Nia (Purpose) To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness (Maulana Karenga, 1966). Anyone who feels like discussing this topic, please do.

Dr. Karenga spoke directly to the destruction of historic culture for African Americans. This truncated culture left the vast majority of African Americans with only the ashes of slavery and poverty. The ash left from this horrible page of history was like ask left by Mount St. Helens erupting in 1980: massive, impossible to walk through, and if you were so unfortunate as to be stranded in it, it shifted with every step, moving you farther and farther away from you goal. In his annual founders message this year, “Kwanzaa and The Seven Principles: Repairing and Renewing The World”, Dr. Karenga wrote:

Created in the context of the Black Freedom Movement, Kwanzaa also stresses the cooperative nature and need of the struggle required to achieve this shared goal. It is the lesson of the life, struggle and teachings of Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, Fannie Lou Hamer, Malcolm X, Martin King, Amilcar Cabral, Yaa Asantewa and countless other ancestors of heavy weight and worth in the world. Moreover, Kwanzaa marks a profound reorientation put forth in the 60’s in terms of the way we understand and assert ourselves as an African people in the world. It marks both a cultural and political struggle to return to our own history and culture, to reaffirm our identity and dignity as African people and to reaffirm our social justice tradition in and thru transformative struggle for serious social change. Thus, we must not forget this nor the obligation in the morality of remembrance and recommitment.

It is time for all of us to reorient ourselves as people of the world. This is one of those think globally and act locally moments, for me. Humans, like dogs, cats, cattle, horses, pigs, and so on, are pack or herd animals. The question each of us has probably been asking since we were born is “where do I fit in?” In the most blatant example of this, I watch the Cubbette (the Chihuahua) figure out her place in the pack in every social situation. Her nature tells her to aim for the top of the pack. Humans do this too. I watched the new nephew-in-law trying to figure out where he fit in our family on Xmas. I didn’t know where in the pack he was aiming. He may be happy with the situational hierarchy that often emerges in human relations.

We watch politicians do this; and corporate executives; and even market segments jockey for supremacy, and we gave it to them. In recent decades this idea that we can hand over our labor, our product, and our profits to someone else who will (magically) make it better for us, proved disastrous. This social change to a dynamically radical top-down organization, moved the production of essential elements to survival – food, shelter, and clothing – out of our communities. This interdependence happened at the same time as these same forces siphoned off huge amounts of the money used as exchange. The three to six percent on every purchase that we pay to finance agencies when we use a credit card (and I do use credit cards) could have maintained or built a lot of infrastructure, provided social justice in the form of jobs that made the term “working poor” an oxymoron. We have given politicians, multinational CEOs, financial market manipulators, and hucksters the highly undemocratic even unrepublican (both are the lower case meaning of the words) position of Big Man. The Big Man, in political science terms the refers autocratic rule by a single person. That person, often corrupt, dictates what we do, and enjoys the profits of our labors. We are still in a people run government (whether republic or democracy), and that chaffs with the Big Man run elements of society. Think of the names of the Big Men dethroned and disgraced in the financial meltdown, and you will see the points where social change with social justice can be made.

That said, I do find great guidance in Dr. Karenga’s words of encouragement that our purpose is “to reaffirm our social justice tradition in and thru transformative struggle for serious social change. Thus, we must not forget this nor the obligation in the morality of remembrance and recommitment.”

How do we do this on a personal level? Suggestions?