Tag: Maulana Karenga

Every Day a Call to Struggle

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

An excerpt from Dr. Maulana Karenga’s annual Kwanzaa Message, published in the L.A. Sentinel (December 22, 2022).

Again, this year in this our season of celebration, we find humanity and the world are in severe and continuing crisis, including: the resurgent pandemic of COVID-19, constantly producing deadly variants; failed and predatory economies and expanding hunger, famine, homelessness and suffering; continuing conflicts and wars; massive displacement of peoples; unjust and irrational immigration policies; and continuing environmental degradation through plunder, pollution and depletion.

And all these oppressive practices and impositions are carried out by the rich and powerful, the obscenely armed and aggressive, who are irresponsibly and immorally unmindful and uncaring about the cost and consequences they savagely impose on humanity and the world and all in it, especially the most vulnerable among us.

Continue reading “Every Day a Call to Struggle” →

A Series of Interrelated Self-Destroying Problems

On By RadicalDiscipleshipIn Subverting EmpireLeave a comment

KarengaFrom the conclusion of Dr. Maulana Karenga’s recent column in the Los Angeles Sentinel:

As I have noted elsewhere, “a society that cannot concede its problems cannot solve its problems. And a society that cannot solve its problems cannot survive its problems.” Certainly, we cannot deny America, U.S. society, has a series of interrelated self-destroying problems. And these basic problems cannot be summed up as Trump, although he represents them in one of their most raw, racist and unadorned forms. The struggle over what kind of America we will have is still being fought on the ground in every place and instance of oppression. Paul Robeson is right, “The battlefront is everywhere. There is no sheltered rear.” And the task, Fannie Lou Hamer tells us, is to constantly question America, and set aside all illusions of a “perfect union,” of freedom unfought for and of justice not gained and sustained in righteous and relentless struggle.