What can I say about Umoja or Unity?

Our nation is broken

Our Earth is dying

Our people, my people, are being killed, deported, and children are being stolen from their parents

Our leadership is divisive, blind with greed, and ignorant of the nation and the people it serves. Our leader thinks he is a king

America is crying out from the ancestors that they lynched, mobbed, murdered, and raped

There is this genetic predisposition placed in the DNA of my people that we are “dirty, garbage, uneducated, and poor.”

However, my brothers, sisters, and others kissed by the lips of the sun, we have a reason to celebrate.

As the songwriter says: “We have come this far by faith, leaning on the Lord, trusting in His hold name, and He has never failed us yet.”

As scripture says it: “Oh taste and see that the Lord is good and his mercies endureth forever.”

Our nation may be in turmoil, but the negro people are not.

We have seen this side of history, fought for our rights, and crossed the Jordan.

We are the answer to a slave’s prayers

We are united and undivided

For we know the truth as long as the sun rises our mealain shall never be erased from this earth. For if it is, that means there is no new day, no new dawn, no moon to light the night

Kwanzaa is our holiday that is often ignored, but while there is life in my body, I will not forget those carried on ships as cargo sold from West Africa.

I will not forget the times as slaves being sold like property, being discarded like trash, babies ripped away from mothers, and made to work on land without pay. Bitten by snakes in the Everglades, getting married in secret, jumping over a broom to signify the unification of two souls.

I will not forget what binds our souls, history, and stories together.

I will not live in denial of the progression, regression, and possession taken and yet to be taken

We haven’t made it to the mountain tops, and it will take generations after us to get there

But we will, and we will let freedom ring

We may be down, but we are freer than we were and are only captive and held back by those who like to step on our necks, drag us from cars, shoot first, ask later, and by our own imagination.

We will sing what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr envisioned and say these words with power, authority, and triumph:

Free at last

Free at last

Thank God Almighty, WE are free at last.

Happy Kwanzaa, let’s stay together forever. Umoja means Unity, and we are more together as a people than we are as a part of a nation.

• Xih-Z. Zih