South Chicago's Moorish Cultural Workshop
by Charles Williams
Brother David Ellison-Bey in his South Chicago home speaks his mind on race, relations and unity. And his mind is a wonderful place.
His anchor and platform, the Moorish Cultural Workshop, a collection of philosophy and clippings, of common sense and enlightenment, serves as the entranceway, his introduction. The workshop is an unrestricted organization in that it allows for future change. "The Moorish Cultural Workshop is an open-ended organization," Ellison-Bey explains, "whose main goal is to educate and act in an organized manner to combat disorganization and misunderstanding among people generally and the people of African descent particularly, by distributing from time to time information on various aspects of this society and the various effects it has on individuals and groups."
Living in the Black Metropolis, a world apart, means living without. Without healthy, abundant food, for example. It also means forever striving, as all people do, to understand the human condition. Thus the Moorish Cultural Workshop.
A repository of African American media. A place to flop. "We personally are not initiating anything new, but we are trying to get people to understand the conditions in which we all live for the sake of good will," says Ellison-Bey.
Common sense runs deep, to no surprise, in his collection, with smart sayings all boiling down to the essence of take-care-of-your-business. After common sense, Ellison-Bey promotes his studies on caste, universal law, the nature of thought, child rights, citizenship, and it goes on. Listen: Audio.
Workshop highlights include:
- What is race? What is race not? Race does not reflect clear-cut scientific definitions of biological stock. Instead it's self classifications. This from the U.S.Census Bureau. "We live in a caste system," asserts Ellison-Bey.
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Thoughts are things. What are you thinking? "My major aim is to re-educate so that the individual may realize that he or she is the 'Master of his Fate'," he writes.
- Promoting the Kwanzaa principles: unity, self-determination, responsibility, economics, purpose, creativity and faith.
- Notes on the persecution of African Americans.
The motto, if the workshop needs one, is certainly, "Let's talk it out."
The Moorish Cultural Workshop can be reached at 6726 S. Parnell, Chicago, IL 60621. Phone Bro. David at 773-874-3332.