Category: Published Articles

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Divali: Lessons For Personal, Community Rejuvenation

Divali: Lessons For Personal, Community Rejuvenation

By N Oji Mzilikazi

(Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 22 October 31, 2013)

Asato ma sadgamaya

Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya

Mrito ma amrita gamaya

From appearance lead me to reality

From darkness lead me to light

From death lead me to Immortality

Namaste! Divali Greetings to Montreal’s Hindu Community, and to Hindus worldwide.

Divali, Dewali or Deepawali is one of the most important festivities in the Hindu calendar. Divali is for Hindus what Christmas is for Christians and Eid-ul-Fitr is for Muslims…

 

(Inspired by photos; memories of weekend retreats at the Shiva Lingam Temple with the likes of Collette Lee Loy, Mwanza Donkor, Ngina, Miriam, Marie, Alex, Phillip, Keith Saadik Edwards, the grace and kindness of Pa and Ma Nancoo, and my teacher Lutchman Singh.)

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America Invasion of Grenada: 30 Years On

America Invasion of Grenada: 30 Years On

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 21 October 17, 2013

I pray for progress, I pray for stability

I pray for happiness

And a whole lot of love in meh country

— “A Prayer For My Nation”

— King Ajamu

The United States of America is inarguable the most powerful nation in the world. Thirty years ago, on October 25, 1983, America invaded the small Caribbean nation of Grenada — with all its military might, including US Navy Seals, the Delta force, a fleet of 23 warships with the aircraft carrier USS Independence, stocked with fighter jets and bombers, as if Grenada was an emerging superpower, and a threat to other Caribbean islands and to American hegemony…

 

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Spare Us The Lashes Of The “Selfish Gene” Theory

Flagellation as a tool of education and social sophistication

SPARE US THE LASHES OF THE “SELFISH GENE” THEORY

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 19 September 19, 2013

When the Black historical experience has been marked by chattel slavery, torturous suffering, unmitigated brutality and violence, unbridled exploitation, the fracturing of voice, soul and self, obliterating identity, culture and religion, destruction of the bond of family, institutionalize racism and discrimination, dysfunction in every imaginable way; our education, must in part — and out of necessity be centered on making us whole, and languaging ourselves — finding voice, being formidable, and uncompromising in upholding one’s humanity, and bringing respect to the race…

To that end, those of us at the bottom of the education, employment, wealth, and health indexes expect our brightest, our leaders and exemplars to throw us lifelines; provide us with visionary blueprints, winning strategies and techniques to empower — stop our recycling of losing formulas that keeps us at each other’s throat, and at the bottom of the economic barrel.

 

 

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Pimping, Misrepresenting Resistance

Pimping, Misrepresenting Resistance

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 18 September 7, 2013

The Bhagavad Gita, Hinduism holy book, opens with two armies just about to battle, and Arjuna, expressing trepidation to Lord Krishna – he doesn’t want to fight – his uncles, his cousins, his brothers; his relatives are in the opposing army.

Lord Krishna then asks Arjuna to which class does he belongs. Arjuna replies, “The warrior class.” Lord Krishna then tells Arjuna to do his Duty – Fight!…

 

 

 

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Emancipation 2013: Field Negroes Needed

50th Anniversary of the March on Washington

Emancipation 2013: Field Negroes Needed

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 17 August 22, 2013           

Won’t you help to sing

These songs of freedom

Cause all I’ve ever had redemption songs

All I’ve ever had redemption songs

These songs of freedom

Songs of freedom

— Redemption Song

— Bob Marley

August 28, 1963, was a momentous day in the history of America, and Black people everywhere. On that day, hundreds of thousands of people; men women, children, Blacks, whites, Jews, gays and lesbians, marched on Washington in the most significant protest of the civil rights era.

It was on that day, there in Washington; on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I have a dream” speech, inarguable one of the greatest 20 Century speeches.

King’s speech prompted William Sullivan, the FBI’s assistant director of domestic intelligence, to recommend: “We must mark him [King] now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous negro of the future of this nation.”…

 

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Emancipation 2013: Who Will Pay Reparations For My Soul?

EMANCIPATION 2013: WHO WILL PAY REPARATIONS FOR MY SOUL?

By N Oji Mzilikazi

Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 23, Number 16 August 8, 2013 

 

…The Hon. Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania (Republican)  initiated the move for reparation. On March 19, 1867, in a speech before the U.S. House of Representatives, Stevens declared that no Southern state should be readmitted into the union until the ex-slaves were treated equally both in law and in practice.

Stevens introduced the Reparation Bill: Taking land away from plantation owners and giving the former slaves; each adult male or head of family forty acres of land, with $100 to build a dwelling. Thus, the “40 acres and a mule” that African Americans speak about, believe is their rightful due…

…Colonialism and African enslavement set in motion crimes against humanity, and its repercussions are still in play today…

 

Justice is yet to be served. To quote Bob Marley: “Mi no know how me an dem a work it out.” But reparations have to be worked out. Someone has to pay reparations for my soul.