Today, June 29th, represents what would be the 78th born day for Kwame Ture. Formally possessing the slave name Stokely Carmichael, Ture embodied the most principled integrity of today's revolutionary Pan-African work to bring about one unified socialist Africa. Ture, had the vision and lack of out of control ego (unlike most of us) to recognize that our people's liberation, and the salvation of the planet, were not based on his individual brand - which seems to to be the primary objective of so-called activists today. Instead, he was focused on acknowledging his mortality and the necessity to ensure that activists were created who could duplicate his dedication, commitment, and clear understanding of the contractions we face. His approach placed him in the position of sacrificing an overwhelming level of personal comforts, prestige, and recognition in exchange for hard, unappreciated work to build the foundation for that critical Pan-African work. Often, I was able to observe first hand his principled approach to carrying out his work. Routinely sleeping on people's couches, going long stretches without meals, insane hours in car travel, while being systemically disrespected by people who didn't have enough credibility to scrub his underwear. Despite all of this, you never heard that human complain about anything. Instead, without him even pointing it out, he was committed to providing us his shining example of dignity and discipline. Well, on his born day I'm here to tell you I was always paying attention. I have spent my humble time doing my absolute best to emulate his commitment and discipline. His integrity and courage. And, in doing so I have been able to experience my own taste of the disrespect that comes with principled work. I have absolutely no animosity about that though. Actually, it has served to permit me to have even greater respect for Kwame Ture and what he represented. It has driven me to push myself even harder every day. And, although its admittedly difficult sometimes to reconcile the ease in which people dismiss your hard fought contributions, I can always look to his example to remind myself that none of this is ever personal against me and its certainly not ever about me. For those reasons, I'm eternally thankful to Kwame Ture for his uncompromising example of how to stand up with dignity to this oppressive system without blinking an eye.
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