Maafa Reflections at 16 Year Anniversary

This 16th Year for the Commemoration was like starting all over again. It has been like getting ready for a game only to find out that your teammates stayed in the dugout and left you all alone in the outfield. I have been really encouraged by the Pelican Bay Strike, those men who have been living in solitary confinement, men who are allowed a photograph of a loved one, a hug or a kind touch at a visit. Men who haven’t seen sky in decades, these men, supposedly the incorrigible have been able to form alliances cross racial, ethnic and philosophical lines, something nearly impossible to achieve outside.

They are a model being replicated around the country, first with longest state government shutdown in recent history ended with Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton signing the budget July 20, 2011, now Occupy Wall Street and Monday, Occupy Oakland at 4 PM at City Hall. These are people who agree that something has to change in a country where corporations are given the same rights as people, all natural resources are legislated or privatized –this includes food, a place where waste is the biggest crime, that and mediocrity. Rev. Edward Pinkney stated on a recent sweep through California called the Justice Tour, that when he was organizing in prison, he spoke to everyone and those groups he sought out, such as the Skin Heads and White Supremacists groups thought he was weird until Pinkney explained that one doesn’t have to like his ally. More is at stake that friendship today, and while we are letting petty disagreements keep us at odds, the men with the suits and hard hats take everything. There is a war going on both internally and externally – and the enemy is winning. Every time we stop speaking to another person, every broken tie, every bitter thought against another person, we’ve lost and Satan has won that round, if not the battle.

Hanging onto one’s rights is the hardest part of being free, and staying free now that the chains are gone is harder than when they were visible. Today, this 16th Maafa Commemoration Ritual, the word I want you to retain is “remember.” Remember. . . those things you want to forget. Memory is all we have—our perceptions of a reality, not many share. It is only by returning to that place, that trauma that one is able to evaluate and grow taller for the experience.

When we started this journey, a few of us called the parent organization: Lest We Forget. The idea is the Maafa or the Black Holocaust will continue to replicate itself because we do not remember. Remembering is essential to the cure—and a lot ails our community presently within the Pan African Diaspora—its malignant and its spreading, the cure: Maafa, Sankofa, Ayaresa, a Twi word meaning healing. It is an on-going journey.

Earlier this month two nations celebrated the anniversary of their independence: Nigeria with 51 years (1960), Uganda’s is today, October 9, with 49 (1962). Baby nations, just as African Americans are new at this freedom thing with just a little over 151 years post Emancipation Proclamation experience. Today would have been Troy Anthony Davis’s 43rd birthday. I am still finding it hard to believe that Georgia executed him Sept.21 in the face such legal uncertainty. Umoja or unity has always been a problem for black people whether they were in America or Africa or Europe—it’s just something we have to recognize and work through, but to organize, one doesn’t have to like the other person, speak to the other person, empathize or love the other person, all one has to do is get on board or get out of the way of the train. It is much more pleasant when there is comradery, but comradery is not necessary. There is no reason why children are allowed to have firearms and shoot one another. There is no reason why so many children are serving 25 years to life sentences. There is no reason why so many black children are in foster care. There is no reason why a child can go to school in Oakland and graduate and cannot read or write. We can work to eliminate these problems without once inviting the other person to lunch or over for dinner. Liking me is not a prerequisite to working with me.

The world is changing and the only people who are going to survive what I hear is a time worse economically that the time at hand, are those people who know how to organize and get things done. As long as I agree like most decent human beings agree, to walk softly on the planet and to do as little harm as possible with my oversized carbon footprint, then I think was can work together. We all have issues, this is why the Maafa Ritual is important, this is why a month spent looking at these issues without makeup, before cocktails, after one wakes up, is crucial to our people. We need to look more at the image in the mirror in front of us and beside us, next to us and behind us as it shifts form.

Currently at Lorraine Hansberry Theatre is a play called Day of Absence. In this fictional period, all the black people disappear for a day. On that day, the day of absence the world stops in that town, because black people are the key to making everything function and without them nothing goes as it should. We don’t have to disappear physically, but Africa is a wonderful place to live—life might be as easy in one way, but in all the ways that matter, Africa is a better home for one’s soul and one’s spirit, but back to the scenario--imagine if we disappeared from this world philosophically, imagine if we made our lives and well-being a priority and ignored all the noise and chaos this world tempts and distracts us with. Imagine if we reordered our lives and made love, peace, happiness, joy priorities because we deserve these things and joy,peace and happiness are not states one can purchase or inherit—they are states one has to cultivate.

One can have joy and still fight for justice and equality for her people. One can have peace and still maintain one’s convictions to freedom for all people, especially African people. Let’s reflect on those principles and values that are most important today as we honor the memories of our ancestors who suffered long for this day we live in now and for them for their tears and their pain and their devotion and their faith, we do not want to throw this opportunity to make them proud away.