Hello Dear listeners and Beloved ones,
As we mark Juneteenth, a sacred day of remembrance, reckoning, and radical imagination. Ee invite you to gather with us in the spirit of Ujima, the third principle of Kwanzaa: Collective Work and Responsibility.
This month’s Conversations with Nyasha and Sidney episode is a love letter to Black freedom movements past and present, from Harriet Tubman’s Combahee River Raid to the ice cream traditions passed down at chapel cookouts. From organizing student protests to writing picture books that uplift our communities. Ujima lives in it all.
In this month’s episode, we reflect on:
What collective responsibility looks like in co-creation
The sacred tension and trust that comes with shared vision
How interdependence is our superpower
The ways we each show up in our own lane… and hold the whole road together
Nobody’s free until everybody’s free. - Fannie Lou Hamer
Quotes from the Conversation:
"Ujima demands that we unlearn the capitalist myth of being self-made and return to the ancestral knowing that we survive, thrive, build, dream, and flourish together." – Nyasha
"The Underground Railroad wasn’t possible without community. Harriet Tubman built networks. That’s Ujima in action." – Nyasha
"This isn’t about charity. It’s not saviorism. Ujima is a commitment to live and act as though our liberation is bound — because it is." – Nyasha
"One book changed my entire pathway. Reading The Bluest Eye made me realize the power and potential of community." – Sidney
"We are not expected to do this work alone. That’s the lie of individualism. Even our Ancestors are in us, dreaming through our bones." – Sidney
This is a celebration of the principle of Ujima in action, as we practice it with one another, our community, and with you. It shows up in:
the stories we teach our children
the Ancestors who guide our organizing
the resistance movements we uphold
the music, meals, and memory-work that sustain us
🕯️ This Juneteenth, Light a Candle for the Collective
As we recorded, we lifted up the work of Greta Thunberg and the Indigenous, Black, and queer abolitionists delivering aid to Gaza by sea. We know that not all of us can be on the boat, but all of us can provide light in our own way.
Light a candle.
Share your resources.
Support mutual aid.
Offer prayer, spellwork, or intention.
Show up for those in struggle, in Palestine, in the Congo, in your neighborhood.
Ujima begins at home and stretches across oceans.
✨ Leave Us a “Fruit Bite”
Hello dear listeners and beloved ones. Thank ya’ll for joining us in The Fruit Bowl, a podcast about all things Kwanzaa and where we transform this winter holiday into a year long season of community, collective action, creative resistance and resilience. The Fruit Bowl is an interactive community call to action where you, dear listeners, can leave us voicemails sharing your thoughts about one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa and how this principle resonates in your everyday practices and community building. This month we are focusing on Ujima, the third principle and first green candle on the communal Kinnara. Derived from the East African Swahili phrase for ‘Collective Work and Responsibility’ Ujima blends collective action with individual responsibility. Ujima asks each of us to answer, “what is your call to action?” While calls for a ceasefire and indigenous sovereignty are necessary and important, and the global calls for freedom and solidarity must rise as high as the list’ning sky, how do joy and justice resound in your neighborhood?
For this third candle, share the ways and wonders of Ujima in your everyday life. What did collective work and responsibility look like while you were growing up? How can Ujima help transform and build up your community?
Leave us a fruit bite about how you hope to bring Ujima into your home, your neighborhood, your good work, and your good trouble just in time for Juneteenth season.
We want to hear from you. What does Ujima mean to you in your life, work, or relationships? How are you practicing collective care and responsibility?
We ask:
How do we move from allyship to co-conspiracy?
What does it mean to raise children rooted in collective responsibility?
How do we protect the workers of liberation - from Palestine to the Congo to our own streets?
Drop us a voice note here:
🎤 https://www.speakpipe.com/UjimaJourney
We may feature your reflection in a future episode and your wisdom matters.
🎶 Let the Sound Move You
Our Ujima Playlist is live now on Spotify and YouTube. Let the music aid as you move deeper into the spirit of this work.
This Juneteenth, may we remember:
Our freedom is interconnected. Our futures are entangled.
And Ujima is one of the many keys.
With full hearts and fierce love,
Nyasha & Sidney
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