To all African performers,view and take note,when you act,act right!

WHERE IS BLACK POWER?

Let me explain white supremacy and its continuation.....Herman was not broken out of prison, like sistah/elder/warrior Assata.....Justice is to be taken by the hands of the oppressed. RESISTANCE! Being released is not resistance or resilience as some may choose to believe. Being released is actually the continuation of power exercised by the oppressor......Many of us use these moments as moments of hope which is exactly what it is not. When we accept these injustices of yesterday we make room for these injustices to be passed on to our youths today and our generations to come. ......Meaning as with brother Mumia today would we may  accomplished if he is to be released from prison as an old feeble man 10,20 years from now?

....So we stay within the mind frame of"The System" and their protocol exhausting our energies on infinite confusion and entrapment s known today as legal procedures......When we can fearlessly identify our enemies and plan outside of the plantation mentality only then would our cubs not become dieing breeds behind concrete walls of white supremacy.....

ps...Hope the New Black Panther Party makes sure that this brother doesn't pass away eating cat food......Cant respect nothing new that comes without our elders or their traditions.....

THE SAGA CONTINUES AS WE INDIVIDUALLY FACE OUR OWN IGNORANCE AND INACTION......QUESTION? HOW CAN THE HUSBAND,THE SON,THE UNCLE,THE FATHER,THE BROTHER,THE UNCLE OF THIS BLACKWOMAN IN THIS VIDEO,HOW CAN THEY REMAIN WITHIN THE EXISTENCE OF MAN WHEN WE ALL KNOW,ALL WHO READ THIS,NONE OF US WILL EVER LAY A FINGER ON THESE VICTIMIZERS IN RETALIATION FOR OUR SISTAH WE SEE BEING BEATEN LIKE A DOG.....WE ARE SUBCONSCIOUSLY AND SOME CONSCIOUSLY CONTINUOUSLY ACCEPTING EXISTING AS DUMB,HARMLESS ANIMALS.....

$3,000 UJAMAA/Cooperative Economics Challenge

ORAAD NEED'S

From now until June 5th ORAAD Worldwide will challenge its membership to pledge $1 or more! After we have reached our goal of $3000.00 USD we will use UJAAMA/Cooperative Economics Month  (June 5th- July 2nd) where challengers will work together to create a African Re-Education project to use the funds for, once the plan is agreed upon by participants we will deposit these said funds into an escrow account, and distribute those funds to the project of our choice! We should put into action the Nguzo Saba daily and this Challenge will prove our collective power! Post your pledge only once below as follows: I pledge $(your amount here)... 

The Traditional African Family

CHILDREN

Although children among the Baganda are brought up in an unroutinized and casual way with a few rites of passage to adulthood, they seem to go through three distinct stages during their up bringing. Each stage has its own features, some of which are perhaps peculiar to the Baganda customs and system of socialization in their traditional family pattern.

The naming ceremony is very important early in the child's life. Before this ceremony, the child is not considered a complete member of the clan or society. ".....it is not until this ceremony is completed that the child's legitimacy is once and forever established."17

People gather at the clan chief's house. The mothers bring children of both sexes with the umbilical cords carefully kept after birth. The paternal grandmothers drop the cords into a can, which contains beer, milk, and water. "If they float, the clan chief accepts the children as legitimate; but if the cord sinks, the child to whom it belongs is considered born in adultery and disowned."18

After this part of the ceremony, a feast is held. The following day, the naming ceremony takes place. The paternal grandfather recites many names of the clan's dead ancestors. If the child laughs, then the last mentioned name is given to him or her, "....and the soul of the ancestors is considered to have entered its body."19

The significant feature of the second stage in Baganda childhood is that after they are weaned, Baganda children do not live with their biological parents. Boys will live with the brothers of their father and until marriage, girls live in the home of a married elder brother or with the brother of the father. "Living with new parents means no particular change in status; the biological parents do not forget their off spring and are always present for any ceremonies involving their children."20

The third stage in Baganda childhood is the socialization of the child in readiness for adulthood. This is sexual differentiation in socialization in which girls will become acceptable mothers and wives and boys husbands and fathers. Children are expected to help in minor household tasks. Boys herd goats, cows, and livestock. They also perform light duties for relatives. Girls at an early age are taught a wide range of household and agricultural duties including cooking, cultivation and tending children. "Girls, in distinction to boys, seldom have time to play games."21

THE AFRICAN EXPERIENCE OF GOD THROUGH THE EYES OF AN AKAN WOMAN

 

The Living God

"The fool says in his heart 'There is no God.' " In traditional Africa there are no such "fools." In his inaugural lecture delivered at Ibadan in 1974, Professor Bolaji Idowu discussed "the reality and unreality of God" under the title "Obituary: God's or man's?," bringing to that university the "God is dead" debate of the 1960s. Idowu believes that "man's estimate of himself and his destiny, his interpretation of the phenomena of the universe and his philosophy of history depend upon this one central point: belief in God, because He is; or unbelief. . ." Elsewhere Idowu asserts that "God is universal and so is revelation." Here he agrees with the Tanzanian who said that as people everywhere see the one sun, so they all have the one God.(1) On the other hand, Betty Goviden, in her article "In search of our own wells," quotes Malusi Mpumlwanas, a South African poet, who asks "What do I mean when I say I believe in God?. . . . Is God of the 'Die Stem' and 'Nkosi Sikelela' one and the same God?"(2)

In traditional Africa, that is, Africa when people are being themselves, discounting Christianity, Islam, and Western norms, God is experienced as an all-pervading reality. God is a constant participant in the affairs of human beings, judging by the everyday language of West Africans of my experience. A Muslim never projects into the future nor talks about the past without the qualifying phrase insha Allah, "by the will of Allah." Yoruba Christians will say "DV" ("God willing"), though few can tell you its Latin equivalent, and the Akan will convince you that all is "by the grace of God." Nothing and no situation is without God. The Akan of Ghana say Nsem nyina ne Onyame ("all things/affairs pertain to God"). That Africans maintain an integrated view of the world has been expressed by many. In his autobiography, Nelson Mandela writes:

My father was an unofficial priest and presided over ritual. . . . and local rites. . . ., he did not need to be ordained, for traditional religion of the Xhosa is characterized by a cosmic wholeness so that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the natural and the supernatural.(3)

The Yoruba respond to prayer with Ase, the divine and highly potent power with which Olodumare (God) created the universe and maintains its physical laws.(4) The belief in the all-pervading power and presence of God endows the universe with a sacramental nature.(5) The African view of the world is nourished by a cosmology that is founded on a Source Being, the Supreme God, and other divine beings that are associated with God. As God is the foundation of life, so nothing happens without God. God lives, God does not die, and so indeed humans do not die. Even when we do not occupy a touchable body, we still live on.

The way we experience God is portrayed in the language we use about God, especially the names by which God is known. Early researchers into AR like G. Parrinder, E. B. Idowu, and J. S. Mbiti have recorded for us several African names of God with copious annotations, which it is not necessary to rehearse at this stage.(6) What needs to be said is that these names are still current and that more names descriptive of people's experience of God are available in proverbs, songs, and prayers. These names, says Idowu, are not mere labels: "They are descriptive of character and depict people's experience of God."

When words fail, symbols take over. For the Akan of Ghana the Adinkra symbols, the minuscule figures for gold weights and those on royal maces, include many that are theophorous. The star in Adinkra is a symbol that says "Like the star, I depend on God and not on myself." The symbol of hope says, "God, there is something in the heavens, let it reach my hands." The dependence of the existence of the human spirit on the spirit of God is expressed in another symbol; and the more well known Gye Nyame is the Akan expression of the belief that without God nothing holds together, and is variously interpreted as "except God" or "unless God" -- God is experienced as the very foundation of existence.(7) All these examples demonstrate the difficulty of translation and the inadequacy of words to express our experience of God.

People believe that all the good and well-being they enjoy come from God, and that if one is not yet enjoying well-being it is because one's time has not yet come. "AR holds that the world and nature are good gifts that God entrusted to human beings: they provide nourishment for life, security and home for our bodies" (Lutheran World Federation [LWF] document on AR). The experience of God as beneficent is not only Muslim or Christian, but a living faith of Africans that has been reinforced by these "missionary" religions.

Marriage and Procreation

We must note that marriage and procreation in African communities are a unity: without procreation marriage is incomplete. ((MBITI, J. S., African Religions and Philosophy, p. 133). Pregnancy is the first indication that a new member is on the way. The expectant mother becomes, therefore, a special person and receives special treatment from her neighbors and relatives. This special treatment starts before and continues after child-birth. In some African societies, marriage is not fully consummated until the wife has given birth. For this reason, there is general abhorrence of barrenness in most African societies. “Unhappy is the woman who fails to get children for, whatever other qualities she might possess, her failure to bear children is worse than committing genocide: she has become the dead end of human life, not only for the genealogical line but also for herself”(MBITI, J. S., African Religions and Philosophy, p. 110)