Cuba 13/8/1926 – 25/11/2016

Oh Cuba

Los derechos se toman, no se piden;

se arrancan, no se mendigan.

                                        José Martí to Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruiz

                        Death came to the old revolutionary
put out what was left of his cigar
leaving him his military cap
so they would not place laurels
that would bother him.
It is no little thing to confront the empire
& survive its rage of a mad dog
from which a bone is taken.
Oh Cuba of the bitter history,
of palms, dances, songs,
of the drums of Alegba & Yamayá,
of the cane made sweet by blood & sweat
mourn & remember, sing, dance, work

for justice & never return to slavery.

© Rafael Jesús González 2016

This year has been a long one. It was amazing to have traveled to President Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana this summer and to England for the first time. In Ghana, it was the rainy season, yet I was able to get to many places of interest. I was tracing the trade—slave trade and traversed the country in trotros and by hired car and by chartered bus to see those places where African ancestors were traded like commodities. We saw pools where the captives had their last baths, hollowed trees where Africans hid and houses constructed to keep families save and ensure a head start if they needed to evacuate. Though I started by journey in the mountains a few miles outside Accra, it was the travel north toward Wa and Burkina Faso, where countryside opened up and the stories and hikes to sacred spaces in the mountains were shared. Familiar with the Ndebele woman from South Africa, it was interesting to meet women in Ghana in a rural community located between Bolgatanga and Navrongo, Sirigu where the Sirigu Women’s Association of Pottery and Arts (SWOPA), continue a tradition begun by the grandmothers and great grandmothers.  The patterns and designs are seen in the historic cathedral, Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Minor Basilica, where angels and saints are painted in red, white and black.

With yet another stolen election in Haiti (October 2016), Jean-Yvon Kernizan, a Fanmi Lavalas activist, said such blatant tampering with ballots, delayed counts from precincts under the eyes of skilled international voter efficacy teams—means the People are at War. Such can be said for questioned outcomes for the US elections both local, state and national with Trump this country’s recent President Elect. However, in California housing initiatives to safeguard renters and neighborhood integrity passed in Oakland, yet did not pass in Alameda where homelessness is becoming an issue. The state ballot initiative which speeds up death penalty cases vies with another initiative passed in earlier which guarantees youth sentenced to life without the possibility of parole to a hearing and perhaps early release.

It is grave now for black people, others too; however, black people specifically need to get in better physical shape, mental and spiritual shape to tackle the battle which continues to rage against us. Immigrants are being targeted, so are Muslims; however, black people are in all stated populations and whether American born or immigrant, we all look the same in the eyes of white supremacists and racists who now control the federal system. It is as if the north pulled out of the south, Obama representing the short-term presence of the Union during what was called Reconstruction a farce if one looks at W.E.B Dubois’s classic, The Souls of Black Folk, the chapters which look at how it feels to be a problem in a nation [which has not] found peace from its sins [nor] the freeman his promised land” (1, 4). Dubois critiques the Freeman’s Bureau, the Freeman’s Bank and “Negro suffrage” (23).

Even if Trump disavowals his relationship to the Klan, it doesn’t matter, because his presence has allowed the anger and xenophobia public free reign. All of a sudden, people who are not black feel what black people have felt, black women have felt, black men have felt during what was supposed to be a time of celebration—Emancipation in the guise of Abraham . . . Barack, no Lincoln Obama – 1863 and 2009. Perhaps the laisser faire which greeted Obama’s reign dissipates in light of Trump; however, the pressure and absence of censure which greeted Obama’s term was misplaced, which is how a Trump could become president. People were voting for Trump, because he represented a different view for America–White Anglo Saxon Protestants. This Thanksgiving was a return to the Puritans whose Thanksgiving Feasts referenced the successful massacres of indigenous people. President Lincoln made these successive massacres, Thanksgiving Day. The first day of the new national holiday, was also the day Lincoln “ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota” (Susan Bates). We should be mindful of the elders do not want to be here when Donald Trump takes office. Let them know that we are getting stronger, forming coalitions, making plans, working smart. The 50^th anniversary of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense was a brilliant philosophical synergy of multiple movements: UNIA, NOI, SNCC, NOI, UNIA. . . . The work of the Hon. Marcus Garvey who was inspired by Booker T. Washington and Nobel Drew Ali who also inspired the Hon. Elijah Muhammad. Garvey inspired the first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah. There is a black star at the center of the Ghanaian flag. Of all the countries I have visited in Africa, Ghana and Zimbabwe were the most welcoming. However, Ghana, has so many black people living there from throughout the African Diaspora. Most are business persons who contribute to the economy, even though they cannot become citizens.

Interpretations of the BPP state that it was a multiracial movement, and that might be true; however, the way it played out was police brutality in black communities—black men killed, black youth tracked, targeted and killed and if we look at surveillance and intelligence in major cities across the nation, those targeted and profiled are majority black. This is illustrated in Craig Atkinson’s film, “Do Not Resist” (2016).

It is a black-thang, so to act as if organizing within communities most affected leaves unspoken the privilege attached to other communities is a waste of precious time, because as Kernizan stated on Flashpoints, “We are at war.”

So while I count my blessings and thank the creator in all his and her illumination which my comprehension barely touches for this year and this moment and perhaps other days to come to do necessary work for black liberation, I know we will not be successful in the battle unless we organize. It doesn’t have to be grandiose. Start with friends, get together regular and pour libations, share a meal, develop a project, complete it and then start another one. Be active, because the opposite is certain death.

Alex Haley’s “Roots” is 40 years 2017. Bounce TV aired the series in November. Sankofa, the turn back to fetch a legacy within reach— is a powerful move. Sankofa teaches us to remember the ancestors, this is where our strength lies. This is where the answers are found, this is where the spirit of the yet to be born gather to meditate.

Don’t forget to breathe through the journey. Black people have been here since the beginning; we will be here when this episode passes. Stay the course and do not give up or think a few victories mean the war is over. In 1948 a Universal Declaration of Human Rights were adopted by most members of the United Nations. At that time, Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia and Haiti were among the 48 countries in favor of the UDHR. South Africa voted against it. Noticeably absent were the voices of the colonized African nations and those still economically shackled in the Global South, so this declaration omits the voices of the majority population on the planet earth. Marcus Garvey became aware of this as a union organizer when he petitioned the Queen of England on behalf of the workers in Costa Rica and Panama. Later, in 1928 after losing his case and having to leave the United States, Garvey travelled to Geneva, Switzerland, to present the Petition of the Negro Race to the League of Nations (from George G. Johnson’s “Profiles in Hue”).

“This statement outlined the abuse of Africans around the world. In September 1929, he founded the People’s Political Party (PPP), Jamaica’s first modern political party, centered primarily upon workers’ rights]], education, and aid to the poor. However, prior to all of this at the first National Convention for African Peoples of the World in 1920, Garvey crafted and ratified the Declaration of Rights of the Negro Peoples of the World. There is a preamble, twelve complaints and 54 declarations. This document was signed by 122 delegates from the convention, including Garvey who was nominated the Provisional President of a United States of Africa. It was also signed by Henrietta Vinton Davis, Arnold Josiah Ford, and Garvey’s two secretaries, Janie Jenkins and Mary E. Johnson (from “Philosophy and Opinions of Marcus Garvey” (1925).

Not specific to the rights of black people, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights nonetheless states every human being has a right to freedom of person and mobility, housing, health care, education, economic justice, safety, the right to representation in a court of law (and the presumption of innocence as well). . . . Human Rights Day was concurrently established December 10, 1948 at that same meeting in Paris. Not all countries agreed to all 30 declarations, and so abstained. In the past 60 years there have been attempts to revise the document; however, no revisions have amended the original document despite its Eurocentric or western orientation.

When the Dust Clears . . .
A Review of Julie Dash’s “Daughters of the Dust”

25 years ago, Julie Dash made history with her film “Daughters of the Dust” (1991). When it opened theatrically, the first film by a black woman director in US history to have major distribution, the long lines were evidence of a shift in the dominant narrative.  The film opens nationally Dec. 2, locally in San Francisco at Landmark Embarcadero, with a brilliant 2K restoration print— It will look as Dash and Director of Cinematography, Arthur Jafa envisioned, yet could not afford to print.

Most Black women in their 40s-50s have a Julie Dash, “Daughters of the Dust” tale. I do. I was my younger daughter’s age in 1991 when the film screened in Oakland.  Summer Williams, MD, who presented the MVFF39 Award to Ms. Dash with rising star, Ta’Naejah Reed, (14) as the youth looked in awe with tears in her eyes at the iconic woman, had Dash stories – that moment on stage another in the making, while Ashara Ekundayo, Chief Creative Officer at Impact Hub Oakland’s Dash story was her graduate thesis. Dare I mention Queen B—Beyoncé’s homage to “Daughters” in “Lemonade,” what Dash said in the Q&A is the ultimate compliment. Dash’s cinematic reach into a feminist Diaspora arch is unparalleled when juxtaposed to colorfast whiteness. With “Daughters of the Dust” the director gives black women agency, an agency previously denied, silenced, and certainly ignored if not forgotten by those with the mic. Not only does she amplify the voices of the three generations of the Peazant women: Nana Peazant (Cora Lee Day), Eula (Alva Rogers) and her unborn child (Kai-Lynn Warren), the film shifts from normed patriarchal aegis to an African sensibility where women are seen as the “sweetness of life.”

A love song to her father—a Geechie man who raised his children in the projects in Queens, New York, this work is perhaps the highest accolade a daughter could offer a parent. To make a film about her dad’s people, a people who are still African and American, says a lot for the cultural retention and integrity present in this society. The isolated coastal islands, from the St. John’s River in Florida to the Cape Fear River in North Carolina preserve this cultural worldview, however, once the Peazants, Dashes . . . migrate north, the dominant narrative all but silences them. “Daughters” unearths those voices. We have to pay attention and listen really carefully, as vocal nuances and linguistic rhythms sound strange to acculturated or assimilated ears. Dash said it is time for audiences to acknowledge and struggle as she did with Chinese, German, Spanish. . . . Gullah, a Bantu language which uses English words, is America too.

Dash says, “I set out to make a foreign film about an American family. I like the experience of going into a theater and being taken somewhere you’ve never been,” Dash, 53, [at the time] said. “That was what I was trying to do rather than just tell a Southern story.”  It was her association with the other creative minds, such as Charles Burnett and Melvonna Ballenger together known as LA Rebellion (1967-’89) which allowed her a space to grow and express her voice.

Dash’s film stylistically utilizes a new form to tell the Peazant story, that of the griot or djeli. If D.W. Griffith’s “Birth of a Nation” (1915) stands as the norm for feature films in Hollywood, a film rift with images which demean and dehumanize black people, “Daughters of the Dust” is Dash’s emblematic protest. “Daughters” shifts the American gaze perceptively into a dialogue about black humanity, black agency and the worthiness of black lives.

The story takes place on sunny summer day, the day most of the Peazant family plan to move to the north. Everyone dresses their best for photographs, a great meal, and fond farewells. Matriarch Nana Peazant great grandmother of the Peazant family, is the link between the old and the new. Nana represents a traditional African based socio-cultural belief system that must come to grips with a westernized belief system in this contentious post-Civil War New World. Nana represents Obatala, a Yoruba deity, who is leader of the orisa for its great age and wisdom.

The Peazant family and its Gullah community are juxtaposed to an industrialized and ever encroaching “northern state,” the north a place absent trees, absent saltwater ancestors, absent Nana’s presence—a situation devoid of geography or invitation. A people, without rights, now that slavery is over, the idea that freedom has a reality the government feels obligated to recognize proves dubious to Nana who states she doesn’t know what freedom means to Negro people in the north.

In Cora Lee Day’s Nana Peazant (1914-1996) we witness an African woman who has examined then discarded European spirituality for what works, ancestral rituals. The songs of protest live within the sinew of the born and yet to be born. The beauty of Dash’s “Daughters” is an alternative legacy.

Keith Josef Adkins’s “Safe House” continues at the Aurora Theatre through Dec. 4

When Keith Josef Adkins, playwright, Cincinnati native, was growing up he recalls his grandmother saying that their people in antebellum Kentucky were not enslaved. He didn’t pay her words any mind while a youth, after all weren’t all black people’s ancestors former slaves? Well not really. In his family case, a white women ancestor named Elizabeth Banks had a black husband and despite the whippings she received when bearing the three black children, the children were born free because their mother was free. This is how free black people were born and stayed free as they married other free black people or purchased enslaved black people, married and then freed them

The family we meet in “Safe House,” two brothers and their aunt, are one of two black families in this fictional town. The other free blacks are run out of town when the family that remains is caught trying to help an enslaved black person escape. The escapee is caught and the family is put on a curfew for two years. When we meet the family, the two years are almost up and the younger brother is excited about being free again. It is hot and humid and he wants to take a dip in the river, off limits to black people. His more conservative brother is a cobbler and is making big plans to expand business and open a shop in his family’s home when something happens which ruins his hopes and dreams and shatters the already shaky relationship between brothers.

Free black people have to carry passes and though they have rights, the law does not have to respect them and in this town, does not.
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“Safe House” looks at black people with privilege and the relationship between this family and the other black people who live on the plantations nearby. Whenever something happens, because they are black, the sheriff (whom we never see) assumes this family knows about it, even when denial is on the tip of their tongues. Addison (David Everett Moore) wants his younger brother to act right, do right but Frank (Lance Gardner) is his own man and feels a sense of obligation to his people who are not free. His Aunt Dorcas (Dawn L. Troupe) supports him, but is not willing to risk her freedom again.

Another character is the deputy (Bracken) who is an ally. His role (portrayed by actor Cassidy Brown) in the story, shows how infectious the disease of white supremacy is and how crippling it is to everyone without power. Just as one gets used to the idea of free black people, Adkins hits his audience with a jaw breaker, whole mouth full in the person of spunky Roxie (actress Jamella Cross), an escaped slave looking for sanctuary and freed woman Clarissa (Dezi Soléy). Clarissa bakes cakes and loves one of the brothers enough to slip a rod into the batter. Adkins further tangles a web America has yet to unravel in the excellent production of “Safe House,” directed by L. Peter Callender at the Aurora Theatre Company, 2081 Addison St. in Berkeley through Sunday, Dec. 4. For tickets call: 510.843.4822  or boxoffice@auroratheatre.org

The Last Tiger in Haiti closed at Berkeley Rep

So human rights abuses continue, none more prevalent than the illegal institution of slavery, especially the sexual enslavement of children. In a play at Berkeley Rep this fall season, “The Last Tiger in Haiti,” the characters look at the power of story in self-actualization. How does story revive or find within what has been crushed embodied soul? Jeff Augustin, playwright, looks at the Haitian tradition of indentured servitude, that involving children sent to live and work for more wealthy or elite Haitians—the youth, Max (18), Emmanuel (15), Joseph (17) and Laurie’s (17) treatment, is as unsteady as their drunken master searching for home in a darkened ally. We meet his daughter, Rose (11), who hangs out with the servants, and pretends to be one of them.  The term restavek (“staying with”) is how the practice is innocently described. However, “Tiger” exposes the underside of such beast. I first learned of this child servitude or enslavement from a pamphlet published by Mildred Trouillot-Aristide, former First Lady of Haiti. Set in Port-au-Prince in 2008 just before the earthquake, “Last Tiger” is a story of exploitation and abuse. The abuse is subtle, not solely what one would expect from a system of economic enslavement which cause rupture between a parent and child. No, the true violence is interpersonal; it lives between the hearts, gets into the sinew and bone where trust and love lie. It is the betrayal Max feels when his little sister, Rose whom he cares about and loves, Rose steals then pawns his soul.

She thinks she has gotten away when 16 years later Max shows up on her figurative doorstep. He has read her book and wants his story returned. The fact that “The Last Tiger” is told from the perspective of this privileged child “Rose” (actress Brittany Bellizeare), is disturbing. Rose (11) is like a virus which undermines Max’s ascension. Seemingly innocent, Rose steals the older youth’s savings to keep him from leaving. She turns the money over to her father, whom she pretends to hate. Max (Andy Lucien) is trapped and eventually runs away. Rose also steals from Laurie (actress Jasmine St. Clair) who befriends and protects Rose from the other boys, Emmanuel and Joseph, who are suspicious of this rich child. The two boys question her presence and the trust Max and Laurie give her. Then Rose steals something precious – a doll Laurie’s mother gave her; it is all that Laurie had left from her mother. Without shame Rose puts her version of the truth in her bestselling memoir. Max tracks the author down to reclaim his tattered life, to bury the dead. The monster she portrays him as in the memoir is Rose, not him. He wants her to recant and admit she fabricated the tale.  Max says how he worried that she had been killed after the earthquake; however she survived adopted by an Irish missionary family.

Max knows the potential for betrayal in his adoption of Rose, the master’s daughter, yet in the Diaspora now, Rose is clueless as to her crime. Max asks her: “Did you think we were volunteers?”

Rose responds, “All the kids at school had ‘restaveks,’ I thought it was a part of life. But once I understood – I snuck you all food, clothes, hugged you. Made you human. And Joseph didn’t say [he hated me]. He said it about my father. I was there. . . .” She says she embellishes his life to “make it better.” She projects the evil of enslavement on the youth her family owns as if Max, Joseph, Emmanuel, and Laurie benefit from the masked artifice. She ignores her father’s sexual perversions and Joseph’s repeated rapes. She makes Max into a murderer though she is the killer; she kills their dreams, appropriates their stories and then does nothing to find the four youth (even now) who allowed her into their world.

Her published words destroy Max. How could she forget the power of story to manifest what is hidden? How could she forget the power of story to transform? How could she forget the power of story to imagine something greater than what one is given? Max says, “You have taken my life and made it into a fable.”

Max says with resolve to Rose when he sees how tainted she is by her circumstances, empathy a gift absent from the worldview of exploiters: “I was born a slave, I could never have a story. A narrative. We spent all that time in that tent telling other people’s stories, a countries stories cause we – Laurie, Joseph, Emmanuel – we never had choices. Our stories were already written, by your parents, by you, by people like you.”

Ghosts? Yet, nonetheless, Max, Laurie, Joseph and Emmanuel exist. How do we make the lives of those erased from history real when the bodies cannot be located, their stories cloaked in silence? This is the challenge faced by those outside the dominant narrative structure. Rose is published. Imagine all the stories she missed once the well ran dry. She tells Max he is the best storyteller she knows, there is a market for his stories, that she can help him publish; however, Max is not interested in opening new wounds to other wolves or insatiable hungry tigers.

An alternative ending perhaps lies in our ability to trust, let go and keep moving. Max is disappointed in Rose, but now surprised. She is a product of her people, of what author Edward P. Jones calls, her known world.  How could he have expected her to walk straight when her shoes were designed by crooks?

To help with the recent hurricane and the continued Cholera pandemic, visit Haiti Emergency Relief Fund 100 percent of the funds goes to grassroots organizations in Haiti.

On the Fly:
Film Screening
“Daughters of the Dust” (112 mins.) opens December 2, at Landmark Opera Plaza in San Francisco; The Laney College Dance Department presents its annual showcase: “And Still We Dance. . . Promoting Resilience, Determination, & Pride”, Friday-Saturday, December 9-10, 8 p.m. at Laney College, 900 Fallon Street, Oakland,. Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 at the door; Z Space and Word For Word present: “All Aunt Hagar’s Children” by Edward P. Jones, directed by Stephanie Hunt, Assistant Director, Margo Hall, Thursday-Sunday, through Dec. 11, at Z-Space. Listen to an interview with one of the cast, Velina Brown; Gala Thursday, December 1, 7 p.m. with the author, Edward P. Jones in conversation with the Legendary journalist Belva Davis at Z-Space, 450 Florida Street in San Francisco. Listen to an interview with the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Edward P. Jones. Also at Z Space, Dec. 15-17, KMLZ: The Lobster before Christmas.  Visit www.zspace.org or call (415) 659-8134. “Safe House” by Keith Josef Adkins, directed by L. Peter Callender, at the Aurora Theatre Company Tuesday- Sunday, Dec. 4. There is a talk back on Dec. 1. Visit https://auroratheatre.org/  Listen to an interview with the Adkins on Wanda’s Picks Radio Show. TheatreFIRST presents VS. by Cleavon Smith, Directed by Rotimi Agbabiaka at Live Oak Theater, 1301 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, Thursday – Saturdays, 8 p.m. – Sundays, 2 p.m. through Dec. 17.  Tickets available through our website: www.theatrefirst.com and at the door.  Listen to an interview on this same show with Cleavon Smith, playwright, whose play, “VS” looks at the story of a black general who served in the Revolutionary War, commander of mixed race troops. It is a commission of TheatreFirst.

Brava Center Picks

Flash Plays
Bay Area Playwrights’ Flash Plays Dec. 3, 8 p.m., Dec. 4, 5 p.m. 40+ Playwrights, 70+ Plays, 80+ Minutes of Fast and Furious Fun!  FlashPlays is Playwrights Foundation’s 7th annual winter festival featuring newly penned micro plays (one minute or less!) that together evoke love for our city by the bay.

After Orlando @ Brava
Brava Studio Sessions in association with NoPassport Theatre Alliance and Missing Bolts present AFTER ORLANDO theater action An Evening of Short Plays in Response to the Pulse Nightclub Shooting, Directed by Vidhu Singh, Tuesday | December 6 | 7pm. This event is free. Donations will benefit a LGBQT group in our community. Playwrights: Eric Ehn, Dipika Guha , Jessica Litwak, Lisa Schlesinger, Chiori Miyagawa, Rohina Malik, Deborah Zoe Laufer, Mando Alvarado, Migdalia Cruz, Andy Field, Caridad Svich. Closing ritual led by activist and writer, Ed Wolf.  Please note each piece is 3-5 minutes in length.

AFTER ORLANDO is an international playwright driven theater action including over seventy playwrights from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Africa and Australia. Plays have been specifically written and curated in response to this tragic event and will be read at over 40 venues across the country and in the UK throughout the fall.  “As theatre-makers, we have the ability to bring together many singular unique voices toward a common goal. We feel it is necessary to give artists a place to respond to the tragedy in Orlando and the current state of the world.”  – Missing Bolts Productions

Kwanzaa 2016 in San Francisco
The Village Project presents its 11th Annual City-wide Kwanzaa Celebration in San Francisco

ALL EVENTS ARE FREE & OPEN TO THE COMMUNITY

Kwanzaa 2016 Schedule

UMOJA (unity): To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race. Monday, Dec. 26th: 12 Noon – Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street @ 3rd; 7 pm, African American Arts & Culture Complex, 762 Fulton Street @ Webster

KUJICHAGULIA (self-determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves. Tuesday, Dec. 27th: 12 Noon – City Hall, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett Way, Rotunda; 2 pm, Hamilton Rec Center/MoMagic, 1900 Geary @ Steiner; 6 pm, Bayview Y. 1601 Lane @ Revere

UJIMA (collective work and responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and solve them together. Wednesday, Dec. 28th: 1 pm, Western Addition Senior Center/Western Addition Family Resource Center, 1390 Turk @ Fillmore; 4:30, OMI Family Resource Center/IT Bookman, 446 Randolph @ Arch

UJAMAA (cooperative economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together. Thursday Dec 29th: 1 pm, Western Addition Senior Center/Western Addition Family Resource Center, 1390 Turk @ Fillmore; 4:30, OMI Family Resource Center/IT Bookman, 446 Randolph @ Arch

NIA (purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness. Friday, Dec. 30th: 1 pm Boys & Girls Club, 380 Fulton @ Gough; 4 pm – Glide Memorial, 330 Ellis

KUUMBA (creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it. Saturday, Dec. 31st:: 1 pm, Success Center, SF, Jazz Heritage Center, 1330 Fillmore; ; 4 pm, Bay View Opera – Ruth Williams Memorial Theater, 4705 Third Street

IMANI (faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of our struggle. Sunday, Jan. 1st: 1:00 pm, Third Baptist Church, 1399 McAllister @ Pierce

About Kwanzaa

Created by Dr. Maulana Karenga in 1966, Kwanzaa is celebrated annually by more than 30 million people worldwide, over seven days from December 26 to January 1. The values of Kwanzaa, Nguzo Saba (The Seven Principles), are critical tools for addressing the issues facing the African-American community. Ceremonies will be led by Brotha’ Clint Sockwell and Malik Seneferu. There will be a candle lighting & pouring of libation ceremony, live entertainment & a feast at each event. For more information visit: