community call to action . the fruit bowl . umoja .
Share Your Voice around the First Principle of Kwanzaa
Audio form of message:
Good day listeners and loved ones.
We hope this public service message finds you well-rested and hydrated. As your friendly neighborhood historian and resident social justice griot prepare for their upcoming book “Once Upon a Kwanzaa,” they are inviting everyone across communities, cultures, complexions, and colors to join them in bringing Kwanzaa into our everyday spaces of fellowship, solidarity, and creativity.
This month we are turning our gaze to Umoja, the first principle and centermost candle on our community Kinnara. Derived from the East African Swahili word for ‘Unity,’ Umoja can extend beyond your safe spaces of kinfolks and friends to include people in your neighborhood, coworkers and classmates, and even followers and subscribers in your digital gardens and groups. Whether they are relatives or strangers, Umoja reminds us that we are all connected through our indigenous, immigrant, and diaspora ancestries and grounds us in the ways and wonders of the Bantu philosophy of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.”
Beyond the man-made, imaginary borders and political divides, Umoja encourages us to nurture community around tables, in gardens, in libraries and learning centers, in sanctuaries and prayer halls, in backyards and on porch steps, on car rides, buses, trains, and planes, over phone calls and facetimes, and even across time and space, especially virtual ones. For this first candle, leave us a little voicemail via Speakpipe, sharing the meanings and manifestations of Umoja that you have discovered in your everyday life. How do you show up in your neighborhood, your workplace, your classroom, your digital gardens, or your family spaces (be they born, found, restored, or growing) with Umoja? What potentials and possibilities can you unlock by adding a little Umoja into your world?
With Love and Good Trouble, Sidney Rose and Nyasha~
Leave a voicemail here:
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