Mama Nobantu

One of the three Community Warrior-Healer-Builder Love honorees is Mama Nobantu Ankoanda

Before you can say “lets,” Mama Nobantu is in the van saying, “C’mon, let’s go.” Before you can say, “I need…” Nobantu has opened her house, extended her hand and her heart.

She’s a Warrior-Healer-Building Mama!

Her children grew up knowing that their mother belonged to our community. Mama Nobantu Ankoanda is an educator, teacher, former principal and founder of Afrikan centered community-based institutions in Palo Alto, California and in the Atlanta, GA Metro area. Mama Ankoanda is also Dr. Mama Nobantu. She holds a doctoral degree in Education, a Master of Arts degrees in Elementary Education and a BA in Social work. She’s earned this Black Community Warrior-Healer-Builder award because she’s been spreading love and revolutionary fever in our community since she was a student in 1968 when she became a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika.

Join us on Thursday, Feb. 13th, 7 pm
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She participated in and studied the Poor People’s Campaign in Washington, D.C. and in ’69 traveled and studied Afrikan History and Culture in Accra, Ghana It was at the University of Accra where she received a certificate in Afrikan History and Culture. We’ll be here all day if we try to list all the building-love she’s spread over our community. However, a few more demand to be mentioned now. She founded or co-founded these schools: Shule Ya Taifa, Shule Nyansa Sua, Shule Mandela Academy and the School of Wisdom and Knowledge College Preparatory Academy. Nobantu is not a has-been-educator - living in the past. Afrikan-centered educational institutions like CIBI, AYA, Kilombo, and others lean on her knowledge and her work.

In 2006, Mama Nobantu moved to Decatur, GA to be closer to two of her daughters and most of her grandchildren. While in Northern California, she co‐founded Sisters of Tomorrow (SOT)- a grassroots rite-of-passage program for young sisters, and she now serves as an Elder for the Atlanta Chapter. She also serves on the Elder Council for African Community Centers.

She brought her Collard Greens Cultural Festival (CCCF) and her famous Collard Green Ice Cream to the Metro. Both have found a home in Lithonia, GA. While Atlanta celebrates its 11th CCCF, East Palo Alto, CA will be celebrating its 21st. Nobantu is untiring. She’s a Warrior-Healer-Building Mama.

Join us on Thursday to celebrate her long and her latest efforts to strengthen our community to victory. She has and continues to show her love for us; let’s love her back! Feb. 13th, 7 pm at the
2526 Delowe Dr. in East Point, GA.

Derrick Boazman

Our next Black Community Warrior-Healer-Builder honoree is my friend and brother - Derrick “Too Much Truth” Boazman.

Personally, I don’t know of a man that loves the Black community more than Brother Derrick Boazman. His love is strong; it’s wide; it’s deep. It’s deeper than his years – flowing to him from his mother and father and from those in our struggle who came before. He’s a native Atlantan born and reared on Atlanta’s Southside – where he still resides. I start his warrior-tribute by talking about his love because it is his love for us that fuels his fight for us – especially for “the least of these.” His love for us as an extension of the love family and community showered upon him is exactly what makes him the consummate warrior-healer-builder?

Join us to Simba Simbi: Hold up those who hold us up! Thursday, Feb. 13th 7pm for our 8th annual Black Love Day Dinner Celebration.

As swift as is his sword at our enemy’s throats is his compassion and giving to those in need. Some warriors-in-training may shout at this racist system – “speaking truth to power.” Brother Bozeman is a seasoned warrior of many battles over many years. He was elected to the Atlanta City Council in 1997; then again in 2001. He doesn’t just speak truth to power he organizes us for battle to remove people from power over us. For AYA, Warrior means actively challenging people, policies, and practices that oppress and aggress upon our people. Derrick: he’s been jailed challenging injustice too many to count. While for some, going to jail is their claim to fame; for Derrick, that’s just a measure of his commitment and willingness to lead by example, to put his life and career on the line. His claim to fame is winning! He’s a man of action. He’s as philosophical and spiritual as Revered Martin Luther King and as “by any means necessary” as Malcolm X.

Boazman is President and CEO of Facilitation Strategies, Inc. He’s a political science graduate from the historic Morris Brown College. He’s a Civil Rights movement organizer who has not traded his pedigree for laurels. Times are too perilous for that. While he’s expanded his reach nationally and internationally, he’s never left his community.

Every day his WAOK radio program “Too Much Truth” is both a voice and a vehicle for the people. Many know him in many ways. I know him best as a man among men and the Convener of Let Us Make Man – Black men dedicated to working together across various lines to lift Black men and our community from the cradle to the grave. His awards are too long to recite here. He wouldn’t want me to mention them anyway. He’d want you to know what good-fight for our people you can get into today.

If you want to know that, and if you want this brother to feel your love for his demonstrated love, join us on Feb 13th for our 8th annual Black Love Day Dinner Celebration.

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Rashid Nuri

AYA Educational Institute is proud to announce the 2020 Black Love Day Community Warrior-Healer-Builder Honoree, Baba/ Brother K. Rashid Nuri– a food revolutionary.

Rashid, in his new book Growing Out Loud, asks a powerful question: “What is more revolutionary than a seed? Once planted, the seed bursts through clay, sand, rock, concrete – whatever to fulfill the purpose imprinted in its DNA.” Rashid doesn’t just plant seeds; he is a seed - breaking through. This see has been nurtured by the Jamaican Maroons flowing through is veins, by the African, Asian, and Latin American liberation movements of the 60s, and more. We can eat better because of him. Attend this Black Love celebration. Feb. 13th 7pm.

Higher and Higher...

The beginning of a Huffington Post article on Baba Rashid begins “The older man steps out of a gray Chrysler Grand Voyager. He wears a tan fisherman’s cap and a brown tee topped with a plaid work shirt. People chat as they fill baskets with carrots, chard, kale, collards, lettuce, onions, cabbage, and mustard. The man briskly moves from person to person, hearing the day’s news or making sure the necessary tasks are completed. He stoops to take a quick check of the soil. Feels it run through his hands.”

“I’m reminded of a Sterling Brown’s After Winter:

He snuggles his fingers

In the blacker loam

The lean months are done with

The fat to come.

His eyes are set

On a brushwood-fire

But his heart is soaring

Higher and higher.

Though he stands ragged

An old scarecrow,

This is the way

His swift thoughts go,

“Butter beans fo’ Clara

Sugar Corn fo’ Grace

An’ fo’ de little feller

Runnin ‘ space.

Rashid’s heart is soaring higher and higher, and we are Clara, Grace, and De’ Little Fella.

His snuggling fingers helped to create, nurture and ultimately pass on Truly Living Well (TLW) Center for Natural Urban Agriculture. From a backyard plot in Riverdale to small farms on Harbin, then Washington Road, to Good Shepherd Farm, then to Wheat Street in downtown Atlanta, and finally to Collegetown, TLW fed thousands, employed hundreds, and became a model and inspiration for Urban Agriculture locally, nationally, and internationally.

TLW uses food production as a plate on which to create a culture of self-sufficiency, health, and wellness in our community. For Rashid, it’s much more than that. Rashid has turned over the reins of TLW to continue his revolutionary journey.

The Lean months are done with - the fat to come.

Patience, daily work, and long vision are the virtues of the builder. Precisely because they are involved in the day-to-day work along with others, the “why” can get lost. Rashid will not let it. He wants to stop the destructiveness of Big Agriculture with the transformative power of the local food economy to sustain community vitality. We want to help him. We want to lift him.

Simba Simbi: Holding up that which holds us up. Join us on Feb. 13th.

www.akomalove.com

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2526 Delowe Dr. East Point, GA 30344

Wekesa O. Madzimoyo