THEME FOR EMANCIPATION 2005 DISCARDING BROKEN CHAINS: DISCOVERING UNBROKEN CONNECTIONS

Our ancestors fought to break the chains of slavery. And they did. On May 18th 1803, following victories over the major armies of Europe the people of Haiti, under the leadership of Dessalines, unfurled their own national flag. On August 1st 1804 they formally proclaimed Haiti an independent state. Our Haitian ancestors had broken the chains of slavery. Our struggles for freedom in other parts of the Caribbean, in South America and Central America, in the United States were all inspired by the Haitian example and in some cases directly assisted by successive governments of a free Haiti. Before the end of the nineteenth century the chains of chattel slavery had been broken everywhere.

But historical epochs and institutions do not have neat beginnings and endings. Good or evil legacies trail from one era into the next, from one social order into another. Elements of the discarded system of slavery persist in the psychology of the people, in institutions, in value systems, in the determined efforts of the losers in a struggle to hold on to the privileges and power they had before the historic change.

The theme for emancipation 2005 reminds us that even though the chains of slavery were broken with the realization of emancipation, we still carry the invisible fragments of those chains, weighting our thoughts and imaginations. Hidden injuries of centuries lurk in our subconscious. Without realizing it, we find ourselves, at a mental level, grasping for the ends of the broken chains, hanging on to the ideas, the values, the guidance and directions of the former slave-owners. At a material level we are caught in systems of dependence with financial, economic, technical and technological tentacles strangling nations like ours.

We will not find the answers to our growing social crises without recognizing these underlying causes. At the immediate level we see reactions to such visible hurts as inequality, material deprivation and social exclusion, ills we are convinced can be cured by jobs and money, combined with some rough military tactics - directed against the poor and marginalized. But if we want solutions we need to recognize the cumulative impacts of the historical experience. Today’s wounds are contributing to the lowering of already diminished self-esteem, especially among African youth, who are particularly vulnerable because of the deep crisis of identity.

The 2005 emancipation theme evokes the need to discard the broken chains which are at the root of the crisis of identity and to discover the unbroken connections which can provide the wholeness of Being to resolve problems from the human level, problems which cannot be resolved by guns.

Despite the centuries of effort our connection to our ancestral roots was never broken. Suppressed but never broken. Each time we are proclaimed dead as a people our consciousness rises again. Marcus Garvey’s UINIA attracted millions of members across the globe because it awakened the consciousness of the connection.

When it was thought that the message of Garvey had died, Black Power swept the world and the red, black and green flags signalled a new awakening. The movement in Trinidad and Tobago formed an important part of that tidal wave of ethnic consciousness, not only sparking a positive sense of identity in Africans but revitalizing Indian cultural expression. It demonstrated that far from being necessarily a force of division, positive ethnic consciousness can be the basis for the most solid unity in our society.

Now the connections are surfacing in a major way again, Africans as a global people have re-entered an age of self-discovery with significant initiatives coming from the African continent and movements of self-affirmation arising with increasing strength and interconnections in Europe, North America, Central and South America, the Caribbean and everywhere that our people are scattered.

The emancipation commemoration is geared to making the message of the theme real. It demonstrates the connectedness across continents, particularly as reflected in cultural expressions and thought, and the possibilities of global action for development. When the Emancipation Support Committee bring the Garifuna (often called Black Caribs in the English-speaking Caribbean) here to perform we are making a profound connection across different experiences of Diaspora. The history behind the music makers is no less exciting than the music itself and it tells another side of our story. It is a story of Africans who were in the region before slavery, of Africans who escaped plantation slavery and joined those who had been here before, of the reshaping of African culture in a new environment, outside of the indoctrination of the slave plantation, of Africans paying respect to the dieties of the indigenous people with whom they integrated in the fight for integrity and freedom. Here is a different diasporic experience. Yet the music connects immediately, the common root in evidence.

When we present Batoto Yetu from Harlem, it is a statement of the possibilities of African Youth rising from the depths of ghetto life through the medium of the performing arts mixed with the development of ethnic consciousness, to reach heights of excellence and public acclaim through their talent and dedication. Guided in life and art by an artistic director from Angola they tell stories in their song and dance from their ancestral roots or from their immediate environment interwoven with African symbols, values and beliefs. And they are able to light up Broadway and Carnegie Hall with the brilliance of their performance. They demonstrate the positive potential of self-discovery.

Jamaican reggae, like our calypso, has made affirmative statements about our reality and some of the most positive expressions date from the era of Bob Marley. Bunny Wailer will head a cast that will remind us of the that aspect of reggae on Saturday July 30. The mixture of the best of our local artistic talent throughout the period of commemoration and a range of talents from the region and the wider international African world helps to locate our own unique creative expressions within a global context and develop within performers and audience a sense of the larger connectedness.

Our local and international intellectuals, beginning with Dr. Molefi Asante on June 12th at the opening of the Kwame Ture Memorial Lecture Series, will join with film makers to strengthen our base of self-knowledge. Business executives will engage in discourse about building the economic linkages. Small entrepreneurs, local, regional and international, coming this year from Africa, from Peru, from China and the Caribbean will continue to build linkages that can be mutually strengthening. Social activists from Trinidad and Tobago and other parts of the Caribbean will engage our minds with alternative approaches to addressing the crisis of urban youth.

Discovering unbroken connections is about many things and all of them are developmental.