A truly Happy New Year to all readers!
Following my return from church the dawn of 2016 and in the quietude of my domicile, I thought about the things that matter to me most: my family, my community and the future of the Black community.
I have learnt over the years that when we fail to seize the moment and pursue our dreams and ambitions, life can easily pass us by. I also thought about how much I appreciate your support and your willingness to trust my writings and opinions as the years go by. This is something that I have never taken for granted.
Now, with the arrival of 2016, we are once again faced with the need to sit down and think deeply about the meaning and responsibility of being members of the Black community, and determine to recommit our collective selves to our highest cultural values.
Let us desist from focusing on issues that have nothing to enhance our development or our communal well-being; instead, there was rifing and strifing over individual interests, abuse of power of sorts, while the community suffered. [In the name of prevailing better judgment I do not intend to be specific or provide examples.]
The message of unity was sidetracked to the point of being obsolete or totally lost. Yes, it is certainly a propitious moment for this implied essential questioning and assessment, especially with a new government at the helm, historical international interventions (refugee arrivals), and diminishing possibilities… All of which we must ensure become a shared good for everyone in the mosaic.
What a better time than at the beginning of the year, for as the age old saying goes: “If you know the beginning well, then the end will not trouble you.” In addition, for the Black community to move forward, rid itself of its seeming lethargy, then our resolutions must emerge from serious reflections on our lives as individuals and as a people on what we have done and must do, and what we have failed to do or have yet not done and is compelled to do, if we are to be what our history and self-understanding demands of us.
It is also designed to help us measure ourselves in the mirror of the best of our culture, re-affirm the realness of our commitment to the identity of being Black in Quebec (Canada), conscious of all it reflects and requires, and determine how far have we come as a community, where do we stand in relation to the principles we hold dear, and the daily and continuous practice we offer to prove it.
When the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey called for “race first” it was a necessary moral call to give first consideration to the building and liberation of our community as an extended family. This call was right and necessary. For we are our own liberators, and a people that cannot save itself is lost forever.
This year, 2016, should be the beginning of a new era, a call not only for reflection and inspection, but also detection.
So as the not so New Year marches on, let us, with grateful hearts and steeled determination, collectively unite in a renewed and reformative manner to further the cause and progress of our community, the legacy of which will benefit future generations.
Aleuta– The struggle continues..
