Under the baobab: Celebrate new beginnings, but prepare to keep working, fighting in 2021
Sisters and Brothers, Chag Urim Sameach, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa. This sacred time is made more blessed by the sacrifice of those who have gone before. This is the deadliest year in U.S. history. Yet we come to its end, beginning to hope. The holiday decorations seem brighter this year. The prayers are more earnest. The permitted hugs more precious.
Recently a friend and colleague, Pearl Gluck, invited us to a “latke/vodka Hannukah Zoom party.” Jo made some latkes. A couple of dozen folks stopped in to tell stories, to enjoy each other’s Zoom presence, and to celebrate a light which lasted longer than it rationally should have. It was appropriate. Nothing about these present times seems rational.
This Christmas, we sent cards for the first time in a while. We have consumed gallons of Meyer Dairy eggnog. We listened to Christmas carols on NPR, attended two online masses, lit incense. Halfway through Christmas Day I found myself sitting in front of the tree, holding my mate’s hand and crying. Seeing the pictures and artifacts around us, my emotional inner spring popped its cork and bubbled up. Like millions of others, we have lost too many loved ones. We have tried to re-inflate our dreams. As Langston Hughes said, “Hold fast to your dreams for when they die, life is a broken winged bird which cannot fly.”
Beginning the day after Christmas, several of our neighbors including Terry Watson and Leslie Laing of Strategies for Justice, Lorraine Jones, president of the State College NAACP, and Nanre Nafziger and Tierra Williams of the 3/20 Coalition and Gary Abdullah, Assistany dean for diversity and inclusion at the Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State, will host a series of virtual events to celebrate Kwanzaa. It’s a seven day African American holiday founded by Dr. Maulana Karenga.
Kwanzaa is a Swahili word, meaning first fruits. Each day of the celebration addresses one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa: Umoja (Unity), Kujichagulia (Self-Determination), Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility), Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics), Nia (Purpose), Kuumba (Creativity) and Imani (Faith). The livestream kicked off on Saturday and will continue with a video posted daily until Jan. 1 on the State College NAACP YouTube Channel. We will end the year mourning our losses and celebrating new beginnings, but the struggle is not over.
One of the most important elections of our lifetime is coming up in Georgia in January. Control of the United States Senate is at stake. We can’t quit. The bigots haven’t. King said, “if I can’t change your mind with my love, I will change your behavior with my commitment.” We will keep demanding that the university, the Borough and the police cease and desist from racial profiling, racial discrimination and all behavior that is rooted in so-called white privilege.
One hundred and fifty years ago Frederick Douglass demanded that this nation face its hypocrisy and eradicate the atrocity of slavery. Almost 200,000 of his Black Brothers joined the union army to help free their people. They ended slavery.
A hundred years ago W.E.B. DuBois and others formed the NAACP to fight lynching and Jim Crow segregation. They battled in the courts until 1954 when the Supreme Court passed Brown vs. Board of Education, which ended legal racial segregation.
Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King and 250,000 other people marched on Washington to demand jobs, freedom, equality and voting rights. We rolled up our sleeves and went to work. Through those efforts, a Black president was elected. Over 50 African Americans joined the House of Representatives. This year Kamala Harris became the first Black woman to be elected Vice-President of the United States.
Like Jacob we must join hands, grabbing hold of the angels and demons of power, to wrestle them to the ground. You ask how? You say, our world is collapsing. We are suffering through a pandemic. We are trying to graduate. We are trying to find a job. I respond as Frederick Douglass did, as W.E.B. DuBois did, as Martin Luther King and Kamala Harris did.
How? By any means necessary. We have a world to rebuild.
Brothers and sisters, talk to you from Atlanta.
La lucha continua.