East Side library hosts Kwanzaa event

By Sean Barron

news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

What do you get when you combine completing tasks consistently with obtaining a good education, being responsible for one’s family and community, acting with kindness and consideration and going above and beyond one’s own beliefs?

Those are among the ingredients that make up Kujichagulia.

“We need to go home and celebrate these principles. We also want our children to carry them on,” Gladys Burnett said of the seven principles of Kwanzaa, including Kujichagulia — self-determination.

This second principle means “to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves.”

That concept was the highlight of Saturday’s Kwanzaa celebration at the East branch of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County, 430 Early Road, on the East Side.

Hosting the one-hour program was the East Friends of the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

Also part of the event was a table filled with artifacts from Africa, including a set of seven candles that were red, black or green — the colors of the Pan-African flag — and symbolized the seven principles.

Burnett, an East Friends member, discussed the value of applying the notion of self-determination to today’s challenges. For example, mutual respect and trust must exist between people and their leaders, including elected officials and authority figures, she noted.

It’s not enough to simply be angry at the recent spate of police killings of black men, but to proactively be part of solutions to the problem, Burnett stressed. She also cited a program aimed at aiding black men who are re-entering society from prison in establishing businesses.

Nevertheless, too much emphasis is placed on helping people after they get out of prison instead of making more efforts to ensure they don’t enter the legal system in the first place, noted Lance Julious of Youngstown, a part-time landscaper.

Along those lines, blacks who kill whites are far more likely to receive the death penalty than vice versa, said Julious, who came with sons Cal, 9, and Nicholas, 10.

In addition, he said, more- common black-on-black crime doesn’t receive the level of outrage as high-profile police shootings of young blacks such as the Aug. 9 shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., by a white police officer.

During the civil-rights era in the Deep South in the 1950s and ’60s, most blacks struggled for the right to register to vote. Today, more blacks need to exercise that sacred right, noted Rose Wilkins, another Friends member.

“We have to vote people in who are looking out for us and our communities,” said Wilkins, who predicted that a greater number of people will stand against so-called “stop-and-frisk” police practices and other such tactics.

Saturday’s gathering also featured the pouring of libation, a spiritual act that allows participants to honor deceased loved ones. Several attendees called out the names of those they wished to remember, which was followed by a moment of silence.