MARCUS GARVEY: STILL RELEVANT

I am honored to be here. To be asked to serve as an Advisory Board Member of the International Foundation for the Exoneration of MG.
Back in the nineties when I decided that ICS should launch a Campaign to Exonerate Garvey, if you were to ask me why, I would have said it’s a matter of principle. Garvey is my hero. And he is the National Hero of my country, I cant just let it go so.

Around ten years have passed. And I have done and learnt a lot about the issue of racism and social and economic exclusion since I decided to stop talking about my hero and start behaving like my hero: and launched a one woman offensive I call the NANNY Brigade to change the face of development Banking and future of race relations in LA in the work I do each day.

So now when I am asked why? Why bother to go through all thus trouble to try to exonerate the Marcus Mosiah Garvey… After all we know who he is, we who revere him should not care what others think and further we have better things to do with our time that spend time and money trying to clear his name. Now I would say, all of that talk has merit, but one thing you must understand is that my continuing passion to be a part of the movement to exonerate Marcus Garvey is not just about rewriting history or clearing up a past injustice or restoring the good name of a person who honor.

The campaign to exonerate Marcus Garvey is about our taking the responsibility to begin to write our vision of the future. You see what we hold dear and in high esteem about our father and teacher Marcus Garvey is the fact that he had a vision that mirrors the vision we each have of a New World Order. Marcus Garvey had a vision of a World Order wherein people of African descent, Africans everywhere would no longer be the misfit, the mistake, the miserable, but a World where our cities, our nations and our peoples would occupy the same space as people of other races.

And you may say with Kofi and Condi in the House, we have achieved a measure of respect, and yes we have… but my friends as noted in the Durban Agenda of the United Nations World Conference Against Racism which took place in 2001, the world and people of African descent still suffer the ravages of an economic and political history and system based on racism.

In the best selling book The World is Flat, Thomas Friedman begins with Columbus quest for going East by Sailing West and he lands in the East and up until page 200 or so without once taking a pit stop in Africa or the Caribbean where people of our race are dominant. The World is Flat…. the World is Fat and in the Kingdom we my friends do not seem to be playing any role other than the part of peasant, jester, and/or beggar at the King’s Gate. But this is not the day for a discourse on that.

And when we look at this reality as Garvey would through the lens of race, and say something must change, we Africans must unite to do something different NOW to ensure first that we survive the ravages of the 21st century and second that 4 centuries or 400 years from now there will no longer race-based ways of defining humanity; there are some who try to cast us as race-baiters and anti-others. I say categorically, do not dress us in your cast-off clothes. Like Garvey, we aim to bring a respect and tolerance and love for self so that we can in God’s words love our neighbor.

Marcus Garvey had a vision that one day, the African continent and its peoples would arise from thier slumber and repair the ravages of slavery and colonialism and be equal among all other continents and peoples.
In seeking to exonerate Marcus Garvey YES… we are seeking to
Excavate truth from the debris of Hoover’s demolition campaign so that our National Hero and one of the GREATEST Pan-Africanists the World has Known can be resurrected from the dustbins of American history.
But more importantly my friends…
We are seeking to EXONERATE Marcus Garvey because
We know we must exorcise once and for all the dread of past failures and see them for what they are landmarks on our collective journey through time and space…
We must excise the tumors of mistrust that have prevented the mass development of the African American economy that keeps us at the Bottom of the economic stew in America’s melting pot
We seek to EXONERATE Marcus Garvey because we know we must exact a new opportunity to gather together a new community of dreamers that individually believe in the VISIONS of a Better World
We seek to EXONERATE Marcus Garvey because we know we must exercise our duty to our ancestors, our duty to the generations to come- to DO ALL we can to move us to the higher ground MG envisioned for AFRICA & AFRICAN peoples….
From reading his Philosophy and Opinions I know that GARVEY knew we were spiritual beings having a material existence for always preached GOD FIRST.
So this is part of God’s purpose…. this campaign.
So fellow Jamaicans, friends, FAMLY all,
We declare this day as a new groundbreaking for the rekindling of Garvey’s vision And we declare ourselves soldiers in the cause for an Africa Re-Imagined.
We will press on in our quest for full emancipation and redemption of the African disapora from the wounds of our 400 year holocaust.. the African MAAFA.
We will press on in our quest for establishment of a New World Order where pundits and will no longer talk about the World without once mentioning Africa. The time is now. Events of the day lead us to believe that the confluence of skill and wealth and opportunity are such as it has not been since that first Pan-African congress in London back at the turn of the last century. This monument will be a mark we assembled here today to declare that the time has come to Rewrite History, Reclaim the Legacy and Restore the Vision.

As we work to EXONERATE Garvey we will breathe life into the message we were given in 1920. The message will spread in the whirlwinds we shall create as we rekindle determination and rebuild trust. A NEW WORLD ORDER where Africa and Africans the world over have an equal SEAT at the Table. Let us work together to EXONERATE the Rt. Hon. Marcus Mosiah Garvey for our common good holding fast to our faith in ONE GOD. ONE AIM. ONE DESTINY…. ONE LOVE.

Claire A. Nelson Ph.D. (c) 2006