The Firefly Effect
Can We Glow Together?
In nature, fireflies have the biological capacity, bioluminescence, to produce light in their environment. When a predator comes into their environment, fireflies in unison, glow to warn them that they will leave a bad taste in their mouth.
Fireflies, as a community, recognize the power they have within to protect themselves from predators — they shine together.
As Black people, we must recognize the power of community, the power to demand respect of the faculties of our minds and the environments of our communities.
“A race without authority and power, is a race without respect.”- Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Some of us have wandered off into the wilderness, making ourselves vulnerable to predators, and end up captured in jars of oppression. And since then, we have no idea that we have been shining for white supremacy.
Who’s controlling your light?
“A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin, and culture, is like a tree without roots.”-Honorable Marcus Mosiah Garvey
Only through the knowledge acquisition of our history — Black history — can we recognize the need to use our light in a communitive way. We have the biological capacity of our DNA, historical memory, to produce POWER to control our environment. We must search for that LIGHT that’s within us.
“The tree grows strong and tall only to the extent that it’s roots are deep and firmly planted into the soil.”-African Proverb
From the pen of a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. Frances Cress Welsing interprets the proverb with the following statement, “If black people are at all disappointed in our present level of achievement, it may be because our roots are not planted deeply enough in the past — resting upon such a shallow, inadequate, and faulty data input of only 400 years of history.”
We must operate on a level of ancestral history, community success, to leave a permanent bad taste in the mouth of white supremacy. In order to protect each other, we must shine together!
