First off, don't make any plans to travel to Africa until you have made a conscious effort to study the history of Africa from the perspective of the masses of people of Africa.  What that means is take time to understand the legacy of traditional African societies, the Judeo-Christian and Islamic entrance into the continent, and the impact those realities have had on Africa.  If you don't understand any of that, and are not willing to learn about it, you will only add more confusion to the mix by traveling to Africa, so if you aren't willing to gain some understanding, its probably better if you don't go.  In fact, its even better if you don't read any farther.  I don't wish to convince you of the need to study.  That's not my job.  Now, for those of you who seriously want to understand why traveling to Africa is important, I'll continue.  Here is a fact most of you probably don't think much about.  Your sole or primary frame of reference for us as a people is based on our time living here in the Western Hemisphere.  Unfortunately, this is becoming true even for most Africans who were born in Africa, or have parents born in Africa, but have spent the bulk of your time over here.  The problem with having the Western Hemisphere reference is that we have only been in this Hemisphere on any mass scale for little over 500 years (I'm not talking about limited numbers of us who came before colonialism.  And in case you are confused about that, if your surname is European and you live over here, it's a safe bet your family was somebody's property so stop pretending like you belong to a legacy of people who came before Columbus).  We were in Africa for hundreds of thousands of years.  So whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not, most of what makes us up is directly connected to Africa.  I'm talking about the foods we like, the way we communicate, the philosophies we believe in, our taste in music, our spirituality, our vision of the world.  Unfortunately, most of what we are as African people contradicts directly with the European values and ways of doing things that are practiced as acceptable behavior and norms in European dominated societies.  Consequently, we grow up here being told daily that our way is unacceptable and we internalize believing that to be true.  One clear way to diminish that oppression is to return home to Africa.  Doing so opens your eyes in little ways to who we actually are as a people.  Instead of being viewed with suspicion or disdain for being who you are, being in Africa exposes you to the reasons why doing what you do makes perfect sense.  For example, after Sekou Ture and the Democratic Party of Guinea invited a delegation from the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to Guinea in 1964, Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer came back from the trip and told SNCC members that "they be jus like us over there!  They stand like us!  They even be holdin they babies like us!"  These discoveries are validating for a people who have been taught to believe we don't belong anywhere and therefore have no value.  These discoveries are so many that you spend much of your time in Africa learning about them, reaffirming that not nearly as much of our cultural connection to Africa has been lost as we have been led to believe.

I am very much looking forward to traveling to Africa within the next 30 days.  It won't be my first time.  In fact, I've traveled there multiple times.  Actually, at this stage in my life, I'm seriously planning an eventual transition to Africa to live out my twilight years.  That's maybe farther along than most people who will be reading this, but the one thing that's universal is the need to make that physical trip in order to cement that spiritual and psychological connection.  Admittedly, doing that isn't going to be easy.  Africa is a very complex place.  A place that has been impacted with so much struggle and suffering.  All of these things make understanding life there a process.  Kwame Ture put it nicely when he talked about the conversation he had with a Chinese diplomat once who made an effort to compare the Chinese and African struggles.  The diplomat was complaining about how difficult the Chinese had it in waging their struggle against the Japanese colonialists and the Komintang (Chinese bourgeois class).  Kwame's response was "at least you only had two enemies.  We have to fight the British, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Germans, Israeli zionists, the Americans and our own bourgeois classes in dozens of countries!"   Still, the answers and solutions in Africa far outweigh the problems and certainly outdistance any effort to try and find solutions outside of Africa.  The key there is understanding those contradictions.  Doing this has never posed a problem for me because I have the work study process of the All African People's Revolutionary Party that has provided a strong foundation to process through the complications in Africa and make sense of them.  Doing so makes it much easier to navigate on the continent.  

So, the message here is if you are struggling to find direction in the movement and/or purpose and space for your personal life  consider making an effort to embark upon a process of understanding mother Africa.  Start by taking one geographical area and reading what's going there.  Try Ghana.  Read at least one article a week about Ghana.  As you continue to do that you will learn quickly that African politics are rarely in isolation.  Learning about Ghana will expose you to what's happening in neighboring Corte Ivore, Togo, etc.  Soon, you will find you have a working knowledge of what's going on. Pick your sources wisely.  Try to stick to primary sources.  Read what the African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau or the Pan-African Congress of Azania, South Africa, have to say about what's going on in those countries.  If you want guidance, Google the All African People's Revolutionary Party's Ideological Training Guidelines.  On page eight (8) there is a guide for primary source organizations.  Stick to that list to get your information and in no time you will know enough healthy information about Africa to probably motivate you to plan a trip there.  Decide where you want to go and make an effort to at least learn some words of the local language for that area.  Doing so in Ibo, Wolof, Twi, Fulani, Mandinka, will not take you long and will go a long way.  Plan your trip with people living in the country you plan to visit.  Avoid going over on a commercial tour.  Sorry tour guides, but just think of that in terms of how you view people on tour buses driving through your neighborhoods.  Right.  Connect with real people on the ground and experience the real life there.  

There's much more that could be said, but the important thing is we have to start getting our people to think in terms of Africa.  Our enemies are fooling us with this talk and developing consciousness of us being a race of people.  Being Black people.  All this is designed to do is disconnect us from our land - Africa.  They want to disconnect us because doing so disconnects us from the resources which produces the power we need to liberate ourselves and our people.  That's why connecting with Africa is so important.  According to the U.S. Passport Agency, only about 30% of U.S. citizens even possess a passport which probably means only about 10 to 15% of Africans have one.  The sad thing is many people will openly brag about not wanting to travel outside the U.S.  This is the height of ignorance and exactly the type of stupidity the enemies of Africa wish upon us.  There are many areas of Africa that are rolling out the carpet for Africans in the U.S. to travel to Africa.  Granted, this is a bourgeois level invitation, but we should use it to make grassroots connections to our mother.  The Western Hemisphere is such a small part of who we are and what we can accomplish, but we will never understand that if we don't grow beyond the parameters provided to us by our enemies.  So, think about it.  I'm tired of people only wanting to talk about traveling to Europe as if that's the pinnacle of cultural development.  I'm also sickened to see the connection and consciousness other people have to their homelands only to see Africans having only the context of surviving oppression on the plantation.  Edward Blyden, Paul Cuffee, Marcus Garvey, and others sought to awaken us about our motherland, our homeland, over 100 years ago and many have come and gone with the same message.  The U.S. is nothing without the exploitation of Africa propping it up so don't think that connecting to the U.S. makes you connect with the winner.  That tide is turning and it's turning fast.  Take steps to prepare yourself and your family for the next phase.  Africa is getting stronger and no force on Earth will stop her!  Take the opportunity to introduce yourself to your mother, the sleeping giant of the world.  In doing so, you may find that you learn many important elements about yourself that you have been trying to understand for quite some time.

Its November and that means its time to be besieged with the annual 24/7 propaganda campaign designed to get us to spend money we don't have.  The institutionalized pressure to buy, buy, buy, is succumbed to by millions every year who go into debt annually buying worthless material products for people in our lives that we usually have at best, very dysfunctional relationships.  We are told that if we cannot buy (exploited) diamonds and jewels, cars, clothes, and electronics for our loved ones for Christmas that we don't love them.  This is the subtle message communicated by capitalism because everyone knows you are what you can buy in this system so if you can't buy anything, then the logical extension of that is you obviously aren't worth anything as a human being.

The impact this backward thinking has on people is evidenced by the fact there are more suicides in November and December than the entire rest of the year.  People are killing themselves because they can't measure up to the standards set up by the capitalist system.  Standards that are designed to reap profits for the system regardless of the hardships trying to meet expectations places on people.  

The other troublesome aspect of this blind consumerism is the lies that all of it is based on.  Thankstaking is a vicious and terrible reminder of the heartless terrorism carried out by the original invaders from Europe.  There was no cross cultural meal celebrating the arrival of these terrorists.  The actual turkey dinner is nothing except a retake of the celebratory dinner from 1637 involving Europeans celebrating the cowardly slaughter of the Pequot people.  So, when you sit down on that Thursday and eat, whether you verbally acknowledge it or not, whether you think its about football or not, what you are really doing when you sit down is validating an attempt to wipe out the Native peoples of this hemisphere.  As for Christmas, Biblical scholars have asserted for quite some time that all evidence suggests that Jesus the man was born in the early fall, September by most accounts.  Economists equally agree that the December 25th date was concocted solely to provide an annual economic boom day at the end of the year for merchants.  The fact that Christmas should be a Christian holiday is lost in the midst of all this shameless consumerism.  I guess that explains why any semblance of Christian values is completely abandoned by so-called Christians who are out searching for that deal.  Once the retail doors open on the day after thankstaking, all rules are out the window.  In fact, people act like weekend violence in Chicago is such a primitive phenomenon when that day after thanksgiving is easily the most collectively violent day of the year, every year.    

There's no question that it's time for justice seeking persons to speak out against this annual foolishness.  It's time to stop ignoring and co-existing with it.  It's time to challenge it.  For me it's easy.  I haven't celebrated any of these imperialist holidays since at least the early 80s when I was in my late teens/early twenties.  In fact, my 28 year old daughter has never celebrated Christmas, thankstaking, fourth of the lie, or any of these propaganda weapons against humanity and she's as intelligent, well adjusted, and happy as any of your children if not more.  My daughter is the way she is because we redirected our energies into collective inspirational activities this time of year.  We developed alternative events to promote positive values centered around justice.  My daughter was raised going to the American Indian Movement's "un-thanksgiving" sunrise ceremony at Alcatraz the morning of the so-called holiday.  We used the end of the December to organize and participate in ideological family get togethers where we reaffirmed the values of resistance against this system of oppression.  My daughter is better for this as well as myself and all the other comrades, family, and friends who take this healthy approach.  I even remember with fondness how relieved my parents were when I explained to them years before they died that they need not worry about buying presents for me and their granddaughter any longer.  That what we really wanted was to spend time with them.  Now that they are gone, it's that time with them that my daughter and I miss, not any adherence to imperialism's script for carrying out its propaganda agenda.  

So for 2015 you should join us by refusing to participate in this anti-human consumer fraud scam.  Save your money and if you must spend, use money to visit loved ones.  Pool your monies and take a trip to discuss how we can reach out to our youth and make some small contribution to humanity.  I know that if you take that step to say goodbye once and for all to thankstaking, Mis-Christ, the fourth of the lie, and all imperialist manifestations, you will feel better as a human being and it will clear the way for bigger and better reflections for building a better world.  Plus, you will be happier and healthier once you are freed from having to participate in these meaningless annual exercises in corporate subsidizing.   

I have a very good friend in California who immigrated to the U.S. as a child with her family from the Philippines.  We met in the workplace and our initial conversations were centered around politics, specifically my radical revolutionary views and practices.  Much of what was involved in those initial discussions were points and counter points around the question of the rightful place for loyalty for persons who immigrate to the U.S.  My friend's original argument was that she and her family were thankful to the U.S. for the opportunities it provides to her family to seek freedom from the conditions they faced while living in the Philippines. Understanding then that her views were common among most people, particularly people of color e.g. Africans, Asians, Arabs, Central and South Americans, people from, the Caribbean, who come to the U.S., I argued a quite different position that challenged much of the foundation of what she believed.  I argued that her family and every other immigrant family that came here from anywhere outside of Europe actually owed a debt to the African civil rights movement and not the U.S. government.  I explained that the U.S. government was founded on racist ideology and practices and had never done anything to make things "better" for families like hers.  In fact, whatever opportunities are provided to anyone who comes to the U.S. are the result of the struggle of my people to open the doors up for any such "opportunities" to arise.  It took some time, but eventually my good friend, being the intelligent and thoughtful person that she is, began to see the merits of my position.

Although my discussions with her took place 15 years ago, the concepts behind them still stand true.  It is indeed a fact that immigration policies in the U.S. were decidedly European before 1965.  In other words, if you weren't white, you weren't right, and you weren't getting into the U.S.   Before 1965, immigration policy was structured around a quota system where the determination of who would get immigration visas was based on the percentage of your ethnic group in the existing U.S. census.  Since the overwhelming majority of people in the U.S. at that time were of European descent, that meant the overwhelming majority of people offered immigration visas would also be a European descent.  Consequently, before 1965, approximately 93% of all immigrants in the U.S. were European (white).  So, in other words, no matter how smart, how good looking, how patriotic you were to uncle sam, if you were of color, tough luck getting a visa to enter the U.S.  It wasn't going to happen.

What changed was the great deal of pressure activists within the civil rights movement put on the legislature to broaden immigration policies.  This work consisted of challenging the racist foundation of immigration policies in concert with efforts to challenge racist practices in all levels of governance.  The result of this social pressure was the 1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, or the Hart Celler Act, which abolished the quota system and changed the focus of immigration to uniting families and providing a human rights service.  This change in focus greatly benefited people of color who's lands were the target of imperialist wars and occupations.  As a result, the immigration gates were opened for people from Vietnam, Laos, the Philippines, Azania, South Africa, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Mexico, etc.  This change in immigration focus has had a dramatic impact on who is immigrating to the U.S.  For example, in 1950, 60% of all immigrants that year were from Europe.  In 1990, according to the census, 90% of all immigrants were from Asia, Africa, Central and South America.  In that year, a whopping 35% were from Asian countries.  Those figures have tipped dramatically as unstable economic policies from imperialist trade policies like NAFTA and GATT have terrorized the people's of Mexico, El Salvador, etc., into fleeing chaos to come to the U.S.

The point is the ability to come to the U.S. shouldn't be seen as any great moral offering by U.S. capitalism.  It is instead the result of mass policies of destabilization in countries around the world in imperialism's constant pursuit of riches and control of land resources.  Even still, the racist policies that have always defined this country would never have supported the masses of immigrants of color coming here without the push of those freedom fighters who fought to challenge systematic racism in every space of U.S. policy; domestic and international.  So, despite the propaganda you receive telling you to thank this country for being here, what you folks of color who's families have immigrated here should be doing is thanking the masses of Africans who shed blood and opened the door for you.  You should learn to look at uncle sam for exactly what he is.  The terrorist that sabotaged your country in the first place, thus making your ability to stay and prosper there impossible while he posed as your friend and acted as if he was offering you safety when he has never wanted you here in the first place.

I've been the victim of crime many times in my life.  As a result, I've called the police a few times, but only to create police reports so I could file insurance claims to get replaced what was stolen from me.  I've never called the police to come to my aide or the aide of anyone connected to me.  I've never called them to intervene or investigate any issues.  I have worked with people to investigate numerous crimes against humanity and I have been involved in a number of situations, more than I can recall off hand, where the community has been able  to resolve the issue without involving the police.  So, you are not going to be able to convince me that police serve a practical purpose.

I know they don't matter because I know they were never created to serve and protect people that look like me.  The concept of police departments evolved from the former slave catcher terrorist patrols in the South and the City Watch patrols in the North.  Both were designed to control, restrict, and direct the movement of African people.  That's why you cannot find a single police department anywhere if you look before 1863 when slavery was eliminated.  The departments were created from those terrorist posses that used violence and trauma to intimidate and force Africans back to the plantation.  These animals were hired to do this because the industry people were afraid the plantation business would be destroyed as African people left the south in droves to escape that environment.  All of this is depicted quite nicely in the 1972 film "Buck and the Preacher" staring Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, and Ruby Dee.  Thus, Chuck D's classic reference of "overseeer to officer."  In fact, the much discussed Second Amendment was finalized in large part due to this slavery question.  The wording of that amendment was focused on insuring these terrorist posses had the legal right to remain armed.  So, don't talk to us about protecting gun rights and police protecting communities because we know none of this applies to African people.  That's why African gun rights are never upheld by racist groups like the National Rifle Association  (NRA - see the Mulford Act from 1967 in California which was designed to disarm the Black Panther Party after they marched into the state Capitol in Sacramento with guns in May of 1967.  This measure was fully supported by the NRA).

So, it's clear that police were never created to serve and protect African people.  If you throw in the fact that capitalism is built and maintained on the backs of Africa's human and material resources, then it's clear that the real role of police is to repress the African masses in order to insure the oppression of African people and this is true everywhere in the world.  This repression is essential for the maintenance of capitalism and therefore, is permitted to continue unabated.  The repression is necessary because the unique position of African people as the basis of this system's continued operation objectively places us as the most likely enemies of the capitalist system.  This is the reason why we are the only people who have historically "burned this country from plantations to cities" as Kwame Ture correctly pointed out.  You can apply Kwame's logic to Europe, Australia, etc.  The role of police is to stop us from resisting.  Stop us from organizing and overturning this backward system.  The role of police is to protect the interest of the corporate rulers.  That's why if there is a dispute between banks and residents of houses, the police always take the side of the banks.  It's why police shoot African people down without due process and why there is widespread support for them in doing so.  It's why police respond to legitimate cries of pain for African suffering with an arrogant and a-historical response of "police matter."

Since slavery, police have always been the security guards for the super-rich.  That's their job and the sooner we understand that, the sooner we can solve the problem of police terrorism.  We will never solve it as long as we are holding onto this fantasy perspective that the police must be held accountable to serve us with justice and respect.  That will never happen because the interests the police represent is diametrically opposed to the human interests of the masses of African humanity.

We don't need them anyway.  We can solve our own problems.  We can do so by coming together as community to collectively address the issues that plague us.  We have enough people who are trained as therapists and counselors.  We sacrificed and made it possible for them to pursue those skills because we knew we needed it.  So, why are we continuing to let those folks work for our enemies while our people gain very little benefit from their crafts?  We should be organizing those folks to service the drug, alcohol, and other addiction needs of our people.  We should organize those with self defense skills to train our communities on how to protect ourselves from predators.  And we should engage in mass political education in our communities to spread the message that we are the gatekeepers of the health and safety of our people.  This is the reason we carry out the free breakfast program in N. Portland.  Because we see it as a beginning stage of building that sort of self determination in our communities in a socialist manner.  We call upon true revolutionaries to create similar problems everywhere.  If our people can glimpse what a liberated zone looks like where they live, then we can understand the necessity for our national homeland - Africa - to be a liberated zone because whatever we can accomplish locally is simply a snapshot at what's possible for us once Africa is free.  This is the work needed.  Let's start doing it so we can eliminate the capacity for these armed terrorists known as police to continue to patrol and oppress among our people.

Minister Louis Farrakhan's comments on the assassination of Malcolm X at the 10/10/15 Million Man March reignited discussions everywhere about the subject.  Did the Nation of Islam (NOI) have a hand in Malcolm's murder?  If not, who did it?  The question is one that's haunted me since 1979 when I was 17 years old.  During my first semester of college, I decided to read the "Autobiography of Malcolm X."  From that I was hooked on Malcolm.  He immediately became my ideological father to which he remains to this day.  I read "The Assassination of Malcolm X" immediately after completing the autobiography and since that time I'm quite sure I've read every book there is on Malcolm.  I traced his life physically, traveling to Omaha, Nebraska, to find the street he grew up on.  I went to Detroit and found the house he lived in there.  I had a personal ceremony with my daughter at the former Audobon Ballroom where he was assassinated and I followed his steps to Ghana, West Africa.  

What all those experiences have taught me is that most of what is being discussed and presented about Malcolm is very limited and shortsighted.  Spike Lee's movie was an absolutely terrible representation of Malcolm, his life, and certainly his ideas and actions.  And, like much in this society, most people rely on the movie to form most of what they think they know about Malcolm.  

What I will say about Malcolm's murder is Minister Farrakhan didn't kill him.  He's not totally without blame either.  A simple way to put it is we know for a fact from Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files, open and made public from the 1974 Freedom of Information Act (FOI), that the FBI had "high level" informants in the Nation of Islam as early as 1957.  It's reasonable to believe that those high level informants were placed within the highest level of leadership of the NOI.  In fact, we believe that John Ali, the former National Secretary of the NOI, was more than likely an FBI man placed within the NOI.  Ali was brought to Elijah Muhammad by Malcolm and it was Malcolm who sponsored Ali for the national secretary position.  Once Ali got in that position, his relationship with Malcolm changed.  The quality of communication between Malcolm and Mr. Muhammad began to erode as John Ali became the intermediary.  Malcolm's access to Mr. Muhammad was much more limited and problems in communication began to happen on a frequent basis.  An example of this was Malcolm's much discussed "chickens coming home to roost" comments after John Kennedy was assassinated which presumably led to Malcolm's suspension from the NOI.  It is John Ali who can be seen on every documentary immediately staging the press conference to denounce Malcolm.  Ali had played the same interference/sabotage  role during Malcolm's meeting with Fidel Castro in Harlem in 1960, the Ronald Stokes incident in Los Angeles in 1962, and with Malcolm's relationship with Muhammad Ali who was then known as Cassius Clay.  The day after Malcolm's murder, there was an FBI memorandum which congratulated operatives for a "job well done."  That document discussed a cash bonus payout for what took place.  Ali was more than likely on the receiving end of that payout, but he had a lot of help and this is where Minister Farrakhan comes in.

Ali and whomever else was paid to cause havoc within the NOI were able to do so by driving a wedge between Malcolm and Mr. Muhammad.  The Muhammad family, vastly concerned that Malcolm's integrity and commitment to the African liberation struggle would jeopardize their material comfort should Malcolm rise to become leader of the NOI should Mr. Muhammad pass on, were more than willing to be pawns in the demise of Minister Malcolm.  Herbert Muhammad, the longtime corrupt boxing manager to Muhammad Ali, and Mr. Muhammad's eldest son, Elijah Muhammad Jr. a power hungry and unstable man, and Raymond Sharriff, the Supreme Captain of the military wing of the Nation - the Fruit of Islam (FOI)- and his wife Ethel, were all bitter enemies of Malcolm.  Along with James Shabazz, the then minister of the Newark Mosque, and Minister Farrakhan, then the Boston minister, the FBI had people in place who would articulate the need to destroy Malcolm, thus setting stage for an environment within the NOI where Malcolm's assassination could take place.  Of course, all of these people are at worst guilty of self ambition, envy, and petty egoism.  It must be understood that it was this federal government that set the stage for Malcolm to be murdered.  Anyone who was involved on any level was simply a pawn for the wishes of the federal government.

What's practically never discussed is why the federal government wanted Malcolm out of the way.  If you watched Spike Lee's movie, you have no idea what the man did to qualify for death so we will give you a perspective here.  Although the comments after Kennedy's death were used as the reason for Malcolm's separation from the NOI, that separation was in the making long before 1963.  Malcolm was a political revolutionary.  A Pan-Africanist.  Based on the comments he made in the last year of his life (read the "Final Speeches of Malcolm X) he was a developing socialist.  All of this didn't happen just in 1964.  The seeds for Malcolm's political development were being sewn long before then.  If you want to understand his political development better, look to the meeting he arranged with Fidel Castro in 1960.  A meeting Mr. Muhammad was not that keen on, but one that Malcolm wanted because Malcolm knew Castro represented the emergence of new genuine revolutionary leadership in the world.  That meeting served as the beginning of the relationship between Malcolm and the revolutionary government of Cuba which apparently continued up until Malcolm's assassination.  Also, If you read/study Malcolm's speeches from 1962 forward, you will find that he was talking about a political agenda that had very little to do with the line and position of the Nation of Islam.  By the time he left the Nation in 1964, he was free to pursue the path he was ready to travel.  Some detractors claim that his call to Mr. Muhammad after his official break is proof he actually wanted to return to the NOI.  I completely reject this.  Leaving an established organization, the one that created your identity, would be frightening to anyone, even Malcolm X.  How many of us have severed a relationship just to go through one, two, three, or more periods of reconcilation before terminating the relationship once and for all?  This is not really a desire to continue in that relationship.  It's a fear of moving forward into uncharted territory.  Malcolm was ready to pursue his revolutionary path.  Much has been said about his trip to Mecca and his "conversion" to Sunni Islam, but the most important aspect of his trips were the political connections he made.  It was Malcolm himself that said the highest honor of his life was "having an audience with Kwame Nkrumah" (Malcolm's Autobiography).  Nkrumah gave Malcolm the political context of Pan-Africanism which answered Malcolm's questions about where to take the African struggle.  If you don't believe that, just look at the fact that Malcolm returned to the U.S. after meeting Nkrumah and started the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU) in 1964.  This organization was to serve as the U.S. branch of the Organization of African Unity (OAU - the African Union today) that Nkrumah founded in 1963.  Clear proof of Malcolm's Pan-Africanist inclinations.  We should also mention Gene Roberts, a New York police officer who posed as a member of Malcolm's OAAU.  Roberts actually gave Malcolm mouth to mouth after Malcolm was shot.  We know now that Robert's intention was not to save Malcolm, but to insure he was beyond recovery.  Roberts went on to frame the Panther 21 in 1969 of conspiring to blow up the Statue of Liberty.  There is also the much reported poisoning of Malcolm in Egypt in 1964 where doctor's there confirmed he had a toxic substance in his stomach and did not suffer from food poisoning.  And, the fact French intelligence officials later admitted they didn't want Malcolm to land in France days before his actual assassination because they didn't want him killed on their soil.  All of this is clearly far beyond the capacity of the Nation of Islam.

The fact U.S. intelligence forces were doggedly following Malcolm in Africa is common knowledge now.  Even Spike Lee got that part right.  Nkrumah even warned Malcolm that his own Ghanaian intelligence had told him that their information was that Malcolm would be assassinated upon his return to the U.S.  The U.S. government killed Malcolm because they were highly concerned about the revolutionary potential he was helping to create and that this revolutionary work was taking place on an international basis.  His ties with the radical Casablanca Group Pan-Africanists in Ghana and Guinea were a major issue with the U.S. along with his developing ties with the Cuban revolution and the Pan-Africanists in Egypt.  Malcolm had to go and in February of 1965 he was assassinated.  In February of 1966, Nkrumah's government was overthrown in a now acknowledged (by them) Central Intelligence Agency coup.  They made many attempts to overthrow the Sekou Ture regime in Guinea, but were unsuccessful until his death in 1984.  Of course, they continue to sabotage the Cuban revolution to this day in spite of their public efforts at reconciliation (the embargo remains in place).

An elder stated it best when he said the NOI may have fired the guns, but it was the U.S. government that bought the bullets.  Still, the NOI had many people who made the fed's job much easier than it should have been.  All of the people mentioned with an honorable mention to Newark Mosque FOI caption Clarence X Gill, possibly the master mind behind the assassination, helped set the stage for Malcolm's murder.  Uncle sam is the murderer.  He killed Malcolm like he killed Patrice Lumumba, Che Guevara, and countless other freedom fighters.  That's what uncle sam does and they will continue to do it until we have an organized mass that will make it impossible for them to kill the movement simply by killing individuals.

I recently received with great joy the video depicting Palestinian and African activists demonstrating our solidarity with each glorious struggle against injustice.  The examples are common knowledge now.  Palestinian youth tweeting to African anti-police terrorism activists tactics designed to effectively neutralize tear gas.  African activists taking trips to occupied Palestine (Israel) to observe first hand the terror being inflicted on the Palestinian people.  For those of us who have been doing this a while this is all wonderful, but we have an obligation to make sure you know its not new.  The relationship between the African liberation movement and the struggle by zionists to seize control of Palestinian homelands has a long, positive, and negative history.  Around the turn of the century number twenty, the zionists started going into high gear.  zionist leaders like Chaim Weizman aggressively sought to seek out the support of militant African leaders like the Honorable Marcus Garvey.  Garvey's Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) had millions of members on three continents and the Caribbean by 1924.  They had the Negro World publication which was published in English, Spanish, and French, in 33 countries.  Somehow, the zionist movement was able to convince Garvey that our justifiable struggle to liberate Africa was similar to the zionist effort to merge Judaism and the legitimate suffering of Jewish people throughout Europe with the zionist movements objective of stealing land in the name of Judaism.  So Garvey intertwined the zionist movement with the African liberation movement and often spoke of the zion movement, or the movement to go home.  One hundred years ago this must have made sense.  Especially to a struggling African people who were fighting for dignity, but the problem is Palestine was never home for the European descendants who now dominate occupied Palestine today.  This fact didn't stop the zionist movement from hoodwinking the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) later in the 20s.  Weizman even convinced NAACP leaders to sponsor him on a tour of African churches in the U.S. as a fundraising effort for the zionist movement.  After the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, this miss information continued to serve as the dominant narrative as evidenced by the creation in the early 1960s of the group Black Americans in Support of Israel (BASIC).  The objective of this organization was to insure that Africans participated in organized efforts to lobby for legislation in support of the state of Israel.  BASIC even fooled some honest people like Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who was a BASIC member.  In fact, King unfortunately said in 1967 that "any attack against Israel is anti-Semitism, whatever way it comes out."

Of course, the truth is zionism and Judaism have absolutely nothing to do with one another.  Judaism is a religion that has its roots in Africa.  This is evidenced none other than in the Bible where anyone can find Genesis, Chapter two, verse 13, which speaks of the role of Africa in the development of Judaism and Christianity.  Judaism, like Islam, Christianity, Rastafarianism, Buddhism, Santeria, and all forms of spiritual worship, seeks to make us live better as human beings.  To reach our highest potential as people.  Consequently, Judaism can never have anything in common with zionism which is a political movement with no religious basis that was founded specifically to create an imperialist state that would serve capitalist interests.  This has happened since 1948 as Israel serves as capitalism and imperialism's stronghold to the Middle East and gateway to the all important waterway passage from the East to the West and vice versa.  

Fortunately, African people. like all of humanity, do not stand still.  We struggle.  We move.  We fight to advance as a people and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) did just that when they (in 1967) courageously became the first national organization within the U.S. to come out in support of the Palestinian people in general and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in particular, which was considered the sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people at that time.  Before them, the Nation of Islam had been speaking out against zionism since the 1940s.  And, after SNCC, other organizations like the All African People's Revolutionary Party, most prominently through the words of Kwame Ture (the chairman of SNCC in 1967 - when he was known as Stokely Carmichael - when that organization took it's bold stance), became - according to the so-called Anti-Defamation League - "the most anti-zionist organization/voice in the U.S." from the early 1970s forward.  We accomplished this by making anti-zionism a regular part of our work.  When I came up in the A-APRP, every program we organized had a representative from the PLO.  Al-Fatah, at the time, but sometimes the Democratic Front the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front, etc.  African people came to expect it when attending our programs.  Whenever and wherever Kwame spoke, African Liberation Days all over the world, weekly local programs, the Palestinian question was a regular part of our program.

Before that, where did this anti-zionist consciousness come from and why did it emerge?  The where is connected to the Nation of Islam, most notably through the words of Malcolm X.  His consciousness against zionism was spiked by Elijah Muhammad in the late 50s, but he really began to understand the devastating nature of zionism when he took his first of two trips to the Middle East and Africa in 1964.  It was then that he met guerrilla fighters for the PLO who schooled him on the history of zionism.  It is also very much worth mentioning that there was a sister in the Nation of Islam named Ethel Minor who left the Nation with Malcolm.  She joined Malcolm's newly formed Organization of Afro American Unity.  Once Malcolm was assassinated, Ms. Minor joined SNCC and Kwame Ture credited her with bringing the anti-zionist consciousness to SNCC.  This consciousness was fueled by an understanding of zionism's rule in exploiting and pimping African people to build it's empire in occupied Palestine.  Besides the manipulation already mentioned with the NAACP and the UNIA, zionist Israel established close ties with the apartheid regime in Azania, South Africa.  Weizman and Jan Smuts, the South African Prime Minister in the early 1900s, established those ties with led to refined diamonds, mined in Southern Africa, becoming the primary export of the zionist state.  This remains the situation today.  This is reason why you can research any liberation movement on the African continent or off and you will find the zionist state engaged in working overtime to sabotage that movement.  This is true from the anti-apartheid forces to the Libyan Jamihiriya to African liberation organizations in the U.S.  

So, today, the foundation is a strong one.  Many of the activists on the ground don't know this history so hopefully this little bit can help them.  We have been working to support the Palestinian people for 50 years because doing so is just, but also because it's practical for our interests.  A weakened zionist state, which we've already documented is strengthened by exploiting Africa, only helps our African liberation fight.  Therefore, supporting Palestinian self-determination is only logical for us.  

The Palestinians will be victorious.  And, the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism is simply a matter of time.  We also give shout outs to our comrades in the Irish Republican socialist struggle because their efforts to win will weaken British imperialism, a major oppressor of African people everywhere.  And, last, but certainly not least, we provide our full support for the Indigenous people's of the Western Hemisphere. Their victory is ours and ours is theirs.  Forward Ever!

First, let's give credit where credit is due.  Twice in the last 20 years, Minister Louis Farrakhan has mobilized millions of people to come out and focus on a struggle for human justice and dignity.  Regardless of whatever you feel about Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam, or whatever your issue is, I respect his organizing capabilities.  In 1977, he made the decision to break away from Warith Deen Muhammad, Elijah Muhammad's son, who was ordained the successor to the elder Muhammad upon Elijah's death in February of 1975.  Warith deconstructed the Nation of Islam.  Dismantled the Fruit of Islam and the Muslim Girls Training and General Civilization Classes, and the teachings of his father.  Farrakhan spent years going from city to city, reorganizing and resurrecting the Nation of Islam in the image and teachings of his mentor; Elijah Muhammad.  Today, Farrakhan doesn't have the number of followers that Elijah Muhammad had back in the mid 60s - a then estimated 250,000, but Farrakhan has demonstrated a skilled ability to rebuild the Nation and his work to mobilize for the original Million Man March in 1995 and the commemoration march three days ago, is testimony to his organizing skills.  Although less people in the U.S. know of it, Farrakhan's organizing to rebuild the Nation is similar to the work the late Kwame Ture did to build Pan-African cadre for the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP).  Brother Joseph's recently released book - "Stokely - A Life" honors Kwame's organizing work in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC - pronounced SNICK) in Mississippi and Alabama in the mid sixties when he was known as Stokely Carmichael. Unfortunately, Joseph, as pretty much every capitalist scholar, chooses to ignore Kwame's even more impressive organizing work in Africa to build the A-APRP, expanding the party from one work study circle in Guinea-Conakry to Pan-African cadre all over the African continent, Europe, and the Americas today.  Of course, none of this is on CNN, BET, or CIA network, so most people know nothing about it.  This is especially true in this "if it ain't in my face, it don't exist" consciousness of the capitalist world in 2015.  In spite of these difficulties, understand that there is extensive work taking place.  Farrakhan has done that work for 60 years inside of the Nation of Islam and that should be respected.  I am objective enough to see that regardless of whatever other problems I do have and you should be too, especially since most of you can't even organize yourself to do what you want to do, not to mention millions of people.

And it is this organizing capacity that explains why the capitalist media has been silent on the Million Man March.  Please realize that the corporate/capitalist media - CNN, MSNBC, FOX, CNBC, and all the rest of them, are owned by the people who stand in complete opposition to the masses of people on the planet.  The people who exploit the worlds human and material resources for the purpose of private profit and control over the universe.  There is no objective reporting in a capitalist society.  This is why Africans shot down like dogs by slave catcher police are consistently criminalized and the police who murder them are humanized.  It's why people who stand up against U.S. imperialism are labeled terrorists while the U.S. can and does kill millions without the slightest accountability from the media.  It's why Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam can be compared to the kkk and neo-nazis with a straight face by the media while anyone with an intelligence level slightly above that of a fool knows that the Nation of Islam has never killed a single European while those white supremacist organizations have murdered, terrorized, and traumatized millions of innocent persons.  So, those of you waiting and wondering why there was no coverage of the march should just accept that it's not going to happen.  Yes, we know that they cover us when there are killings.  They cover Chicago when there are 40 shootings in our communities over a weekend.  They cover that so you think, logically, why wouldn't they cover the Million Man March where millions us come together without as much as a scratch being reported?  The problem is you are thinking with logic and they are thinking with dollar signs.  They know they have to keep the masses of people asleep, afraid, and disconnected from reality because that's their job as the propaganda organs of their masters.  They want everyone, including as many Africans as possible, to be angry and distrustful of the masses of Africans.  Especially those who have the audacity to rise up and challenge the legitimacy of the always in the right uncle sam.  

In spite of all of that, we are here to tell you not to fret. Kwame Ture taught us that we can organize our people without the capitalist media.  Kwame knew from his experiences in SNCC in the 60s that the media was not a friend to our movements.  So, the A-APRP has never used the capitalist media to do our work.  We never call them.  We never expect them to report our work and when they do come out, we may talk to them, we may not, depending upon whether we believe doing so will help what we are trying to do.  And, since 1972, we have put the word African on the lips of every African.  Even this fraudulent "African-American" is a compromise to our relentless work to convince our people that we are Africans fighting against the capitalist/imperialist network.  We have an anti- FBI/CIA campaign.  When I started in the A-APRP in 1984, we would do programs on those terrorist organizations.  I have been involved in hundreds of programs where we educated people about how the CIA murdered Patrice Lumumba in the Congo, Allende in Chile, Che Guevara in Bolivia.  How they overthrew the democratically elected governments of Nkrumah in Ghana, how they invaded Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan.  How the FBI illegally sabotaged African organizations like the Black Panther Party as well as our comrades in the American Indian Movement.  I've done educational programs like this on everyone from Anna Mae Pictoh Aquash to Fred Hampton to Mumia Abu Jamal to Thomas Sankara.  Today, pretty much everyone except a few slow thinkers understand that the FBI/CIA are not to be trusted.  This is because of the work of the A-APRP and many other organizations and we have done it without one media article, one television news report, one tweet to support our work.  I remember in 1998 when Kwame Ture made his physical transition and the so-called Black Entertainment Network, then owned by dark people, did a report on Kwame and life in Guinea-Conakry, the place Kwame spent the last 30 years of his life.  The report was rifled with racism and the very same miss-information that the capitalist media has been reporting since the 60s.  They said Kwame somehow lost his mind when he moved to Guinea.  Sekou Ture was a dictator.  Socialism has failed.  

You should understand why Minister Farrakhan and Kwame Ture were such good friends.  Although they had different perspectives on what is best for our people, they respected one another because they both understood that whatever good is going to happen to African people, we are the ones who are going to have to create it.  And, since this backward system is based on our continued exploitation, that means our liberation is tied to the destruction of capitalist uncle sam.  So, don't hold your breath waiting for CNN and the others to give anything resembling a balanced report of a historically important occasion like the Million Man March.  Don't sweat it though.  There will be a day soon when they will be begging to report whatever we want them to, but by then, their time will be up.

Unless you are from Guinea, have lived in Guinea, or have actively participated in revolutionary Pan-African political work, chances are you don't know much about Sekou Ture.  In fact, even if you are from Guinea, it's probable that we will disagree about much of you have been told about this great man.  Ture was the first president of Guinea, West Africa.  He was a founder and leader of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG).  As a young man he organized mine workers in Guinea against the treacherous tactics of the foreign mining industry.  He attended the historic 5th Pan-African Congress meeting in Britain in 1945 and rose to lead Guinea's courageous stand against French colonialism which led to the referendum in 1958 where Guinea was the only former French colony in Africa that voted overwhelmingly to separate from the French Union and declare independence now!  For that brave decision, the PDG was targeted and attacked relentlessly by France and the imperialist world and Sekou Ture's position as an eternal enemy of imperialism was cemented.  From 1958 until his death in 1984, Ture was subject to numerous assassination attempts.  This was especially true after the imperialists overthrew Kwame Nkrumah and the Convention People's Party in Ghana in 1966.  Ture responded to that assault by inviting Nkrumah to join him in Guinea as co-president of that country to which Nkrumah did, remaining co-president until his death untimely death in 1972.  Meanwhile, Guinea picked up the mantle held by Ghana as the base for African liberation in Africa.  The African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, and FRELIMO from Mozambique called Guinea home for their operations to wage struggle against the colonists and for that, Guinea suffered a cowardly military attack by Portugal in November of 1970 which was properly repelled by the courageous people of Guinea.  Ture is widely respected enough by African people that today, although many of them don't know it, that's the reason the names Sekou and Ture or Toure, are pretty common in African communities across the world.  For example, Kwame Ture, formally Stokely Carmichael, who moved to Guinea from the U.S. in 1968/69 heeded Nkrumah and Ture's call to work to build the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) and this work caused the then Stokely Carmichael to decide in 1977 to change his name to Kwame Ture to honor his teachers; Nkrumah and Ture.  

In spite of the many material contributions Ture and the PDG made to the African revolution, one of Ture's most significant contributions was his writings.  In fact, his critical essays, speeches, and books on African unity and the development of political parties dedicated to Pan-Africanism form much of the basis of the Nkrumahist/Tureist ideology of the A-APRP today.  One of those classic writings/speeches by Ture was his speech to the 6th Pan-African Congress in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania in 1974.  In that speech, Ture took the unpopular position of attacking the philosophy of "Negritude."  Ture described Negritude as the concept of making African people a race or a people who are identified by our race, instead of a people defined by our history and culture, which are directly linked to Africa.  I realize that some of you who call yourselves Black Nationalists are going to be as upset by reading this as many of those people were who were in attendance at that 6th Pan-African Congress meeting, but I encourage you to respond intellectually with science and not emotion.  Ture makes the undeniable point in this speech that Negritude as a concept was developed during colonialism when it was important for us to unite as a people who were oppressed by colonialism wherever we were on the planet.  Consequently, during that time, it makes sense that we would recognize ourselves as oppressed "Black" people, but Ture argues that this was always at best a temporary analysis based on the end of the colonial era which was mostly over with by the mid 1960s.  His point is before, during, and after colonialism, we have always been and will always be African people and that "African" is a political definition based on our connection to Africa, not a racial designation.  What do I mean by political definition?  Ture provides a concrete example on page 197 when he talks about Fidel Castro and Che Guevara.  Both white men who have made unquestionable contributions to forward African progress.  Ture discusses how Castro is fond of saying African blood flows through is veins and then Ture makes the point that why would any African reject Castro, who has done everything to advance Africa e.g. sending military troops to defend Africa, doctors to help cure Africa, providing safe spaces for African freedom fighters like Robert Williams and Assata Shakur.  Ture further argues that whether we like it or not, people of Arab descent and yes - European descent - have for whatever historical reasons, some related to colonialism and some not, been a part of Africa for centuries.  Now keep in mind that Ture is making his analysis based on his class perspective of the people's class versus the anti-people's class so he is talking specifically about people who make contributions towards Africa's forward progress.  So, in the final essence, Ture is defining an "African" as someone who is dedicated to the forward movement and emancipation of Africa.  This is going to be difficult for those of you who define an African based on the narrow parameters of biology or race.  You will have a hard time seeing that Ture is arguing that we really have no commonality with one another because we look the same.  When you see a "Black" person on the street you of course have to hope they are interested in African liberation.  You have an obligation to work with them and help them grow to making that commitment, but the truth is their physical appearance has nothing to do with whether they are committed to being an African revolutionary or an agent for imperialism.  This is the point Ture is making.  Since the A-APRP has the ideology of Nkrumahism/Tureism, this is why we adopt the class/nation/gender analysis because we cannot just have a race analysis because if you understand the history of class struggle (which means you have to understand what class structure and status mean and how it operates) you know that there have always been "Black" people who worked on the side of our enemies.  They did this not because they were confused.  They made conscious decisions to work for the enemy because they had a class interest in doing so.  For example, many "Black" people walk around today calling each-other "King" and "Queen."  If we understand class history, there is no way a king or queen is going to represent the interests of the masses of people no more than it's possible for a slave master to represent the interests of the slave.  So, class struggle isn't new.  King Tut was not your friend and Barack Obama isn't either.  No matter how cool they are and how proud looking at them makes you feel, these people are representatives of the ruling class.  This is why literally millions of Africans have been killed and displaced under Obama's watch.  AFRICACOM and structural readjustment from the International Monetary Fund have devastated Africa and opened it up for imperialist expansion and the destruction of the Libyan Jamihiriya and Muammar Qaddafi, led by Barack Obama, has set Africa back by unimaginable levels.  These are the types of things Ture is talking about in his speech and many of you need to learn how to listen to this science.  You would reject Qaddafi, because he was an Arab while ignoring his work to bring potable drinking water to the Sahara desert, a feat that was essential to liberating Africa.  Now, all of that is gone in large part by your "Black" president.  You would ignore the millions of dollars Qaddafi loaned to the Nation of Islam, an African in the U.S. organization.  You would ignore the support Qaddafi gave to African liberation movements like the African National Congress (when they were engaged in armed struggle against the racist apartheid regime).  Meanwhile, you same people who won't accept Qaddafi are telling us that our salvation is tied to supporting "Black" businesses who's entire business model is patterned after the capitalist corporations that have hijacked our people for the last 500 years.  We are expected to support these people with no evidence that they have any consciousness or commitment to supporting our people's liberation, just because they look like us?  You don't even respect our people enough to demand that these people make any type of commitment to us.  The only thing that corrupt model has proven it can produce is entities like the so-called "Black Entertainment Network" which even when it was so-called "Black" owned produced nothing of value and substance for the African community.  All it produced was profits for the people who owned it.  What Ture is arguing is a conscious and healthy minded African people would see Qaddafi and Castro as brothers, not enemies.  And, we would be looking with suspicion upon these so-called Africans who do nothing for our people except take our money for their overpriced products.  But, in order to fully understand Ture's arguments you must see land as essential to liberation.  To do this requires you to see Africa as primary because Africa is the only land we have any justifiable right to.  This doesn't mean anyone has to move anywhere.  We know many of you love this plantation.  It does mean that we have to see Africa as central to our existence, wherever we are.  If we see Africa in this way, then our basis for unity is the liberation and development of the African continent.  We would understand that this development, under scientific socialist development, would meet the needs of our people worldwide the same way splitting us up and disbursing us all over the world has helped develop and maintain imperialism.  If you understand all of this, then you understand the basis of revolutionary Pan-Africanism.

The final aspect of this is related to my latest novel.  The 542 page literary fiction work entitled "The Courage Equation."  There are some people, all of whom are too lazy to at least read the book first, who criticize the book because the main character is a White woman who moves from the U.S. to Africa and joins up with Africans to engage in a sincere fight to liberate Africa from imperialist domination.  I've heard it all regarding this character - who's name is Boahinmaa - which is an Akan name meaning "one who has left her community."  The name was given to her by the children of Ghana because of their acceptance of her sincere effort to respect and fit into their community.  Some of what I'm hearing; I'm disrespecting African women.  I'm justifying pursuing a White woman...Blah, blah, blah.  Wrong on all counts.  First, I'm a writer.  A fiction writer.  Maybe you have trouble writing your name coherently, but I am very capable and skilled at writing large volumes of content.  I have plenty of imagination and the ability to comprehensively translate what's in my head to paper. I've written before on several occasions the reasons why I chose to write this book and series the way I have.  Whether you believe it not is immaterial to me.  The point is Sekou Ture provides the philosophical and practical basis to give context for why I my story isn't some sort of warp minded betrayal of my community, but instead is a very honest portrayal of what the real African world actually looks like, whether you see it or not.  I know this doesn't play well for the Umar Johnson crowd.  I saw his very miss-informed analysis of socialism in the Pan-African movement on Youtube.  I have nothing against the brother or those who agree with him.   I just wish he would get an organization and build it to work towards his very suspect definition of Pan-Africanism.  I assert again that we are Nkrumahist/Tureists in pursuing one unified socialist Africa which we offer as the solution to our people's problems without apology.  My book gives a solid foundation for how Africans should work together and how the people who are around us can play a role without upsetting our cultural basis.  This is our reality, but we see this because we have a very clear and dedicated strategy for achieving Pan-Africanism.  So, my point is following Ture's logic, Boahinmaa Omawale is more of an African than many of the so-called Black Nationalists running around here viewing our people as a means to an end while contributing very little to actually advance our people beyond vomiting old tired capitalist solutions disguised in black face.

I reread Ture's speech recently, after not having read it for quite some time.  And after doing so, I'm re-energized.  I'm ready now to do battle with those who attack my writing because my work in a smaller way, is making a solid contribution like Ture's work in a big way. So, although he's already there, I'm going to make sure Sekou Ture stays with me.  When I'm talking about my book I'll think about how he must have felt in 1974, delivering this revolutionary message to many who were not ready to hear it.  And, I'll think about his classic statements that "if the enemy isn't doing anything against you, then you aren't doing anything" and his statement to Malcolm X when the latter was visiting him in 1964; "you are doing good work to transform our people.  We need dignity, not money, and our dignity is tied to Africa's liberation."

The criticisms have been coming in hard and heavy for months.  "I don't like Farrakhan.  I don't trust Farrakhan.  The Nation of Islam is using the march to promote Dianetics.  Nothing happened after the original Million Man March (MMM) in 1995.  Farrakhan killed Malcolm X.  I don't agree with the Nation's positions on women, LGBTQ, etc, etc, etc."  What all of those critiques reveal to me immediately is that the people making them have very little real understanding of our people's conditions and how to address our problems.  I say that because anyone who has that understanding is able to refute those criticisms quickly and decisively.  Are they able to do that because the criticisms are inaccurate?  I can tell you that I'm not a member of the Nation of Islam. I never have been, and I never will be.  The reason I went to the march is because I am a revolutionary organizer for African people.  I'm a cadre organizer for the All African People's Revolutionary Party, the organization I joined at age 22.  The organization I am still actively committed to at age 53.  I've organized countless programs for the A-APRP over the years.  I've introduced and recruited scores of people to our work.  I've done that on three continents and the Caribbean.  So, if I've learned anything during that work and over that period of time, it's that a smart organizer takes every opportunity to organize their people.  I attended the Million Man March because I knew hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of African people would be there.  I knew they would be there and they would be primed to talk about the problems and the solutions our people face.  This reality is an organizer's dream.  A fantasy experience of low hanging fruit.  A once in a lifetime chance to reach a lot of receptive people with our message at the same time.  

I can tell you what my experience was at the march.  There were at least one million people present.  Africans from every background.  Africans born in Africa, the Caribbean, Europe, and obviously, the U.S.  College educated Africans.  Working class Africans.  Older Africans.  Younger Africans.  Militant Africans.  Not so militant Africans.  Every opportunity to talk to people about our Pan-African work.  Myself and 10 other A-APRP organizers from the Maryland, Penn, California, New York, and Georgia chapters, passed out thousands of pieces of literature urging Africans to get organized.  I had hundreds of outstanding conversations with people.  Interactions where people thanked me.  Where we exchanged contact information with the persons I talked to and the organizers closest to them.  This is how we get people involved and getting people involved is how we get organized and getting organized is how we win.  

So, for the record, I don't believe Minister Farrakhan killed Malcolm X.  I believe he, and the Nation of Islam, were manipulated by the federal government as a part of the plan to murder Malcolm, but I don't believe Farrakhan was responsible.  And, whether the Nation of Islam is spreading Dianetics and whatever people think of them and their work today or in the past is completely non essential to me.  Wherever Africans are, I'm going to try and be there.  Wherever we are, the A-APRP should be trying to be there.  That's the point.  Being where our people are places us in a position to work with them which is exactly what I want to do.  Honestly, I didn't hear much of Farrakhan's speech.  I've heard the Minister live probably about seven or eight times over the years.  Plus, I was busy working while he was speaking.  That's the reason the critiques are so baseless to me.  Besides the fact most of the people making the criticisms couldn't organize themselves from one room to another, Farrakhan has been in the Nation of Islam for 60 years.  Whatever you think of him, whatever I think (I don't agree with most of what he says) I respect him because I respect organization.  I will always respect organization because you cannot refute that most people couldn't organize five people to do anything.  Yet, Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam have twice organized over a million Africans to come together.  Positive spirit and energy.  No violence, and a desire for action.  That's what 60 years of organization gets you.  So, humble yourself and understand that because someone goes to the march, it doesn't mean they are a disciple of L. Ron Hubbard. It doesn't mean they support and agree with Farrakhan or the Nation of Islam.  For us, it's an opportunity to organize our people.  If you could figure out a way to get a million people to do anything, I will be at your rally too.  Stop missing the point.  The picture above is myself with the immortal Dada Mukassa Ricks.  Forty nine years ago, Mukassa, when he was Willie Ricks, suggested to the leadership of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in rural Mississippi, during the march against fear, that it was time to move from the theme of "Freedom Now" (the theme of Martin Luther King's organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference) to "Black Power."  Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), followed the field guidance of Dada Mukassa and today not one African anywhere in the world has missed the influence of the Black Power movement.  This is how we organize friends.  I'm standing on Dada Mukassa's shoulders.  On Kwame Ture and Ruby Doris Robinson's shoulders.  And yes, on Minister Farrakhan's shoulders.  If I don't agree with him, I'm going to organize around what I agree with.  That's how we advance.  Let's work people and stop wasting time because we are too elitist or ignorant to do the necessary work to seriously address our problems.  Anyway, I have a secret.  The people who are best organized are going to win so you may want to get cracking.

Just last night I came across yet another attack against the work we do in the A-APRP here in the Pacific Northwest.  This particular attack very sloppily focused on yours truly and a speech I made with a Che Guevara shirt on as if to suggest that my wearing his image somehow invalidates our legitimacy as an organization.  What a country?  Here, you can just say someone's name and people, without having anything beyond sound bite information about that person, will become judge, jury, and executioner.  Imagine if you were indicted based on such flimsy and ill-legitimate evidence?  You would be outraged.  So, we are very upset about these continued baseless attacks against our hero; Ernesto "Che" Guevara.  And, since it seems to upset these criminals so much that we admire a great man such as Che, we will turn up the heat on singing his praises.  This is the perfect day to honor this man because it was 48 years ago today that his life was tragically cut short.  He was a revolutionary, a socialist, a visionary, a guerrilla fighter, a husband, a father, and an example that anyone honest about making the world a better place should emulate.

Why do we admire Che?  The many examples of his exemplary revolutionary personality has been stated on this blog many times so I won't take time to easily dismiss the tired old lies about Che being a corrupt leader.  The very people, accused war criminals under the despicable Batista regime that the Cuban revolution overthrew, would be called out as the scum they were by the dishonest hypocrites who slander Che's image if the shoe was on the other foot and these war criminals had been accused of the same crimes, but had been on the people's side instead of that of imperialism.  We admire Che because of his courage.  Everyone who fought alongside Che spoke of his constant habit of running out front when the shooting started.  In fact, Fidel Castro had many stern conversations with a determined Che, trying to encourage him to command the soldiers and not physically lead them into battle.  Compare that to U.S. military and political commanders, the overwhelming majority of whom would never go within a continent of a battle while never hesitating to send your family members into harm's way to die for multi-national corporate profits.  Che fought on the side of justice and unlike far too many people, he was always willing to put his behind on the line for that justice.  He never sought personal privilege and recognition.  In fact, another thing he was constantly criticized for was his lack of concern for his appearance.

We love Che and we have to acknowledge the irony of the attacks against him and us.  Our enemies accuse us of being racists because of our unwavering commitment to African nationalism and Pan-Africanism.  Yet, we honor a man like Che who identified as a white man.  We not only honor him, but we encourage white activists who claim to want to fight on the side of justice to seriously study Che's life because if you do, you will see someone who initiated Cuba's commitment to Africa.  In truth, it was Cuba's courageous presence in Southern Africa, started by Che's military work in the Congo in 1964, that led to the release of Nelson Mandela from prison in 1990.  The negotiation for his release was made based on Cuban troops leaving Southern Africa where they spent years fighting against racial segregation, settler colonialism, and capitalist domination.

Finally, for those who criticize some of Cuba's actions in the early days of the revolution in response to fears of aggression by counter revolutionaries (with the full backing of the U.S.).  Much of these accusations are centered around Che's role as a military commander.  To this we say that every revolution, especially one that takes place 90 miles from the bastion of world imperialism, is going to make errors.  You can continue to focus on those errors, but we suggest you contextualize these aspects by thinking about Cuba's commitment to place social justice above some people's personal rights.  This is a concept that is foreign to most people in capitalist societies where personal rights smash the value of collective advancement, justice, and any semblance of equity.  Che was committed to institutionalizing Cuba's socialist principles.  One of those principles was making sure education remains free and universal in Cuba.  So, regardless of what you think happened 50+ years ago, with Cuba's world recognized educational system, which stands second to no one, it will just be a matter of time before any discrepancies and shortcomings that people want to linger on will be wiped out.  It will take a few generations, but it will most definitely happen.  This is the process for collective advancement and this is the correct socialist model to make that happen.  Che is a major reason for that and for his role in it, we love and honor him.  So for every one of you reactionaries who attack him, we will be right there to set the record straight for our children and all justice loving people on the planet.  That's why 48 years after these reactionaries are gone they will be completely forgotten while Che's legacy grows and the love for him deepens with every breath that we take.