How to Apply Kwanzaa Principles to Community Conversations 2024: Ujamaa!

How to Apply Kwanzaa Principles to Community Conversations 2024: Ujamaa!

NGUZO SABA:
7 Principles of Kwanzaa

Umoja – Unity

Kujichagulia – Self-determination

Ujima – Collective Work and Responsibility

Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics

Nia – Purpose

Kuumba – Creativity

Imani – Faith

Video by RDNE Stock project on pexels.com

Kwanzaa derives its name from the Swahili phrase “matunda ya kwanza,” meaning “first fruits.”

"Stemming from the Black Power Movement and founded in 1966 by educator and activist Maulana Karenga, Kwanzaa is a time to honor Black people and celebrate our contributions, heritage and culture, while acknowledging our shared struggles and our unwavering efforts to overcome them. The holiday encourages people to honor seven principles: unity, self-determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity and faith."
, Applying the Principles of Kwanzaa to Advance Economic Justice
Op-Ed on The Grio Dec 26, 2023

The Hidden Potential of Kwanzaa Principles: Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa)

UjamaaCollective.org is a perfect example of this principle in action. Located in the heart of the historical Black community in Pittsburgh known as the Hill District, Ujamaa Collective is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization founded with a social mission to act as a catalyst to advance Africana Women by providing a fair trade marketplace for cultural, artistic and entrepreneurial exchange through cooperative economics in the Historic Hill District and beyond. “We lift as we climb.”

Cooperative Economics (Ujamaa) is to build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses, and to profit from them together.

In my research I stumbled upon on and selected a quote from this article, “A Black Epistemology for the Social and Solidarity Economy” written by Caroline Shenaz Hossein, Associate Professor of Business and Society, Department of Social Science, York University, Ontario Canada. “Although the ills of neoliberal variants of capitalism are known, the diverse economies in which Black folk engage are less understood. Forcing White and European ideas on a non-White experience is limited in what it can do effect social change. Nor can we sever the Western ideologies in the field because it is this very bias why the Black radical tradition and other Black theories come into being. There is no shortage of Black writings on solidarity economics and they can now be housed in Black social economy. 

"Cooperation is... a thorough conviction that nobody can get there unless everybody gets there. And that "there" is nowhere but "here"… in the full, rich living of the present moment as an individual, as a couple, a family, a society, a world."—Virginia Burden, The Process of Intuition, 1957


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