Happy Kwanzaa 2012!

Haban Gari   What's the News?

Today is the first day of the seven nights of Kwanzaa which runs until January 1.   This is the 45th anniversary of the creation of the event by Dr. Maulana Karenga and the 2012 Kwanzaa theme is 'Kwanzaa, Us And the Well-Being of the World: A Courageous Questioning.'

For the last two years I've compiled Kwanzaa Black Trans Style posts and attempted to take the seven Nguzo Saba principles of the holiday and apply them in an interpretation that uplifts and inspires the African-American trans community.   

So what are those seven Nguzo Saba principles of Kwanzaa that are celebrated each night?    Glad you asked inquiring TransGriot readers. .

• Umoja (Unity): To strive for and to maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race.
• Kujichagulia (Self-Determination): To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.
• Ujima (Collective Work and Responsibility): To build and maintain our community together and make our brothers' and sisters' problems our problems, and to solve them together.
• Ujamaa (Cooperative Economics): To build and maintain our own stores, shops, and other businesses and to profit from them together.
• Nia (Purpose): To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.
• Kuumba (Creativity): To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.
• Imani (Faith): To believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders, and the righteousness and victory of our struggle.

I decided not to do the Kwanzaa Black Trans Style posts this year, but what I will do is give you links to the compilation posts I compiled for Kwanzaa 2010 and Kwanzaa 2011.    

I hope the 2010 and 2011 compilation posts contain something in them that not only give you food for thought, but inspire you to take positive action.   I hope they give you the impetus to not only do something as African descended trans people to stand up and help our shared African American community and any other one we interact with, but take stock in our own lives and how we can improve them for the benefit of our community.

I hope those posts also inspire my African descended transbrothers and transsisters to in their own ways and collectively do a better job of representing the African-American trans community and our people in a more positive way.

And may let the seven candles burning brightly on the Kinara burn these words and the words of my posts brightly into your hearts and minds.