A few years ago, I was in New York, and I went to visit the place where Marcus Garvey had the headquarters of the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA). I hold Marcus Garvey in such high esteem that I expected to find a life-size statue standing outside the building. I was sorely disappointed, there were no indications–Marcus Garvey or the greatest organization Africans have known since the start of the diaspora was there. Even though I was disappointed I still had hope. I left there and headed for the park that bears his name. Surely, there will be a statue of Marcus Garvey in the Marcus Garvey park. I had a moment of excitement when I got to the park and saw a life-size statue in the distance. It was too tall to be the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey, but I was hoping. I got to the statue, just some random Black athlete sporting his Nike running shoes. My son who accompanied me on this self-guided tour, said to me, “It’s okay, Dad, at least the park is here.” I told you that story because I want you to understand, I want to make it clear what I think of Garvey. While other people go to New York to visit Time Square or to catch a show on Broadway, I go to New York to visit the 100-year-old address of the UNIA, to walk on hallowed ground, the same ground the Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey walked on.
Marcus Garvey is more important to us than a white man’s pardon. The pardon is absolutely useless. To us here at the African Cultural Calendar, Marcus Garvey is the greatest leader we have had in over 509 afriyears. In fact, we would argue, with exception of Harriet Tubman, Marcus Garvey is the only true leader we have had in the Western Hemisphere. The questions Marcus Garvey asked are still relevant today. “Where is the Black man’s government?” “Where is his King and kingdom?” “Where is his President, his country, and his ambassador, his army, his navy, his men of big affairs?” How does a pardon almost a hundred years after his death address those questions? Garvey couldn’t find those things, he said, “I could not find them, and then
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Social Media
The African Cultural Calendar has withdrawn from all of the Social Media platforms. We are still a going-concern, but we find that social media is not worth the required effort. We have a number of concerns with social media. First, is ownership. We do not have an ownership stake in any of the social media platform. “Black Tweeter” or “Black X” is not Black owned. It is the section of Tweeter where Black people contribute to the well-being of Tweeter’s owners. Second, we are not in control of our message. We can not direct our Tweets; we cannot target our ads to the people we want to reach on Facebook or Instagram. We don’t know who is looking, at our posts and pages. Without control, social media is just a distraction. What we can do on social media is what the owners of social media allow us to do. They are in control of our interactions. In a way it is like asking the master if we can go visit our family over on another plantation. We believe in community; we do not believe that everyone in the world qualifies to be in our community. There must be a better way!