For The Love of My People

By BaBa Omowale Eng

BaBa Omowale Eng

So, I say to you, my beloved community, breaking free of the chains of psychological slavery is one of our major challenges in 2024. Thinking first about where is it that we got our beliefs, our values and where we got our attitudes? Then we need to look at who ultimately benefits by how all of that directs our lives.

Remember, my people, ‘Bookman’, one of the authors of the first successful revolutions by Black people fighting enslavement in Haiti, said that Black people would never be free until we freed ourselves of the white man’s God. He talked about how prior to bringing Afruikans to America, the ships would stop off in the Caribbean to break our ancestors down, torture them, make them fear white people so much that they would give up our language, our traditions, our way of spiritual practice and our God. They did all that because they knew that it was in our languages, in our traditions, in our worship of our God that gave us strength. They knew that to weaken us, to take away that power they had to strip us of all of that. My people true history shows that is what they did to us, even before they brought us to America.

My People, I love you whatever your practice, however you look, because I know your essence and I know that your liberation is bound up with mine. So, whatever I can do to help you recover, rescue and reclaim our heritage, please let me do that – with you, not to you, or for you, but really with you.

Let us rediscover what it is to be fully Afrikan in the world today, in reciprocal relationships that share responsibility and accountability. Help us create a space where our power is the result of our unity and solidarity. In that space of real Black consciousness we are equal to anyone else in the world.

Let us share in the bounties of Creation as The One God intended us to.

My Brothers and Sisters, reclaiming our identity is central to our liberation. Our young people will join when they see us working together and loving each other the way we were created to. They are just waiting and watching to see what we will do.

Let us show by example that Afruica is first and we are the Black folks that will make our connection with our Motherland/Afruika real again.

Let us do what we have to do, and make sure that the Civil Rights Bill of 1866 is not overturned in the Supreme Court of these United States.

Let us join together to make sure that the status quo, which is the platform that supports the way things are, is not what we support. And let us say to those who are comfortable with the way things are that they have to make a choice because they can’t serve the Black community and serve the white slave masters at the same time.

Let us show each other that self acceptance means acknowledgement of our faults and mishaps, and self love must be manifest in everything we do. Black consciousness says that I can only love you if I truly love myself. If I see me – everytime I look at you, you should see yourself everytime you look at me. When we do that we will share God’s Power on this earth, in this world.

The One God of Our righteous Ancestors and Our Ancestors spirits will bless and be with us as we finally achieve the Freedom that God promises to all.

Thank you.