The major crises of the black Diaspora during 2005 involved governance.

Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath in August/September illustrated the federal government’s disinterest in black people, but also revealed deficiency in our black-run New Orleans government. Mayor Ray Nagin’s administration should have been better prepared for the Katrina disaster, since it should have known our people’s poverty and the federal government’s deflection of funds away from maintenance of the levy infrastructure. This acknowledgement of a plank in our own eye does not absolve the federal government.

“Where is the black man’s government?” Marcus Garvey asked early in the 20th century. In the 21st century, we have more black-run governments – in Africa, the Caribbean, and American cities such as New Orleans. We should now concentrate more on governing ourselves than on protesting the oppressor’s disinterest. We should still protest when necessary, but we should redirect our primary focus.

Government is not always official. Through Isaiah, God said that the government would be on Christ’s shoulders. The Church has served Katrina aftermath victims in ways that the secular government has not. We must continue these efforts into 2006 until we have removed the need.

The Katrina aftermath issue echoed loudly and repeatedly during the October 2005 Millions More Movement gathering in Washington, D.C. in October 2005. The disaster reinforced our need to recommit to the principles of the 1995 Million Man March into 2006 and beyond.

We should also recommit to the legacies of leaders and loved ones who died during 2005, including Shirley Chisholm, Johnny Cochran, Ossie Davis, Constance Baker Motley, Rosa Parks, and Judge Bruce Wright.

Mrs. Chisholm, “unbossed and unbeaten” as a Brooklyn congresswoman, sought the Democratic Party’s nomination for president in 1972, more than a decade before Jesse Jackson. Her former husband described her as “…a mouthpiece for the underdog, the poor, underprivileged people, the people who did not have much of a chance.”
Attorney Cochran’s death made it safe for the press to discuss his life of defending the oppressed against powerful, including government. His defense of O.J. Simpson is best understood within this context. We should further study his underlying Christian convictions.

Mr. Davis and his wife Ruby Dee, who survives him, portrayed African-Americans positively on stage and screen during most of the second half of the 20th century. They continually interacted with the black community through speaking engagements, participation in community organizations, and their decision to live in a black neighborhood of New Rochelle, NY. They symbolized black achievement, black consciousness, and staying connected. They have been, in a sense, black people’s royalty.

Judge Motley was part of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund team that won the 1954 Supreme Court decision barring school segregation. She also was instrumental in James Meridith’s 1962 enrollment in the University of Mississippi, along with other desegregation cases. Later, she became the first female borough president of Manhattan and, subsequently, the first black woman federal judge.

Rosa Parks was the NAACP activist whose decision not to yield her seat to a white man sparked the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott in 1955. That boycott ignited the modern civil rights movement, which forced federal, state, and local governments to outlaw segregation and discrimination.

Judge Bruce Wright insisted on justice rather than pre-judgment. This battle is still raging, with present implications in the recent removal of Queens Supreme Court Justice Laura Blackburne.

Globally in 2005, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank committed to cancel debts owed by 19 poor countries including 13 in Africa and three in the Americas with significant black populations. We should monitor implementation to ensure that: 1) world powers do not use debt cancellation as a path to some other form of economic exploitation, and 2) newly debt-free governments use the funds freed from debt service to service our people’s needs.

One of the debt cancellation recipients, Ethiopia, has amassed 150,000 troops along its border with Eritrea. Similarly, Eritrea has lined up 250,000 troops. Another fratricidal war appears imminent between these countries, which are linked by language and history. Their last war cost each country $1 million per day, as well as cost 70,000 lives. This is the wrong way for the government of a poor country to spend funds freed from debt service.
In 2006, let us focus on effective self-governance. Let us redirect some of the moral energy that went into the struggle for freedom and power toward better managing whatever freedom and power we have thus far achieved at home and abroad.

Mwandikaji K. Mwanafunzi is a freelance writer whose commentaries on contemporary issues have been published in magazines and newspapers throughout the U.S.