On this the fourth and middle day of Kwanzaa, we celebrate Ujamaa, Cooperative Economics. Let us strengthen our resolve to build and maintain our own stores, shops and other businesses and to profit from them together....

Malik Brown owns the Ebony Bookstore. For lunch, he goes to the Kingston Diner on the corner. That afternoon, the owner of the diner, Olive Wilkins, buys some beauty supplies at the beauty shop next door. Later, the beautician, buys a copy of Black Enterprise magazine and Jawanza Kunjufu’s book, Black Economics at Malik’s Bookstore....

However, our community exists not only in the "real" world, but in cyberspace too. Here, sites established by Africans, throughout the Diaspora, exchange not only information, but goods and services on a global scale. In the true spirit of Ujamaa, these sites are always eager to publicize each other’s addresses. Blackwebportal.com aims to be just that, the portal through which we can access all our sites on the internet. They list thousands of Black sites, according to a dozen categories, broken down into scores of subsections......

Our community is also found in the church. The Black Church has increasingly become a center for business, education and civic improvement. For example, one church in Queens, Allen AME, has built a school, a senior citizens center, hundreds of housing units, a catering house, and many other facilities. It has a yearly operating budget of over
60 million of dollars, has sent its pastor to Congress and is a major force in the economic life of the borough and the city. Many of its five thousand plus members live 20 miles, or more, away from its brand new massive, stately cathedral....

And so today, on the fourth, and central, day of Kwanzaa, we joyously celebrate that which makes us a viable ongoing community, Ujamaa, Cooperative Economics!  UJAMAA!