AYA Educational Institute

Time to breathe. Life is a circle. Time to celebrate Chisulu (Cornell Geddie, Jr.) - the man from whose seed I came. He's the man who most showed me how to be a man. And while he wouldn't have known to call it this - the man who most showed me how to "be Afrikan" - hold Afrikan values, hold Afrikan visions and make a circle of community. I say "most" because I was raised in a community of men - my second Dad - Garrie Wright, my grandfathers, and even great grand fathers, uncles, great uncles, cousins and male family friends so close that they were called "uncles." To all of these men, I'm deeply indebted. Shout out to my mom for keeping me in this community of men, even during our time in Brooklyn, NY - 500 miles removed from my father who was in Fayetteville, NC. April 20, 1931 is the day he came into this world. His father and mother merged to become him. He and my mother merged to become me. I extend myself into my childre...

I Love AYA! That was this morning’s focus in this dynamic class - The Economic Conundrum. Was it too deep for Monday morning; too deep for mere high school students?  I've written about the course before - AYA High School students are learning about our Circle of Culture and how we used it to heal us. They are studying this in an economics class because they know that we had to have healed ourselves for us to have displayed such economic cooperation and economic nationalism in many places in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries in places like Memphis, Atlanta, Rosewood, and in the better known Black Wall Streets - in Tulsa, OK and the Hayti District in Durham, NC.  I decided to include in their search for *HOW* we used our culture to heal - a discussion of role of resistance, rebellion, and revolt (individual, group, and mass action) against White domination as a strategic and effective healing "treatment" for the psychic injuries resulting from the woundin...