Tag: Sequoia

“The spaces the Black community had carved out, the restaurants we’d established, the communities we’d become a part of, were all fading out.”

This Maafa Commemoration Month we continue to lift “A Love Supreme” as we organize a defense against state violence. Congratulations to Professor Aaliyah Dunn-Salahuddin, whose community vigil and program honored the lives of the Bayview Hunters Point revolutionaries killed 50 years ago when the community rose up after SFPD killed Matthew “Peanut” Johnson and more recently when the community turned out after SFPD killed Mario Woods.

African American soldiers have fought in American wars since the Revolution, but in 1869 Congress established four all-Black regiments within the U.S. Army: the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry. These regiments were located all over the country and did everything from fighting campaigns against Native tribes to pursuing bandits, improving our roads, and scouting and mapping frontier land.

Sunday, Oct. 12, marks our 19th Annual Maafa Commemoration. This is a time when we gather to remember our African ancestors, especially those who endured the transatlantic slave trade or the Middle Passage, the Black Holocaust. It is a time for Pan Africans to gather and celebrate life and recommit ourselves to the work of liberation: spiritual, psychological, economic and political.

Judith Jamison looked regal on stage with Farai Chideya last month in The Forum Conversations at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Her message seemed to be one of preparedness and presence – being, as our sister Ayana Vanzant says, in spirit. Muslims call this the sirata-l-mustaqim or the path of the rightly guided.