In every society, there are elements that provide a means of sustenance, shelter, protection, education, uplift and fulfillment for the people. Our farmers, food vendors, nurturers, builders, educators and teachers, information providers, bringers of wisdom, cultural artists, human-rights activists and warrior-protectors all serve critical functions that keep a society surviving and thriving.
There are also elements that pose threats to that very sustenance, shelter, protection, education, uplift or fulfillment. These threats come in the form of famines, natural disasters, misinformation, temptation, challenges to our confidence, deprivation of comfort, discouragements and other deleterious impacts upon us at the individual and group levels. We have seen them all — crime, hurricanes, economic disasters, rumors, culture-banditry, malevolent members of our own communities and even misanthropic, autocratic and dictatorial heads of state.
A community survives and thrives based on the degree to which it is able to ensure the needs of its members and defend those members from the threats. Because there are so many different areas of sustenance and so many different types of threats to our communities, there are a variety of corresponding activists, organizations and other leaders that specialize in one of others of these areas. All the different aspects of our existence make it impossible for one person or organization to effectively deal with all the needs and threats we face as a people, and as a result, we have a multitude of activists and organizations, each pursuing the uplift of our community along a specific path. Grocers know about food, auto mechanics know about cars, and to build a house one needs carpenters, electricians, plumbers and other specialists working in coordination with a general contractor. Similarly, in a community, we have spiritual, cultural, legal, media, business, scientific, human-rights, community-engagement and defense specialists. While this imparts a degree of expertise on each of these different types of community workers in the area they have chosen to take on, it also means that a comprehensive plan to see to all the needs of our communities must include all of these activists and organizations, working together in a coordinated, cooperative way.
We go into aspects of coalition-building more deeply in our associated Web sites, KUUMBAReport (https://kuumbareport.com) and the Sixth Region Diaspora Caucus (https://srdcinternational.org). Here, we will provide a brief introduction to the idea of coalition-building, especially the degree to which our specific focus, that of bringing one aspect of culture to the community through events and music, depends on the strength of these other disciplines if it is to bring the kind of uplift to our people and our world that would do justice to the concept of Kuumba (creativity; to do what we can, in the way that we can, to leave our world more beautiful and beneficial than we found it).
Building a Cooperative Coalition