Revolutionary Daily Thoughts: The Philosophies and Opinions of Our Ancestors/Elders

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"Peace to all now dreaming of power and money. May you fulfill your
wishes, since powerlessness dehumanizes, and poverty erodes the
soul. Let us reflect a moment, and we may come to understand that
knowing who we are, thinking deeply about identity, will not stop us
reaching our best goals. it is likely to give us the energy and
direction we need for their attainment. One need not be a reader of
ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic texts to know that people trapped in
penitential identities, laboring under names they do not understand,
unable to connect with more than a few generations of their history,
are helpless chaff in the hurricanes of global history. Everything
going on in the world today tells us there is life in unity, death in
division and disunity. But in Africa we are encouraged to treat the
fearful information reaching us as if it did not concern us. It is
about us. If we listen and think, it will be about our life. If we
do not, it will continue to be about our death. Identity is about
efficient group cooperation, without which no society prospers. The
behavior of work groups and sports teams provides useful indications
about the uses of identity. Identity creates a basis for long-term
cooperative action of a routine sort, the kind of sharp, well-thought-
out reflexes professional trainers refer to as automatisms. In
reality there is nothing automatic about automatisms. They result
from a great deal of careful work, learned, understood, then repeated
purposefully over a long time, so that when the time comes when the
action trained for is needed, it is unnecessary to waste time in
informing, explaining, teaching. All that indispensable work has
long been done. The advantage of automatisms is that they facilitate
efficient group behavior toward a chosen goal. Culture is the medium
that prepares a society for that kind of efficient behavior.
Identity is its basic product. Rational identities put groups in a
position to achieve positive outcomes, in the form of solutions to
common problems. Irrational identities lead to negative outcomes, so
that groups laboring under such identities are likely, even when
given substantial resources, to gravitate toward problems and
catastrophes. "

Ayi Kwei Armah
The Eloquence of the Scribes

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

The dead never go away:
They are in the glimmering shadow
and the darkening shade.
The dead are not underground;
They are in the trembling tree,
the groaning wood;
in flowing water
as in still waters.
They are in the hut and in the crowd:
The dead are not extinct.

Birago Diop

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"History teaches us that, in certain circumstances, it is very easy for
the foreigner to impose his domination on a people. But it also
teaches us that, whatever my be the material aspects of this
domination, it can be maintained only by the permanent organized
repression of the cultural life of the people concerned."

Amilcar Cabral

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"Give the warning; some will survive."

Ugandan (Afrikan) proverb

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"Nubians, let's examine the word 'bitch' more closely. A bitch is a
female dog. Is that what we want to equate our women with? When
such a large portion of men openly disrespect their women, it's a
sign of low self-esteem. What are you saying about yourself when you
say that the people you love, look to for love, live with and have
children with, are bitches? When women who look, dress and act like
your sisters and mothers are called bitches, aren't you disrespecting
them also? Don't you see? That's what our enemies want, for us to
disrespect ourselves and each other. Our enemy wants us to
disrespect each other because that's an absolute obstacle to Unity.
Just look at conditions today. It's almost as if Blacks hate
Blacks. It's more than obvious that we will never be a strong united
people until Nubian men and women respect each other, trust each
other and turn to each other for love and support. If you don't have
love and respect for your counterpart, you will be unable to instill
love and respect in your children. You can see that now, we have a
whole generation that has a total disregard for other men and woman.
The women are abused, raped, killed and left to fend for themselves
in record numbers. The men are disrespected by the women and killed
by other men. That's exactly what whites want, for the Nubian woman
to be continuously called a bitch, so she can start believing that's
what she is, and then start acting like a bitch. For he (the white
man) knows that he could never have a beautiful, civilized Nubian
queen, so he wants her reduced to a lower level: that of a bitch.
He feels that at her lowest level, he would have a better chance at
lowering her expectations and have a better chance at possessing
her. He realizes that Nubian women are the most sought-after women
on the planet. He, the white man, knows she is a natural beauty and
that his pale counterpart is of no comparison to a natural beauty.
Whenever you see a Nubian woman with a white man, the reason is that
she has given up on brothers. She had decided to settle for less
because she hasn't found a Nubian man to treat her right. No Nubian
woman would want to be with a naturally bland and weak version of the
Nubian man, when she could be with her own real man. Unfortunately,
there are far more grown-acting boys and males perpetrating manhood,
and not enough real Nubian men."

Pen Black
Consequences of Oppression

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"Nationbuilding begins with family. And family begins with conscious,
visionary, heterosexual couples. The family, molded in the ethical and
moral traditions of Afrikan people, is the only cultural and social
incubator for our children, for our people, for our future. Perversion
has no place because it robs women, children and, in the end, men of
their dignity and self-respect. "

Mwalimu K. Bomani Baruti
Complementarity

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

The Afrikan Pledge

"We pledge to our Creator to remember the humanity, glory and suffering
of our Ancestors. We will honor the struggle of our elders. We will
strive to bring new values and new life to our people. We will have
peace and harmony among us. We will be loving, sharing and creative.
We will work, study and listen. We will learn so we may teach. We
will have discipline, patience, devotion and courage. We will live as
models to provide new directions for our people. We will cultivate
economic power and self-reliance. We will help to nurture our children
for the unified Afrikan Nation. We are an Afrikan people. We will
win.

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"There is no success without successors."

Queen Mother Moore

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"It is the understanding throughout Africa, that the child within does
not fully leave on its own."

Ra Un Nefer Amen
An Afrocentric Guide To A Spiritual Union

[olufemi_baina_ayo]

"The purity of your name is worth more than the purity of your body."

Tunisian (Afrikan) proverb