Africa World Now Project

Originally produced and aired in 2016...:

The great political theorist, cultural philosopher, revolutionary, C. L. R. James once said that he is black, number one, because he is against what they have done and are still doing to us; and number two, he has something to say about the new society to be built because he has a tremendous part in that which they have sought to discredit.— C. L. R. James, C. L. R. James: His Life and Work.

In the article The University and the Undercommons: Seven Theses (The—sees), Fred Moten and Stefano Harney start their analysis with this powerful quote: “To the university I steal, and there I steal.”

They go on to write that this is the only possible relationship to the university (American) today. In fact, this may be true of universities everywhere. It cannot be denied that the university is a place of refuge, and it cannot be accepted that the university is a place of enlightenment.

Their analysis is centered on a sharp critique of how we produce and reproduce a certain forms of knowledge. And the role and responsibility of those who step into this dialectical process of who has the right to know and what they should do with what they know.

Moten and Harney go on to suggest that in the face of these conditions one can only sneak into the university and steal what we can. To abuse its hospitality, to spite its mission, to join its refugee colony, its gypsy encampment, to be in, but not of—this is the path of the subversive intellectual in the modern university.

The authors are attempting to peel back the cover of knowledge for knowledge sake. They suggest that in this present moment, we must begin to take the path of heretical thinkers.

The "maroons knew something about possibility. They are the condition of possibility of production of knowledge in the university—the singularities against the writers of singularity, the writers who write, publish, travel, and speak. It is not merely a matter of the secret labor upon which such space is lifted, though of course such space is lifted from collective labor and by it. It is rather that to be a critical academic in the university is to be against the university, and to be against the university is always to recognize it and be recognized by it, and to institute the negligence of that internal outside, that unassimilated underground, a negligence of it that is precisely, we must insist, the basis of the professions. And this act of against…always excludes the unrecognized modes of politics, the beyond of politics already in motion, the discredited criminal para-organization, what Robin Kelley might refer to as the infrapolitical field (and its music). It is not just the labor of the maroons but their prophetic organization that is negated by the idea of intellectual space in an organization called the university" [31].

Next we will hear an further elaboration of the ideas set out by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney with Dr. Claudrena Harold, author of New Negro Politics in the Jim Crow South from University of Virginia, Dr. Will Boone, Dr. Corey Walker, and myself of Winston Salem State University.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock, Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Kenya, Palestine, South Africa, and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

Enjoy the program…!

Image: Toward a Black University Conference 13-17 November 1968. Hilltop, 8 November 1968...available here: https://www.dc1968project.com/blog/2018/12/27/12-november-1968-amp-toward-a-black-university-conf-hu-begins-tomorrow

Image: Female literacy volunteers return to Havana at the end of the literacy campaign in December 1961

On June 23, 2021, a total of 184 countries on voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba, for the 29th year in a row, with the United States and Israel, being the only countries voting against resolution. Three countries - Colombia, Ukraine, and Brazil - abstained.

Wednesday, July 7, of last week, the world received news of the assassination of then Haitian president in the midst of already tension conditions on the ground.

On this same day, a historic press conference with the Cuban Permanent Representative to the UN, H.E. Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta presented a review and response of the recent vote against the blockade as well as the challenges and promises of the recent development of the Cuban COVID vaccines.

On Saturday, July 10, reports via mainstream media outlets began proliferating images and a narrative that suggested that the Cuban people were protesting against the ineffectiveness of the government. However, more detailed and clear journalism shows this was not the case, as the mass majority of the protestors were clear in their disdain for the embargo which in turn has caused deleterious impact on the population.

According to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, “the economic sanctions on Cuba were imposed by the United States of America in 1960 and were subsequently amended by the Cuban Democracy Act of 1992 and the Helms-Burton Act of 1996. These acts essentially ban all commercial ties between the United States and Cuba and severely impair the right of United States citizens to travel, to communicate with or carry out cultural exchanges with Cuba. Every year since 1992, the General Assembly has passed a resolution calling for an end to the embargo. The most recent resolution on this issue (A/67/4) was adopted on November 13 2012 by 188 votes against 3, with 2 abstentions. Since the United States is the major regional economic power and the main source of new medicines and technologies, Cuba is subject to deprivations that impinge on its citizens’ human rights. Moreover, the US makes its own foreign trade policy extraterritorial, through a system of secondary sanctions which force third-party countries also into imposing an embargo on Cuba.”

For your benefit, and in accordance to the central mission of Africa World Now Project which is to provide a platform that allows you to intentionally organize information toward understanding the root causes of issues that impact historically and ethnically marginalized peoples, paying specific attention to the African/a world, today we will play the recording of the historical press conference organized, in part, by yours truly having nominal input, under the leadership of Obi Egbuna, Jr and a collection of other concern communities and organizations.

Next, you will hear the Cuban Permanent Representative to the UN, His Excellency Ambassador Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta present a review and response of the recent vote against the blockade as well as the challenges and promises of the recent development of the Cuban COVID vaccines.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana and Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

According to 'Trane himself, as written in the liner notes to A Love Supreme, “The music herein is presented in four parts. The first is entitled "ACKNOWLEDGEMENT", the second, "RESOLUTION", the third, "PURSUANCE", and the fourth and last part is a musical narration of the theme, "A LOVE SUPREME" which is written in the context; it is entitled "PSALM".”

It is also this Psalm, this meditation, part of which I read at the outset, that Coltrane would place on a stand and play as he performed, producing/reproducing what he said is a musical narration of the – Love Supreme.

Alice Coltrane, a multi-instrumental genius and enlightened spiritual leader is not just Coltrane’s wife. She started her journey before meeting Coltrane. And because of this set her path to cultivate rhythms that can heal the world just as John Coltrane discovered he could do. It could be surmised that her presence in John Coltrane life was divine. It was guided by universal law - a law that states everything is in rhythm, everything is in constant motion. Everything is vibrational. And as we move through life this constant hum, this vibrational hum is sure to attract its tonal partners.

In the November 1967 issue of Ebony in an article titled: Requiem for ‘Trane, Archie Shepp suggests that “he [‘Trane] was a bridge…the most accomplished and comprehensive of the so-called post-bop musicians to make an extension into what is called the avant-garde…” (Shepp, 1967).

Something else to consider, specifically in relation to John Coltrane being a bridge, standing in a deeper tradition, according to Youngquist in A Pure Solar World Sun Ra and the Birth of Afrofuturism, “in the mid-fifties Sun Ra gave a broadsheet entitled “Solaristic Precepts” to John Coltrane. On the broadsheets Sun Ra wrote “Warning this treatise is only for Thinking Beings..." (238).

A thinking Being, indeed…

In an interview years later, Coltrane would state that, “I think music can make the world better and if I’m qualified, I want to do it. I’d like to point out to people the divine in a musical language that transcend words. I want to speak to their souls”.

And it was with Alice Coltrane who not only accentuated and amplified Coltrane’s ability to synthesis the rhythmic patterns he put together, as he listened to vibrations most of us are unable to, they both became eternal beings, thinking beings who were able to conceive of the Negative reminiscences of Space-Time, as is expressed in Is, Are, Be and reconcepted “AM”.

Today...: uninterrupted conversations with our eégún: thinking about the Coltranes [John and Alice] w/ Dr. Anyabwile Love

A Philadelphia native, Anyabwile Love completed his graduate studies in Africana Studies at Temple University, receiving his PhD in May 2014.

Currently he serves as Associate Editor for the literary journal A Gathering Together and is an Assistant Professor of History + Black Studies at Community College of Philadelphia.

Anyabwile is the founder of The John Coltrane Symposium-a community centered annual celebration of Coltrane’s life and his musical legacy, its second annual iteration will be in session, September 22-25, 2021 with a possible extended day until the 26th.

For more, follow the symposium’s Instagram page and/or visit the website - https://www.thecoltranesymposium.com/

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native/indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; Ghana, Ayiti; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

The 17th edition of the New African Film Festival takes place online April 1–18, 2021 presenting a lineup of outstanding contemporary African cinema for audiences in the Washington, DC, area and beyond. the festival is co-presented by Africa World Now Project, afrikafé and AFI. The New African Film Festival showcases the vibrancy of African filmmaking from all corners of the continent and across the diaspora, featuring 33 films from 26 countries, including six submissions for the Academy Award® for Best International Feature.

Opening with Mosotho filmmaker Lemohang Jeremiah Mosese's multi-award-winning drama THIS IS NOT A BURIAL, IT'S A RESURRECTION, winner of the World Cinema Dramatic Special Jury Award at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival and the first film from Lesotho to be submitted to Academy Awards®. The festival closes with a new 2K restoration of Tunisian director Férid Boughedir's landmark survey of African cinema, CAMÉRA D'AFRIQUE, which was originally selected to close the 2020 edition of the New African Film Festival. Almost all films in the lineup will be available to view online across the entire United States.

Link: https://naff.eventive.org/welcome

Audio: The Last Poets & Metropole Orkest; 50th Poetry International Festival Rotterdam, De Doelen, 13th June 2019

The question of land as a fundamental aspect of African/a liberation movements is an often-neglected point of inquiry. Nevertheless, it is indeed, ever-present.

Promisingly, there has been an uptick of more folk who are paying attention to the demands of Black radical thought and behavior that sought and seek to engage in understanding its role in material and nonmaterial ways. One such important treatment is Edward Onaci’s, Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State.

In dominant discourse, however, the question around land as fundamental to liberation is often couched in a warped sense of capitalist ownership, which highlights the fundamental contradictions engrained in an imposition of a European modernism, and its attendant political philosophy of liberalism.

All of which has produced, limited discourses around the idea and practice of rights, a discourse rooted fundamentally in what does it mean to be human as the development and maintenance of private property; all contradictions that radicals must, also, seriously engage when exploring questions around land and freedom.

It cannot be lost nor taken for granted the totalizing nature of colonialism as a product of imperialist logics, as the neglect of internal critique often leads to the reinscription the very power dynamics that movements say they intend to disrupt.

Ultimately, land, in the epistemic and ontological purview of African/a peoples is understood not in the limited capitalist sense of ownership but the transmission of communal practices of human stewardship as being primary caretakers of the planet.

And when land as a fundamental component of Black liberation is centered, ideas around national identity, critical consciousness formation, human rights, citizenship…what it means to be human can be better mapped to understand the interconnectedness of the various manifestations of the global Africana (Black) struggle for freedom. a black internationalism becomes clearly defined.

Today, we will hear a recent roundtable discussion, exploring the questions that Kurt Oderson presents in his documentary, We Rise for Our Land.

Kurt Otabenga Orderson is an award-winning filmmaker from Cape Town, South Africa, whose work has been featured on Al Jazeera, SABC, ESPN, ZDF, and HULU. He has worked on six continents and has directed and produced over ten feature documentaries screened at international film festivals, universities, and colleges.

Kurt Orderson is the founder of Azania Rizing Productions, a company that aims to inspire young people through creative storytelling about Africa and African Diasporas and is a member of the Africa World Now Project Collective.

Others you will hear are:

Savi Horne, Esq. Executive Director of the North Carolina Association of Black Lawyers Land Loss Prevention Project;

Dr. Tasneem Siddiqui, member of the Africana World Now Project Collective and Assistant Professor of History in the Department of History, Political Science and Social Justice at WSSU;

Dr. Yousef Al-Bulushi, Assistant Professor of Global & International Studies at the University of California, Irvine;

Dr. Kamau Rashid, Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Inquiry at National-Louis University in Chicago.

And yours truly…James Pope.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

Enjoy the program!

I normally provide a textured, multi-leveled, quite frankly intentionally thick introduction to our programs. But today, we present a conversation I recently had with Amir Mohamed el Khalifa [aka Oddisee], as the conversation is textured, multi-leveled and thick itself…

The son of Sudanese and African descendant American parents, Oddisee was born and raised in Washington DC, spending summers in Khartoum learning Arabic and swimming in the Nile. Growing up amidst the sounds of New York hip hop, his father playing Oud, Go-Go, and gospel, Amir took his first steps as an MC producer in the analog basement studio of his legendary neighbor, Garry Shider (of Parliament Funkadelic).

Known for his independence, Oddisee consistently debunks myths, stereotypes, and limited ideas of what an artist, creative, curator is, or can become.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Enjoy the program!

Links

https://oddisee.bandcamp.com/

http://oddisee.co/

https://www.mellomusicgroup.com/pages/oddisee-1

[Originally produced and aired in 2019]

Vodun, Voodoo, racialization into Black Magic as currently understood is a distorted figment of a Western imagination. Voodoo is narrated as a sensationalized ‘pop-culture’ caricature of voudon, which is an Afro-Caribbean spiritual system that was brought with enslaved Africans forced onto the plantations in Haiti, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Brazil, the United States and elsewhere. The fictitious associations with drinking blood sacrifices, voodoo dolls or zombies are directly a result of the same dehumanization processes innate in a system of chattel slavery, the lifeblood of racial capitalism.

To be clear at the onset, Voudon is "an assortment of cultural elements: personal creeds and practices, including an elaborate system of folk medical practices; a system of ethics transmitted across generations [including] proverbs, stories, songs, and folklore... voudon is more than belief; it is a way of life," wrote Leslie Desmangles, a Haitian professor at Hartford's Trinity College in "The Encyclopedia of the Paranormal" (Prometheus Books, 1996).

Voudon teaches belief in a supreme being called Bondye, an unknowable and uninvolved creator god. Voudon practitioners recognize many ancestral spirits (called loa), each one of whom is responsible for a specific domain or part of life.

Followers of voudon see a universal energy and a soul that can leave the body during dreams and spirit possession. In Western Christian theology, spiritual possession is usually considered to be an act of evil, either Satan or some demonic entity trying to enter an unwilling human vessel, unless of course you go to black worship services. This is in contrast to the fact that in voudon, possession by loa is desired. In a ceremony guided by a priest or priestess, this possession is considered a valuable, first-hand spiritual experience and connection with the spirit world.

In 1685, variations of a practice to forbid the practice of African religions and required all masters to Christianize their slaves within eight days of their arrival—which codified into various laws. Slavery was condoned by the Catholic Church as a tool for converting Africans to morally upright Christians.

Furthermore, one Haitian scholar notes, "Many of the African spirits were adapted to their new environment in the New World. Ogun, for instance, the Nigerian spirit of iron-smiths, hunting and warfare took on a new persona... He became Ogou, the military leader who has led phalanxes into battle against oppression. In Haiti today, Ogou inspires many political revolutions that oust undesirable oppressive regimes."

The practices of dehumanization and hiding Africans histories (it is a misunderstanding to say African histories are lost)…has contributed much to the survival of racist logics that promotes false notions and ideas of racial white supremacy. These practices were applied to Africana total existence.

Nevertheless, the spiritual practices of the various peoples who were forced across the oceans have ancient origins. In fact, we can see ancient links between the Yoruba peoples and ancient Egypt….

Today, we are pleased to have filmmaker Onuora Anthony Abuah back with us to talk about another one his films, a two-part documentary that explores the Danhomé Kingdom. Part 1 is titled, Danhomé & Vodun and Part 2 is titled, Voodoo in Togo.

As a filmmaker and under the banner of AEA Films UK, his projects include MONA, Catching a Thief, Woodfalls, Woolwhich Boys.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the Native/Indigenous, African, and Afro Descendant communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all peoples!

Film[s]: https://www.youtube.com/c/TalesFromtheMotherlandProductions/videos

The notion, assumption, and/or idea that the various peoples who were enslaved during the periods and processes of the solidification of the racial global economy that claims our ancestors were deprived of culture, strips of all associations with historical and ancestral groundings is a product of centering European historicity as the dominant expression of social, historical, political and epistemic knowledge systems.

This argument is rooted in the fact that one of the most vibrant places to find the most articulate expressions of African/a humanity is in the way we resist injustice—inequity—violence. The way we conceptualize and engage in struggle against systems of oppression, the foundation of which is an advanced understanding of the praxis of being human.

See everything Sylvia Wynter.

African/a struggles operate on multiple and simultaneous levels of human existence. It always was, always will be a struggle to realize a world beyond. The material and nonmaterial praxis to balance forces seen and unseen. The science of African/a fighting arts…a commitment, conscious or unconscious, to embody resistance.

Of becoming rebel.

Building on the work of Dr. Kamu Rashid, I assert that of becoming rebel can be understood in the Swahili tradition as, “Harakati za Waasi”, translated as “Movement of Rebels”.

For Dr. Rashid, it represents the tradition of radical resistance that is embedded in the history of Capoeira and other African Diasporic combat arts. These arts were used in the people’s resistance to state oppression throughout the Americas. Harakati za Waasi seeks to honor these traditions by seeking to engage in the rigorous study and practice of the theoretical and technical applications of African combat systems. Additionally, Dr. Rashid and the collective seek to broadly disseminate these arts within the African community for the sake facilitating cultural transformation.

Today, embodied resistance: the science of African/a fighting arts with Kamau Rashid.

Dr. Kamau Rashid is an Associate Professor of Educational Foundations and Inquiry at National-Louis University in Chicago. Kamau earned his Phd and BA from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master of Arts degree from Northeastern Illinois University.

Dr. Rashid work focuses on African American history and culture, particularly on the inter-generational dynamics of African/a social critique, which includes an exploration and theorizing of W.E.B. Du Bois as well as contemporary African-Centered scholars and critical race theorists. Undergirding this, he studies art (Hip Hop and comics) as a radical public pedagogy.

He is co-developing an oral history and archival project focused on African American social movements in the Chicago area from the 1960s to1980s with Dr. Richard Benson of Spelman College. And is currently working on Finding our way through the desert: Jacob H. Carruthers and the restoration of an African worldview as well as The critical theory of W.E.B. Du Bois: The Struggle for Humanity. He has published a number peer-reviewed articles and book chapters and received various grant awards to support his work.

Lastly, likely most importantly, Dr. Rashid is active in a number of community organizations in the Chicago-area including the Kemetic Institute of Chicago, a research and educational organization focused on mapping, exploring and applying the ancient and contemporary contributions of ancient Nile Valley civilizations.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Enjoy the program!

Image: Statue of Zumbi

Today, we will listen to a thinking session I had with students last year, where we engaged ideas around an argument I presented, that suggested Afrofuturism is an ancient idea that expresses itself as an African/a freedom principle. It is an articulation of a constellation of deep African/a ideas and practices of what I called Africa’s Ancient Future [a nod to Wayne Chandler’s Ancient Future].

Through historical and ancestral memories of magic; use of spiritual technologies; intentional philosophies of life; heretical temporality; creative nonlinear knowledge production; and a symbiotic connection with nature and the universe, Africa’s Ancient Future is articulated through a freedom principle, which implies a constant struggle to delink one’s collective self from now moments, reconciling past moments, in order to create future moments that allow the full expression of one’s humanity.

What was of specific importance to our interrogation of the time concept, was its arrested expression as a Western European construct. The temporal ticks used to mark the flow of human phenomenon/a are mapped from distorted perceptions of a limited reality, perceptions that were born from a historical and ancestrally specific cultural worldview…then forced upon the world through enslavement, colonialism, imperialism, language, and religious violence.

Therefore, to clearly outline the argument I am making, I do so now in order for you to follow the conversation you are about to hear, all while provoking and inviting you to think with me. Think beyond me. Think around me. Think over me. Think through me. But think, nonetheless.

The argument as presented, then and today, suggests that in order to understand Afrofuturism/African Futures as an intellectual/theoretical frame or lens through which to understand the place of Africa in a future as a very ancient idea. I argued that we must map its provocations at various moments to be extracted from the deep cultural fabric of African/a people, an interdependent relationship between the material and spiritual, a way of life to its development as an epistemic frame through which we can see all African/a ways of knowing reassert itself on a global stage as the progenitor of all human knowledge.

Communities, the peoples that inhabit the geographical spaces referred to as continental Africa have always been acutely aware of the future…the cultural practices in current religious forms and functions are rooted in a deep African spiritual understanding/worldview. This is not a profound acknowledgement. However, the future, the concept of the unseen, a moment that is to come, is prevalent and vital to highlight. The relationship to land, the universe, and ancestors are centered around an understanding of the seamless interconnectedness of past, present and future…and we have a duty and responsibility to maintain it in balance…which is and can be important to apply as a sociopolitical organizing principle [this is another point and foundation for another program altogether]. But important to highlight, nonetheless. Especially if we situate this argument in discourse around sociopolitical and economic relations will then highlight the limits of rights discourse, which are currently rooted in individualist notions where duty and responsibility can be negated by the rule of law birthed in the [re]conceptualization of the human as a justification for the maintenance of private property.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Image: Madonna - by MANZEL BOWMAN (@artxman; support here: https://manzel.biz/ & https://society6.com/manzelbowman)

Analyzing the conditions which dictate the systems and institutions which also perpetuate inequities require the ability to identify and map. It requires the science and art of identifying genealogy. It requires the necessity to map memory-to [re]member. But not simply for remembrance.

African/a peoples oscillate between variations of a peculiar aversion to history or wanting to know everything about history, specific African/a history.

But few understand the purpose of history or its use as a tool for organizing.

Today, we will listen to a conversation I recently had with Obi Egbuna Jr., where we explore the question [in phase one of a series of conversations] which asks: How can history be a tool for organizing?

It is one thing to know bits and pieces of historical content, but a historical consciousness not being cultivated into a critical consciousness is without purpose. The notion of a tree without roots is often given as axiom to grounding African/a peoples on the path to learning history. But what is important to engage is the question for what? To what ends? For what purpose?

Knowing your roots [i.e. history] does not necessitate purpose [unorganized information is not knowledge. Knowledge is only power when organized, intentionally organized].

To move to the next level of historical consciousness, is to evolve it into a critical Africana consciousness. Association is not enough to be considered a functional component of a movement and proximity does not guarantee contribution. One has to struggle with ideas through practice, crafting this into a praxis for expressed objective[s] in order to find continuity with the past, to understanding the present, ultimately leading to creating a future.

Obi Egbuna Jr., was born in London, England, and raised in Washington, DC, spending time in Nigeria.

Obi is a founding member of the Pan-African Liberation Organization (PALO), established in Washington, D.C., from 1990-2007.

In addition to organizing and speaking engagements, Obi is a journalist, African/a history teacher and playwright. Obi is correspondent to The Herald, Zimbabwe’s national newspaper, and the first US correspondent in the country’s 32 years as an independent nation.

Obi has taught African History at Roots Public Charter School since 1990 and has also taught at Ujamaa Shule and Northwestern High School in Prince George’s County. He is the current African History teacher for the Sankofa Homeschool Collective as well as holds community-based African History Classes.

Obi is a founding member and executive director of Mass Emphasis Children’s History and Theater Company (2012).

He has written several resolutions and appeals to the United Nations, World Health Organization, and Southern African Development Community covering a wide range of issues, ranging from HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe to police brutality in the United.

Obi has also organized around calling for the unconditional and immediate lifting of US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe that went to the White House, U.S. Senate and Congress.

Lastly, in addition to forging his own path, Obi worked directly with Kwame Ture the last 8 years of his life and is the son of Obi Egbuna Sr, who was a Nigerian-born novelist, playwright and political activist, leading member of the Universal Coloured People's Association (UCPA) and the British Black Power/Black Panther Movement.

Our show was produced today in solidarity with the native, indigenous, African, and Afro-descended communities at Standing Rock; Venezuela; Cooperation Jackson in Jackson, Mississippi; Brazil; the Avalon Village in Detroit; Colombia; Kenya; Palestine; South Africa; and Ghana; and other places who are fighting for the protection of our land for the benefit of all people.

Enjoy the program!

For more: https://battlecubazim.wordpress.com/word-from-the-producers/obi-egbuna-jr/