Day 2: Black August

individuals are often named in history as though fights for freedom were solitary struggles of individual leaders garnering followers. more accurately, it has been teams of dreamers, strategists, spiritualists and fighters who’ve made the impossible possible. today, i honor the teams of people working together to bring about needed change.

on my mind today are the good folks at per ankh publishers; a collective of african intellectuals and freedom fighters who’ve created an institution “capable of researching, producing and disseminating high-quality information on Africa, for the use of Africans working to create a rational, unified, continental future.” (Eloquence of the Scribes, p. 296-7) they’ve fought hard to break free of the limits imposed on their minds by colonial educational systems that prepared them (and black people world wide) to advance global systems that advance european culture and life and deny the advancement of their own. and through core principles fashioned over time, they’ve worked against the tendency to receive donations by seemingly well-meaning people, but who are unwilling to do the work themselves. instead they resource their work in the front end, and allow for it to in turn support the collective.

this is only one of many collectives across time and space that have contributed to the freeing of our minds, bodies and souls from myriad systems of oppression. the work of black liberation is ongoing.