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Witnessing the Selling Out of Juneteenth Right Before Our Eyes

6/21/2021

For those active and aware of the African (Black) experience of struggle over the last 500+ years, Juneteenth, along with African Liberation Day and all commemorations of our glorious fight for dignity, are institutions to keep us focused on the work at hand. When I was growing up in San Francisco, California, U.S., in the 70s, events like Juneteenth had a decided political temperature. This was certainly the case in the historically strong and political African existence within the Bay Area. Juneteenth commemorations within the Fillmore and Hunters Points areas of San Francisco, areas African people dominated in the 70s, were independent, bold, and full of a clear focus on our continuing fight for liberation against this empire that continues to oppress us. I recall greatly enjoying the blaring music of James Brown, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, etc. The resulting dancing in the streets by thousands of Africans and others interested and supportive of our struggle and history. I was also influenced by the always present existence of speakers from the independent community based African nationalist organizations who organized those events. It was from those events and others that I learned that our people have always struggled against oppression from the eastern shores of Africa all the way to the western shores of this hemisphere. I learned about the Maroon resistance against the slave raids. The Quilombo societies that formed to protect our people. Societies that still exist today in Brazil and other places. The strong resistance of our people in Africa against colonialism and slavery. The message at those events was consistent and it had a strong impact on me. We, and only we will bring about the freedom of our people and that will only happen from all of us making commitments to get involved and participate in our liberation struggle on a collective basis. Those events were sponsored by independent and radical organizations like the Pan-African People’s Organization and other similar formations.

Fast forward to today and although independent and radical African organizations definitely still exist, I belong to one, our capacity to be the organizers of events like Juneteenth has been overrun by the non-profit industrial complex and for profit corporations. Today, organizations like the Pan-African People’s Organization and the National Committee for Reparations have been replaced in sponsorship by Wells Fargo and other multi-national corporations who can easily spend thousands of dollars for a show. As a result, the militant and uncompromising spirit of the Juneteenths I grew up with has been replaced by a dominant “can we all get along” party atmosphere that uplifts symbolic progress while hammering the message that the absolute only legitimate form of struggle that is morally acceptable is that waged through the capitalist electoral process on an individual basis.

I was talking to a longtime friend this past weekend. This African has been one of the most, if not the most, visible African drummers in this city for decades. He was lamenting how back in the day, he and other drummers and dancing groups customarily opened all cultural events like Juneteenth and how the atmosphere has changed so that such a cultural infusion today is extremely difficult. Its difficult because what that brother and others like him represent is the African cultural and independent spirit of our historical resistance. The organizers of today’s pro-capitalist join party events have absolutely no interests in keeping that spirit alive.

When you understand the contradictions of capitalism, class struggle, and neo-colonialism, none of this should surprise you. What’s challenging is that the majority of African people seem to see no issue with any of this. In fact, many of them have wholeheartedly accepted this move along individually to find your seat at the master’s table approach and theme to Juneteenth that was dominant at commemorations that happened this past weekend. I see it constantly. Instead of Juneteenth being a vehicle to encourage us to organize collectively for mass liberation against the system (as it was designed), it has become a “venmo Black people some money” day. I’m not saying we don’t need to support people who need financial support. I do this often, but we cannot permit our mass institutions for struggle for justice to be reduced to an individualistic focus on any random African who is struggling to pay their bills. Especially when that message loses the focus on the need for us to take collective responsibility for our liberation.
In most of these Juneteenth events there was little to no mention of police terrorism, systemic white supremacy and the thought that there would be any type of Pan-African message or – gasp – a comment about the need for revolution would be blasphemous. Instead, those necessary messages are now completely replaced with “get a job – preferably with the police department or sign up to join one of the military branches. Or, sign up for a new cell phone service or buy shirts with pictures of Kamala Harris and/or meaningless and absurd messages like “I’m rooting for everyone Black! (even if they work to advance the very system that oppresses our people)”

And, on social media, some Africans decry any effort by people like me to point up these contradictions because it ruins their party atmosphere. Regardless, these contradictions will continue to be exposed because African people must come to understand what’s actually happening here underneath the party atmospheres with Drake playing to red, black, and green balloons. The capitalist system is doing what it always does. Its job is to eradicate the militancy from our people. To perpetuate the long ago disproven myth that if we just continue to hold our breath, the oppression that holds us back will quietly disappear and these events are just “celebrations” about the waiting process and/or the celebration of the few individuals who have achieved some measure of advancement within the capitalist system (while the masses continue to suffer). And, the kicker is that these capitalists are so arrogant that their message will continue to hold our people that they do not even feel the need to address the obvious contradiction of their government approving a Juneteenth holiday (symbolic progress) while continuing to deny the importance of even teaching about the history of the chattel slavery system (institutional misinformation against us).

And, the capitalist system – always the source for all of our contradictions – isn’t solely to blame for all of this dysfunction. The African petti-bourgeoisie plays a significant role by continuing to flex their muscles by supporting all efforts to win our people over to the capitalist system. They do this because that is the very reason for their existence – to serve as a buffer class to control the masses of African people.

No one is saying you cannot enjoy the music, food, etc. None of you enjoy those things more than I do. What is being said here is when you have walked through the slave dungeons in Senegal and Ghana as I have. When you have visited the slave plantations in Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, Jamaica, and Cuba, as I have. When you have studied extensively and participated in our liberation struggle for quite some time as I have. You develop strong skills in being able to properly assess what’s happening with our people. Juneteenth, African Liberation Day, Kwanzaa, etc., all of it was created to serve one specific purpose. To remind us of the struggle and sacrifice required for us to be free as a people. The reminder is critical because the fight is obviously still taking place. That important last point gets completely erased by the corporate sponsored parties. Those are designed to make you think the struggle part is in the past so all that’s needed now is a few tweaks here and there and a party. The corporate structure of current day capitalism owes its origination and maintenance to the oppression of the African masses and that’s true specifically, not just theoretically. As a result, they will always see their role as that of using their massive resources (that result from their exploitation of Africa, the African masses, and all of humanity) to propagate us to have nothing except complete allegiance to their vision. Based on events this past weekend, the worrisome part is that many of our people, seem to be ok with accepting that dangerous message.

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Listen! Umar Johnson isn't Pan-Africanism. The African Masses Are

6/3/2021

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I have belonged to the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) for 37 years. Before that, I spent four undergraduate years and one graduate college year as a leader in campus Pan-African Student Unions. That means I’ve spent 42 of my 59 years on earth involved in Pan-African thinking and work. I certainly don’t know everything. I learn new things about our movement every-day, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to act like I don’t know any more about this movement than every random person out here. I’ve been fortunate enough to do concrete on the ground organizational Pan-African work in more cities than I can count in the U.S. I’ve done this work in Canada, Britain, Ghana, Gambia, Tanzania, Senegal, Jamaica, Cuba, and other places I can’t remember right now.

When I was a student Pan-Africanist I thought Pan-Africanism meant a nebulous global unity of all African (Black) people. There was no class or gender analysis for me in those early days. If you were “Black” that was the only requirement. The A-APRP taught me immediately that Pan-Africanism properly defined has a very concrete and specific definition and that definition is one unified socialist Africa. And, I’ve also come to understand clearly that our revolutionary Pan-African objective comes with uncompromisable principles i.e. a commitment to support struggles against injustice everywhere, including those carried out by non-African people. And, that the destruction of capitalism is a core element to our ability to achieve and sustain our objective while patriarchy and other forms of human oppression are just as evil as white supremacy.

Beyond the years of physical work I’ve done for the party, the element that has concretized my developing understanding is the A-APRP’s work study process. For 37 years I’ve participated in this process, studying everything from the ideas and practices of Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Ture, Walter Rodney, Assata Shakur, Malcolm X, etc., to the concepts of zionism, patriarchy, and more. Then taking that developed analysis to do work among our people. I’ve seen a lot in 37 years. I’ve seen people come to work study a few times, participate in little to no work, disappear, then later present themselves to others as experts on the ideology and practices of the A-APRP. I’ve seen people deliberately and/or unwittingly attempt to misrepresent the A-APRP. I’ve seen abusive people. I’ve never understood any of it. Since day one in 1984, I’ve taken this entire process as seriously as I could at all times. I did so because I’ve always seen it as my life mission. One that has been provided to me by our glorious ancestors. I’ve always believed that this reality required me to always approach my work with the highest level of integrity, selflessness, and consistency that I could muster.

All of this study and work has taught me several things, but one of my earliest lessons was to distrust anyone talking about liberating our people without any level of organization backing them. In other words, I freely admit, I’m always suspicious of non-organization individuals claiming to have ideas about how to liberate our people because I know individuals can never free our people so whenever I see that, I know there’s really some other agenda taking place. And, if these comments offend the anti-organization crowd, I care about that about as much as you seem to not care about us demonstrating consistently that liberation without organization is idealism.

All of the above is why someone like me, with the Pan-Africanist exposure I’ve had, can never take someone like Umar Johnson seriously. I came to be aware of him several years ago and I’ve been forced to address him nonstop, ever since. The reason for this is because regardless of what you say about Johnson, he has developed a widespread online presence that he has been able to convert into book sales, etc. He has also spent the last several years promising people an independent school that people have reportedly donated hundreds of thousands of dollars too. Johnson has done this by presenting himself as the “Prince of Pan-Africanism.” Although I curse the repeated number of times I’ve had to spend talking to people whose only interpretation of the word “Pan-Africanism” came from their exposure to Johnson on youtube, etc., his existence has helped provide us with plenty of opportunities to help people actually understand what revolutionary Pan-Africanism is really about.

And, this point is the main premise of this piece because my first strong clue that Johnson was not serious about Pan-Africanism was when I realized he didn’t even have an organization. The majority of African people (and everyone else) are not involved in organizing work among our people. As a result, many of us wouldn’t know what this work looked like if it walked right up to us and slapped us silly, but you can’t tell most of us that. That’s why lots of people who have followed Johnson probably didn’t think much about him lacking any type of organizational structure, but those of us serious about this work could never ignore that. We highlight that because we know from our work that revolutionary Pan-Africanism is only achievable through the power of the organized masses. The forces who built a system of institutionalized oppression of Africa and humanity are extensively organized. The capitalist system – built exclusively by seed money provided from the transatlantic slave trade (the enslavement of our ancestors financed the industrial period), is organized on every single level in a way to ensure the interests of capitalist multi-national corporations are always dominantly represented. They control the education you receive. They control the job you work at. They control the messages transmitted in the house of worship you attend. They even control how you view sports (by making you believe the imperialist national anthem, designed to promote support for their mercenary military, is supposed to have something to do with basketball, football, etc.). And, if you resist any of that they control the judicial system to send you to prison and/or force you to serve their violent interests in their military. All of that obviously requires intense organization on a mass level. And, since the system we are fighting is organized, we know we have to exceed their level of organization. That is the reason we understand clearly that anyone talking about our people uniting who doesn’t even prioritize or discuss the need for us to be organized on a mass level cannot be serious about our liberation.
Plus, anyone as intelligent as I’m sure Johnson must be, has to understand this question of the necessity of organization. The fact he ignores it anyway, tells us that there is probably a desire to avoid accountability, which serious participation in serious organizations demands. And, that brings us to Johnson’s alleged school project. Our poor people. So oppressed and desperate to alleviate that oppression that we are easy fodder for opportunists. Plus, capitalism trains us to look for the easy way to prosperity (who wants to marry a millionaire), so when someone like Johnson comes along with a shiny message, there are always plenty of us willing to listen. There are plenty of us who will give money or whatever. Chicken wing church preachers have been exploiting this weakness in our communities for centuries. So, Johnson tells you he’s starting a school and people donate money. Lots of money. A year passes. Then two. Then several years, right? No school. No accounting of the money. Nothing, but more solicitations. Those of us who do revolutionary Pan-Africanist work in as sincere a fashion as we can just shake our heads at this. Within the A-APRP I’ve worked in numerous schools in four different countries in Africa and two states within the U.S. to provide our youth a revolutionary education. A couple of those schools I’ve helped initiate. We have been able to run these institutions based on contributions from the community, book royalties I’ve received from my books, and other creative revenue streams. We’ve actually never had a money problem. When we ask the community for things, since we have a proven track record of integrity, people have no problem contributing money for a projector, transport, passports, school materials, food, etc. I will never forget when we made a community call for school supplies for our youth in Portland, Oregon, U.S., in 2016, we received so many contributions we had no where to house them. Quality stuff too. One young person donated several Skull Kandy backpacks that were extremely popular with the youth. Those backpacks had speakers built within them so that when the youth plugged their phones into them, they could listen to music, etc. I didn’t even realize that until one of the youth showed me from the backpack they chose. The point, if you are working with the people and earn their trust, regardless of how low-income people are, the money will always come for the work you are doing for the people. Kwame Nkrumah addressed this when he was asked about Ghana prioritizing economic development in the 50s. His response was that we must “seek ye political kingdom first” meaning the consciousness of the people is the priority, not money. When you have a conscious people, they will give their last nickel to support the work. On the flip side, when you have an unconscious and disorganized people, like we do today, every two-bit hustler with command of good talking points can swindle us with ease.

As I’ve said, I’ve had countless discussions with people, cleaning up the confusion related to Johnson and others. That’s a part of our mission i.e. helping our people understand what revolutionary Pan-Africanism actually is. That it always has to be centered around the liberation of Mother Africa and that all of us are a part of the African nation. And, that this liberation can only happen through an organized revolutionary struggle that is protracted and designed to eliminate neo-colonialism and its puppeteer – capitalism/imperialism – and replace them with the total liberation and unification of Africa under one continental socialist government.

Johnson advances ideas committed to capitalism, individualism, patriarchy, and homophobia. None of those backward anti-people qualities match revolutionary Pan-Africanism which is always a universal humanist ideology and objective centered on the masses of Africa and all of humanity. The challenges for us are the strengths we have are the organizing work we are doing worldwide and the hard-work, focus, and commitment it takes to sustain that work. As a result, we don’t know, nor do we desire to learn, how to craft the type of sexy soundbite message, with no substance, that people like Johnson have perfected. Such an approach would never work for what we are doing anyway, because that would be like someone using the same superficial tactics in a relationship with another human being. It’s a superficial approach which means it will fool people for a while, but eventually, people start to wise up to it. Kwame Ture labeled that the case of “when you boil dirty water, the scum always rises to the top!”

Meanwhile, we will continue doing what we have always been doing, serving our people to develop capacity to forge the type of strong fighting force that will bring us the freedom we desperately deserve. We will continue to straighten out the confusion. And, when our people are ready, we will be here ready to work with us for the real work required to bring justice for our people.

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"Memorial Day" Another Dishonest Play for Emotion Extortion

5/30/2021

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Every year, the U.S. government, backed 100% by the multi-national capitalist corporations that lead it, uses propaganda days to justify and normalize U.S. imperialism and exploitation. The spring/summer months have two of the largest in Memorial Day and their Fourth of July. We will say more about the Fourth of the Lie as it gets closer, but for this weekend, its this so-called “Memorial Day.” The premise of this day is that we all should pay respects to those who fought in the U.S. military and lost their lives. The capitalist system promotes the day as some sort of day of mourning. As an example, over the last few days, thousands of people on Twitter are criticizing bourgeoisie spokesperson Kamala Harris because she made a Memorial Day tweet about enjoying the weekend without paying homage to the imperialist definition of the day.

Since Harris is a primary spokesperson for U.S. imperialism, we are sure her statement was never meant to disparage imperialism. In fact, she was probably just operating within the selfish individualist mindset that most people in this society live by. That’s why Memorial Day is so absurd because most people, beyond empty rhetoric, have absolutely no concern for any of the U.S. troops who have died in battle. Part of that is because, as stated, people in this country are socialized to see very little beyond their noses and to interpret and value everything based solely on how it benefits them on an individual basis. In other words, what most people here actually mean when they say “respect Memorial Day” is they wish to maintain their privileged and comfortable lives and if that takes millions of U.S. troops being maimed and killed, than so be it. And, don’t expect any of them to spend five seconds even looking at these “veterans” stationed along any city offramp in this country.

And this perspective must be understood within the context of the contradictions within this capitalist system. We would argue that people don’t think beyond themselves because the very essence of this so-called “holiday” is based completely on lies and misinformation. No U.S. war has ever been fought for any reason other than to develop, maintain, and sustain the dominance of multi-national corporate capitalism. Despite the propaganda, none of these wars has accomplished a single thing to establish stability for a single person within the U.S. and this certainly has not happened within any of the countries where these wars have taken place. Afghanistan, Iraq, Grenada, Somalia, Kosovo, Libya, etc. None of these countries are better based upon U.S. imperialist efforts. Instead, all of those countries are in much worse condition in every measurable category as a result of imperialist hegemony. And, as for people within the U.S., the continued decline of capitalism has never been so easy to see as it is now with the effects of the pandemic over the last year or so. Meanwhile, U.S. military veterans commit suicide at a rate of 25 per day.

The truth about all of this is that Memorial Day, the Fourth of the Lie, thankstaking, all of these propaganda days for capitalism each serve one purpose and one purpose only. Tools to convince you and me that we possess some exceptional protection from God. We are on the right side of history and the military elements from this country are God’s troops against the devil, so therefore, we have a responsibility to pay our respects to not only the military, but really the criminal values and objectives of the capitalists who lead this country.

And those capitalists have gone to great lengths to imbue institutions to promote their values. Millions are spent by the U.S. government, through the military, to ensure professional sporting events, high schools, job faires, colleges, etc., are soaked with respect for U.S. military/imperialism. This process is so institutionalized that most people don’t even recognize this blatant effort to politicize these events/institutions with imperialist propaganda. They only recognize the people who resist it, like Colin Kaepernick or those brave souls who protest military recruitment on high school and college campuses. People accuse these activists of politicizing everything when it was the capitalists who started that process a long time ago.

You will get no respect for Memorial Day here. You will get wishes of recovery and good will towards those who fought in those backward wars. Those people were duped into believing they were doing something worthwhile and regardless of that, most of them are only there in the first place due to economic opportunities that do not exist for them otherwise. This is extortion. Forcing people to do your violent bidding at the hope of being able to feed their families. Disgraceful, when in reality the U.S. military is nothing except a mercenary force designed to serve the violent interests of a soulless empire whose only concern is its continued dominance of the world at any cost.

Still, many more so-called veterans of U.S. military “service” need to join their comrades in exposing the contradictions of the U.S. military. Too many of them, in an effort to justify risking their lives for nothing, losing friends, and losing much themselves, continue to uphold this imperialist myth because it brings them some dysfunctional comfort on a personal level.

Instead of worshiping mercenaries and their missions, we would do well to study the consciousness of people within the Cuban revolution who reserve their hero worship for those thousands of selfless persons in Cuba who volunteer for medical service throughout poor countries in the world in Africa, Asia, etc. Celebrating people who make the world better instead of contributing to further destruction in the world. An amazing concept.

Another fake “Memorial Day” will come and go, but in another 30 days we will be forced to stomach imperialism’s biggest propaganda effort – July 4th. It never stops and it cannot stop because everyone knows that the only way you can sustain the dominance of a lie is to keep it going and never let up.

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Why Black Power/Unity Fully Realized Equals Pan-Africanism

5/24/2021

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May 25th each year is officially designated as African Liberation Day (ALD). Within the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP), we use ALD simply as an institution to organize our people around the concepts of Pan-Africanism i.e. the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism being the solution to the problems African people face today in 120 countries worldwide.

In 1989, Kwame Ture (Stokley Carmichael) participated in a panel discussion on the McNeal-Lehrer news show on the Public Broadcasting System. The purpose of the panel was to bring together different voices within the African community within the U.S. to talk about the then growing usage of the label “African-American” to signify Africans or people of African descent born and living within the U.S. Of course, Brother Ture was a major figure in the civil disobedience direct action period of the civil rights movement of the early to mid 60s, and the Black power movement in the latter 60s. Ture was the person who first publicly articulated the “Black power” theme during the civil rights “March against Fear” that was carried out in June of 1966. The last major civil rights march, this particular one brought with it a strategy by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) of which Ture was the chairperson. After engaging in the rigorous and failed campaign to properly integrate within the Mississippi, U.S. Democratic Party through the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (a SNCC project) in 1964, and the independent Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama the next year, Ture and SNCC had moved significantly away from the non-violent civil disobedience philosophy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. By 1966, SNCC was heavily influenced by the African nationalist philosophy of Malcolm X. As a result, SNCC decided to challenge King’s organization’s march theme of “Freedom Now” which King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had contributed to the march when the civil rights groups took it over after James Meredith was shot by a white racist. “Freedom Now” had been the standard theme for all the civil rights marches and SNCC, wanting to infuse more militancy and self-determination into the consciousness of the African masses, wanted to replace “Freedom Now” with “Black Power!” During some of the most dangerous and tense points of that march, Ture – at the urging of Mukassa Dada (Willie Ricks) who had organized around the “Black Power” theme at march stops ahead of the march – shouted the new slogan to hundreds of angry African youth who had just been terrorized once again by racist police and local people. This action galvanized the African masses nationwide and worldwide and Black Power became a rallying cry and movement for the next several years.

As a result of his position within that social development, Ture was asked during the television panel discussion whether he would adopt the term “African-American” or stay with the term “Black” which he was so instrumental in popularizing during the 60s. Ture responded that human consciousness moves at all times. He explained that during the 60s, we believed our primary struggle was one against white racism so in response to that, we asserted “Black is beautiful” and “Black Power.” Ture continued that as our understanding grew, we learned that our struggle isn’t just a struggle against white racism. It’s a struggle for power against the oppressive system (capitalism) which was built upon and sustained from our exploitation. As a result, Ture said that the power we need comes from controlling land and the land we have a right to is Africa so the correct term for us to identify ourselves is African.

It is that same logic that clarifies why Pan-Africanism is a much higher expression of our dignity and desire to be free and independent than Black Power. The term Black Power or Black unity is great, but lacking in substance as it relates to addressing core contradictions our people face. Our reality is that we know absolutely nothing about someone just based upon them being Black. As a result, someone can claim Blackness and be completely against the interests of the masses of our people. An example is a popular phrase being widely used today that says “I’m rooting for everyone Black!” This comment, well intentioned as it is, lacks class analysis and scientific reasoning. To say such a thing means you root for people like Mobutu or William O’Neal, or Barack Obama or Clarence Thomas since the only qualification is containing “Black” biological components (the inference being that having that component brings certain qualities with it – an assumption that is easily proven untrue). Of course, there are people somewhere who have taken the time to develop much deeper criteria for when they use the term “Black Power”, but for most people, and certainly the way its been practiced, it has no meaning beyond physical appearance. No connection to values, principles, and actions.

On the other hand, when we say revolutionary Pan-Africanism we are talking about an objective that contains certain ill-refutable principles. One is that Africa is our mother and rallying around and uniting around her liberation is at the core of our focus. And, by liberation, we automatically mean that capitalism and imperialism, the systems that have exploited Africa for 500+ years, must be destroyed and replaced by scientific socialism. It also means that by African, we mean a primarily political definition, not just a biological one. In other words, being an African requires a commitment to principles of justice and collective existence, not just what you look like (understanding that the only way to demonstrate your quality as a human is by what you do, not where you come from. In fact, what you do defines who you are i.e. African being a primarily political biological definition). With that understanding, Pan-Africanism comes with certain requirements that include an emphasis on mass and collective organization, not just the placement of individuals into visible positions and the suggestion that doing that alone equals progress (the capitalist way to providing symbols of progress to avoid the real thing). Pan-Africanism also includes an understanding that we do not struggle in isolation. The humanist principles of our Nkrumahist/Tureist ideology that drives our Pan-Africanist work prohibits any xenophobic confusion. As a result, we recognize and respect the fact that all non-African people fighting for justice are fighting against the same forces of oppression that we are. This doesn’t mean that we depend upon anyone except ourselves. Only the African masses can free Africa, but we do understand that victory for the Palestinians, Indigenous people’s of the Western Hemisphere, Irish, etc., does nothing except weaken the same enemies we are fighting against. Plus, our humanist African culture requires us to recognize everyone’s cries for justice, not just our own.

We cannot accept capitalism in blackface in 2021 and beyond as more tricknology to fool our people into false promises of forward progress. We cannot continue to act as if someone’s appearance qualifies them as trusted representatives of our people. Instead, we have to build mass movements that build collective leadership based on principles of justice, not individual leaders based on idealistic and symbolic imagery. So, revolutionary Pan-Africanism is without question, the highest expression of Black Power because it provides all of the elements we want from Black Power i.e. pride in our history and culture. While, it also gives us the scientific and humanist skills and vision to link up with our people everywhere on earth and with all of oppressed humanity. Participate in African Liberation Day 2021 and every year in May. African Liberation Day is the highest expression of Pan-Africanism and all of the wonderful principles we discuss in this piece.

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Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party & African Liberation Day

5/10/2021

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“a“Revolutionary or Death” is the 2020 biography written about former Black Panther Party (BPP) Minister of Information Leroy “Eldridge” Cleaver. The book was written by Justin Clifford. Eldridge Cleaver without question was an enigmatic figure within the BPP and Clifford attempts to use this biography to show a balanced view of Cleaver as insightful and talented while also displaying Cleaver’s brutality and ruthlessness.
Most people engaged in studying the history of African liberation movements in general and the BPP in particular already have some understanding of the contradictions within the BPP. Eldridge personified those contradictions. On the positive side, his open willingness to use the royalties from his best-selling book “Soul on Ice” to help finance the early stages of the BPP, and his work to establish the Los Angeles BPP Branch (the first outside of Oakland, California, U.S.), are clear examples here. It was Eldridge who recruited Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter into the BPP after their days doing time together at Folsom Prison in California during the 1960s. Carter, along with Fred Hampton, probably remain as the most iconic and respected BPP leaders to this day. Also, Cleaver’s work, along with people like Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael) and others to make the Panthers a national organization cannot be overstated.
On the dysfunctional side, Cleaver’s admitted focus on using rape as a method of controlling women is obviously disgraceful. And, along with that behavior was Cleaver’s consistent physical brutality against women, especially his longtime wife Kathleen Cleaver. And, then there’s Cleaver’s constant sexual manipulation and exploitation of women. And, his selfish and narcissistic behavior in this regard is also represented by his adventuristic and ideologically underdeveloped understanding of revolutionary theory and practice. It was his lack of understanding in this area that led to multiple people being killed, including Lil Bobby Hutton. Also, Cleaver’s underdeveloped political consciousness led the Panthers into an unsustainable position of confrontation against the U.S. government with nothing close to the capacity to engage that position. Then finally, there was Cleaver’s talent for creating and implementing the political personality that would best serve his individual interests. From being a model inmate in prison to becoming a member and eventual prison leader for the Nation of Islam. Then becoming a Marxist/Leninist and one of the primary voices for the BPP. Then he became first a born again right wing Christian before becoming a member of the Unification Church (Moonies). Then, he became a Mormon, and provocative clothes designer before reclaiming some of his radical left ideas during the last period of his life. Cleaver seemed to use identity the way most people use fashion, to represent the flavor of the day that works best for that day’s objective.
The contradictions related to Cleaver’s seemingly chameleon life created a broader question about the Black Panther Party itself. Due to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) counter-intelligence inspired beef between Cleaver and BPP co-founder Huey P. Newton, most people tend to view the two of them as opposites. The truth is much more complex, and that truth further defines the strengths and weaknesses within the BPP itself. Like Cleaver, Newton made major contributions to the BPP and the African liberation struggle in general. His vision in creating the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense provided the blueprint that current organizations like Black Lives Matter still borrow heavily from. And, his individual courage in being willing to publicly confront armed police in the name of justice provided a role model that people all over the world grew and benefited from. I remember being 13 years old and stealing a copy of a Playboy magazine that my father’s friend provided to him when my father was hospitalized. After staring at the naked pictures, I stumbled upon an article in the magazine, and it was the picture for the article that captured my imagination. It was Newton in the rattan chair with the African spear and shotgun, outfitted as a Panther, staring uncompromisingly ahead. I also recall the title of that article. It was “Why Blacks Aren’t Scary Anymore.” Today, I understand clearly that capitalism has always promoted the narrative that our people were scared to stand up for ourselves (and unfortunately, most of us don’t study our history enough to realize how untrue this is), but there is no question that Newton’s vision and practice made a major contribution to increasing the militancy in not only our movements, but in our communities all over the world.
Also like Cleaver, Newton had a history of brutality and ruthlessness to all genders of people. And, also like Cleaver, Newton’s abuse of drugs brought out more of his dysfunctional behavior at the expense of all those who suffered because they looked to Newton (and Cleaver) for principled leadership.
The reality of these contradictions with Cleaver and Newton reflects the broader contradictions that plague us as a people, and society as a whole. What these situations demonstrate is that we cannot expect to rely on individuals, regardless of how charismatic and intelligent, to “lead” our struggle because all of us are works in progress. Maybe not to the extremes mentioned here, but all of us have positives and negatives. Yet, all of us have unlimited potential to make much needed and necessary contributions. Still, the history of the BPP, Newton, Cleaver, etc., shows us that individual leadership is not the answer. The word cadre is used often today, but most people using it cannot demonstrate any true understanding of its meaning. Unlike its popular usage, the term isn’t inseparable from European communist parties. It doesn’t mean people who occupy privileged decision-making positions. Instead, it simply means persons who personify the principles and practices of revolutionary life through what they do on a consistent basis. By principles, we mean valuing humanity over all else and practicing patience, selflessness, and consistency with the people regardless of any and all obstacles that get in the way.
The development of collective cadre can only happen within a collective revolutionary process. That cannot mean haphazard discussions. It cannot mean intense intellectual study accompanied by nothing else. It can only mean mass processes where study and the tools of collective development i.e. criticism/self-criticism and democratic centralism, are utilized and institutionalized on an systemic basis.
Clearly, all of us deserve some of the blame for the behaviors of Cleaver, Newton and others because we did not build in processes to challenge their behaviors and hold them accountable. Instead, we built up these individual leaders as being larger than life and therefore incapable of being criticized. Examples of this are Cleaver’s erratic and dictatorial behavior in carrying out the ill-advised shootout against Oakland police two days after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (where Lil Bobby Hutton was killed). His dictatorial and abusive behavior while representing the BPP in Cuba and then Algeria, and North Korea. And, Newton’s abuse of power throughout the 70s which not only got people killed, but also contributed to numerous Panthers being incarcerated for long periods of time. These examples are still relevant today because we continue to make the same errors. Even in 2021, too many of us are still swayed by the symbolism of organization and power to which the BPP represented clearly during the 1960s. Just like we glorified the black leather jackets, black berets, and guns in the 60s, we still romanticize African people with guns and mouths that fire more inaccurately than the guns they carry. And, this is still a problem for us simply because most of us have never been involved in any actual organization of our people against injustice because if we were, we would be able to see the clear difference between real power/organization and the symbol of such. If we had actual experience, we could never be so easily fooled into becoming excited about anything except the real thing. And, we would know that by the real thing, we mean us building capacity to win and not just creating imagery to make us feel better without any positive changes in our material conditions.
The Panthers are gone today. Most of the people claiming to be Panthers now wanted nothing to do with the Panthers during the 60s. If you listen to people talk now, you would think the Panthers had millions of members when the reality is they never had more than a couple of thousand actual working members if that. And, of those who would join the BPP or similar organizations, too many of us were looking for someone to occupy the hotseat for us. Make all of the hard decisions. Someone to weather the criticism because we are not willing to occupy that position. Until we advance past this juvenile consciousness and accept the reality that liberation is a mass phenomenon we will never move forward. until we have mass, collective cadre leadership, we will continue to come up short. There are never going to be anymore Huey P. Newtons, Eldridge Cleavers, Malcolm X’s, Kwame Tures, etc., to occupy the position of “leader.” And, there shouldn’t be because we don’t need “leaders.” What we need are organizers who are willing to work with our people to establish and build foundation for real political power. And by political power we don’t mean the occupation of individual elected positions within the capitalist system (with no mass movement to hold those individuals and the system accountable). What we mean is what Kwame Ture defined as “the power of the organized masses of people” meaning a movement controlled by the masses, not individuals. This reality represents power so mass and collective that one, two, or 20 people cannot control it and/or be coopted by it. A movement so broad that no matter what individuals do and/or come and go, we will retain capacity to carry forward in an organized direction representative of mass decision making processes and actions.
To his credit, Kwame Ture came to understand the need for collective leadership and his work within the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) after his time in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Black Panther Party expressed this understanding. For the last 30 years of his life, Ture worked to make a contribution towards the A-APRP, Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), and other Pan-African formations becoming the collective cadre leadership organizations that we need. As a result of his efforts, this work continues today 20+ years after his physical transition which is the clearest example possible of why mass cadre leadership, not individual leaders, are important. When the individual leader dies or changes political direction their work stops. When there is mass leadership, the work continues regardless of what happens to individuals.
In the final analysis, we know who Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton are because of their monumental contributions to our struggle for justice. We should continue to honor those contributions, but we should also learn from their contradictions in order to help us build stronger mechanisms for our future struggle. May is African Liberation Day month. No day represents the push for mass collective African leadership more than African Liberation Day. Hopefully, we can use this year and future years of commemorating African Liberation Day to solidify the need for continued mass movement development.
ke a contribution towards the A-APRP, Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), and other Pan-African formations becoming the collective cadre leadership organizations that we need. As a result of his efforts, this work continues today 20+ years after his physical transition which is the clearest example possible of why mass cadre leadership, not individual leaders, are important. When the individual leader dies or changes political direction their work stops. When there is mass leadership, the work continues regardless of what happens to individuals.
In the final analysis, we know who Eldridge Cleaver and Huey P. Newton are because of their monumental contributions to our struggle for justice. We should continue to honor those contributions, but we should also learn from their contradictions in order to help us build stronger mechanisms for our future struggle. May is African Liberation Day month. No day represents the push for mass collective African leadership more than African Liberation Day. Hopefully, we can use this year and future years of commemorating African Liberation Day to solidify the need for continued mass movement development.

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A Democratic Example within the Culture of Violence and Injustice

5/6/2021

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Tupac Shakur performing at the A-APRP African Liberation Day at Oak Park, Sacramento, Calif, U.S., in 1991. The next year, we would be placed in a showdown with city of Sacramento that would challenge the strength of our democratic centralist practices

Within my recently released book “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence” I make the argument that the medicine for transforming people within a backward, capitalist society is the institutionalization of mass political education programs. For most people who hear this, their thought is that we are talking specifically about reading books and gaining individual intellectual knowledge. This definition of mass political education couldn’t be farther from the truth.

By mass political education what we mean is a process where comprehensive history, ideology, and philosophy is read, without question, but that is only one facet of the program. The material must be read in groups and those groups must commit to engage in that process on a consistent basis i.e. bi-monthly, monthly, weekly, etc. Other key components of this process are facilitation of the sessions should be rotated so that everyone has the opportunity to lead discussions of the material. This is critical because this practice helps prepare all participants with the skills to facilitate sessions, not just one or two dominant individuals. The rotation also ensures everyone is participating and providing their unique perspectives of the material because the more perspectives, the broader the understanding of what is being read and discussed.

The other components of this process are criticism/self-criticism and democratic centralism. The book describes in detail how criticism/self-criticism and democratic centralism should be properly carried out so we will not go into detail doing so here. What we will do is provide a clear example of democratic centralism in action in real life and how that process of democracy works to strengthen our work even in the most adverse of circumstances.

In late May 1992, the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) organized African Liberation Day (ALD) as a commemoration of our worldwide fight to build a Pan-African fighting force to run the capitalist/imperialist crooks out of Africa, regain our homeland, and build a socialist future for the African masses. ALD had been the template institution for African liberation since 1958 and the A-APRP had been organizing ALD commemorations on its own and in coalition since 1972. In 1984, the A-APRP expanded its organization of ALD beyond just Washington D.C. to multiple other cities throughout the U.S. Sacramento, California, U.S. was one of those additional cities and it was during the A-APRP’s first organized ALD in Sacramento in 1984 that I signed up to join the A-APRP. From that year forward, every year, the A-APRP has continued to organize ALD. In 2019, the last year before the pandemic, we played a role in organizing ALD commemorations in 17 cities worldwide of which most of those events were in Africa (as it should be). In 2021, we continue to organize on the ground ALD commemorations throughout Africa as well as some select other locations, including a major webcast ALD on May 22nd, and May 25th. From 1984, through 2008, we organized on the ground ALD commemorations in Sacramento that attracted thousands of people each year. During that stretch we had in person participation from people like Tupac Shakur (1991 – see the video of his performance on youtube), Dead Prez, Mutabaruka, and the Coup, but none of the years stand out to me beyond 1992.

That year we had a serious tussle with the city of Sacramento with getting a permit for our event. The park we had carried out the ALD rally from 1984 through 1991 – McClathey Park, or what the local Africans called “the big Park” in Oak Park, Sacramento, was having a stage constructed in 1991/92. The purpose of the city building a stage was to facilitate the city organizing music events in “the Big Park” as a part of their plan to land grab and gentrify Oak Park away from the African, Indigenous, and poor European masses who dominated the neighborhood during those days. Prior to 92, no city events took place in that park. In fact, nothing took place in that park besides drive-by shootings, drug deals, and other innocent and/or often nefarious activities. The city had all but abandoned the park until this revolutionary Pan-African A-APRP began having its ALD commemorations there. This involved us constructing our small sectional stage (that I stored in our garage) in that park the night before the ALD rally and me and other comrades sleeping in the park to protect the space. Sleeping in that park year after year during that period I observed all types of things. We broke up countless fights that involved weapons, including guns. We gave shelter and fed countless people and we used those opportunities to engage in thousands of conversations with the African masses, the lumpen proletariat, about the work we were doing. As a result of our success with our ALD commemorations, the city saw the opportunity and built their stage. And, from 1993 through 2008 we continued to organize ALD on that new stage while the park became more known for the city sponsored events that included big name entertainers like Eric Bonet and Hally Berry. Our events continued without a single hair ever being out of place with no security except our own A-APRP forces while the city events – equipped with armed police and private security – had numerous violent episodes to the point where they eventually ceased having events in the park they reclaimed from us. Their arrogance never once permitting them to wonder why we had none of the problems they regularly encountered.

So, due to the stage construction we needed a new venue for 1992. The next viable option was William Land Park in the center of the city. We didn’t want Land Park because it was surrounded by a petti bourgeoisie European neighborhood which made our pre-rally march, an annual event in Oak Park, ill-logical. Plus, Land Park was the apple of the city. The open stage area which was frequently used for drama events sat right across from the city zoo and the playland facility. Not the place the city really wanted to relinquish to African revolutionaries. And, to be honest, we couldn’t really see ourselves operating in that location either, but our options were few. After having established ourselves in that side of town for the previous seven years, we didn’t wish to move the event across town. Plus, there were not many other options that had a stage and the other amenities we needed (dressing rooms, electricity, etc.). Still, the city hadn’t changed their minds so initially, they rejected our application. We had to seek out legal representation when the city told us they were not issuing permits for social events in the park. We filed documents indicating that African Liberation Day was no social event. It was a political demonstration against the oppression African people face and a call to action for African people to become free. The city suggested we take our claim to the state and try to hold our rally at the state capitol. We explained to them that our event was not to make a demand of the capitalist government, but to call our people to action and that is why the event had been organized within the community. Despite the fact we were not going to be at the Big Park that year, we felt confident that the people would travel the extra mile or so to join us in Land Park if we had the event there.

Forced with facing a first amendment violation, we are sure the city’s attorney’s advised them to approve our permit, but the city issued the permit for Land Park usage while denying us a sound permit. When we protested they told us that city ordinances prevented any noise in the area from interfering with the musical sounds coming from playland and the zoo. Our attorneys confirmed their right to do this and we were forced to consider how we would proceed.

That decision resulted in several contentious late night meetings to discuss how we would proceed. There were several contributing factors. May of 1992 was just weeks after the L.A. rebellions as a result of police terrorism against the African masses. It was also weeks after the U.S. government had bombed the home of Libyan Jamahiriya leader Muammar Qaddafi’s home in Tripoli, Libya, North Africa. The mood of the African masses was tense and none of us were in a compromising mood. The internal debate was over whether we would honor the fact we had no sound permit (how would we do that) or just defy the ban and have our sound amplified which would have been a violation of the law that the city made clear to us would result in legal, including criminal, charges being filed against us.

This is where the effective usage of democratic centralism within our organization came into play. I particularly remember the discussion held the night before the ALD rally. It was a Friday night in our house. About 25 people. We debated back and forth, vigorously for hours until at least 3am Saturday morning. The positions were articulated repeatedly and painstakingly. Adding to the tension was my own household occupied different positions on the issue. My comrade ex-wife was always one of the pragmatic forces within our work. We had already taken a hit from the city a few years before when complaints filed against us for wheatpasted posters of Muammar Qaddafi led the city to pull our address from previous permits and sue us for damages. We had successfully fought that and won, but the stress was apparent in our house because she didn’t want to face another challenge like that. I didn’t either, but more important to me was not letting the city dictate our direction, especially not at such a crucial time. We collectively argued back and forth and at about 2:30am, after no new points were being introduced (you know, that place where everyone starts repeating things – the clear sign that its time to take a vote), the question was called. I don’t remember the count of the vote, but I do remember that the vote to use sound won out. I also recall that my comrade ex-wife was irritated with me as I was one of the loudest voices of defiance against the city. The point here is that democratic centralism (and the principled stance of my ex – the reason we maintain respect for each other today) was apparent. Once that vote turned out as it did, after repeated battles over the years and people demonstrating their commitment to principled struggle over and over, everyone in that room knew that if anyone of us went down due to our decision, we would all go down together. Thus, is the nature of democratic centralism. Everyone has the collective responsibility to abide by the decision, even if you disagreed with it. In fact, those that disagreed had the responsibility to work the hardest for the outcome that won out because that would be the only honest way you could assert the correctness of your position. Obviously you couldn’t do that if you did anything to sabotage the outcome. That would actually validate the opposite position.

The trust in all of us honoring democratic centralism, regardless of personal positions was important to me that night because without a march, the start of the rally would be the time when our decision would come into play. And, as the M/C, I would be the one up there. I would be the target. I wasn’t afraid of that. My largest concern was not letting the people down. If the police stormed us and shut down the event we would not only lose credibility, but our people would get the message that we cannot organize and represent for ourselves and there was nothing I wanted to do more than prevent such a negative message from happening. So, after 3am, our task was to get some sleep. Since we were not in Oak Park, it was no longer required to sleep in the park with our stage, but after such a contentious debate, and the requirement to be at the park early, the idea of sleep was unrealistic. I remember laying awake and attempting to think it through. We knew from past work that if we had enough Africans in that park, there would be little the police could do. If we didn’t have enough people, we were in trouble. The uncertainty of whether people would show up to the new location kept me up. I recall that at about 5am my ex and I started making contingency plans in the event one, both, or more of us were arrested. Within the A-APRP we operated in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee’s “jail, no bail” principle meaning if you are arrested, you are on your own. We didn’t intend upon ever making the mistake the Black Panthers did by making getting people out of prison our primary work (the Free Huey campaign helped the authorities recognize that they could derail the Panthers by locking up as many of the leaders as they could). Money was scarce, but despite our disagreement about the issue, we quietly discussed options in that bedroom in that house full of people who were undoubtedly having the same tensions. We knew, even in that bedroom that whatever happened, we would try to find some way not to leave anyone behind who was subjected to harassment by the police.
An hour or some and I was at the park. By 8am we had another meeting at the location to lay out our strategy to start at 1pm, no matter what. I was extremely nervous. Not for my role, but in the hopes people came out. By 9am it was already super hot. On its way to a triple digit day, I was unsure that people would be willing to come all the way to Land Park. I kept positioning myself into the bleacher seats which at least sat under shade trees. I prayed intensely to our ancestors.
Under what felt to me to be an intense atmosphere of tension we prepared. When the sound system was set up we did sound checks while watching for the police, expecting them to come down and try to arrest all of us.

By 12:45 you could cut the tension with a knife. It was about 95 degrees and I was sweating profusely. Not entirely from the heat, but I was also determined to represent our ancestors as best as I could. At about 12:55pm a phalanx of police, about a dozen of them, appeared at the top of the bleacher seat area, looking down upon us, but this this didn’t intimidate me, it emboldened me. My belief in our ancestors plus the knowledge that we were all there operating on the same page gave me more than enough strength. I couldn’t wait to hit that microphone and I did. I can’t even tell you what I said at 1pm, but it was probably one of my best introductions ever. I can tell you that I was highly inspired by the reality that despite the change in venue. Despite the heat. Despite no march, which always brought people into the event, there were at least 300 or 400 people already there and they were on their feet, participating with my words like a church audience with lots of verbal “talking back.” I talked about police terrorism in L.A. and everywhere. I talked about Africa being our home and how we would reach the point of organization where the police and the imperialist military would one day pay for their abuse of our people. The mike, the ground, everything seemed on fire to me as sweat stung in my eyes. I was up there continuing to fire people up with my eyes shut. I had almost forgotten all of the gestapos being there until I was alerted by comrade Nidamu that the police were approaching the stage. This prompted me to open my eyes, stinging and all. About eight of the police were marching down towards the stage as I introduced the first performer. I jumped from the stage to join Nidamu and other comrades in going to challenge the police when we were greeted by about 50 members of the audience who came down to intercept the police. Responding to my cries of this being our event and the need for us to exert our dignity in the face of repression, these wonderful African people were yelling at the police and telling them to leave. They surrounded the police and continued taunting them until a woman police smiled brightly and nervously towards me while offering a ring of keys in my direction.

“We just wanted to let you know someone left these keys in the trunk of their car!” She said in the sweetest voice. I took the keys and without acknowledging them further, returned to the stage. No one will ever be able to convince me that their intention was always to have eight police give us a set of keys, but once they saw the spirit of the people there wouldn’t be anything else they could do. Our strategy had worked! And even more important, our commitment and dedication to the principles of democratic centralism had ensured we would have the unity and focus to stick to our guns. Without that, there is absolutely no way I believe the events would have concluded that same way. I know I certainly could not have had the confidence I had without the assuredness that I had the full support of my comrades from that stage. People offered me praise for my performance that day, but I could never accept that. I knew that the victory was all of ours. I was simply the conduit of the expression of comradery and democracy we exhibited that night before. This is the strength of organized mass political education. This is the stuff that gives us the capacity to win. This is the formula that our enemies are afraid we will recognize and implement. This is the stuff we have to do because when we do, we will be unstoppable.

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A Review of "Black Power and Post-Colonial Society"

5/2/2021

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The 76 page “Black Power and Post-Colonial Society – Essays on Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), Religion, and More”, written by Dwayne Wong (Omowale) in 2020, is another book presentation by Wong designed to present his views on a number of topics as he has done previously. Its important to honor Wong’s efforts because the topics he chooses to write about, in this book and other works, i.e. the political views of people like Malcolm X, Kwame Ture, and Assata Shakur, as well as the political struggle in Guyana, and religion among African people, are subjects where very little literature exists. In Wong’s own words, he approaches his work from his Pan-African perspective. This book is filled with analysis and as a result, it provides the reader with many components to consider. In this day and age where intellectualism is largely considered to be a negative, this is a very important contribution to any and all efforts to expand political discourse, particularly around issues impacting the African masses.

The challenges I left Wong’s book with were connected primarily to his section on Kwame Ture and Ture’s time in Guinea-Conakry working as a militant and Central Committee member within the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG) and the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). After becoming known internationally as the face of the U.S. Black Power movement from the late 1960s, Ture moved to Guinea-Conakry and he spent the last 30 years of his life working to build Pan-African capacity based on the concepts demonstrated in Kwame Nkrumah’s 1968 book “The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare.” I would do absolutely anything to find analysis somewhere, anywhere, that spends time exploring the work Ture did in Guinea from 1969 to 1998 (the year he made his physical transition). I already possess much of that analysis because of my time as a cadre organizer within the A-APRP, but for the African masses in particular and humanity in general, Ture’s period living and working in Africa is left as an enigma. And, Wong’s book does nothing to contribute towards dismantling this information shortcoming. Had he, Pernel Joseph, or any of the scholars who chose to write about Kwame Ture after 1968 bothered to take time to examine his work within the PDG/A-APRP during that 30 year period (and not just consistently reduced Kwame to a 1960s Black power/civil rights celebrity), maybe we could learn more about the day to day work Kwame did in the PDG and the A-APRP to build up the revolutionary Pan-African cadre Nkrumah called upon him and all of us to do in the Handbook? Maybe Wong and others could come to understand the critically important work Ture contributed to in helping the PDG further define its relationship to the African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau (PAIGC), and for those organizations to do the same with the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (South Africa), the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), the A-APRP, and other Pan-Africanist formations operational throughout Africa and the African diaspora. Anyone who has engaged in organizational work focused around building ideological clarity and unity has to understand the difficulty in the work Ture dedicated his life to. And, those of us alive today, who have interacted with all of those Pan-African entities, and their efforts to further solidify their relationships, certainly can provide testament to the degree of difficulty and importance of that work, and the importance Kwame’s contributions made towards advancing that work.

Also, if Wong and others had been able to spend more time understanding that critical work Kwame Ture was engaged in, maybe that could have contributed to them developing a greater understanding of the government of Sekou Ture in Guinea, the PDG’s policies and practices, and an assessment and analysis of the PDG and Sekou Ture that extends beyond the same imperialist authoritarian depiction of Sekou Ture that has been dominant within the capitalist media for 50 years.

In Wong’s book, he repeats the accusations against Sekou Ture and the PDG about them being undemocratic and abusive towards the people of Guinea. And, I’m not here to try and diminish the mistakes the PDG made and/or explain them away. My writings on the subject, including the long review I wrote on Joseph’s 2014 biography on Kwame Ture entitled “Stokely – A Life”, have gone in great detail to acknowledge the errors the PDG made through its struggles with corruption, Camp Borio, etc. Still, Wong, acknowledges the challenges the PDG faced from imperialism’s efforts to constantly overthrow Sekou Ture as legitimate. As a result, a much deeper analysis of this history reveals several things. Instead of reducing the narrative to one of Sekou Ture being a dictator and the PDG being undemocratic, we instead choose to suggest that after 500 years of colonialism, African people have the right to learn how to govern in new ways, under new systems. To develop processes that function outside of the capitalist system that has clearly subjugated us. We believe the PDG attempted to do this and like any mass movement/efforts, it is going to take time to iron out the contradictions. Unlike the perfectionists from the white socialist/anarchist left – who have never recognized any of what was just written as it relates to African and other colonized people’s self determination (while they have also contributed even less of any substance to our movements, or even their own communities), we recognize that these new efforts at building socialist political parties, one party states, came with some great things and some very poor things. Like any assessment, it is from these things that we build from to improve and do better. This is what a true revolutionary process is going to look like, the process that it is. In other words, to suggest that there is only one standard for democratic development and anything that falls short of that standard in any way is undemocratic is absurd (especially if the model, as it usually is, for democracy is the Western capitalist model). Mobutu ensured there were absolutely no semblances of democracy in the Congo from 1964 through 1997 when he was finally forced from power. And, not only was there nothing within the Congo during that 33 year period that can even be mistaken for democracy, Mobutu ruled with an absolute iron fist while being 100% supported by imperialism. Meanwhile, Sekou Ture and the PDG made the Local Revolutionary Power committees, or PRLs, the central mechanism within the PDG from which the people of Guinea were to participate within their government. These PRLs, modeled after the Committees in Defense of the Revolution (CDRs) in socialist Cuba, were set up all throughout Guinea to provide people with the vehicle to provide input and make local decisions on everything the PDG did. This was proven by the decisions made at the PDG’s party congresses, much of which reflected direct input from the people through the PRLs. There is absolutely no evidence that the PDG controlled PRLs on a national level. In fact, there is plenty of evidence of the PRLs tremendous, although not perfect, influence throughout the country. So, the suggestion that the PDG was undemocratic doesn’t make sense. If that were the case it would make no sense for them to place as much emphasis on the PRLs as they did. Instead, they could have just done as Mobutu did, and not even pretended to be democratic. Clearly, their intention was to create a people state. Now, the question of whether they were able to accomplish this is a different discussion and to that question, of course the answer is no, but an assessment for the reasons why the PDG fell short requires much more of an analysis than that provided by Wong, Joseph, and others writing about Sekou Ture and Guinea. Within the A-APRP we have always engaged in that assessment. And contrary to Wong’s statements about Kwame Ture’s unwillingness to criticize the PDG, I have sat in too many meetings throughout the U.S. and Africa, with and without Kwame Ture, to know that his criticisms of the PDG and its shortcomings in figuring out effective methods from which to root out corruption and elevate its democratic principles into wider practice were well established, before and after Sekou Ture’s death. Wong praises the PAIGC, and its founder Amilcar Cabral, for their work, which Wong identifies in contrast to the PDG, in working to develop more democratic structures throughout Guinea-Bissau. That deeper analysis I mentioned that Wong could have engaged in could have possibly led him to understand that a lot of what he is praising within the PAIGC is a reflection of the process we are engaged in to build Pan-Africanism. Both Kwame Ture and Amilcar Cabral were students of Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture. Were it not for Sekou Ture and the PDG, Cabral would not have had a base from which to build the PAIGC that Wong praises. Without Sekou Ture and the PDG, Kwame Ture would not have had a base from which to develop and probably most importantly, Nkrumah would not have had a base to produce some of his most important contributions to Pan-African work taking place today. Cabral, and Kwame Ture, were co-founders of the A-APRP. And, Kwame Ture’s work within the PDG and PAIGC, and the A-APRP’s continued work within the PAIGC and PDG since Kwame Ture’s physical transition, are reflections of the lessons learned from not only Sekou Ture’s PDG, but Nkrumah’s Convention People’s Party and Kwame Ture’s Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and Black Panther Party.

A single life that is adversely impacted is too many, but whether we like it or not, whether we admit it or not, we have to learn to crawl before we can walk, and errors can and will be made. Where these writings always fall short is that they are consistently unable to determine the difference between terrible errors based on inexperience and lack of political education, and practices that result by design to keep people oppressed. None of these writers can ever produce any evidence (they don’t even try to make the argument) that Sekou Ture and the PDG benefited financially, etc., from the errors they made. That’s why its difficult for us to understand why Wong and others, when assessing Sekou Ture and the PDG, seem to believe that their errors are not distinguishable from those made by imperialism and neo-colonialists.

Ironically, Wong uses Walter Rodney’s correct class critiques of Nkrumah and Sekou Ture’s governments (in Ghana and Guinea respectively). Then, Wong later states that Rodney himself acknowledged that Nkrumah’s analysis after being removed from power in Ghana (and becoming co-president of Guinea), addressed the results of those contradictions.

Its interesting to wonder what would have happened with the PDG in Guinea had Ghana, Mali, the Congo, and other potential progressive and Pan-African entities in Africa not been sabotaged, leaving Guinea isolated? Wong’s assessment of Guinea becoming “pro-imperialist” towards the end of Sekou Ture’s life doesn’t consider that possibility. What we do know is that when imperialism achieves that isolation on its enemies, and then imposes sanctions and other methods designed to turn the people inside against the government, as was the case in Guinea, a simple explanation that the regime turned “pro-imperialist” is insufficient. During the time of the early 80s when Wong claims this was happening, Guinea and the PDG was hosting A-APRP delegations, building with the PAIGC, MPLA, etc., and doing everything to support the anti-apartheid struggle in Southern Africa. All things that were certainly not designed to make the U.S. and imperialism happy. In 1982, when Sekou Ture came to the U.S., one of the major examples Wong and others refer to in order to suggest that Sekou Ture, in seeking U.S. financial investment (after years of declining it), was softening, Sekou Ture took action during that trip that actually solidified his position as an anti-imperialist. He took the unprecedented step, during a state visit to the U.S. of appearing at an event at Howard University in Washington, D.C., as the keynote speaker for the A-APRP. This is clearly not an action someone would take if all they are trying to do is appease imperialism. In fact, no other world leaders outside of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Kwame Nkrumah (and maybe one or two others), have come to the U.S. and done anything similar.

Overall, Wong provides an informative book that everyone should read, but like everything, do so with a critical eye. If nothing else, it demonstrates the importance of political education more and more.

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The Black Bourgeoisie. Chauvin & The Con Against African Justice

4/20/2021

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Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. slave catcher (police) who brutally murdered George Floyd a year ago while being videotaped doing so, was convicted today. At the very least, the convictions will require him to spend a significant amount of time in prison, if not the rest of his mortal life. Regardless, read no further if you expect us to find some reason to celebrate.

If you study the news reports coming out about the verdict from African (Black) news sources (and of course the dominant capitalist/white supremacist media sources), the narrative being presented is that this verdict is some “piece of justice” for us, a people long denied any semblance of justice. Those sources are also consistently echoing the ridiculous theme that since the Floyd family apparently sees the verdict as justice, that arbitrarily has to be the defining factor in the how the verdict must be seen by everyone.

The “piece of justice” talking point is being promoted by these African voices within the bourgeoisie media, people like Joy Reid and Michael Steele for example, as a clear tactic to appeal to the long suffering heart strings of the African masses and those who empathize with our condition. To the untrained eye, this talking point would seem to be rooted in common sense. From Emmet Till, to Medgar Evers, to Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, Addie Mae Collins, to Denise McNair (Birmingham Church bombing), to the Rodney King beating, Latasha Harlins murder, Oscar Grant, all of the thousands of other police terrorism victims, and the thousands of lynched and otherwise terrorized Africans. After centuries of this ongoing trauma, these bourgeoisie voices are working overtime to appeal to your fatigue, fear, and strong and legitimate desires for peace by telling us that this was the victory we needed. And, to add the final layer of cement to this “analysis”, these people are pushing the emotionally charged closer statement that since the family says its so, it must be so because who would dare speak out against what the grieving family wants?

After 528 years of being bamboozeled and misled, pardon us if we take a completely different approach to this verdict than the repeated images of Africans on television celebrating, crying, hugging, and expressing raw emotions at the sight of a European police terrorist actually being convicted in a U.S. court of brutally taking the life of an African. The legitimacy of our emotions is unquestioned and the desire of the family to see the beast responsible for the murder punished is equally understandable, but if we are serious about justice, and not just feeling better about one situation in a sea of millions, than we would be completely ill responsible if we didn’t raise several critical points.

And, those points are the “piece of justice” talking point is full of so many holes that there’s more air in that jug than water. If I steal everything you have, keep you subjected for hundreds of years, and continue beating and oppressing you and your family members, the simple act of getting me up off of your head could seem like justice, but if we factor in the entire scenario of your exploitation of my existence, there is absolutely no way just having you stop and pay a price is ever going to equal justice. As Malcolm X said almost 60 years ago “if you stab me in the back and you take the knife out, that’s not going to heal the wound.” The verdict of Chauvin was the equivalent of taking the knife out. In many instances, doing so causes the wound to become worse as bleeding out often occurs once the weapon is removed. As Malcolm explained, the healing process requires addressing the hundreds of years of exploitation and the conditions that period created in which the current reality is just a snapshot of the oppression, not the definition of it. In other words, even with the Chauvin verdict, and even if he’s sent away for life in prison, that does nothing for Breanna Taylor, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland, etc., etc., etc. And, these bourgeoisie voices clearly have the intellectual capacity to recognize and understand that last point, but what you have to understand about the African petti bourgeoisie and bourgeoisie is the role they play in this society. Their job is to serve as the buffer class between the African masses and the capitalist ruling classes. Their responsibility, and the reason they have been afforded their position, is to ensure that as house slaves, they keep the field slaves under control. So, its always their job to pour sand on the fire. The way they are doing that in this instance is to tell us that despite the overwhelming consistency of injustice that we are consistently forced to endure, we should be satisfied in some way with this one “piece of justice.” They tell us this not because they even believe it to be true. They tell us this because their job is to prevent us from rebellion against the capitalist system. And, they are entrusted with their high profile voices and the subsequent rewards provided to them for serving their masters to make sure there are no slave revolts. This is the reason why you will never hear any of them saying the things being said here and even if some of them make an attempt to sound this way (in an effort to present some level of credibility in the process), they always circle back to the answers lying somewhere within the capitalist system that keeps us oppressed.

Regarding the question of the families, at first glance, this sounds so personal. So, inappropriate to comment about, but in truth it is not. Its not because the only reason you know about George Floyd is because the masses of people said what happened to him was unacceptable. As a result, justice for him can never just belong to his biological family because they alone did not create the conditions that led to his case being protested all over the world. They did not create the leverage that certainly played a significant role in creating the conditions where Chauvin could be convicted in the first place. Since the people claimed George Floyd and made him the poster child of the larger movement for justice against police terrorism against the African masses, he now belongs to the people, not just his family. Another way of explaining this phenomenon is the people claimed him because collectively, they understand that his murder was larger than just him. The forces who support capitalism always want you to believe that his murder was a personal reality for him and his immediate family. They want to tell you that because of this, whatever he was doing in his personal life is relevant to the conditions that led to his death, but the people know better. They know that last spring, they were sick and tired of police terror against the African masses and this is proven by the fact that no one can dispute that had it been Jeff Floyd, or Marcus Floyd, or William Johnson, or Tabitha Williams, who Chauvin leaned into with his knee uncaring, unconcerned, while the person underneath screamed for mercy, the same resulting movement would have more than likely still resulted. And, no one can really dispute that because if that was not true, protests would never have happened before George Floyd and they would never happen after him. So, we can never accept this bourgeoisie narrative that the family is the deciding factor because the family didn’t make his name for him. Its like in 1996 when I had the honor of bodyguarding Dr. Betty Shabazz, the widow of Malcolm X. After much chiding by my comrades, I spoke to her and told her of the personal role Malcolm had played in my life since 1979. I told her that I had always considered him my ideological father and I asked her if my doing so was okay with her. She chuckled and told me that after all I had told her about her husband and my life, “he is your father regardless of what I would say. You have earned that!” I took that to mean Dr. Shabazz understood that her husband was not just her personal property. She knew that he belonged to people. Later, I read statements from her where she confirmed that her knowing people embraced her husband the way we do had provided her the comfort that had helped her survive the years after his assassination. By the same token, the people have earned the legacy of George Floyd and this is an important point because this is the only way to ensure that the legacy of his death (despite whatever nonrelated factors the forces of reaction want to try and make his death about) stays connected to our mass struggle for justice. Plus, the problem with centering these police shootings on just the biological families is most of the time, most of them, as well as the person killed by police, are not involved in our movement for African liberation. In fact, some of them are politically reactionary. As a result, they are often not prepared to respond to the tragedy in any way beyond the personal and emotional. That honors the collective component of our culture and our fight for freedom. Their responses, however manifested, are of course important, but much of the dysfunction within the movement that has resulted from people developing opportunist and often exploitative practices on the back of the movement is the result of this unscientific line of bourgeoisie thinking that family = movement.

The only thing that equals movement is people engaged in the organizing work to carry the struggle forward. And, for anyone keeping score over the last 528 years, we refuse to let our struggle for justice be reduced to one, two, 10, or even 100, convictions in 2021 and beyond. Just the fact that so much has to happen on our end to arrive at the slightest indication of doing the right thing is more than enough evidence for us to know that nothing short of the complete elimination of this backward capitalist system will bring us the actual justice we need and deserve. They can keep their “piece of justice.” Our people deserve the entire thing.

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COINTELPRO & My Kindred Spirit with Ana Mae Pictoh Aquash

4/13/2021

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Ana Mae Pictoh Aquash was a Mikmaw woman from Nova, Scotia, Canada, but she is known mostly because of her work within the American Indian Movement (AIM), primarily in South Dakota among the Lakota people there during he turbulent 1970s. If you don’t know that history, you should study it. I would suggest some of the important details from that period are included in the works of former AIM activists Ward Churchill (and Jim Vanderhill) in their 1987 book “The FBI’s Secret War against the Black Panther Party and American Indian Movement” and Mary Crow Dog in her 1990 book “Lakota Woman.” There are others like Peter Matthiessen’s 1983 “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse.”

On February 24, 1976, after being missing and unheard from for months, Ana Mae’s decomposing body was discovered in a desolate area of the Pine Ridge, South Dakota reservation by a rancher. Although two former AIM activists were eventually convicted for killing her in 2004; Arlo Looking Cloud and John Graham, with another former AIM member – Theda Clark – implicated, but never convicted, the story of Ana Mae’s life and death still remains unsolved for many Indigenous people and those of us concerned about justice.

My interest in Ana Mae is one I haven’t truly come to understand until recent years. I was born and raised in the inner city within a solidly African community. I had no knowledge of the struggles of Indigenous peoples, not to mention understanding the land question for them in the Americas or us with Africa, until I entered my late teens and early twenties. When I was 17, having acquired just enough information to become dangerous, I joined forces with a now defunct Black Nationalist/quasi Pan-Africanist formation that taught me solid self-defense skills coated with plenty of patriarchy and Black capitalism posing as liberation theory and practices. After a few years in college working for Pan-African student organizing, by 22, I was a committed member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP). For the last 37 years, the A-APRP has been my political home. And, since the A-APRP has an institutional study process that guides our work, it was there that I learned who I am, who my people are, why we are in this position, and as a result of that, who the Indigenous people are. The A-APRP had principled relationships with AIM and other Indigenous groups like El Partido LaRaza Unida which fit nicely with my own political evolution during that time in the early 80s.

By my own evolution, what I mean is although all of the above gave focus to my level of consciousness, my awareness of Ana Mae Aquash came before my formal organizational development. I was 14 years old in 1976. That was the year more than any other that shaped the direction for the rest of my life. It was that year that I was subjected to brutal racist terror aimed against me by adult Europeans that was so barbaric it still amazes me that I’m still here to talk about it all. It was also that year that I recall reading a small article about this Mikmac woman Indigenous activist who’s body was found in South Dakota. I didn’t have a clue then why, but for some reason, this story stuck with me in 1976. I recall that I asked my father about it. He was no student of political history, but he was an African man born and raised in Louisiana, U.S., so without question, he understood institutionalized white supremacy. As a result, his response to me about Ana Mae’s murder was that she was a member of AIM who were “like the Black Panthers for Indians.”

At 14, I had no formal understanding of much of anything except that this society was toxic for me and everyone who looked like me and so in my young mind at that time, anyone like the Panthers who tried to do something to combat that was good. And, to me, if the Indigenous people needed something like AIM, and AIM served a similar purpose for them that the Panthers served for us, that must be a good thing. There were a couple of years there where I was more than completely lost as a result of the constant trauma I was experiencing, but by the time I was turning 17, I had transformed myself into a voracious reader. And, after reading Matthewson’s book when I was 21, my respect for Ana Mae, AIM, and the Indigenous struggle was cemented. I read everything I could get my hands on about Ana Mae Aquash. I learned that she lived in Boston, Mass, U.S., and did community work in the predominantly African Roxbury district and as a child who was completely abandoned by this system’s miseducation system, that truly resonated with me. The idea that someone not even from my experience could see value in someone like me enough to work with our youth. When I realized that due to her outstanding community work, Ana Mae was offered a fully paid scholarship to Brandeis University, which she turned down so that she could do AIM work in South Dakota, she became immortal to me. Still studying, I had to figure out what happened to this magnificent woman.

Fast forward to current times. I’ve lived and learned quite a bit. During one of my many trips to Africa over the years, I had a conversation with an elder in Gambia during a break in some of the political work we were doing there. This person asked me to tell them something about struggle in the U.S. and I thought it appropriate to start with the Indigenous people. I told them about Ana Mae, her contributions, and how I’d always felt like she was a part of me. I trusted this person so I asked them if they thought it strange for an African to feel such a connection to someone else outside of our community who died when I was a child? This wise person responded by telling me that there are ancestors who take an interest in us and do what they can to help guide us forward in life. They told me that since I had a heart for uncompromising struggle for justice, spirits who shared that passion would gravitate towards me. They told me that some of those ancestors knew me. Some didn’t, and it didn’t matter. Some would be African, some could be any nationality and it didn’t matter either way. Then, they told me that based on what I had told them about Ana Mae Aquash, they were convinced that she had chosen me and that I felt her as I did because she’s probably been a part of my life the entire time. That voice in your head that tells you that you should do the right thing? This wise person in Gambia told me that this is the ancestors and that Ana Mae was one of those voices in my head and she would continue to there unless I permanently deviated from my path of seeking justice.

For people opposed to spirituality or for those held captive only to the models forced upon us by colonialism, this interpretation will be hard to accept, but the moment this person explained this to me that way I knew it was true. At that point, my worry was how I could ever maintain being worthy of Ana Mae’s guidance.

What all of this means for me today and moving forward is that I’ve tried to learn what I can from Ana Mae’s life so that my contribution can improve. I know from the struggles of the Panthers, AIM, etc., that the lack of organized political education in those organizations contributed mightily to the dysfunction that led many of the leaders and members within AIM to wrongly conclude that Ana Mae was an informant for police agencies. Anyone who studies this history will discover that the actions of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in taking undue interest in the death of a poor Indigenous woman, stealing her body, severing her hands, and burying her immediately, while supporting a clearly bogus autopsy, demonstrates the FBI’s role in sabotaging any truth surfacing about what happened to Ana Mae. And, the FBI’s overall sabotage against AIM is well documented by now by anyone who wants to know about it. And, to Indigenous family who, like some of our African family, are so much more concerned about who killed Ana Mae (like we are equally focused on who killed Malcolm X), instead of why she was killed, I say maybe – AIM people pulled the trigger, but the FBI bought the bullets.

I’ve also learned that Ana Mae, like Malcolm, like all of us, had personal struggles. Her personal struggle over not living with her two daughters and other mistakes she made in romance haunted her and this reality really shakes me because my similar mistakes have always tormented me deeply. Since I’ve always been taught to believe I wasn’t good enough, any mistake I’ve made has always been magnified by me and others around me. As a result, the lesson I’ve learned the best about Ana Mae that I’m convinced she has helped me grasp, is that we know who she is because of her outstanding contributions in building organizational capacity in AIM with women, battling patriarchy, and becoming one of the few women in national recognition within that organization due to her enormous contributions. Although the FBI obviously did a great job convincing enough people that Ana Mae was an informant, there is clear and plentiful documentation that when detained by the FBI on multiple occasions, she maintained dignity and courage while refused to tell them anything, despite the FBI being very manipulative and doing a lot to convince people that she cooperated with them.

Its those honored principles that makes Ana Mae special and whatever personal contradictions she had can never supersede her honored behavior when it mattered the most. Her personal mistakes, like mine, are no one else’s business. She, nor I, have abused a single person and as I’ve studied her life, I’ve seen the parallels. Through her life I’ve seen in my own life how much people who pass judgement against you possess themselves values that a rat wouldn’t be impressed with. I know now that much of this is often people working to keep you off balance because your efforts to live a principled life make them uncomfortable because of the pressure it places on them to become better as you are attempting to do. This ghetto raised African needed to learn those lessons because there are many people out here who will work overtime to undermine your value and despite the optics people maintain of me that I’m a strong person who can handle anything, those attacks wear you down over time just as they did Ana Mae.

I can honestly say that I think about Ana Mae countless times monthly and that I’ve done so since I was a teen. Now that I understand why, I embrace it and I continue to view her as a shining light for the work I want to continue to do. And, a major portion of that work is helping people today understand that its hard enough to build movement capacity without us doing things to help the police undermine our work. With the internet, their ability to do so is much easier than it was during Ana Mae’s time. As a result, I’m thankful for Ana Mae Aquash. Her existence in my life exemplifies Marcus Garvey’s statement that we never know how much we do today will impact people later on. Or, as the Lakota women said at Ana Mae’s transition ceremony, “everything comes back twice.” Years ago, when I was doing a presentation on Cointelpro in front of a crowd, when I was talking about Ana Mae, I broke down which made everyone seemingly uncomfortable. It certainly made me feel awkward. Sometimes now when I’m thinking about, or talking about Ana Mae, or Malcolm, or Marilyn Buck, or Kwame Ture or, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, I break down, just as tears are falling down my cheeks as I’m writing this, but now, I experience this with pride. I know now finally that the age old saying is 100% correct that you can destroy the person, but you can never destroy their spirit! I also know that despite the despicable treatment Ana Mae experienced in those final lonely months, and the resulting disrespect her demise generated for many years, that also will never define her legacy. There are too many of us searching for uncompromising truth to permit that to ever happen.

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Deciding to Publish an Anti-capitalist Manifesto through Amazon

4/7/2021

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In February 2021, I published my fifth book; “A Guide for Organizing Defense against White Supremacist, Patriarchal, and Fascist Violence.” I’m happy to say the book is really creating a sensation. People everywhere, inside and outside of the U.S., are buying it, and requests to discuss the book continue to come in. I believe the success for this book is related to its on the ground approach for organizing independently in an anti-capitalist way that provides readers with a toolkit for how to engage in effective organizing for beginners, intermediates, and experienced persons/organizations.
I made the difficult decision to publish this 76 page manifesto through Amazon.com and this is what I wish to discuss here. Of course, the question is continuously being posed to me. “Is there a way I can purchase the book directly from you instead of Amazon? How can you publish through Amazon? They are so exploitative towards their workers? Etc.”
First, let us remind you that we have been engaging in anti-capitalist organizing for decades, long before many people today even knew how to say the word – capitalism. No one can argue that our work has ever compromised our anti-capitalist, pro-socialist, pro-revolutionary Pan-African foundation and principles. So, if that’s true, why Amazon?
There are multiple variables that people, well meaning I’m sure, just don’t understand about organizing work in general and independent African organizing, and even the publishing industry, in particular. First, I understand and respect people being opposed to oppressive corporations like Amazon. I don’t like them either, but unlike many others, I’m not selective and arbitrary in how I engage capitalism. I recall being 18 and just emerging in activist work. At that time, one of the primary issues in the African liberation world was the anti-apartheid movement against racist segregation in Azania, or what you call South Africa. As a student activist, we figured out that Bank of America invested in racist apartheid South Africa. So, we launched a boycott of Bank of America. As we got more engrained in that movement, I learned that to boycott every company that was in bed with apartheid would mean not even being able to have a drink of water. The point there is good intentions are great, but if you look around you right now the reality is the clothes you are wearing were created with exploited resources and labor in Haiti, etc. The device you are using to read this article, talk on the phone, Google whatever, is functional because of exploited African human and material resources from the Congo and Mozambique. The car, bicycle, or public transportation you utilize uses gasoline coming from exploited countries. The metal used to construct your mode of transportation is built from the same exploited materials. So, everything around us is being utilized through a process of exploitation. If you understand this reality than that should expand the conversation beyond the individualistic moral platitudes many of us unwittingly mistake for honest revolutionary principles. In other words, if you are fighting a physical war against the enemy and the weapons available to you are made by Smith & Wesson, a despicable company that bankrolls the racist National Rifle Association, etc., if the enemy is advancing towards you, do you say “I refuse to fire this weapon to save my and my comrade’s lives (and advance the struggle) because I don’t like the company that made the weapon?” or, do you look at it as you will use that weapon, and any weapon available to you, for a greater objective?

And, none of the above is a justification for Amazon and their corrupt practices. What I am saying is as Kwame Nkrumah said in his historic book “The Handbook of Revolutionary Warfare”, the oppressed when organizing must use whatever resources are available to them.
Also, maybe people just don’t understand how this publishing thing actually works, but just so you know, African people are oppressed and exploited everywhere on earth. The oppressed don’t write history because there are no long line of publishers out here looking for revolutionary Pan-Africanist literature or revolutionary literature coming from anyone. The handful of publishers who are out here are mostly over capacity and unable to commit to more projects due to their limited resources to publish. I know this because I’ve spent the last three years I’ve been writing this manifesto, and the last 10 years I’ve been writing and publishing books, talking to them and trying to find a home for my literature. I’ve spoken to many wonderful people from various countries who have expressed great support for the query letter information I’ve sent them about this manifesto while expressing their inability to work with me for various reasons.
The other challenge for those who keep asking me if they can buy the book from me. My response to them is my objective is to place this book in thousands of hands. Hundreds of thousands. Millions of people. I realize folks surely mean well, but I have no publishing resources and machinery to facilitate carrying out that objective. I don’t have a means to ship thousands of books. I don’t have any of those resources just like you don’t. What I do have is a piece of work I’ve created that I’m trying to figure out how to get into people’s hands everywhere, so please don’t ask independent revolutionary authors if you can buy books from them unless they are only intending upon producing enough copies for a small reading group in the same area and nothing beyond that. Also, don’t ask them to give you books. I don’t know if people believe white supremacists when they keep saying rich European bourgeoisie liberals are funding our work, but if that’s true, somebody owes me millions in back money.
For us as revolutionaries, we have to weigh Nkrumah’s axiom to us and when we do that, the strategy we employ by going through Amazon is working to facilitate our objective. Anyone anywhere can buy the manifesto for the extremely inexpensive pricing I arranged of only $8.00 USD for paperback and $5.00 for digital copies (clearly, based on the pricing, our objective was availability, not profitability). As a result of the low pricing and easy availability, the book is being purchased by people in multiple countries. So, you tell me, at the present time, what’s more important, us getting the word to as many people as we can, as quickly as we can, as mass as we can, without having to come out of our pocket to do so, so that we can build that capacity to overrun Amazon and all of these other capitalist thugs? Or, should we continue to employ the type of arbitrary and selective principles some of you apparently feel are the right way which isn’t producing any meaningful capacity for us to do much of anything?
So, we get it. You don’t like Amazon. We don’t either. We also don’t like the company we pay for electricity and gas. We don’t like Target and the supermarket. We don’t like getting gasoline from Shell and Chevron, etc. What we do like is understanding and respecting the lessons of our ancestors. The most successful slave revolts from Carlota from Nigeria/Cuba to Nanny of the Maroons, to Samory Ture in Guinea to Yaa Asantewaa in Ghana, etc., all contained some level of making the slave master believe they were 100% in charge while simultaneously organizing to overthrow them. A lot of people need to learn the difference between principles and strategy and tactics. Principally, we fight for capitalism’s elimination. Strategically, we use whatever tools are available to us to fulfill our capacity to carry out that objective. If this explanation doesn’t convince you, then you probably don’t want to be convinced so don’t support this manifesto or any independent revolutionary, African, Indigenous, etc., work. And, if you have a better organizing method then we do, we sure wish you would stop keeping it such a secret.

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Witnessing the Selling Out of Juneteenth Right Before Our Eyes

Listen! Umar Johnson isn't Pan-Africanism. The African Masses Are

"Memorial Day" Another Dishonest Play for Emotion Extortion

Why Black Power/Unity Fully Realized Equals Pan-Africanism

Eldridge Cleaver, the Black Panther Party & African Liberation Day

A Democratic Example within the Culture of Violence and Injustice

A Review of "Black Power and Post-Colonial Society"

The Black Bourgeoisie. Chauvin & The Con Against African Justice

COINTELPRO & My Kindred Spirit with Ana Mae Pictoh Aquash

Deciding to Publish an Anti-capitalist Manifesto through Amazon

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