By N Oji Mzilikazi
The full keynote address I delivered on Saturday 11 November at Montreal Caribbean Social Organization 40th Anniversary Celebration
Tag: Montreal Black Community
Reflections On Carifiesta 2014
REFLECTIONS ON CARIFIESTA 2014
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 14 July 10, 2014
The 39th staging of the Carifiesta Parade on July 5th was one of the best in years.
While my heart welled with pride for the thousands of community members that were participants — revellers as well as on-lookers — I couldn’t help but weigh the power of their presence, the financial and voting power they collectively constitute in their hands against community laissez faire attitudes, divisiveness, paralysis, and other shortcomings.
I couldn’t but weigh the potential power in our numbers against the continuous underfunding of Carifiesta by City Hall, the absence of funding from the Quebec government and the Montreal Tourist Board, and that Carifiesta is without a corporate sponsor…
To Rectify Damage, Reverse Paralysis Conclusion Part 1
TO RECTIFY DAMAGE, REVERSE PARALYSIS Conclusion Part 1
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally published in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 13 June 26, 2014
A rule of success is to “Beat the iron while it is hot.” More so in this internet age of information overflow, information access, and social media hydra-headedness that overwhelming has focus on the trite, superfluous, just what is current. And news is fast, immediate, and quickly forgotten.
The partial collapse of the historic Negro Community Centre (NCC) in Little Burgundy on April 13 that prompted this series …
To Rectify Damage, Reverse Our Paralysis (Part 3)
Black public figures are just as opened to bias and discrimination as any of us…
TO RECTIFY DAMAGE, REVERSE OUR PARALYSIS
(Part 3)
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 12 June 12, 2014
What is the purpose of education for the children of enslavement and colonialism who bear multitudinous psychological, educational and economical scars from centuries of inhumane and unbridled exploitation, torturous suffering, dehumanization, racism, discrimination and hatred, if not to make us whole?
Yet the scars of colonialism; internalized racism and self-hate have many believing it’s all about becoming privilege, being a cut above others of the race, achieving “white gaze” – validation and approval of whites – escaping the constraints racism placed on Blackness…
To Rectify Damage, Reverse Our Paralysis Part 2
To Rectify Damage, Reverse Our Paralysis Part 2
By N Oji Mzilikazi
Originally appeared in the Montreal Community Contact Volume 24, Number 11 May 29, 2014
Moving forward sometimes call for one to look backwards; even take a couple steps backwards. Doing so allows us to engineer change. Doing so facilitates understanding the forces that made; shaped us, have us where we currently are.
Doing so allows us to learn from the past, gain new perspectives, contemplate and come up with better strategies, make different and more informed choices — strategic choices to bring about better, healthier, and more successful outcomes…
The NCC Saga: “Rallye and Petition”
The NCC Saga: “Rallye and Petition”
By N Oji Mzilikazi
April 28, 2014
A “Rallye and Petition” email from an ad-hoc group of concerned citizens interested in preserving the Negro Community Centre (NCC) building in Little Burgundy, and soliciting input and support for a monster rally on Saturday May 24, 2014, is currently in circulation.
As much as I would like to see the NCC preserved, I find the desire and intent to make the NCC a cause célèbre to mobilise the community around to be ill-conceived, a knee-jerk reaction, and misdirected.
Are we never going to accept ownership for our self-oppression through organizational infighting, incompetence, sins of omission and commission, and our penchant to recruit, empower, and recycle egotistical, selfish, poorly-educated, visionless, and untrained soldier-leaders to lead troops on the front line of a war in which Blacks are attacked on all fronts, and we are perennially victims?
No wonder we die from self-inflicted wounds.
There were no calls for a rally or petition when Centraide withdrew its funding from the NCC over issues of accountability and transparency. There were no calls for a rally or petition when the door of the NCC was locked in 1989. But now that bricks are on the street…