clarencepage

KWANZAA IS A FESTIVALOF HARVEST AND celebration of the Good, the shared good, the shared good of field and forest, of fruit tree and flower, the shared good of wind and waters, rainfall and riverflow, of life and all living things, in a word, the shared good of the world in all its wonderful abundance.
At the very heart and center of the celebration
of Kwanzaa is the ethical imperative and so-cial obligation of the cooperative creation and sharing of an inclusive Good. This prin-ciple and related practice are rooted in itsan-cient origins the African harvest and the communitarian worldview and way of life that undergirded and informed it. The ancient roots of Kwanzaa in the shared African har-vest and the celebration of it, immediately bring to mind the sacred teachings given to us by our honored ancestors in the Odu Ifa which tells and teaches us we are to con-stantly strive and struggle to bring good into
the world, share it and not let any good be loss DR MAULANA KARENGA

" What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages". Frederick Douglass

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