AWC
A written message A spoken word or an ideaWhat are the parts of communication?
Message
Sender
Receiver
Today's Tennis Match
will start at 11:00 AM
"Let's play tennis"
Being Healthy
is more than a visit to the local so-called health food store, being healthy is a lifelongcommitment to living life to its fullest and to honoring the magnificent temple given to you by
the universe. In order to approach being healthy in a wholistic manner it would be wise to
rethink the common perception of health. Being health is more than just maintaining physical
health, more than mental and emotional health, being healthy is finding the harmony, joy and
balance in one's life and developing the ability to adjust to changes in a healthy way. Truth,
critical thinking, access to life-affirming information, and freedome from fear are keys to
receiving, understanding and applying vital information to be naturally healthy.
In coming issues of the Ultimate Journey Newsletter we will have guest articles
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coaches, and other health and wellness educators.
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The following three articles are just a sample of the articles to come!
I Think I'll Call It Morning by Gil Scott Heron
Welcome to the Ultimate Journey
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Our aim is to provide information that will educate, motivate, and excite our readers.
We encourage readers of this preview to feel free to send us feedback as a way
of exchanging energy.
Designed with you in mind, the newsletter will present wholistic health articles, nutrition tips, liberation commentary, recipes, announcements, products, and answer letters to the editor...So be informed and enjoy!
Friends of Amadi
Membership packet
Some of the membership benefits:
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Ask about the two types of memberships...How a person talks to another person, how a person listens and whether he or she heard and understood what was said can promote conflict or squash it!
The energy connected to effective communication is divided into four areas:
Physical exchange (no words)
RESISTING THE ERASURE OF BLACKNESS: HUMAN RIGHTS AND RACIAL JUSTICE
Los Angeles Times, 06-10-10, p. A7
DR. MAULANA KARENGA
There is a war being waged against the concept, consciousness and practice of Blackness, against our understanding and asserting ourselves as a self-conscious community, and against our presence and self-presentation as a people who embody and express a unique and equally valid and valuable way of being human in the world. It is a war waged on various fronts to deny us human rights and racial justice, i.e., the right to exist, the right of presence, of self-representation and self-determination, of cultural practice and preservation, and the right to a good life as a self-conscious community, free from domination, deprivation and degradation.
But whatever strategies and tactics used, it is to estrange us from ourselves, alienate and isolate us from others, and eliminate us as a valid, valuable and viable communal presence from intellectual discourse, policy considerations and public space. Here it is important to note that Blackness is defined not simply by color or phenotype, but by color, culture and consciousness, i.e., a unique and equally valid and valuable way of being human in the world, and a “consciousness-in-movement” which asserts itself in liberational and life-affirming ways. It is this attempted erasure of our culture and consciousness that is at issue and that forms what is called and condemned in UN documents as cultural genocide.
Leftists, liberals, labor leaders and right-wingers alike, all tell us we should not insist on a Black identity, have Black interests or offer a Black agenda. It is a regular refrain of the ruling race and their “colored” allies that we are bitter, if we do battle for social justice; separatist, if we insist on self-determination; and essentialist, if we assert that we are an African people in world-encompassing cultural and communal terms. Of course, no such widespread criticism is offered of Jews, Latinos or even Armenians. Indeed, their diversity is not used to deny their identity and commonality. Only with us is diversity raised to deny commonality rather than reveal a rich and complex identity-in-diversity.
Also, we are constantly told we must tone down or dilute our assertion of ourselves and not be “too Black.” This is peddled as an essential requirement for success and acceptance by the ruling race who defines what is proper and profitable, what is civilized and savage, beautiful and ugly, using themselves as the exemplary model and measure. Thus, we start out with an ethically unacceptable ethnic disadvantage, for we cannot be ourselves, measure ourselves by our own culturally-grounded standards and represent ourselves in dignity-affirming ways that do justice to our humanity and our cultural conception of ourselves. Instead, we must present ourselves in the image and interests of others, i.e., the ruling race.
We are also told we are in a post-racial moment in history and society, but actually, this only applies to us. In fact, post-racial is what we are supposed to pretend; it’s not what White people really practice. Thus, our pretension and their practice are at great and ever-growing variation. For, they still monopolize wealth, power and status, and control the economy, political system and cultural apparatus of this country. And we are continuously called to self-efface and distance ourselves from our people and cultural center to put them at ease, get a job, receive funding or be elected and serve as president. Indeed, we are duly advised and admonished, with funeral seriousness, that Blackness is no longer fashionable, favored or funded in this world of post-racial pretensions and illusions.
Furthermore, the ruling race/class has additionally problematized our presence in life literature by cultivating and funding a collaborating group of intellectuals to facilitate the indictment and erasure of Blackness. Indeed, these intellectuals have gone beyond the crisis of intellectual sterility and parasitic dependence on the ruling race which Harold Cruse described in his classic work, The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. They have, in addition, positioned themselves to become little more than intellectual scavengers, constantly searching for stench and stain, defects and faults among Black people, and creating and sustaining pathological discourse as the essential, even primary, way of understanding Blackness.
Thus, they write history and social science as a ritual of revelation of racial deficiencies, disorder and failure. They present literature as life and a substitute for social engagement. And they praise the routine cinematic presentation of racial caricatures and moral mayhem as a needed teaching tool and corrective for deficient internal discussion of communal problems. Likewise, in a promised discourse on hidden and suppressed voices of popular culture, the masses in motion and struggle are too often missing and instead there is an almost religious seeking of signs and wonders in youthful words, songs and sayings, pretending they contain a socially subversive content which is absent and unintended. Indeed, they fail to understand or appreciate Sekou Toure’s assertion that “to take part in the African revolution, it is not enough to write a revolutionary song. You must make the revolution with the people and the songs will come by and of themselves.”
They offer little or no creative challenge to young people, but much contemptible catering, calling themselves into unsolicited service, not only to defend misrepresentations of youth, but also to discredit legitimate concerns and correctives for some youths’ negative and self-destructive approaches to the world. However, there is a rightful and necessary concern for the well-being and good future of a people which youth embody and express by embracing and advancing further the best of their people’s culture.
This is the meaning of Frantz Fanon’s affirmation that “each generation must . . . discover its mission and fulfill or betray it.” It is a generational mission which is to be discovered and pursued within the context of the best of its culture in constant exchange with the world. And there is within our culture a legacy of liberational “consciousness-in-movement” which resists erasure and informs our daily practice and historic motion to be free and flourish and open up new avenues of human history.
It is a legacy at its best, summed up by Anna Julia Cooper, in which we see ourselves as a people, men and women, in work and struggle “for the universal triumph of justice and human rights . . . demanding an entrance not through a gateway for ourselves, our race, our sex or our sect, but a grand highway for humanity” as a whole. And within this world-encompassing mission, we are never to accept or hold as less than central and sacred our own selves and our unique and equally valid and valuable African way of being human in the world.
REBUILDING A CULTURE OF STRUGGLE: BREAKING CHAINS INSTEAD OF HUGGING THEM
Los Angeles Sentinel, 06-03-10, p. A7
DR. MAULANA KARENGA
To refresh our memories of ourselves at our best, to recommit ourselves to principles and practices that demand and draw from us the excellent, uplifting and enduring, and to rebuild our Liberation Movement and go forth to repair and renew ourselves and the world, we must reaffirm and reconstruct our culture as a culture of struggle. By a culture of strug-gle, I mean a culture founded and formed in struggle by a people who understand and em-brace struggle as a normal and necessary way of life. That is to say, they see and approach it as an indispensable way forward and upward, as a rightfully required way to break social and psychological chains, cross wrongfully restrictive boundaries, realize themselves ful-ly, and bring good in the world.
It is a culture that understands and as-serts with Frederick Douglass that “if there is no struggle there is no progress” and it’s a contradiction to “profess to favor freedom” and “deprecate agitation.” It is a culture that recovers and reaffirms Fannie Lou Hamer’s contention that “we must bring right and jus-tice where there is wrong and injustice.” And that “Every step of the way you’ve got to fight.” And it is a culture that embraces and acts on A. Phillip Randolph’s assertion that “Freedom is never granted; it is won. Justice is never given; it is extracted.”
Here struggle is defined as righteous, rightful and ongoing striving on every level and in every area of life, as the Odu Ifa says, “to bring good in the world and not let any good be lost.” This is obviously and intention-ally a moral conception of struggle rooted in the Maatian ethical teachings of our ancestors who perceived struggle as morally compelling, necessary and natural for human good and the well-being of the world.
It is morally compelling, because our ethical tradition obligates us to struggle against wrong, evil and injustice everywhere and bring good in the world. It is necessary, for without struggle, as noted above; there can be no real or righteous progress. And it is nat-ural, because it is in the interest of human freedom and human life. For we are born in freedom and it is unnatural to be unfree and likewise, it is natural to struggle to recover freedom when and where it is denied, and to struggle to expand it in dignity-affirming and life-enhancing ways.
Thus, a culture of struggle has as a cen-tral contention that every constraint on human freedom and flourishing is immoral, unjust and unnatural as Anna Julia Cooper taught us. And this is so whether it is outright or dis-guised oppression or discrimination, imposed poverty, institutionalized ignorance and mise-ducation, monopolies of wealth and power or structured dependence of any person or people on another. A culture of struggle, then, of ne-cessity holds with Malcolm X and Martin King that we have the right and responsibility to struggle against evil and injustice every-where. King urges non-violent active resis-tance and Malcolm, leaving our options open, sanctions “freedom by any means necessary,” i.e., depending upon how the oppressor re-sponds to our rightful resistance.
Even as a culture of struggle praises the people for its righteous and heroic resistance to oppression, it also condemns collaboration in one’s own oppression as immoral, cowardly and ultimately self-destructive. Frederick Douglass, speaking of the abolition of en-slavement in the West Indies and the resis-tance of enslaved Africans, praised the en-slaved Africans for seizing the initiative in their own struggle, and refusing to collaborate in their own oppression. He says that in their rebellions, “they bore themselves well. They did not hug their chains, but according to their opportunities, swelled the general protest against oppression.”
And in their righteous resistance, the en-slaved Africans demonstrated to the enslavers that enslavement was wrong and came with considerable costs and consequences. Thus, Douglass says that abolitionists “showed that slavery was wrong”, but the enslaved Africans in resistance “showed it was dangerous as well as wrong.” Indeed, the oppressor has no right to security in the practice of oppression and no claim to peace in the practice of injustice.
Malcolm reminded us that there still ex-ists contemporary versions of those “house negroes” who hugged their chains in the Ho-locaust of enslavement and those Africans working in the fields who hated their chains and dared to break them. “House” and “field” are symbolic types of collaborators and com-batants, of the submissive and subversive, and either of them may, in real life, be in any so-cial or physical location, and in any group or class. But a “house” position, i.e., a “higher class,” often cultivates a mentality of indict-ment, distance and disregard for the people, acute denial of discrimination and oppression, pathetic identification with the oppressor or established order, and satisfying oneself with a materially-comfortable and socially-cushioned place in oppression. And this is clearly “chain-hugging” in a most self-degrading and self-mutilating way. But to be righteously and irre-versibly committed to liberation and justice and to oppose unfreedom and injustice every-where and in every way possible is to be a breaker of chains and a way-opener for our people and humanity as a whole.
A culture of struggle grounds itself also in the fundamental understanding that we are our own liberators, that a people that cannot save itself is lost forever and that those who would be free must strike the first, the final and decisive blow. It is again A. Phillip Ran-dolph, who reaffirmed that “salvation for any race, nation or class must come from within” and that at the heart of this social salvation is the disciplined and deep-rooted struggle for and achievement of a social justice which combines political freedom and the economic foundation to exercise and enjoy it.
Finally, a culture of struggle is unavoid-ably rooted in the hearts and minds of a people who are grounded in their own culture, clear-minded about their identity and the responsi-bility of caring for each other, undeterred by danger and obstacles of any kind, and con-sciously committed to an enlightened and libe-rating collective vision and vocation which informs and undergirds what Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune calls “our ceaseless striving and struggle” as a people. Indeed, as Frantz Fanon says, “the living expression of the na-tion is the consciousness-in-movement of the whole people. It is the coherent and enligh-tened practice of men and women.” This means boldly accepting the awesome respon-sibility and demands of our history and hu-manity. And this ethical obligation, as a world-encompassing conception, begins with ourselves and leads inevitably to a constant concern and ongoing active commitment to the well-being and good of the world.
Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach, Chair of The Organization Us, Creator of Kwanzaa, and author of Kawaida and Questions of Life and Struggle. [www.MaulanaKarenga.org; www.Us-Organization.org and ww.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org]
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