In the All African People's Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), we believe that every people's ideology, philosophy, and value system evolves from that people's culture. As a result, we trumpet Nkrumahism/Tureism as the ideology for Pan-African revolution, which we believe to be the ultimate solution to the problems African people face everywhere on the planet (all people of African descent are Africans and belong to the African nation - Kwame Nkrumah - "Class Struggle in Africa"). Nkrumahism/Tureism is steeped in categorial conversion and the other tenets of the Revolutionary African Personality that drives the new socialist woman and man that we seek to create for Africa's contribution to a better world for the future. Consequently, although we study and respect the ideas of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Le Duan, Engels, Luxemburg, etc., we believe those ideas are best suited for the people and culture which produced them. This is understandable if one has a clear definition of culture. We accept the definition provided by Sekou Ture - that culture is the sum total of a people's experiences. That said people take those experiences and shape their world with them. They use them to develop their legacy. It's important to understand this because many people have made the mistake of using other people's cultural analysis to attempt to understand their unrelated political reality. This is the reason Amilcar Cabral - a student of Nkrumahism/Tureism - correctly stated that "ideology cannot be exported." It is also the reason that a man like El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, better known as Malcolm X, could accurately predict that African urban rebellions, or slave revolts, would proliferate and continue all over the African world, long before this actually happened. This isn't to say that slave revolts didn't happen before Malcolm's time. Africans and all oppressed people have always resisted their oppressors. In fact, slave revolts such as the Maroon rebellions, Haitian revolution, Sam Sharpe rebellion in Jamaica, Nat Turner led revolt in the U.S., etc., had as much to do with the eventual eradication of institutionalized slavery as anything else. But, what we have seen since the 1960s has been a rise in spontaneous mass rebellions that result from the African masses reacting to state repression. This is the phenomenon that Brother Malcolm spoke specifically and precisely to. It was in a presentation he gave less than two weeks before his state initiated assassination. He was speaking at the invitation of the Africa Society of the London School of Economics on February 11, 1965, in London, England. When asked about the urban rebellion in Harlem, New York, the previous summer, Malcolm responded by explaining that the reason Africans are spontaneously reacting to police terrorism by tearing up the neighborhoods they live in is because "the entire economy of the communities we live in are not owned by us...The landlord is white. The merchant is white. The police are white. And the media paints the resisters as hoodlums when in fact their efforts are easily understandable." He continued to explain that until the power system that oppresses Africans is changed through a revolutionary process, rebellions would continue. There is a clear class/race analysis contained in Malcolm's assessment that serious activists would do well to study.
Fast forward to 2014. Many of you, confused by the rhetoric of the capitalist narrative, and without an African culturally based ideological understanding of this phenomenon, continue to parrot the same reactionary position that was addressed to Malcolm (which he appropriately answered) 50 years ago. The fact is since Malcolm's speech in 1965, we have seen literary hundreds of urban rebellions. Although these are all African rebellions, they can't be tied to any particular geography or language. Rebellions have taken place in Los Angeles (1965, 1992), Brixton, London (1981, 1995), Sydney, Australia (2004), Paris, France (2011), and most recently, Ferguson, Missouri (2014). What is consistent with all of these rebellions, and many others, is that they resulted from the African community's anger at police terrorism in the form of dehumanizing murders of African youth. For those of you who insist on maintaining a completely irrational and unscientific America-centric perspective of the African struggle and the world arena, what these rebellions are telling you is regardless of whether the African speaks British English, French, U.S. English, Southern U.S. English, West Coast English, etc., Africans are being systematically oppressed. More importantly, the African masses are sick of it, not just in the U.S., but all over the world.
This was Malcolm's message 50 years ago. Of course, 10 days after he gave that speech, his ability to contribute to solving this problem was permanently ended. Still, we have his cultural perspective to work with. We have his clear understanding of the mindset of his people, all over the world. We have the work of those who built on his cultural analysis, such as the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who said the greatest problem African people have is our dis-organization. As Kwame was fond of putting it "we are the only people in the world who rise up, burn a city down in three days, and then sit down for 30 years!" Kwame went on to explain that this occurs because we are not organized. That we must transform this spontaneous eruption into a planned, protracted, outright revolt against the capitalist power structure.
For the apologists and cowards, this isn't to say we are anywhere near being ready to develop that sustained attack against imperialism today. What it is saying is when yet another urban rebellion happens, for those who are always quick to point out that "the police have all the guns", your analysis indicates your lack of faith in people in general and your complete ignorance about revolution in particular. There are many more people who crave justice than there are police or military. The Vietnamese taught us that with mass organization, having the best weapons is never enough to win. With this understanding, they handed the U.S. a clear military defeat. Yet, people who claim to be revolutionary do absolutely no study of the Viet Minh Front which was the key to Vietnam's military victory over U.S. military forces. Huey P. Newton summed up the reasons for their victory by stating "the man's technology is never enough to defeat the will of the people" (yet another culturally based analysis). So, we know that our job is to harness the people's will with concrete information and to agitate the people to organize. This is clearly what happened in Vietnam and similar examples point to the same level of organization in the Cuban revolution, particularly their ability to repel the U.S. Navy Seal attack against Playa Del Giron (Bay of Pigs) in 1961. To have this success, we need soldiers who are willing to work with our people on a consistent basis and institutionalize this revolutionary political education process. Political education is necessary in order to even consider planning any type of confrontation against imperialism. We must be scientific in order to win. We need a disciplined approach where people are focused, strong minded, and committed. To get to this point requires one to engage in a political education process of your own. We have that available for you in the form of an Revolutionary Pan-African ideologically based work study program. If you are interested, please go to aaprporegon.org. If you don't live in Oregon, go to the site and click on the international website tab to find the A-APRP chapter near you. If there isn't one, let's talk about how you can start one. Science. Organization. Commitment. These are the tools that will move us to the place where we can stop waiting for the next African to be murdered either by other confused Africans on the streets, in state sponsored executions, or in any of the other inhuman ways that contribute to capitalism's continued dominance of our people.
Finally, if you don't want to join the A-APRP no problem. Join or start some organization working for justice for our people and for humanity. The point Malcolm, Kwame, Assata, Huey, Nkrumah, Ture, Cabral, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and everyone else made and makes is that organization decides everything. It's time for us to move beyond being shocked or upset about the problem. It's time to start work to solve it. What's your response going to be?
Fast forward to 2014. Many of you, confused by the rhetoric of the capitalist narrative, and without an African culturally based ideological understanding of this phenomenon, continue to parrot the same reactionary position that was addressed to Malcolm (which he appropriately answered) 50 years ago. The fact is since Malcolm's speech in 1965, we have seen literary hundreds of urban rebellions. Although these are all African rebellions, they can't be tied to any particular geography or language. Rebellions have taken place in Los Angeles (1965, 1992), Brixton, London (1981, 1995), Sydney, Australia (2004), Paris, France (2011), and most recently, Ferguson, Missouri (2014). What is consistent with all of these rebellions, and many others, is that they resulted from the African community's anger at police terrorism in the form of dehumanizing murders of African youth. For those of you who insist on maintaining a completely irrational and unscientific America-centric perspective of the African struggle and the world arena, what these rebellions are telling you is regardless of whether the African speaks British English, French, U.S. English, Southern U.S. English, West Coast English, etc., Africans are being systematically oppressed. More importantly, the African masses are sick of it, not just in the U.S., but all over the world.
This was Malcolm's message 50 years ago. Of course, 10 days after he gave that speech, his ability to contribute to solving this problem was permanently ended. Still, we have his cultural perspective to work with. We have his clear understanding of the mindset of his people, all over the world. We have the work of those who built on his cultural analysis, such as the late Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) who said the greatest problem African people have is our dis-organization. As Kwame was fond of putting it "we are the only people in the world who rise up, burn a city down in three days, and then sit down for 30 years!" Kwame went on to explain that this occurs because we are not organized. That we must transform this spontaneous eruption into a planned, protracted, outright revolt against the capitalist power structure.
For the apologists and cowards, this isn't to say we are anywhere near being ready to develop that sustained attack against imperialism today. What it is saying is when yet another urban rebellion happens, for those who are always quick to point out that "the police have all the guns", your analysis indicates your lack of faith in people in general and your complete ignorance about revolution in particular. There are many more people who crave justice than there are police or military. The Vietnamese taught us that with mass organization, having the best weapons is never enough to win. With this understanding, they handed the U.S. a clear military defeat. Yet, people who claim to be revolutionary do absolutely no study of the Viet Minh Front which was the key to Vietnam's military victory over U.S. military forces. Huey P. Newton summed up the reasons for their victory by stating "the man's technology is never enough to defeat the will of the people" (yet another culturally based analysis). So, we know that our job is to harness the people's will with concrete information and to agitate the people to organize. This is clearly what happened in Vietnam and similar examples point to the same level of organization in the Cuban revolution, particularly their ability to repel the U.S. Navy Seal attack against Playa Del Giron (Bay of Pigs) in 1961. To have this success, we need soldiers who are willing to work with our people on a consistent basis and institutionalize this revolutionary political education process. Political education is necessary in order to even consider planning any type of confrontation against imperialism. We must be scientific in order to win. We need a disciplined approach where people are focused, strong minded, and committed. To get to this point requires one to engage in a political education process of your own. We have that available for you in the form of an Revolutionary Pan-African ideologically based work study program. If you are interested, please go to aaprporegon.org. If you don't live in Oregon, go to the site and click on the international website tab to find the A-APRP chapter near you. If there isn't one, let's talk about how you can start one. Science. Organization. Commitment. These are the tools that will move us to the place where we can stop waiting for the next African to be murdered either by other confused Africans on the streets, in state sponsored executions, or in any of the other inhuman ways that contribute to capitalism's continued dominance of our people.
Finally, if you don't want to join the A-APRP no problem. Join or start some organization working for justice for our people and for humanity. The point Malcolm, Kwame, Assata, Huey, Nkrumah, Ture, Cabral, the Vietnamese, the Cubans, and everyone else made and makes is that organization decides everything. It's time for us to move beyond being shocked or upset about the problem. It's time to start work to solve it. What's your response going to be?
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