#BlackLoveMatters! by bro. Zayid*
#BlackLoveMatters!
It really does!
Especially for a people who were not allowed to have loving relationships in their centuries of sustained captivity and oppression.
Yet somehow our Ancestors did.
It was their love...their love for each other...their love for us...their love for a future and a day that they knew they would never see...a love that would not allow them to ever give up...because had they done so...Had they given up, we would not even be here...
On this day, let us appreciate Frederick Douglass' mother. As an incredible act of self determination, she made this day his birthday and made him 'her' valentine to transcend the plantation sexual abuse context of his birth!...
Enormous gesture!...
Under the most vicious circumstances!
It was on this day in 1965 that Malcolm endured his home being firebombed, and coming dangerously close to losing his children!...
He could have stepped back.
He could have stepped away.
He didn't.
He got them secured and somehow kept his word and date with our people in Detroit, all the way to Detroit from NYC, and gave us one of his most poignant messages...the fabled "Last Message" dedicating his remarks to his children...
In the shadows of enduring his home being firebombed!...
Out of his love for his children and love for our people...
I have not yet seen Judas and the Black Messiah about the unconquerable Fred Hampton and the informant William O'Neal, who helped set up his murder. I hope it shows how his very pregnant queen and love Akua Njeri shielded him with her very pregnant body when she could not awaken him when the shooting into their space began.
We would later learn that her love had been drugged. That's why she couldn't wake him.
The jury is still out as to who drugged what he and most of the others drank that night, by the way.
It was only after the police came into their room and physically separated her from him that they fired the fatal shots into him...
The love doesn't stop there...
Weeks later she would give birth to a boy with a chest of fire! 50 years later he is honoring his father's legacy, honoring the panther legacy in a way that few have, and she is right there with him. Talk about a mother to son love!...
Finally, i'm gonna dedicate these remarks to Debbie and Mike Africa. Debbie was pregnant with their child when they came under that epic vicious police assault on August 8, 1978, one that would tear them apart plantation-like and ultimately land them and seven other of their comrades in prison becoming known as The Move 9. Their son, Mike Jr, was literally born in prison...Remember Afeni and 'Pac while we're at it...After being torn apart and forced to do more than 40 years in prison each, when they were finally released just over the past year, the first they did was find each other and recommit their lives to each other like they so many of our Ancestors sought to out of their butchering plantation separations...
Let us lead with love...Let us heal with love...Let us transcend the darkness of this time and space as our Ancestors did with love...So that we may emerge with its luster, eternal sweetness and shine!...Enjoying the fruits of our struggle...
It really and truly does...
*bro zayid Muhammad is the founding press officer and lead organizer for the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee-NYC. Follow them on Facebook. Most recently, he is the Newark Strategist for Equal Justice USA and the organizer for Newark Communities for Accountable Policing (NCAP)...
(c)2021
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