"He has an extremely sincere and professional nature which inspired immediate trust and led to 100% enthusiastic participation from his audience. Kazakiyah charmed us all including the teachers."
Carol Sladky – music teacher
Lawrence School
Broadview Heights, Ohio
Metamorphosis. Growth. Change. Action.
https://www.growth-change-action.net/
The Future of Israel
Palestine Chronicle -- January 12, 2011
By C. Hazakyah Hardy-Dia – Haifa, Israel
https://www.palestinechronicle.com/the-future-of-israel/
We love what we do on Masada Street! (Haifa, Israel)
A music and photo documentary by Hazakyah -- 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Foo3jP64epA
Brother Man in South Tel Aviv - Produced by Hazakyah Hardy Dia – 2012
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiD37DDDoiQ
Ein Israeli im Occupy-Zelt. Musiker und Journalist unterwegs. Münster, Germany.
Hazakyah Hardy Dia macht Station in Münster und informiert über den Konflikt zwischen Israelis und Palästinensern
Montag, 16.04.2012, 07:45 Uhr
https://www.wn.de/muenster/ein-israeli-im-occupy-zelt-2061754
Sosua Boxing & Fitness with Hazakyah
https://web.facebook.com/p/Sosua-Boxing-Fitness-with-Hazakyah-100063690246627/?_rdc=1&_rdr
EVERYONE CAN CHANGE: A short play by Hazakyah & English students – 2015 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0hnNScaUko
Round 2 - (60 years old) Hazakyah "The Hebrew Warrior" vs Danny "el Toro" Garcia – 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgRBBgESyMc
New Teacher at ISLA Academy – 2017
https://www.islaacademy.com/single-post/2017/04/03/new-teacher-at-isla-academy
ISLA Academy Sports and Swimming Program – 2017
https://www.islaacademy.com/single-post/2017/10/24/isla-academy-sports-and-swimming-program
"Thanks for coming to our festival and enchanting us with your great drum performance. It was the highlight of the festival. It added a touch of class to our…celebration. "
Josie Faustino, Chairperson
Ethnic/International Festival of Grant County ~ Marion, Indiana
Twenty years or so later in 1985, after earning a bachelor’s degree from Mercer University in sociology, in Macon, Georgia, Hazakyah began his journalism career and committed to following up on the US Civil Rights/Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s. Intially this led to newspaper interviews and friendships with prominent African American Geaorgia state officials William C. Randall, Jr. who served in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1975 to 1999, his father William P. Randall who was was a black community leader and county commissioner in Macon in the 1950s, and 60s, and former state represetative Tyrone Leon Brooks Sr., a civil rights activist from Wilkes County, Georgia. Later Hazakyah also interviewed and interacted with numerous historic African American and African figures:
Ralph David Abernathy Sr.
A key leader in the US Civil Rights Movement, known for his close association with Martin Luther King Jr. Interview took place at a Juneteenth celebration outside of Macon, Georgia in 1986.
Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (best known as H. Rap Brown)
The fifth chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the 1960s. He served as the Black Panther Party's minister of justice during a short-lived (six months) alliance between SNCC and the Black Panther Party. Interview took place at his grocery store in Atlanta's West End neighborhood in 1986.
Ben Ammi Ben-Israel
African American spiritual leader of the African Hebrew Israelite Nation of Jerusalem, which claims that African Americans originate from the Land of Israel. He passed away on December 27, 2014. Interview took place in 1986, in the Village of Peace guest house in Dimona, when Hazakyah went to Israel as a journalist on behalf of the Macon (Georgia) Courier newspaper and the WMAZ-TV Ebony Speaks program. "Ebony Speaks" was a pioneering community affairs television show on WMAZ-TV in Macon, Georgia, that focused on the Black community. It was one of the first of its kind in Central Georgia, airing from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The show, then hosted by the late LeRoy Thomas, aimed to spark conversations about social justice, equality, and community issues.
Louis Farrakhan
Current Leader of the Nation of Islam (NOI), an Islamic and Black nationalist movement founded in Detroit, Michigan in 1930. Farrakhan is notable for his leadership of the 1995 Million Man March in Washington, D.C. Interview took place in 1996, at an invitation-only press conference at the office of The Washington Afro-American newspaper upon his return to America after a 27-day trip through Africa.
“Kazakiyah is a pleasure to work with. His easy, open manner made planning this event effortless. His skill as a facilitator is fine tuned; the animation in his face and his welcoming behavior stimulated even some of our most withdrawn students…”
Laura F. Richards-Barret – Program Director
Great Brook Valley Opportunities Industrial Center ~ Worcester, Massachusetts
Kwame Ture (born Stokely Carmichael)
Trinbagonian-American activist who played a major role in the civil rights movement in the United States and the global pan-African movement. Ture was a key leader in the development of the Black Power movement, first while leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then as the "Honorary Prime Minister" of the Black Panther Party and as a leader of the All-African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). Hazakyah connected with him as a student organizer at Fort Valley State College in 1977, and stayed in touch via correspondence into the 1990s. Ture passed away in 1998.
Winnie Mandela
South African politician, anti-apartheid activist, and second wife of Nelson Mandela. Hazakyah met her when a band he played in did a private performance for her and a small group of her invitees one evening in January 1999, in Washinton, DC.
Na’im Akbar, PhD (Hazakyah’s academic role model and graduate school mentor)
Internationally known scholar, author, lecturer, researcher, and expert in the area of African American Psychology. He joined the faculty of Florida State University in 1979, and served for 28 years. He was acclaimed by Essence Magazine as “one of the world’s preeminent psychologists in the development of an African-centered approach in modern psychology”. He was also cited for his extensive scholarship, research, dedication and commitment to health equity, human rights, racial justice, African American psychology and service to the profession of Psychology and society.
Hazakyah Hardy Dia:
The Story
Hazakyah is a Jewish Ashanti (Hebrew) American Israeli who has spent the past eleven years teaching English, boxing, self-defense and music, as well as building a home, in the Jewish refuge city of Sosua on the north Coast of the Dominican Republic.
Hazakyah was born in Detroit one week after his mother had arrived in New York from France with her two French-born children in tow. Growing up, Hazakyah was subjected to a highly structured and disciplined life. His careful grooming by his notably psychic mother led to his adult/professional life unfolding on many different tracks more or less simultaneously in religion/spirituality, academics, the arts, sports and fitness, crafts, social activism, the media, and self-sustainment.
Hazakyah has studied, taught, performed/competed, vacationed, and has taken good notes and has gotten involved in issues of life and living in numerous cities and countries. He holds US and Israeli citizenship, and has also lived in Korea, France, Senegal, US Virgin Islands, and the Dominican Republic. Moreover he has travelled to or thru numerous other countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe.
In the USA, Hazakyah has lived in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. Every other year during his childhood his family vacationed in Canada.
When it comes to African American history, Hazakyah is a living resource. Because of his mother’s role as a leading and well-respected community organizer in Northwest Detroit, one could say he was more or less “born” into the US Civil Rights/Black Power movement of the 60s and 70s.
He grew up watching his mother interact with people like Kenneth Vern "Ken" Cockrel Sr., an American politician, prominent attorney, revolutionary, and community organizer, from the city of Detroit, who won major cases representing poor and working class Detroiters. And Ralph Nader a Lebonese American lawyer and political activist involved in consumer protection, environmentalism, and government reform causes. His 1965 book Unsafe at Any Speed, which criticized the automotive industry for its safety record, helped lead to the passage of the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act in the USA in1966.
When Martin Luther King Jr. visited Detroit and led the "Walk to Freedom" march on June 23, 1963, Hazakyah’s mother was there with him in tow. The march was a significant event in the Civil Rights Movement, attracting over 125,000 participants (one of the largest demonstrations for civil rights at the time), and demonstrating the growing momentum for racial equality in the North.
As a graduate student at BSU Hazakyah was included in Who’s Who Among Students in American Universities and Colleges, and selected as an honorary member of Golden Key International Honour Society which recognizes students in the top 15% of their class as members. Hazakyah’s personal identity, and keen interest in sociology (human affairs), coupled with his international experiences, accomplishments, and connections, makes him a natural and credible arbiter of self-development matters, as well as cross-cultural and geopolitical affairs.