Atlanta Interview with: Baba kwame-sagyefo kalimara
● What is the significance of fasting in the context of Black August? “Fasting for me, overall, means sacrifice. It means that in our movement for national liberation and sovereignty we have to prepare to, perhaps, do with less to benefit the many. That really speaks to the concept of Ujima and Ujamaa. For me fasting means we are doing this on two tiers; one tier is the spiritual and physical tier and the other a material tier. The material tier comes from the black guerilla family, residents behind the walls, the prison industrial complex; which says when you are fasting you are not buying goods from the commissary or the machine which supports the mechanisms of your incarceration. Fasting also means I don’t go to the Publix (grocery store chain); I am thinking consciously about spending at New Afrikan businesses. The spiritual value of fasting is in recognizing our ancestors were able to survive the western hemispherethe transatlantic slave trade, we were able to survive off of less. Even though we got the worst parts of food we understood spiritually that our survival was really about the collective.
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By Any Means Necessary