"Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival 2004"

Event Statement:

Sisters & Brothers!

Today, on our 5th annual Malcolm X Jazz Arts Festival, we all gather under generous warm turquoise skies to celebrate our living and always changing cultural traditions. Our traditions reach back to both ancient and recent roots in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, but are always undergoing constant renovations. We celebrate all that makes us strong and healthy, especially the well being of our families and loved ones. Our strength lies in the collectivity of all our resources, our industriousness, our creative imaginations, our regenerative energies, and our ability to maintain unity.

We also come together to reflect on the rapid social changes under this chaotic political climate that affects our everyday lives. With the tragic escalation of U.S. imperialist aggression in Iraq and the Middle East, there are mounting numbers of deaths and casualties of not just Americans, but tens of thousands of Third World people in this senseless never-ending 'war against terrorism'. Its impact is felt directly in our own neighborhoods. The late revolutionary prophet Malcolm X said, "You don't know where you stand in America until you know where America stands in the world."

Today many of our youth are caught in the web of mega-prisons being constructed while schools are being neglected. Many of our youth are being shipped overseas to occupy foreign territories to fight fabricated enemies. Still others are unjustly detained and deported indefinitely as unwanted immigrants. Right here, in this community, families are violently torn apart, and we are left blaming each other and ourselves for the same systemic injustices being played out all across the country. Our very basic civil liberties and humanity is being challenged by the illegal Bush regime, and we cannot sit idly by.

Again, Malcolm X responds:
"I'm not going to sit at your table and watch you eat, with nothing on my plate, and call myself a diner...Being here in America doesn't make you an American. Being born in America doesn't make you an American."

To control our own destinies and our children's futures, we begin by calling on our youth to RETURN TO THE SOURCE and SERVE THE PEOPLE! We can unite our respective communities and respect our diverse cultures only through grassroots organizing and working to create a safer and saner world without wars here and abroad. It is the regeneration of new activists, new artists, and new organizations from our own neighborhoods which will create a revolutionary culture that offers us real hope.