US, THE MOVEMENT AND MEMORY: IN THE WINDS AND SCALES OF HISTORY Los Angeles Sentinel | 09-06-18 | p.6 DR. MAULANA KARENGA

HIS IS A SANKOFA REMEMBRANCE, AS PART when I called a group of men and women to- |T of the month-long celebration of the gether at our house to found Us and discussed founding of our organization Us which has with them the historical juncture at which we played a major role in Black intellectual, cultur- stood and the obligation we owed our ancestors al and political history since the 1960s. Min. to continue their struggle and called for a com- Malcolm X taught that “history is a people’s mitment to righteous and relentless struggle and memory” and we must keep our memories, if we unbudging Blackness. And I think of those who are to avoid forgetting who we are, and losing have remained steadfast and those we lost along touch with the sacred narrative of our coming the way, and I, we, pay hommage to them all for into being, developing and becoming who we even the smallest effort to fulfill the sacred and are and must be, as an African and sacred peo- ancestral assignment to bring good in the world. ple. We had met in the wake of the Watts Re- It is, indeed, no easy thing or feather-light volt and the martyrdom of Minister Malcolm X; thought to raise up one day and dare enter, stand so there was no need to explain the necessity and firm and hold fast in the harsh and heavy winds urgency of struggle. It was as clear as a cloud- of history that rise and whirl around and within less sky and as unquestionable as the right to life our long and difficult struggles for liberation and the need to love. It was a heady and uplift- here and everywhere in the world. And yet in the ing time and imagining we could do almost any- 60’s we of Us dared to do this. We believed with thing, we defiantly called for revolution and de- the men and women of liberation movements clared “We are the last revolutionaries in Amer- around the world that we could make a decisive ica. If we fail to leave a legacy of revolution for difference, that a small, conscious, dedicated and our children, we have failed our mission and disciplined group could help light a revolution- should be dismissed as unimportant.” This is ary spark that could set a whole forest on fire one of the main reasons we refuse to walk away and clear the land for the sowing and cultivating from the battlefield until the war is won, refuse of seeds of self-consciousness and struggle. It to declare prematurely the death and disappear- would be a self-conscious struggle of the masses ance of racism, and to pretend a racial reconcili- that would soon flower, bear fruit, bring freedom ation that leaves White people still with a grue- and lay the basis for a new history of our people some monopoly of wealth and power and people and humankind. Obviously, we did not achieve of color with essentially uncertain influence, all we hoped and struggled for, but we did what treasuries of hope, and tragedies of history. we could with what we had. And we continue We committed ourselves to cultural revo- struggling. Moreover, although we as a people lution, radical social change and a legacy of did indeed wage a struggle for liberation that expansive good in the world and established a expanded the realm of freedom and serves as a four-part process of education, mobilization, model of instruction and inspiration around the organization and confrontation in order to bring world, there is still so much undone and yet to about the radical transformation we imagined do. necessary and struggled for in ourselves, society And so, during this, the 53rd anniversary of and the world. We began with cultural and polit- our organization, Us, as we review the records ical education, for we reasoned that the battle we and remembrances of our weathering the winds must wage first is the battle to win the hearts and and being weighed in the scales of history by minds of our people, and if we lose that battle, friend and foe, allies and enemies, and by us, we can’t hope to win any other. But this position ourselves, I think of these things and others. I in no way diminished our concrete struggles in think first of the evening of September 7, 1965 the midst of the masses including: vanguard US, THE MOVEMENT AND MEMORY: IN THE WINDS AND SCALES OF HISTORY Los Angeles Sentinel, 09-06-18, p.6 DR. MAULANA KARENGA roles in the Black Power, Black Studies, Black ence the distorted accounts of our history as per- Student and Black Arts Movements; cooperative sons and an organization that continue today in institutional building for affordable housing and intellectually incompetent and ideologically health care; Black united fronts; cultural centers; driven books and articles, “wild west” websites independent schools and alternative community and respectable sounding info sites pretending to funding; and other advocacy and action in anti- be “free,” but at our and others’ expense, organ- Vietnam War initiatives, including draft re- izing and digitizing lies in a new and continuing sistance; prisoner support; voter registration; intellectual and political war. But we refuse to political organizing, training Black and Brown be dispirited, diverted or defeated. For we are organizers, and building pan-African and Third not summer recruits, but we are battle-tested and World alliances. all-seasons soldiers, Simba, all-weather lions. And then came the crisis in 1969, with the So, the war goes on and the central battle fatal confrontations with the Black Panther Party remains, as we said in the Sixties, the battle for and increased government and police suppres- the hearts and minds of our people. And the es- sion of our organization. Indeed, the two were tablished order is waging war against persons, linked, for it is mainly the government thru its ideas, institutions, historical memory, and ulti- Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) mately against Black people and Black self- that provoked and sustained the internecine determination. Thus, it’s not just about dictating struggle between us, even accounting for our and determining what intellectual or leader we regular organizational rivalry and disagreement listen to or follow, but also about requirements over several issues including: our comparative to deny, denounce and distance oneself from vanguard status, the return and role of Whites in Blackness; and reinterpret and play down the the Movement, the value of Black studies, the struggle-and-freedom-focused, justice-centered, role of culture in the struggle and its relationship and emancipatory thrust of our history. to armed struggle, “Custer stands” vs. guerilla UT IF THERE IS ANY LEGACY OR UPLIFTING war, the importance of Africa and pan- |B lessons left by the 60’s, it is that we must Africanism, African socialism vs. Marxism, and resist these new forms of unfreedom and falsifi- which road to revolution, etc. cation of history and continue to wage struggles COINTELPRO was designed to “disrupt, of liberation on every level of life. For these discredit, destroy and otherwise neutralize” all struggles are clearly the indispensable way we Black leadership and thru this the Movement. understand, free and fulfill ourselves and the Our organization, Us, was on every FBI list the aspirations of our ancestors. Indeed, these are Panthers and other groups were on, and we were struggles demanded by our inherent right to designated as armed, dangerous and revolution- freedom, our natural need for justice and our ary. And a fierce official and unofficial cam- irrepressible longing for a liberated life. And it is paign of suppression was waged against Us thru a struggle for and longed for life that yields or- armed attacks on our houses and headquarters; dinary and special spaces in which the human drive-by shootings; trumped-up charges against spirit is nurtured and constantly renewed, and me and others and our political imprisonment; we and other human beings know ourselves as the driving of Us advocates in exile and under- sacred and at the center and subject of every day ground; the intense and vicious character assas- and hour of history we make. sination which still continues. We still experi-

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture, The Message and Meaning of Kwanzaa: Bringing Good Into the World and Essays on Struggle: Position and Analysis, ww.AfricanAmericanCulturalCenter-LA.org; ww.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.