I'm screaming Umoja, Umoja, Umoja all the way to my ancestors' home!

It was my honor and pleasure to be asked again this year to participate in my community’s annual Kwanzaa celebration. Each year that I’m a part of or just attend this celebration, I’m reminded of where the heartbeat of my community truly lies. I’m reminded of everything great my community has to offer, all the heart, soul, wisdom, passion, talent and love. All of that gets wrapped up into one great evening with faces that look exactly like mine, within a tradition that is uniquely ours! And I happen to think that’s pretty damn phenomenal.

My contribution to this year’s celebration was to interpret and communicate the first principle of Kwanzaa, which is Umoja. Umoja means “unity” in Swahili. The principle is “to strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation and race.” HOW POWERFUL IS THAT!?! You can check out below what I had to say about Umoja both in video and poetic form!

So They Say
Be united, but not too united.

Be free, but not too free tho.

And don’t go about spreading the word of unity and freedom to all your kin folk.

We don’t want all y’all to know.

We intend for this freedom thing to move real slow.

Ya know, like that thing y’all called the Underground Railroad.

Keep it hidden and secret. We don’t want it to grow.

If it grows too fast, y’all might have to go back to where ya came from!

Go back to where we came from? So is that what you say?

Well hand me my reparations, and I’ll be yelling WAKANDA FOREVER the whole way.

We came from chiefs, kings and queens. That’s what I know to be true.

Fuck that shit you be talkin bout on Fox News!

My ancestors BEEN waiting for me to return.

But before I go, there’s a few things y’all gotta learn.

For one:

We wasn’t sitting around waiting. We took our freedom a long time ago.

We knew that Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment shit was just for show.

We were already watching the stars, plotting the river and braiding our escape routes in our corn rows!

Two:

As far as unity goes.

We ain’t asking no mo!

With our own money staying in our own communities…

With educating our own babies in our own communities…

With emptying those jails y’all built in our communities…

This here ain’t no ghetto, it is our community.

That’s all y’all need to know about our unity!

So hand us that ballot. We ain’t throwing it away.

We’ll vote your asses out and start a new day.

We ain’t running, nor hiding. We’re here to stay.

No more terror. No more fears.

Y’all lucky Barack Obama could only do 8 years.

Unity and freedom, that’s our new song.

I’m singing UMOJA, UMOJA, UMOJA…all the way to my ancestors’ home.