure points all at once) which led to over 100 political prisoners, many of whom died in prison. “There are multiple areas of attack that have been used against us when we have concentrated on one or two or three areas of advancement. And that is what I mean by not only multiple pressure points being applied against us but also the notion that we cannot just fight this battle on one front. We are surrounded by our enemies, and if we continue to concentrate on one front, all we will do is get shot in the back.”

A question from the audience centered on “how to involve what we’re doing now into a political base that will allow us to take control of some of these institutions that currently control our everyday lives?” Bro. Dayvon Love offered a response: “many of us have never encountered narratives of people of Afrikan descent operating [as] high level civilizations [so] many of us can’t imagine Black people with it. … so when Black folks come and say ‘this is something we were able to do and the source of its power was our community’, unfortunately, many of us are conditioned to not believe that that’s possible. And I think that that discourages a lot of people from participating, because I think sometimes we’re looking for this magical, all-encompassing moment of victory, when the reality is that there are folks that are doing work. … We’re conditioned to think that we can’t win.”

“There are multiple areas of attack that have been used against us when we have concentrated on one or two or three areas of advancement. And that is what I mean by … the notion that we cannot just fight this battle on one front. We are surrounded by our enemies, and if we continue to concentrate on one front, all we will do is get shot in the back.” — Bro. Cliff Kuumba

Baba Imhotep added “to be political is really to understand conventions. So wherever you are at, you have to operate effectively in that space in such a way that you advance us. That’s the key to being political. And that’s going to happen when we create these spaces to help to raise that awareness within our people. Because a lot of us are in these spaces that we’re talking about. But we do not have a political mindset. And because we don’t have a political mindset, we don’t execute that space in a way that advances us. … But we have to know that we are those who can change our lives. … A lot of us are, in fact, hysterics, don’t believe, don’t trust. We look at us through a lens that has been created by those [who] we’re going up against, but we utilize that lens to assess us, and we can’t do that.”

Mama Yaa Kenyatta added a comment on warriorship: “When we are at war, every place we are becomes a battleground. So, whatever is your lane, whatever is your thing, that is what you should show up as a warrior in. So, you always should be in warrior mode, all the time. So there are little things that we do that we do not think of as being a warrior, it could be what you eat, it could be how you dress, it could be how you interact, it could be what you do on your job. It could be all those things, it’s warriorship. … We’re not doing that. Some of us are fantasizing about being a warrior in a way that’s not realistic. … The hard stuff is looking at your basic day to day and saying how am I showing up in a warrior mindset in my basic day to day activity. … The smallest thing you can think of, you still need to be in warrior mode when you’re dealing with it.”

“When we are at war, every place we are becomes a battleground. So, whatever is your lane, whatever is your thing, that is what you should show up as a warrior in. So, you always should be in warrior mode, all the time.” — Mama Yaa Kenyatta

Baba Olatunji referenced his writing to make the point that “everybody has something that they can do. Just think of what you can do that’s positive. It can be something small, it doesn’t have to be big … but do something. … The important thing is to be the example of what you want to see in others. Be the example. … Be the best Afrikan you can be. Manifest that every day.”

Bro. Cliff added that “warriors win when they come together in an army. The political analysis of Bro. Dayvon, the political party that Bro. Nnamdi is building, the on the ground work that PLM, Conscious Headz and Solvivaz Nation are doing, that UNIA is doing, the venues like Arch Social Club and House of Chiefs, what WOMAN is doing. All of those things need to come together and connect. Then we will be able ti build that army. … The team wins when all the players work together.”

“[E]verybody has something that they can do. Just think of what you can do that’s positive. It can be something small, it doesn’t have to be big … but do something. … The important thing is to be the example of what you want to see in others. Be the example. … Be the best Afrikan you can be.” — Baba Olatunji Mwamba

The event ended with a musical rendition with guitar and vocals by Bro. Cartier Cornish, performing a song originally released by Steel Pulse.

May 21, 2026: Unity Discussion, Power House World Ministries

The May 21 Unity Panel at Power House World Ministries Event Center at Belair Road and East North Avenue featured much of the same panel that spoke at the April 30 Discussion, with the new addition of Bro. Mark Hughes of Park Heights Renaissance joining Bro. Everett Winchester, Bishop James Winslow, Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler and Bro. Dayvon Love, with Mama Danise Dorsey again serving as Moderator.

Mama Danise Dorsey began by recounting examples of unity in action: community support of Black businesses, the 1995 Million Man March, the 2015 Freddie Gray protests. Real effective unity, however, requires more. “I remember when we did not have a Black mayor. Do you all remember that? Do you all remember how Mayor [Clarence “Du”] Burns, our first mayor, ascended through strategy and organization? Our first Black elected state’s attorney and then Black mayor, Kurt Schmoke, that would not have happened [without strategy and organization]. So we need to talk about, lift up in our consciousness, examples of unity. And why do we do that? As Dr. Ausar [Winkler] will share with us, because if we focus on the negative, we send that negative energy out, and we just engender division rather than building unity. Now this is still abstract, but I want to take us to another place. How many folks in here are independent businesspeople? That’s your side hustle, okay. So you’re independent businesspeople. There is an economic structure that you push up against, and it’s only through the support of your community do you benefit, is that right or wrong? The other thing about economics … what we understand about economics is in order for capitalism to operate in the way that it does … is that … the nation inside of a nation supports capitalism because we are primarily consumers, so the money that’s inside of our neighborhoods leaves very quickly. We already know that story. But there’s a design for why it leaves very quickly. … Because during segregation, and I understand that Baltimore’s Black neighborhoods were thriving, east side, west side. … So during segregation … it was circulating in our community and so we were building economic strength, and with that economic strength families are tighter, education is better, churches are thriving, but we were all convinced that there was something wrong with that. So that’s going to be another conversation … the trick bag, how we were tricked into believing that our goal was really dust. … I’m not from Baltimore. … Growing up in rural Kentucky, I was taught Baltimore was the pearl of the south. … Why was Baltimore the pearl of the south? One, you all dominated food and catering. … You all dominated music, entertainment. Cab Calloway is from here. Chick Webb, the great Chick Webb is from Baltimore. … That’s culture, that’s entertainment, businesses … And you all figured out how to do the lottery. You all did that so well that they had to make the lottery legal. My textbooks were being published by Waverly Press on the east side. … The innovations around education, scholarly education, it was coming out of Baltimore, out of your teachers. Out of your principals. … These Brothers have already said to us, we need to know our strengths in order to unify around our strengths. We’ve been told about our degradation. I want you all to be clear about, we are a mighty people.”

Bro. Dayvon Love spoke briefly about an upcoming screening at the Senator Theater, “Beyond The Wire” about the work of Frederick Messenger and violence interrupters and featuring many of Baltimore’s committed on-the-ground activists and organizers. The movie, which offers a counterpoint to the image of Baltimore that was perpetuated by the hit series The Wire, was produced by Dr. S. Rashiem, who was interviewed by The Real News Network (https://therealnews.com) and spoke about the film, which was connected to the Baltimore Legacy Project. After showing on June 18 and 25 at the Senator Theater on York Road, there are plans to stream it, perhaps next year. In the meantime, one can visit https://www.baltimorelegacyproject.com to find out ways to support the film.

“[Y]ou’re talking about unity, people need to know that they have support, and people like us that come together and talk about unity, we can give them hope, so that they will stop shutting down their shops as fast as they come in there. They need to know that somebody’s got their back, and all of us standing together, we can actually clean that up.” — Bishop James Winslow

Bishop James Winslow, founder and Pastor of Power House World Ministries at whose community event center this panel was being held, spoke about how Power House had bought the block and built its center and church building. Being born and raised nearby on Gay Street, “everything we needed [was here]. This area was like downtown, before you even get to Old Town Mall. I’m talking about from Federal Street down to Wolfe Street, both sides of the street was nothing but Black-owned businesses, and everything that you needed, you could get. Well, what happened to it? Martin Luther King died, [then] the riots. Our own people burned it down. And I could not, and to this day I still don’t understand why we burned it down. Because when we burn down our businesses, guess what? They never came back. … Once I came into the ministry, I said ‘Lord, if you allow me to live long enough, I would like to restore some of the luster back in this community that was here when I was a kid.’ And I set out not knowing how I was going to do it … and we started purchasing one block at a time, until we ended up with what we have today. And I can tell you that everything that you see is paid for. We don’t owe anybody anything except for this building which is the only one we have a mortgage on. Everything else is paid for. And it’s here for the community. If you guys have something that you want to have, all you have to do is contact us. We will work with you, we’re not trying to get rich off of anybody. … Up by Erdman Avenue, all of the stores up there are Black-owned, and right now, the people are leaving as fast as they come in. … I like to believe that they’re not selling drugs but I believe it is drug related. And that is one of the biggest problems. And you’re talking about unity, people need to know that they have support, and people like us that come together and talk about unity, we can give them hope, so that they will stop shutting down their shops as fast as they come in there. They need to know that somebody’s got their back, and all of us standing together, we can actually clean that up. If you can remember, this block, right here at the corner of North [Avenue] and Belair Road, you [used to] see hundreds and hundreds of people, standing outside, bent over, because of the drug treatment center across the street, well guess what? Do you see that now? I put a sign, I don’t know if you all read it, but it’s hanging on the building. It says ‘I decree Baltimore a holy city.’ The Lord gave me that. And the Bible says ‘Speak things that be not as though they were.’ I’m not going to preach to you. But every tome somebody reads that sign, they’re actually speaking it into existence. Because it starts with each and every one of us. It is so quiet around here now, you almost think you’re in the county. You will never see anybody hanging out. We don’t have any problems. There’s no crime like it used to be. I don’t know where it went. All I know is it cleaned up.”

Ms. Dorsey asked the panelists beginning with Bro. Mark Hughes, “What keeps us divided? And stay with your theme, like you’re with Park Heights Renaissance. What are the forces that work against that Renaissance?”

Bro. Mark Hughes works through Park Heights Renaissance, an organization that assists people to obtain decent, affordable housing and seeks to make Park Heights a destination location where residents can live, work, grow and thrive. “We have to make sure that the people who we’re trying to help, we do more of letting them … step up and lead. Doing things for people does not help make stuff better. Because once you leave or get enough money or whatever, and you disappear, they’re back in the same situation that they were in. So … one of the things that we have to learn how to do is we have to celebrate our successes. The things in my household coming up, that we had around the different parts of the house, almost in every room, there was either a Jet or an Ebony magazine. … The thing about it was, it was celebrating Black greatness. I always wanted to look at the back page. I wanted to see who had the hottest song. If it was my song in that Top Ten. And then, later on, I started being able to read about favorite sports stars on certain pages. But the whole thing was, while I was scanning, looking for what I was looking for, we know some people were also looking for the Beauty of the Week. But it was our excellence. You were being taught how to celebrate yourself. We have to learn how to do that. We have to learn how to celebrate our successes, celebrate our people. That’s what helps us to become more united. We spend too much time talking about what we don’t have, and not looking at what we actually do have that works. Because other people watch us … and find ways to make money off of us, but still admire us. We just have to learn how to do that.”

“[O]ne of the things that we have to learn how to do is we have to celebrate our successes. The things in my household coming up, that we had around the different parts of the house, almost in every room, there was either a Jet or an Ebony magazine. … The thing about it was, it was celebrating Black greatness.” — Bro. Mark Hughes

Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler added, “I’m not sure that we are divided as much as we are tired, burned out, unclear, and [not] assessing things accurately. I often think we have expectations that aren’t consistent with what’s really going on. Just to be honest, I don’t feel the division, I feel the war. … I can feel the differences and sometimes we think differences are the division. But that is a part of what is necessary for us to be united. … I don’t see too many Black people who feel like they don’t want to fight the same enemy. I just don’t see that. … Sometimes we might disagree on [details about how we will fight]. But a lot of us see things similarly. But then I feel that there is a minority that has been overlooked, and our dear Brother Dayvon Love wrote a beautiful article that I think we should check out. And he wrote about this idea that we as Black people have knowledge. He probably doesn’t want to talk about himself, so I’m going to talk about it. This is what we call unity. … I’m going to support my Brother because we don’t have to [just] support people that’s not here anymore. I’m going to speak about the brilliance before us. I’m going to speak about the brilliance right here. Lots of times, we struggle with that. And I want to speak about that brilliance. I want to cite us here right now. This Brother here I haven’t met yet, but I can see that he’s a beautiful Brother. I don’t see this as disunity, I don’t. So as a psychotherapist, I understand that we need to rewire the way we look at this thing, and that is an issue, because I don’t think that we assess this thing correctly, because we expect something that’s not realistic. This is what keeps us at odds in our individual relationships, because we have these fantasies that you have to ask the question, so what would unity really look like and how would you know you reached it? … So I ask people at the end of [individual] sessions, ‘what do you want from your husband?’ Or ‘what do you want from your wife?’ And many times they don’t know, they just know that they’re discontent. So what I’m saying is that we have to rewire this.”

“I’m going to support my Brother because we don’t have to [just] support people that’s not here anymore. I’m going to speak about the brilliance before us. I’m going to speak about the brilliance right here. Lots of times, we struggle with that. And I want to speak about that brilliance. I want to cite us here right now.” — Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler

Bro. Everett Winchester added that “we may be more unified than we think. … Because of the pain, the frustration and things of that nature, we have a tendency to be in the urgent state that, we have to do it this way. ‘My way is the way’, which causes more frustration, which causes more anger, and when we get together we don’t really accomplish anything, we more or less just talk. And sometimes I think we just have to get into the room and see how we’re unified. … See the things that we are doing well. When I coach my basketball team, I get caught in that mode myself. I’m the coach, I’m bringing these kids off the street, it’s gotta be done this way, it’s gotta be done that way. And they’re working for me, they’re working for me, and then after a while, they’re not running hard anymore. They’re not giving me the same energy. My methods have become old. So I have to come to them and say ‘what’s up? What am I doing wrong?’ ‘Well coach, you want us doing this, but we’re not feeling doing it this way.’ … And I’ve got to humble myself and listen to them, hear their input. Because when you bring people from the street that are from different neighborhoods … not only are they beefing with each other, they’re beefing with society, they’re beefing with the elders, they’re beefing with authority, and I have to keep them in that gym and let the know that I’m with them. … It’s not basketball anymore, we call each other family. … We’ve got to come together and focus on what we have together. There’s no one way to do it. … The word unity is powerful but we’ve got to just make it operational. … We’ve got to listen to each other and not just talk all the time. … And it’s hard to be humble because you know you’ve got the right way to do it. You believe it. … But somebody else feels the same way. …”

Ms. Dorsey posed the next question: “It’s clear we’ve got the spirit of unity, reframing, rethinking … but our division is now external. When the rubber meets the road, then the system will not allow us to successfully educate Black boys. When the system wants to take down the young Black mayor’s strategy that’s working to get rid of violence in our community when the first people to lose their job … look like us. How do we unify to support our people within those external structures ..?”

Bro. Dayvon Love noted that “we need to be thinking proactively and thinking ahead. … If you’re always thinking about the crisis in front of you, you’re not having the time to build an infrastructure so that you have more options and more stability when crisis comes. …” He noted an instance during COVID when the city was taking funds from other programs to purchase processed food instead of investing in the Black Church Food Security Network (https://blackchurchfoodsecurity,net) or Black Yield Institute (@blackyieldinstitute on Facebook) which were building sustainable healthy programs to feed the people. “So I would say the first thing is we need to get to a place where we are proactive and planning ahead. … The second thing that I would say is that, I think one of the biggest challenges that we have as a people is the way, over the past 60 years, the Black middle class has withdrawn itself from the whole of our community. In many ways, the Black middle class, geographically, socially, politically, has left our community. And so there’s this crazy dynamic in which our institutions are more afraid and less stable as a result of that. … Many of the folks that are Black middle class, doing well individually, oftentimes are benefitting from the suffering of the masses of our own people. So I think that there needs to be some accountability on the part of those who are able to benefit from some o the advances of our community, because that will then produce the kind of institutional and financial foundation form us to do some of that proactive planning …”

“Our people have been colonized. … I grew up watching Tarzan and I honestly thought Tarzan was the good guy. I was watching cowboys and Indians and I thought the cowboys were the good guys. We were being programmed to really hate ourselves.” — Bishop James Winslow

Bishop Winslow offered: “Our people have been colonized. … I grew up watching Tarzan and I honestly thought Tarzan was the good guy. I was watching cowboys and Indians and I thought the cowboys were the good guys. We were being programmed to really hate ourselves. And one of the biggest problems I see, why there is no coming together, people don’t even know how to love themselves, and if they can’t love themselves how are they going to love anyone else? … They’re not going to support your business, they’re not going to support your ideas, they’re not going to want to participate … unless they are in charge. It comes down to a point where folk are just jealous. … I see it all the time, even in the church. … And they wonder why their churches are empty, why nobody wants to come. … We’ve got a lot of work to do. To get people to live themselves is a job and a half.”

Ms. Dorsey shared the next plans. “We will gather again, I think it’s June 16th. … We’re going to gather at Next Phaze [Cafe, on Lexington Street in Downtown Baltimore], but in that next gathering we’re going to gather around tables so the audience and the panelists are talking together. … We as a people have to love ourselves, reframe our thinking, in order to proactively think through the artificial structures that can be dismantled so that we can do what we need to do.”

Sis. Ertha Harris brought up the issue of finding out “who is the ‘we'” and also made note of the struggles she has had in maintaining the House of Chiefs, a restaurant and lounge at 4603 York Road, and voiced her concerns about the difficulty in getting the community to come out and support. Bro. Dayvon responded with words of support but also noted that he questions “the extent to which people are ready to hear honest feedback. … Everybody’s not ready to hear it. … That’s a touchy thing to figure out how to navigate.” Another audience member noted that “we have to humble ourselves. … Nobody wants to accept that they don’t know what they don’t know.”

Bro. Keith Scott, a local activist who has run for Baltimore mayor in the past and seeks to build an independent political party to challenge both the Democrats and the Republicans, stated that “we don’t recognize that we’re already unified. We have over 350,000 people living in Baltimore that don’t vote. That means that we’ve got 350,000 people in Baltimore [that] do not like the system they have today. If we offer them a system that they can relate to … We’ve got to listen to the people because they don’t vote [but] they’re talking loud. They’re saying that they do not want this system; we’ve got to put forth another one.” Ms. Dorsey put her spin on that comment, stating that “we need to somehow figure out how to engage them in the creation of the new structure that Dayvon was talking about.”

“We have over 350,000 people living in Baltimore that don’t vote. That means that we’ve got 350,000 people in Baltimore [that] do not like the system they have today. If we offer them a system that they can relate to … We’ve got to listen to the people because they don’t vote [but] they’re talking loud. They’re saying that they do not want this system; we’ve got to put forth another one.” — Bro. Keith Scott

Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler added that many of the conversations are hard er have to reframe our thoughts about why people don’t support us. “We have to realize that we are at war, and we are stretched thin, and even to build things around people is a lot of work. … We have to understand culture and order. … When I hear us talk, I hear the hurt and pain. … We don’t want to hear each other. We feel very threatened by each other. … We are people that need to heal, and even when we mean well, we will hurt each other. It’s not always intentional. We have to really have the real conversation. … We have to heal. …”

Baba Bill Goodin thanked the panel and thanked everyone for coming out to the discussion and for their support for the venue and the food through their donations. Bishop Winslow expressed that “the idea of how we can get this started, this unity thing, I hope and pray, while we’re sitting and eating, and talking, that we get to know one another learn what your Brother or Sister does, so we can start collaborating. It has to start in this room. If we’re just going to sit here and talk about it, nothing’s going to get done. … We’re too busy trying to figure out what somebody can do for us. But what can you do for somebody else? That’s where the rubber meets the road. If we’re going to be really serious about this, we need to talk.”

“I hope and pray, while we’re sitting and eating, and talking, that we get to know one another learn what your Brother or Sister does, so we can start collaborating. It has to start in this room. If we’re just going to sit here and talk about it, nothing’s going to get done.” — Bishop James Winslow

June 16, 2026: Unity Discussion, The Next Phaze Cafe

The third Unity Discussion, and the fourth community meeting to date around this theme of bringing our organizers and activists together in a more unified manner, was held at The Next Phaze Cafe on Lexington Street in Downtown Baltimore on June 16. This session was different from the others in that there were no panels, but after a few statements from Ms. Dorsey and several activists, attendees gathered at tables to discuss several questions pertaining to our own thoughts on building unity and what it will take to accomplish this.

Local businessman and frequent contributor to BlackMen Unifying BlackMen, Baba Bob Wallace spoke about Birmingham being known as “Bombingham” for the terrorist attacks against Black people during the civil rights movement, and how the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s arrival helped spark real unity among the Afrikan American populace, from bringing children to the marches to major economic efforts like the Montgomery Bus Boycott that also helped lead to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, which the Trump administration seems hell-bent on destroying today. “Everything you and I do today, whether you vote, whether you have a job, whether you go to school, whether you can walk safely, whether you can invest in your family and take care of your children, all of that came because of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But that would not have happened had there not been unity among people in Birmingham and in the larger movement in the US. I don’t have to tell you guys, we’re in a crazy time right now in this nation. I never thought in my lifetime that I would see this kind of hatred and this kind of racism come back like it has, with a vengeance. With a vengeance. And Beloved, nobody’s going to save us but us. So, to Bill’s point, if we don’t do something, at all levels, no one’s coming to save us. At all levels. So we need to be doing the grassroots work now. And we can’t wait for somebody else to do it for us, we’ve got to do it ourselves. So, when Bill has been telling me about the idea of unity and having this spread throughout this state and every other state, that we as a people that would come up, rise up, to protect ourselves and fight for ourselves. So I wanted to be [here] tonight, to say to you that we’re in this together. It’s a long road ahead, though. … We’ve lost contracts because of Trump. We’ve lost work. We’ve lost jobs because of him. So this is real stuff, this is real bad. So we all have to figure out what our part is in that, and do what we can …”

Baba Marcus, who had also helped organize the other Unity Discussions at the Pikes Cinema and Power House World Ministries, shared some remarks about the 250th “anniversary” of the United States and the UFC “cage fight” at the White House in which one fighter took the opportunity to make disparaging remarks about former First Lady Michelle Obama. He also shared the meeting plan. This gathering was organized for the audience to participate in telling the organizers what we need to do as a community, and those who were present, though a smaller group than was hoped for, would be the ones to begin to drive this effort. The ability of one person to influence another person, who could in turn influence others, could create a chain reaction of awareness that might awaken a populace.

The audience split at random into three main tables, and the participants discussed several basic questions:

• Who are you and where were you born? (Participants were mostly from Baltimore, with some from Washington DC, New York, Virginia, St. Louis Missouri, Jamaica and Kentucky)
• What is your definition of unity? (Definitions shared included compassion, teamwork, cooperation, support, people of like mind coming together, trust, different people bringing their knowledge, skills and abilities together for a common goal; unity is not uniformity)
• How does unity play out in your life and work? (Participants mentioned Black Wall Street, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Black Panther Party, the Million Man March, the Target boycott and other efforts were mentioned; the follow-up was often not effective, but the initial efforts did help end official policies of segregation in the bus service in Montgomery, for example)
• What is your contribution to unity and how do you know when you have achieved it? (Participants mentioned organizations and continuing efforts to which we belong; true unity has not been achieved as of yet in the vast majority of cases, but this is all a work in progress, so we must hope to recognize the unity we seek when it does come at last)

Each table chose a scribe who would write down the answers of the table’s members, and a reporter who would talk about the table’s answers to the whole group.

Our table’s discussion was described by Bishop James Winslow: “First of all, unity starts with the individual. Whatever it is we’re doing as far as coming together for a common good is never completed, because it is something that is perpetual, it just continues on and on and on and on, it never finishes. … I’ll give you a Biblical example. The Bible says one sows the seed, another one waters the seed, and then God gives the increase. … It takes all of us to do something. We all have a [part to play],” and he made reference to the “Spokes of the Wheel” model of the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition as a related example, “constantly trying to galvanize all of these different organizations that do different things, but bringing them all together for one common good. And that’s what we’re trying to do in this room. Each one of us is a spoke on the wheel. … If we all come together and do what we are supposed to do, we will achieve much. …”

Others described the work of Dr. King, who helped spark the Voting Rights Act and “he put the blueprint out there for us to study”, but “the blueprint went under the bed for quite some time” and was shelved after Dr. King was assassinated. “I think this is a great idea what we’re doing, especially of we keep these groups together and hold each other accountable for showing up.”

A table of food and drink was provided, and the audience enjoyed the refreshments as we fellowshipped with each other. Meanwhile, plans to hold sessions to examine “what is the trauma and how do we address the trauma” that Dr. Winkler had discussed in the earlier panel discussions.

“When we get through looking at Marcus Garvey, when we talk about Dr. King, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, anybody, they’re not coming back. But they left us here. So, if you say we can’t do it, and then we talk about people that were here a hundred years ago, and say they’ve done it, why is it that we can’t do it? Do we mean to say they were a lot smarter than we are? Or else that they had a lot more courage than we’ve got?” — Baba Bill Goodin

Baba Bill Goodin, who originally proposed the March 8, 2027 Black Unity Day and had spearheaded these Unity discussions, made closing remarks. “We have this idea of Black Unity Day, March 8, 2027. It’s not asking anybody to join an organization, or to get away from your beliefs. It’s saying, ‘Organize around whatever you believe in.’ If you’re a Black capitalist, organize Black people teaching about making money. If you’re a Black socialist, organize a group of socialists to talk about unity. Because eventually, we’re all going to come together. It’s easy to say … because sometimes people think that, ‘Oh, it’s them over there doing that’; it’s not about anybody. It’s about all of us. … All of us should know we’re under attack. … When we get through looking at Marcus Garvey, when we talk about Dr. King, Malcolm X, Harriet Tubman, anybody, they’re not coming back. But they left us here. So, if you say we can’t do it, and then we talk about people that were here a hundred years ago, and say they’ve done it, why is it that we can’t do it? Do we mean to say they were a lot smarter than we are? Or else that they had a lot more courage than we’ve got? And so I’m saying to you all, thank you very much, because it does mean a lot to me. Before I die, I would love to know that we’ve left a big footprint for others to follow. So, making unity happen isn’t as hard as we think it is. All we have to do is want it. If enough of us want it, and enough of us talk about it, other people in other cities are going to catch on, and come March 8, 2027, we’re going to have unity discussions all across the country. So it’s starting here with all of us. … So let us practice in terms of coming together, discussing how we can get better [at building unity]. … We’ve got two sides of the street. One side of the street, we’ve got corruption, death, frugs and everything. On the other side of the street, we’ve got peace, love, harmony. You know why we’ve got peace, love and harmony? Because those people are unified on that side of the street. So we can get there if we want to, by respecting each other, by working with each other, and by building together. So let’s do it, y’all.”

Bishop Winslow closed the gathering out in prayer.

The discussions and panels around the subject of building unity will continue. A July gathering is being planned as well as others in the future, and the locations are yet to be determined, though the emphasis is on holding these events at Black-owned establishments.