Every day from December 26-January 1, Pax Christi USA will share a reflection on one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa. Pax Christi USA National Field Organizer Stephen Niamke has prepared each piece to show how Kwanzaa is an effective approach to community organizing — a celebratory, nonviolent, Afrocentric approach to wellness, justice, and peace.
In 2024, Executive Director Charlene Howard wrote, “Kwanzaa is an African American holiday … to celebrate family, community and culture. Although it was not designed to be a religious holiday, the seven principles possess a spiritual quality that is evident in holy scripture and resonates with our principles of Catholic Social Teaching inspired by Pope Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum. The binding thread is acknowledging that we thrive in community and common care for one another.”
Day 1: Umoja/Unity: The foundation of family, community wellness, and nonviolent organizing
To strive for and maintain unity in the family, community, nation, and race
1 Corinthians 12:12-27: In this passage, the body is described as many parts, each dependent on the other. While Kwanzaa is secular, such scripture can serve as a complementary lens for families who draw from faith traditions without allowing theology to eclipse culture.
The Kwanzaa ceremony: When the black candle is lit on the first day of Kwanzaa, it does more than begin a celebration. It establishes a worldview. It reclaims a culture. It inspires hope. It promotes a familial and community tradition. Umoja, unity is not presented as an aspiration to be achieved someday, but as a discipline to be practiced daily. It is the moral and relational foundation upon which all other principles of Kwanzaa rest.
Umoja in the family: Creating a sense of belonging and shared responsibility: Within the family, Umoja strengthens bonds by reframing family life as a collective endeavor rather than a set of parallel individual pursuits. In a society that often prioritizes individual success over communal well-being, Umoja teaches children and adults alike that we rise together, or not at all.
Practicing Umoja in the family can include:
- Shared rituals such as meals, storytelling, and reflection
- Collective problem-solving rather than blame
- Practicing and instilling intergenerational respect and accountability
- An understanding that individual choices affect the whole
- Regularly reviewing the principles of Kwanzaa as a family or community and how they apply to particular times or circumstances
- Creating a family album, sharing traditional recipes, tracing one’s family tree to the extent possible
For children in particular, Umoja provides a counter-narrative to messages that suggest they must navigate the world alone. It affirms that they belong to something enduring and supportive. This sense of belonging is not sentimental; it is protective. Research consistently shows that strong family cohesion is associated with improved mental health, resilience, and emotional regulation which are critical assets in a racialized society.
Umoja as community wellness: Countering fragmentation and internalized racism: At the community level, Umoja is a curative practice in the face of the division and fragmentation deliberately produced by racism, economic exploitation, and social policy. Disinvestment, mass incarceration, housing segregation, and competition for scarce resources have all contributed to divisions within African American communities. Umoja challenges the lie that survival requires separation. By affirming shared identity and mutual responsibility, Umoja counters internalized racism, the unconscious adoption of negative beliefs about one’s own people. It reasserts collective dignity and reframes success as communal advancement rather than individualized accomplishments. Umoja is a form of reclamation that instills a certain type of pride and optimism that directly contributes to success.
From a wellness standpoint, communities grounded in Umoja are better equipped to:
- Respond collectively to harm and crisis
- Support mental and emotional health through mutual care
- Reduce isolation and alienation
- Foster environments where people are seen, known, and valued
- Implementing a regular practice of a family or community caucus, especially when there has been a crisis in the family or incidents of racism have occurred.
Perhaps most importantly, Umoja is therapeutic. Racism is not only structural; it is psychological. It teaches separation, suspicion, and scarcity. Umoja interrupts that teaching by insisting on connection. For African Americans who have experienced betrayal or exclusion—even within faith communities—Umoja offers a form of belonging that does not require assimilation or erasure. It restores trust incrementally, through practice rather than proclamation. As the first principle, Umoja asks a simple but profound question: Who are we committed to being together? Every candle lit after it depends on the answer. And for that matter, the overall wellness of the African American community is directly related to how the principle of Umoja is lived out in daily life.
Umoja as a strategy for nonviolent community organizing: For African American families and communities shaped by histories of enslavement, segregation, and ongoing racial violence, Umoja is both restorative and resistant. It helps to heal what centuries of oppression have fractured. It fortifies what justice requires. It is required for resiliency, individual and collective wellness, and to spawn hope for the future.
In the context of organizing for justice, equity, equality, and peace, Umoja is indispensable. Movements fail not only because of external opposition, but because of internal fracture. Umoja provides the ethical glue that holds coalitions together over time. Unlike organizing models that rely solely on opposition—defining unity by what people are against—Umoja builds solidarity around shared values and shared destiny. This is particularly important in nonviolent movements, like Pax Christi USA, where discipline, trust, and moral coherence are essential.
Umoja in organizing means:
- Prioritizing relationship-building over transactional engagement
- Valuing consensus and collective leadership
- Addressing internal conflict with accountability rather than expulsion
- Ensuring that strategy aligns with community-defined values
- In depth communal study on the history of effective organizing within the African American community.
The African proverb Ubuntu, “I am because we are, we are because I am.” captures these strategies succinctly. One’s humanity and effective resistance through organizing are not isolated; they are realized through relationships. And those relationships include the immediate and extended family, the broader community, the Ancestors, and the yet unborn. We are all needed to bring about effective change.
Thank you for enlightening me.