Extra Credit Attendance & Reflection

Friday April 5th, I attended a guest speaker event in the communications building.

The guest speaker was a woman by the name of Marimba Ani (born Dona Richards).

We were told that Dr. Marimba Ani completed her undergrad years at the University of Chicago and holds a MA and Ph.D. degree in anthropology from the Graduate Faculty of the New School University.

When I first entered the event, I wasn't fully sure what to expect. The primary things I noticed were lots of people who didn't look like college students wearing African printed garments, men in the pan Africa color hats, and lots of young children with their parents.

There were many names and theories mentioned that I didn't recognize or get a chance to attempt to write down. However, I did notice when people from the audience asked questions, they referred to our guest speaker as a renown elder. Others referred to each other as brother (insert name) or sister (insert name).

I accidentally forgot my notebook wasn't in my backpack and I considered it unprofessional to pull out a laptop and type, so I resorted to bulleting notes on notecards. Here's what I wrote...

• We have to organize.

  • We have to form a system for world African sovereignty. Because "You can't be sovereign in somebody else's sovereign place." (I believe this was said in response to a woman seeming surprised at the horrible changes and laws the Florida governor is making to do away with African American related courses, Greek orgs, women's rights, etc.)

    • The media is key.

      • This is part of the reason they started their own newspaper called the African Sovereigntist Nation. If I'm correct it comes out once a year.

  • The vision of a world African order

• There has to be a new generation that thinks in terms of reform because we're fighting a global system.

  • African resources are being used by any and everyone except Africans.

• We need to think big! Garvey thought big!

• You need to know your enemy and their strategies.

  • Need to understand global imperialism.

    • How does it function that they're able to influence & determine policies of African nations? How are they able to take control of resources and yet not use them for the people?

• The African spirit is consistent.

• As African people there's power in our connectedness.

  • this was said in response to a woman from Philadelphia's question about how to rejuvenate her spirit when it's been broken from doing community work and giving it your all. She wanted to know strategies for rejuvenating oneself to continue doing the work.

• They mentioned topics we've been bringing up in class.

  • The strategy in Brazil of doing away with race via intermarriage.

  • France forcing places like Haiti and other countries in Africa that were colonized by them to now pay them reparations for no longer being their colony. This is still essentially a form of slavery.