Peace, love, and light fam. I hope all is well with you and yours. I am stupendously busy as usual. I did take a small break this weekend, enjoying much needed free time with friends and extended family. I have been thinking about what freedom and liberation really looks like and feels like. For the vast majority of us living in this world, liberation is an abstract idea, a dream, a beautiful fantasy. Many of us would struggle with day to day operations as a truly sovereign individual. Let’s talk about what liberation could possibly look like.

First of all, a truly liberated people would own things such as land and property. According to an article published on www.blackisonline.com in 2010, there are only 68,000 African American land owners in the US and they only own 7.7 million acres which is miniscule in the land that has a mass of 2.3 billion acres. Land ownership is essential to wealth creation and sustainability.

Secondly, a truly liberated people would have their own their own systems in place for government, education, healthcare, commerce/economics, etc. Currently, the Amerikkan African (a term coined by a dear friend and leader M’Bwebe Ishangi), depends on those who have oppressed us for the last several centuries for almost everything in our lives, including our foodstuffs. We attend their schools, we go to their doctors and medical facilities, we use their banks, we operate under their self-proclaimed democracy. And we suffer. We suffer from being disenfranchised, over charged, underserved, and miseducated. But many are so comfortable in their oppression that they will fight you if you attempt to suggest another way of living is possible.

Lastly, a truly liberated people will embrace true unity. Living communally; working with others in farming, hunting, craftswork; giving of their talents wholly; fully embracing ancient practices of medicine, eating, and living. When I think of freedom, I visualize a community of my people living and working together, traveling to the medicine man or wombman for health issues, community policing, bartering for goods. I visualize peace and freedom from the threat of police violence, micro-aggressions from those not of the culture, blatant racist acts, and most of all the systems that are diluting a lost people. Every day when I rise , I remind myself of who I am and what I have come to do. I am Ashaki Ma’at Mirembe Ali and I am a revolutionary. I am here to fight for the liberation of my people and I will not stop until my last breath.

Hetepu,

Ashaki Ma’at Mirembe Ali