Dead Prez recommends reading Omali Yeshitela and Overturning the Culture of Violence

Watch and share this excerpt of an interview with the hip-hop group Dead Prez at the 2010 Harvest of Hope Festival.

When asked about revolutionaries that inspire them and book recommendations, they mentioned Malcolm X, The Black Panthers as well as the writings of Omali Yeshitela, leader of the Uhuru Movement and the book Overturning the Culture of Violence by Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People's Solidarity Committee which organizes political and material solidarity with the Uhuru Movement in white communities worldwide.

Order books by Omali Yeshitela and the book Overturning the Culture of Violence by Penny Hess at BurningSpearMarketplace.com.

There's still time to register for the African People's Solidarity Committee's International Conference on White Solidarity with Black Power (January 9-11, 2011 in St. Petersburg, FL). Visit the conference website to learn more.

White Solidarity with Black Power

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Join activists from around the world for the 2010 International Conference on White Solidarity with Black Power.

If you want to see an end to US wars around the world including the war against the black community in this country, you should be in St. Petersburg, FL January 9-11.

Hear from leaders of the African Liberation Movement and learn how you can become an ally of African people's struggle for justice and liberation.

Hands Off African Youth! APSC Statement from Dec 8th Demo in Philadelphia

The following is a statement given by Alison Hoehne, Philadelphia Chair of the African People's Solidarity Committee, at the "Hands Off African Youth" demonstration & press conference, organized by the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, at Philadelphia's Gallery shopping center on December 8th, 2010.

African People's Solidarity Committee STATEMENT FROM THE International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement-led "HANDS OFF AFRICAN YOUTH!" DEMO & PRESS CONFERENCE

Philadelphia PA - December 8, 2010

Uhuru!

On behalf of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the organization of white people working under the leadership of the Uhuru Movement, we are here to say that we give our unconditional support to the demands of this demonstration of HANDS OFF AFRICAN YOUTH!!

We demand that the gallery security guards and the Philadelphia police must immediately stop the daily harassment, arrests and attacks on young Africans and that the city government, corporations and businesses that profit from their brutal extraction of resources from the most impoverished sectors of the city – African and Latino people – must give reparations, billions of dollars for economic development for African communities to use for their own benefit on their own terms.

We want to say to the white community that we know there would be mahem, a total outcry if the tables were turned, if we experienced the reality that African people face in this city and country. Can you imagine the outrage if our children and youth were treated as African youth are?

• if white student dorms at Penn and Drexel were raided nightly by police & ski-masked narc squads, kicking down their doors, tasering them, shooting, arresting, beating and imprisoning them for some weed?

• If white teens had waterhoses turned on them by police at a house party, or even killed by the police at their graduation party as Javon Dawson was in St. Petersburg FL.

• If the hundreds of Drexel students who swarmed at 30^th St. station at rush hour to do a meaningless mass action were beaten to the ground, thrown into paddy wagons and given felony sentences, ending their dreams for a happy and prosperous future.

• What if one out of nine white youth were in prison? If almost ¼ million white kids were stopped by the police every year in Philly for no reason other than being young and white? If over half our children were expelled or left school before graduating because the schools are no different than prisons, treating the children as criminals?

• There is no way to even imagine the horror if white youth were prevented by security guards from shopping in the malls and stores in center city! Shopping is the American way of life, and seen as our basic democratic right!

The reality is that there IS a two-tiered system, one experience for white people and a completely different reality for Africans. This isn’t the ‘50s, but it might as well be in that we have Jim Crow laws right here in Philly! When the Uhuru Movement stood up to demand that the Nutter administration stop the billion dollar war against the African community and fund genuine economic development, InPDUM President Diop Olugbala was gagged, chokeholded, attacked by the police and found guilty of felony charges for just speaking out in the interests of the oppressed African population.

We have to challenge ourselves to say why is that we can stand against apartheid in South Africa, but not against the same war on African people’s rights in South Philly? Why is it we can support the flotilla bringing material support to the besieged Palestinian people in Gaza, but not to the African community in North Philly where three out of four people live in crushing poverty and hunger?

Because we profit from this war on the African community too. The economy, our jobs and lifestyle couldn’t exist without the drug and prison economies, bringing trillions of dollars to the white population as well as to the banks, corporations and government! This system was built on the slave labor of African people on the land stolen from the indigenous people! Right here, Market St was named for the slave market of Africans brought in chains to work for 250 years for free to build the capitalist system and white wealth.

We’re out here shopping for Christmas and we’ve been told that all the wealth and goodies brought to good white children come from a fat, white man called Santa Claus living in the North Pole. But we know the truth, that the wealth in the US and Europe comes from the stolen labor, land and resources of African and other colonized people.

This is the time for us to take a stand in solidarity with the organized resistance of African people, organizing for liberation and self-determination, and to end this vicious colonial terror and exploitation by US imperialism.

41 years ago the US government assassinated Fred Hampton, a courageous 21 year-old leader in the Black Power Movement of the ‘60s. But as Fred Hampton said, you can kill a revolutionary but you can’t kill the revolution! Today we have the Uhuru Movement and President Diop Olugbala, a courageous young African freedom fighter and leader. We have JOMO and powerful leaders like Calvin and so many others.

If we want peace and unity in this city it’s up to us to join with the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, to stand up and say:

•Stop the war on African youth and African communities!

•Free Diop!

•Hands off African youth!

• Reparations, economic development and justice must be given to the entire African community!

• Police out of the African Community!

• Victory to African and all oppressed people!

UHURU!

White people and other allies of social justice for African people can come to the 2011 International Conference on White Solidarity With Black Power, in St Petersburg Florida -- the City of African Resistance -- from January 9-11th, 2011! Register HERE today!

To get in touch with the African People's Solidarity Committee and Uhuru Solidarity Movement in Philadelphia, call 215-387-0919 or email philly@uhurusolidarity.org

Come to the International Conference on White Solidarity with Black Power, Jan 9-11 in St. Petersburg, FL

The African People’s Solidarity Committee, organized under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, invites other North American and European—white—people to participate in “Beyond the Crisis of Imperialism: the International Conference on White Solidarity with Black Power,” January 9-11 in St Petersburg, FL.

This is a call to stand in solidarity with the struggle of African people everywhere to unite and liberate Africa and all its resources.



This call comes at a time when imperialism is facing a serious political and economic crisis that has come as a result of the resistance of oppressed and colonized peoples against imperialist wars of plunder and occupation.

The crisis of imperialism demands that we take responsibility to join in solidarity with the oppressed peoples of the world who are struggling to overturn and transform this parasitic social system built on slavery, genocide, plunder and resource wars targeting the majority of humanity for our benefit.

This call comes as African people from many organizations and political persuasions inside the US and elsewhere have come together in the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC), a broad-based coalition formed by the African People’s Socialist Party.

This historic coalition unites on the principle that US president Barack Hussein Obama functions as a neocolonial president, as “white power in black face.”

BIBC states that the problem facing African and oppressed peoples inside the US and around the world is US imperialism, and that the Obama administration has intensified the colonial war against the African and oppressed peoples in this country, even as it is escalating its war agenda against oppressed peoples in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world.

The existence of Black is Back demands that we go beyond a simple stand for “peace” or against “racism,” stands that leave the essence of this imperialist system unchallenged.

As Omali Yeshitela, leader of the African People’s Socialist Party, states, “It’s not enough to stand for ‘peace.’ George W. Bush wanted peace through an end to the struggle of oppressed peoples. We have to stand for victory to the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, victory to the Palestinian people, victory to the people of Cuba and Venezuela and down with imperialism!”

We have to go beyond the simplistic demand to end “racism,” which is the ideological underpinning of a capitalist system that was born on turning the entire continent of African people into its most lucrative commodity.

We are challenged to stand against the fact that African people inside the US, historically and today, live under conditions of colonialism, the political and economic oppression of a whole people for the benefit of the oppressor nation.

We must take a stand against the US war facing African people in the US today, an ongoing public policy of police containment resulting in relentless police murders and brutality, massive imprisonment and deepening poverty and unemployment.

As the economic crisis of imperialism deepens and white people begin to experience job loss, homelessness, and financial insecurity, we are challenged to recognize that this is the natural outcome of a system that from the very beginning has stolen the resources, labor and land of African, Indigenous and other peoples in order to create the highest standard of living in the world for the majority of the white population living on a pedestal at the expense of everyone else.

As oppressed peoples rise up to take back their resources and drive out imperialist armies in order to exercise their right to self-determination and feed their own children with their own resources, the US can no longer move with impunity to dominate the earth and reward the white population which has historically benefited from this relationship.

The challenge for us as white people is not to seek solutions for our crisis at the expense of African and oppressed peoples on whose backs we have lived, but to join in solidarity with them to bring down this system and be part of building a world built on justice, reparations and liberation for African and other oppressed peoples.

Participate in and endorse “Beyond the Crisis of Imperialism: the International Conference on White Solidarity with Black Power.” Join other like-minded white people and stand on the forward side of history in solidarity with African and oppressed peoples worldwide.

Learn more and register for the conference.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela speaks at a Day in Solidarity with African People in Philadelphia

Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African Socialist International and leader of the Uhuru Movement, speaks at A Day in Solidarity with African People, November 6, 2010 in Philadelphia.

Penny Hess speaks at a Day in Solidarity with African People in Philadelphia, November 6, 2010

African People's Solidarity Committee Chairwoman Penny Hess speaks at A Day in Solidarity with African People in Philadelphia on November 6, 2010.

African People's Solidarity Committee challenges US racial divide

On Saturday, November 6, the African People’s Solidarity Committee will hold a public event entitled, “Beyond Obama: Seeking real solutions to the growing racial divide in the US.”

The conference will feature presentations by leaders of the “Black is Back!” Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations; Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal; the Black Agenda Report; and the Harlem Tenants Council.

It is the culmination of an effort to raise $10,000 for the Uhuru Movement’s black community justice campaigns.

The event takes place just three days before a hearing during which Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams will move to reinstate the death sentence for jailed black journalist and internationally recognized political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal.

This impending hearing has put the eyes of the world on Philadelphia while tensions continue to mount between the police and city officials and the black neighborhoods that bear the brunt of social service cutbacks and increasingly aggressive policing.

Conference organizer Alison Hoehne states that, “The black community in Philadelphia is facing a severe crisis of poverty and political repression. It’s urgent that we in the white community take a strong stand in support of black people’s right to organize for real change!”

Hoehne cites a recent Pew study that indicts Philadelphia as having the highest rate of poverty and the second highest rate of hunger in the country. She says that some black neighborhoods have 76% of families living below the poverty level. A recent edition of The Business Insider reports that 43% of all children in the city rely on food stamps to survive.

Many social justice activists have described the climate in Philadelphia as increasingly repressive towards those who speak out in dissent against government policy as well as towards average black working residents.

Police statistics report that nearly three times as many pedestrians are stopped by police annually in the predominantly black Logan neighborhood since Mayor Nutter began to push his “Stop and Frisk” policy. The recent police beating of Askia Sabur, caught on video tape, has provoked outrage from throughout the country.

The November 6 conference will feature voices direct from the front lines of the struggle over black democratic and human rights:

• Omali Yeshitela, leader of the Uhuru Movement and the Black is Back! Coalition will deliver the keynote presentation
  
  
• Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report and the Black is Back! Coalition will discuss the Coalition’s upcoming “March on Washington to Stop U.S. Imperialist Wars”
  
  
• Penny Hess, leader of the African People’s Solidarity Committee will speak on the role and responsibility of white people to support black community struggles
  
  
• Diop Olugbala, the Uhuru Movement leader recently convicted on charges stemming from a protest at Mayor Nutter’s budget presentation will make a call for attendees to “Defend the Right to Resist”
  
  
• Pam Africa will provide updates on the struggle to free Mumia Abu Jamal
  
  
• Naimah Wilson, will discuss the police beating of her brother Askia Sabur, as well as the attacks on African children in the Philadelphia school system
  
  
• Nellie Bailey of the Harlem Tenants Council will review the current situation in Haiti with massive cholera deaths and no aid in sight, and will present a “Vision for Liberated Haiti”
  
  
• A representative of The Dollar Boyz will discuss the struggle for economic and democratic rights
  

The event will take place at the First Unitarian Church, located at 2125 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia.

The program is open to the public and begins at 1:00 p.m. Admission is $10 – $25 sliding scale and includes dinner and cultural performances from 5:30 – 7:00 p.m.

The event is part of the African People’s Solidarity Committee’s nationwide “Reparations in Action” campaign intended to popularize support from the white community for the black community demands for reparations and social justice.

For more information, visit uhurusolidarity.org or call 215-387-0919.

Join the Black is Back march November 13 in Washington, DC

Stop US Imperialist Wars!

Victory to Oppressed Peoples in the US and throughout the world!

Join the March and Rally in Washington, DC, November 13, 2010, sponsored by the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations!

On November 13, for the second consecutive year, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC) will march on Washington, DC with an internationalist black agenda to challenge Obama’s intensification of imperialist wars around the world and inside this country.

Two years in to the Obama administration it is clear that instead of the promised “hope and change,” we are seeing a neocolonial president enthusiastically catering to the interests of Wall Street and the Pentagon, while the black community that elected him languishes under poverty, prison and police repression.

The broad-based Black is Back Coalition was the first to mobilize against Obama’s imperialist wars on November 7, 2009, just six weeks after the coalition’s formation.

Black is Back boldly challenged the Obama presidency for its crimes against Arab, African and oppressed peoples in other parts of the world, while at the same time opposing Obama’s war at home against African and oppressed communities that are catching hell under expanding police and state repression.

BIBC held its first march at a time when the white left and antiwar movement was frozen into inaction afraid of exposing the first black imperialist president whom they had so enthusiastically endorsed.

The BIBC march challenges us of the white community to recognize that it’s not enough to struggle for peace. We must fight for peace based on justice.

It’s not enough to end imperialist war. We must end imperialism and support the movements for national liberation.

We unite with the Black is Back Coalition by saying that we stand for “Victory to the people of Afghanistan; Victory to the people of Palestine; Victory to the people of Iraq, Pakistan, Venezuela, Cuba and to all peoples struggling to regain self-determination over their lands, resources and lives.”

Obama’s imperialist policies are not new. This country is built on slavery, genocide and colonial wars of plunder and occupation from day one. This is a parasitic system that requires the theft of the resources of the majority of humanity in order to function and to provide the white population with the highest standard of living in the world.

The crisis of the imperialist economy comes from the fact that oppressed peoples around the world are resisting these imperialist wars.

Oppressed peoples everywhere are refusing to let the US plunder their lands and peoples without a fight back. They are determined to have control of their own lands, lives and resources to feed their own families and nations.

The same wars of occupation that the US wages around the world are waged inside this country against the African, Mexican and oppressed populations right here.

The rampant police murders and violence, the millions of African people imprisoned in America’s very lucrative gulag, the mass criminalization of black people justified by a government- and corporate- controlled drug economy imposed on African communities are the result of police containment policies and counterinsurgency tactics no different than those used against the people of Afghanistan, Palestine or Iraq.

There’s a war against African people right here. We don’t have to step over the war dead right in our own cities to protest US war crimes against peoples in other parts of the world. The struggle begins here. There’s colonialism of African, Mexican and other Indigenous people right here, with conditions no different than in occupied Palestine or anywhere in Africa.

African people have a right to resist that war, to fight back, like Diop Olugbala, President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, who was facing up to 10 years in prison after being attacked by plain-clothes police when he was peacefully protesting during a Philadelphia city council meeting.

Diop and InPDUM were protesting the city’s plan to cut back needed services in the impoverished African community while at the same time beefing up the terroristic police machine that occupies black neighborhoods to the tune of $1 billion.

For that stand Diop was convicted of felony charges, but a worldwide outpouring of support for Diop and the Uhuru Movement forced the judge to give him probation rather than any jail time.

African people have a right to this resistance. We say, “Victory to African people! Victory to Indigenous people right here!”

To have peace we must end imperialism and colonialism. There must be justice and liberation for oppressed peoples who make up the pedestal upon which we sit.

As the Black is Back call to the Nov. 13 march states:

“The election of the first black president of the United States – Barack Hussein Obama – has not ended the suffering of our people or U.S. injustices around the world. In fact, the only change we have experienced is an intensification of the exploitation and oppression of black people and oppressed people worldwide, by the global white power machine.

“While the U.S. Congress has given Wall Street and the auto industry trillions of dollars, the same Congress refuses to repair the legacy of slavery for descendants of enslaved Africans or prevent ‘ethnic cleansing’ of black people in New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina.

“Every day, our people suffer police brutality and murder, unjust imprisonment, depression-level unemployment, underemployment, slave labor in the thousands of U.S. prison camps, disenfranchisement, evictions, foreclosures, and homelessness. And there is no health care to speak of.

“African people who dedicated their lives to the freedom struggle during the 1960’s still rot in U.S. prisons, and U.S. wars have expanded beyond the African community in the U.S., to Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and now threaten Venezuela, Iran, and the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.”

The African People’s Solidarity Committee calls on all freedom-loving people to join the black-led mobilization in Washington on Nov. 13 to stop US imperial wars and for victory to oppressed peoples inside this country and around the world!

For more information on the Nov. 13 mobilization by Black is Back see its website at: blackisbackcoalition.org

No jail time for Diop Olugbala! A victory for African and freedom-loving people everywhere!

On October 13 the movement for social justice throughout the world won a key victory for the democratic rights of African, oppressed and freedom loving people everywhere when Diop Olugbala, International President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) walked out of his sentencing in Philadelphia with two years probation. He could have been sentenced to up to ten years in prison.

Read more at http://www.uhurunews.com/

The following is the statement put out by the African People’s Solidarity Committee in support of the struggle to free Diop from these attacks on the right of African people everywhere to struggle for their freedom and liberation.

Diop must be free! No charges! No sentence!

The African People’s Solidarity Committee, the organization of white people working under the leadership of the Uhuru Movement, stands in unconditional solidarity with freedom for Diop Olugbala!

As a leader of the Uhuru Movement Diop has courageously stood up to all the power of the brutal Nutter administration and the Obama presidency in the name of the African working class community which is forced into conditions of poverty and oppression.

Diop is a political prisoner, just like Mumia Abu Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Sundiata Acoli and so many others from the period during and following the heroic Black Liberation Movement of the 60s.

Diop is the political prisoner of this period, exposing the vicious agenda of neocolonialism, white power in black face, that is orchestrating the attack on black people today.

Diop exposes the fact that, contrary to Obama’s statement that we live in a “post racial” America, the reality is that African people in Philadelphia and the US today are catching more hell than they were 40 years ago.

Diop’s stand shows that there are two Americas:

One where black people of all ages are attacked, murdered and harassed by heavy handed, militarized police forces and SWAT teams, bearing down on African communities in the same way they do in Afghanistan—something that we never see in the white community!

Diop has the courage to expose the shootings, beatings and taserings by police in the black community; along with the massive stop and frisking of young black men, the handcuffing and arresting, even murdering young school children, the rounding up of millions of African people for the brutal prison system that makes billions of dollars for the white community; the fact that a black family has 10 cents for every dollar of a white family, the targeting of black families for subprime mortgages and foreclosures—none of this takes place in the white community.

Diop exposes the reality that the US government has imposed drugs on the African community and uses that to criminalize and lock up millions of black people, even though the majority of drug users and sellers are white and the illegal profits are in the white economy.

The reality is that prisons are used to bring billions of dollars of jobs and resources into the white economy. The state of Pennsylvania says openly on one of its websites that prisons are used for economic stimulus for rural white Pennsylvania!

Diop exposes the fact that the US was built on the enslavement of African people.

There are two Americas with two “justice” systems, two sets of sentencing guides, Jim Crow law, with white America’s opportunities, resources and experience of democracy coming at the expense of the African community.

Diop and the Uhuru Movement have had the courage to expose this fact and to demand that the city of Philadelphia stop its billion dollar war budget, beefing up the military style police force against black people and put that billion dollars into real economic development programs that uplift the entire African community of Philadelphia out of poverty.

The African People’s Solidarity Committee unites with the demands of this march and the Uhuru Movement and calls on all white people to join in support of this just call.

The only way there can be peace, unity and real security in this city is to stop this war against the black community carried out in our name!

Reparations and economic development for the African community are the only road to a city united and moving forward, no one at the expense of another.

Free Diop! Drop the charges and no sentence!

Reparations to the African community--$1 billion for economic development

Independent investigations of all cases of Africans brutalized by the police!

Jail the police, judges and attorneys guilty of crimes against the people! And release all Africans in prison due to corruption of the Philadelphia criminal justice system!

APSC statement in support of groups raided by FBI‏

Fight for our right to stand in solidarity with peoples worldwide struggling for national liberation!

Victory and self-determination to African, Afghani, Palestinian, Indigenous, Colombian and oppressed and colonized people around the world!

The African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM) denounce the September 24, 2010 subpoenas and raids of the homes and offices of solidarity and anti-war activists in Illinois, Minnesota and Michigan.

These raids, violating the civil rights of the targeted activists, were carried out by the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force allegedly as part of an “ongoing investigation by the Joint Terrorism Task Force into activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”

Groups under attack include the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee and Students for a Democratic Society.

APSC expresses our support for all these groups and individuals under attack by the US government.

We defend the right of all of us to stand in solidarity with all peoples anywhere in the world fighting to throw off the yoke of colonial violence, war and oppression imposed on them by the terrorist US government. We affirm all of our unalienable rights to raise resources for movements for national liberation and justice.

The US, Europe and the capitalist system itself are the real terrorists!

The US built its wealth and power out of the European assault on Africa that destroyed African freedom and independence at the point of the gun. African people were brutally kidnapped and violently forced by the millions to become the world’s most lucrative commodity as enslaved laborers for hundreds of years.

The US is the real terrorist, carrying out open policies of genocide against the Indigenous people, through torture, murder and war, stealing Indigenous land and forcing the people into concentration camps called reservations today where the life expectancy is 46 years.

The US is the real terrorist having consistently waged countless open and covert wars of occupation, plunder and extermination against the peoples of the Philippines, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Africa, Occupied Palestine and the Arab world and elsewhere in order to create the highest standard of living on the planet for North America.

The US is the real terrorist and wages a brutal counterinsurgency war against the African, Mexican and Indigenous communities inside this country today with militarized police forces shooting down young black men on a regular basis. It is currently imprisoning 2.5 million people—mostly African and Mexicans—on designer, Jim Crow laws after imposing an illegal drug economy on those communities.

The US is the real terrorist, hunting down and rounding up Mexican people who have come across the illegal border set up by the US after stealing the land of the Mexican people.

This attack follows history of attacks on the African Liberation Movement

We recognize that this kind of US government attack on white activists is being perpetrated on a history of attacks against African Liberation activists inside this country since the Black Power Movement of the 1960s which was crushed by a terroristic program called COINTELPRO. This US government secret program was responsible for assassinating and imprisoning movement leaders such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Bobby Hutton and Fred Hampton. Some activists of the 1960s are still in prison today, including Sundiata Acoli, Leonard Peltier and so many others.

We recognize that white activists are being attacked on the basis of the frame ups by the FBI and other US government agencies of Mumia Abu Jamal, and more recently on the Liberty City 7 in Miami, the San Francisco 8 activists, the assassination earlier this year of Detroit black activist Imam Luqman and so many others.

We recognize that the white activists are attacked today on the heels of the political conviction of Uhuru Movement organizer Diop Olugbala who protested Barack Obama’s presidential campaign event in 2008 by raising the banner “What about the black community, Obama!” and who was arrested for leading protests against Philadelphia’s planned $1.1 billion war of intensified police repression against the African community there.

These attacks against the progressive organizations on September 24 are happening under the murderous neocolonial regime of US president Barack Obama who is carrying out and intensifying the terroristic imperialist agenda of his predecessors.

We have a right to stand in solidarity with African and other oppressed peoples struggling for justice and liberation

We affirm our right and responsibility to continue to stand in solidarity with African and Indigenous peoples inside this country and with peoples around the world struggling for justice and liberation from US terror! We uphold our right to stand in material solidarity with those movements by sending resources to support their work and struggle!

The African People’s Solidarity Committee is an organization of white people working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), which leads the Uhuru Movement.

APSC’s work revolves around raising reparations or material support from white people for the liberation movement of African people inside this country and around the world.

For almost 40 years the APSP has led the movement for African Liberation, uniting Africans as one people around the world struggling to liberate and reunite Africa and all its resources as the birthright of African people everywhere.

Stop the US government repression against all solidarity and anti-war activists!

Victory to African and oppressed peoples around the world!

Down with US imperialism!

New video talks about building solidarity with African liberation

Free Diop Olubala! Drop the charges now!

Free Diop Olubala! Drop the charges now!

By Penny Hess, African People’s Solidarity Committee

I urge everyone to call, write and email to the judge to demand that the charges are dropped against Diop Olugbala, a leading African community organizer for the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM).

Diop is facing felony charges of aggravated assault in a political trial that begins August 24 in Philadelphia for speaking out at a city council meeting in March of this year against the city’s planned severe budget cuts that would eliminate essential services in African communities of the city.

Diop led the InPDUM protest pointing out that while Philadelphia cut back on essentials for the African community in the name of the city’s budget crisis, it was at the same time increasing its financial allocations to the militarized police responsible for on-going harassment, brutality and murders in an African community plagued with staggering poverty and unemployment rates.

Diop was holding a sign calling for African people to resist the city’s billion-dollar war budget targeting the African community when he was physically attacked by plain clothed police and arrested.

Diop is also well known for challenging then-presidential candidate Barack Obama at a campaign event in St. Petersburg, Florida in 2008 to answer the question, “What about the black community, Obama?”

It was this bold action that got media coverage around the world, exposing Obama for being “white power in black face,” who would continue to carry out the imperialist agenda against oppressed peoples of the world and against African and oppressed peoples inside this country.

While most of the white left and anti-war movement was silenced by its unity with the first black imperial president, Diop and InPDUM laid bare Obama’s role as a neocolonial shill who won the election by blatantly selling out the interests of the African community and the oppressed peoples of the world.

Diop must be supported because he represents organized African resistance in this period. He represents Africans struggling for justice and liberation in 2010 in the face of brutal containment policies—similar to those carried out by the US in wars of plunder and occupation around the world—that have African communities on lockdown and serving as fodder for the lucrative US prison economy.

Diop shows us that the struggle of the Black Revolution of the Sixties was never completed. It was defeated by the same US government that is trying to save itself from crisis by attacking the people of Afghanistan and Mexican people right here.

There are many political prisoners from the earlier period of struggle who must be supported and freed—heroic people such as Sundiata Acoli and Mumia Abu Jamal.

But Diop represents the new era of political struggle and resistance—young African people rising up to fight the endless police attacks on the streets, the hostile education system, the rampant African community unemployment, the frame ups and discriminatory sentencing that are responsible for nearly 4 million African people being tied to the prison system.

Diop is the political prisoner of today, part of a growing organized movement of African people struggling for liberation in the face of Obama’s myth of a “post-racial America” and a deepening US economic crisis brought about by the emerging resistance of oppressed and colonized people around the world.

From the white community we must stand in solidarity with the movement to free Diop Olugbala, recognizing that as in the 1960s the leadership of a genuine movement in this country for social justice and against this vicious imperialism comes from the African community struggling for African freedom right here.

Drop the charges against Diop Olugbala (slave name: Wali Rahman); reparations to Diop!

Here’s what you can do:

1. Call judge Roxanne Covington at 215-683-7142 every Monday with the following demand:

"I am calling to oppose the City of Philadelphia’s efforts to convict Diop Olugbala, also known as Wali Rahman, with the trumped up felony charge of aggravated assault on police. His arrest represents an attack on the rights of African people to free speech and economic development. I stand with the demand for the immediate dropping of all charges against Wali Rahman and Franklin Moses."

2. Call district attorney Seth Williams at 215-686-8000 and demand all charges against Wali Rahman be dropped.

3. Email the judge at: tdaccrimssupport@courts.phila.gov

Sunday, August 1st - Uhuru Solidarity Training Conference: Reparations in Action!

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Please confirm that you can participate by emailing: info@uhurusolidarity.org Uhuru Solidarity Movement Training Conference REPARATIONS IN ACTION! Sunday, August 1st 10:00am – 3:00pm EDT For all supporters and allies of African liberation: We want to invite you to a training conference this Sunday, August 1st from 10am – 3pm EDT. Uhuru Solidarity Movement is launching exciting new campaigns as part of the reparations in action to support the work of the African People's Socialist Party, coming off its successful 5th Congress, leading the worldwide struggle for African liberation, and building the Uhuru Movement as the leading activist organization for real change all over the world. Participate from anywhere in the world through web video or phone! Instructions for how to connect are at the bottom of this email. Please confirm by email that you can participate in this conference! A detailed agenda will be sent out later in the week, but the topics covered in the conference and training are: Building Days in Solidarity With African People: Oakland & San Diego, CA St. Petersburg & Miami, FL Philadelphia, PA & New York City And your city! Uhuru Holiday Pies Campaign – with a 30-year history of supporting African self-determination Uhuru Holiday Online Auction – getting donations for the auction Trainings on: Community organizing & grassroots fundraising: Reparations in Action Pledge Campaign Organizing benefits, house meetings Using the internet to get the word out: media, online postings, social networking Supporting the Uhuru Pie Campaign in your area: sales, pie production, donations Please confirm that you can participate by emailing: info@uhurusolidarity.org INSTRUCTIONS ON HOW TO JOIN THE CONFERENCE: Topic: Uhuru Solidarity Movement Training Conference: "Reparations in Action!" Time: 10:00 am, Eastern Daylight Time (New York, GMT-04:00) Meeting Number: 731 329 716 Meeting Password: uhuru ------------------------------------------------------- To join the online meeting (Now from iPhones too!) ------------------------------------------------------- Go to https://freetrial.webex.com/freetrial/j.php?ED=136214622&UID=0&PW=NZGI5ZDcwYzdj&RT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D Enter your name and email address. Enter the meeting password: uhuru Click "Join Now". Follow the instructions that appear on your screen. To view in other time zones or languages, please click the link: https://freetrial.webex.com/freetrial/j.php?ED=136214622&UID=0&PW=NZGI5ZDcwYzdj&ORT=MiMxMQ%3D%3D ------------------------------------------------------- To join the audio conference only ------------------------------------------------------- To receive a call back, provide your phone number when you join the meeting, or call the number below and enter the access code. Call-in toll number (US/Canada): 1-650-429-3300 Access code: 731 329 716 ------------------------------------------------------- For assistance ------------------------------------------------------- Go to https://freetrial.webex.com/freetrial/mc On the left navigation bar, click "Support". You can contact us at: info@uhurusolidarity.org

African People's Solidarity Committee / Uhuru Solidarity Movement info@uhurusolidarity.org • www.UhuruSolidarity.org • UhuruSolidarity.blogspot.com Listen to "Solidarity Not Charity" on UhuruRadio.com - Sundays at 1pm U.S. Eastern

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Take a stand against criminalization of African youth gatherings in Philly

Alison Hoehne of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement in Philadelphia wrote this response to an article published this week on UhuruNews.com, "African youth in Philadelphia threaten to shut city down—InPDUM demands hands off the so-called 'flash mobs' (African youth)"

Uhuru! This powerful situation unfolding in Philly is giving us in the white community the opportunity to see first hand the reality that the Uhuru Movement has been exposing for so long -- that there are truly two realities in Philly and in the U.S.-- one experienced by the entire white population and a totally different one experienced by African and Latino people.

Just last night there was a flash mob action during rush hour at the 30th Street Amtrak station with 600 young people swarming through the station. They jammed up the whole concourse and stood frozen in place for three long minutes as commuters tried to get through. Were they viciously clubbed by police and arrested? Was there mass hysteria and condemnation by the city government and population? Were they criminalized in the media today as scum criminal types trying to intimidate our good citizens?

Hell no! They were Drexel University students carrying out a charming, "whimsical" (Phila Inquirer), action to show that hundreds of people can come together in Philly peacefully. "This is not a riot" they said, and claimed to be "taking back" the concept of flash mobs as a cool thing to do, unlike the recent African youth rebellions.

Can you imagine 600 young Africans going into 30th Street station and standing still, jamming the place up and not being so much as touched by the Amtrak police, Septa police and Philadelphia police? I remember when ONE unarmed, homeless and mentally ill African man was shot dead in that station for defending himself from Amtrak police by holding a chair in front of him to keep the police thugs from attacking him!

We have to wake our community up! Who are the real criminals and where is the violence really coming from?

Talking of mobs. Does anyone remember the Williams family in Gray's Ferry getting attacked outside their house by the white nationalist mob of firemen coming out of their "beef and beer" in 1997? The Uhuru Movement and the African community led demonstrations of hundreds of people to protest this attack, (and exposing that this was a daily occurrence), forcing the DA's office to make a reluctant arrest or two. It was reminiscent of the white mob attacks on African people in Philly and the Northeast throughout the 1800s. There's a plaque on Lombard at 6th to the "Lombard Street Riot" where hundreds of Irish and Italians viciously attacked the African parade that was celebrating Jamaican independence. Hundreds of African were beaten and many killed. African homes, churches and an orphanage were burned down, yet none of the white people were arrested. This was the norm.

This is our true history. The entire white population has participated in terrorizing African people to keep the jobs, land and resources stolen from African and indigenous people for ourselves.

Nothing has changed. YET!

African people have always struggled against slavery and colonial terror and oppression. The recent African gatherings/youth rebellions are part of an intensification of organized resistance led today by the Uhuru Movement. Oppressed and colonized people around the world and right here are rising up to take back what's theirs. We'd better understand it and get on the right side or we're going to go down with imperialism and reaction!

We in the white community have the opportunity to take the right stand as never before!

Yes, 29 more young Africans have been sent to prison in Philly in one swoop. Crime rates have gone down after all, so the police have got to do something to help fill those prison beds that Wall Street brokers are betting on. The prison system is what's keeping the economies of Pennsylvania and Philadelphia afloat. More young people from the African community in Phila are sent to prison than almost anywhere in the country, creating a billion dollar economy -- jobs for clerks, police, judges, parasitic lawyers & DAs -- not to mention prison slave labor where Africans make most of the paint products and paint brushes in the U.S., electronic parts, office furniture, even bombs, for pennies a day.

Where is the outcry about this violent system that locks up a whole generation of young African people to make money for white people? Where's the outcry at the brutal police murders of African people which happens every week in Philly without a word of protest from the same folks who are all upset about a table at Macy's getting knocked over?

Why is there no outrage when the reports comes out that the First Congressional District (large parts of Phila, Chester etc) has the second highest rate of hunger in the U.S. or that up to 76% of families in African communities in North and West Phila live in dire poverty! There are no jobs for young African people. Two out of five people in Phila public schools are termed permanent truants. This means there is nothing for African students in the colonial schools except hostile teachers, humiliation and police.

It's truly time that we get organized if we want to change this reality. We must support the right of African people to fight back and organize to transform their conditions of life. Any sincere white person and all allies of the African community reading this needs to join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and get organized under the leadership of the African working class revolution. We surely owe African people reparations and we can start by actively working in solidarity with the movement for African liberation and self-determination.

Take a stand with us to make the outcry from the white community against the criminalization of the African community and in solidarity with the just demands of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement:

1. Hands off the Philly African youth gatherings: drop all trumped-up charges against those Africans rounded up in the Center City and South Street incidents.
2. Reparations to the African community: $1.1 billion for community-controlled education, housing and economic development—not police containment.
3. We demand community control of the police.
4. Free Diop Olugbala! Hands off the City Hall 2!
   

Join today at www.uhurusolidarity.org

April 4th Study on "The Black Jacobins" (revolution in Haiti)

Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People's Solidarity Committee and author of "Overturning the Culture of Violence," will lead a study of "The Black Jacobins," a powerful book on the revolution in Haiti that helps give context to the situation today.

Sunday, April 4th, 1pm U.S. Eastern
Tune in to Solidarity Not Charity on UhuruRadio.com

Email/call with questions and comments:
Email: dj@uhururadio.com
Skype: uhururadio
U.S. phone: 727-565-1599
UK phone: 020-8133-6629

This is a follow up to the study held by the Uhuru Solidarity Movement on February 20th. Penny Hess will deepen our understandings of the conditions faced by African people in Haiti during the period of slavery, the social forces at play in the Caribbean and Europe and the heroic African resistance that resulted in the first successful African-led workers' revolution in the western hemisphere.

People are encouraged to read the book ahead of the study, but that is not required.

Penny will give an overview of the book, read from some selected passages and then open it up for discussion.

So mark your calendars and join us for this important study!

Haiti: The devastation began in 1492 (updated slideshow)

Haiti: The devastation began in 1492

View more presentations from apscuhuru.

This slideshow gives a historical context for the devastation following the earthquake in Haiti.

Africa's Resources in African Hands Tour Event in New York City a Success!

The Africa's Resources in African Hands Northeast & Canada regional organizing tour was threatened by severe winter weather warnings all up the coast to upstate New York state, but even a forecasted "Snow Hurricane" couldn't keep the Uhuru Solidarity Movement from holding an incredible event, "Africa's Resources in African Hands," on Friday, February 26th.

The night kicked off with Brazilian drumming by ZapOte and the revolutionary freedom songs of T & Willetz, setting the tone for an exciting evening!

Oronde Takuma, the leader of the African People's Socialist Party NYC, spoke on the conditions in the African community in New York and around the world, the need for revolutionary organization and the control of African resources by African people, and the role that white allies can play in solidarity with African liberation. He closed by saying, "I look at APSC Chairwoman Penny Hess and the other comrades in the solidarity movement, and I don't see white people. I see revolutionaries. And every white person can truly be a revolutionary if they take this stand."

Chairwoman Penny Hess delivered a riveting multimedia presentation on Haiti and the call for Africa's Resources in African Hands, drawing from the brutal history of slavery and colonialism to lay out the analysis of Chairman Omali Yeshitela and African Internationalism and to explain the strategy of the African People's Solidarity Committee, an organization of white people and other allies who have a principled relationship working under the leadership of the Party building genuine solidarity with African-led programs for self-determination.

The event was well-attended despite the weather, and also included a silent auction and bake sale raising many resources for the African Village Survival Initiative Programs. There was also lots of exciting culture including African uplift poet Robert Gibbons and blues/soul singer The Puge from the African band Juneteenth, who expressed deep respect and unity with the Uhuru Movement.

Chairwoman Penny Hess continued the Africa's Resources in African Hands tour up to Toronto Canada with an event co-sponsored by InPDUM Toronto and the Canada Haiti Action Network entitled "Haiti: Solidarity Not Charity." Also, the tour will end in Philadelphia on Tuesday March 2nd with a potluck and forum on Haiti. See more info at http://uhurusolidarity.org.

With the NYC kickoff event complete, the Uhuru Solidarity Movement will be building in New York City, with a follow-up meeting this Saturday, March 6th at The Center at 208 W. 13th St in Greenwich Village starting at 2:00pm. All New York area people are invited to attend and participate in building solidarity with Africa's Resources in African Hands!

Hands Off the Philly City Hall 2! Shabaka Mnombatha Found "Guilty" by Imperialist Judge, Police Exposed

Following a fierce morning demonstration outside the Criminal Justice Center in Philadelphia, International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, People's Organization for Progress and Uhuru Solidarity Movement members attended the trial of Shabaka Mnombatha (aka Franklin Moses), 1 of 2 members of InPDUM facing charges stemming from the police attack inside City Council chambers on March 19, 2009.

9 Months of protests, struggle, hearings, judges recusing themselves from the case and various legal delays led up to Shabaka's trial on 2 misdemeanor charges of "disorderly conduct" and "resisting arrest." Shabaka's representation was to be a public defender, but activist attorney Michael Coard, who is also representing InPDUM Philadelphia leadership Diop Olugbala in his case, came in to replace the PD and made an impressive case for Shabaka's innocence, exposing the inconsistencies in the stories of the 3 Civil Affairs police officers who testified for the State. Coard used his incredible skills as a defense attorney to expose that it would be impossible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Shabaka resisted arrest or was disorderly in expressing his Constitutional right to free speech while protesting the city budget in City Council on March 19th, 2009.

However, Judge Joseph Waters immediately returned a "guilty" verdict, having shown his allegiance to the State from the beginning and following through to the end, convicting Shabaka of the 2 misdemeanor charges. But Coard summed the day up as a victory: "We won, because we didn't have to call up any witnesses, and we let the cops expose themselves." An appeal has already been filed, and the movement will reconvene outside the CJC for a demonstration on the morning of February 10th, 2010 for Diop's trial. Diop is facing the misdemeanor charges as well as a felony "aggravated assault" charge that was reinstated after being initially dropped by the first judge.

For more information contact Uhuru Solidarity Movement at 215-387-0919 or philly@uhurusolidarity.org.

African People's Solidarity Committee National Conference Deepens White Support for African Liberation Struggle

“Stop U.S. Colonial Wars Around the World and Inside This Country” was the theme of the annual national conference of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) held at the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, FL January 10th through the 12th.

Formed by the African People’s Socialist Party in 1976 the African People’s Solidarity Committee is made up of white activists organizing solidarity from our own communities under the strategic leadership of the African-led Uhuru Movement.

Building a movement for white reparations for African people, APSC organizes white people to recognize our genuine interest in overturning this white power system by standing in solidarity with the African-led movement to unite all African people and liberate Africa.

Activists in solidarity with the Uhuru Movement converged on St. Petersburg from many places around the U.S. including Oakland, CA; Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston, Brooklyn, Philadelphia and the Tampa Bay Area.

The conference combined lively multimedia reports on APSC campaigns such as Africa’s Resources in African Hands and the Uhuru Foods Holiday Pie Campaign with deep theoretical presentations and discussions that helped all of us better understand this present period of transformation and the role we can play in it.

Chairman Yeshitela gave political education

Chairman Omali Yeshitela, leader of the Uhuru Movement and the African Socialist International gave powerful overviews summing up the current work of the African People’s Socialist Party, which is expanding worldwide.

The Chairman emphasized that in this deepening crisis of imperialism the growing liberation struggles of African and oppressed peoples around the world are leading the way against imperialist domination in all forms. He stated that it is important to move beyond protest to a genuine anti-imperialist movement led by African workers.

The Chairman exposed that capitalism was born from the enslavement of African people, the genocide of Indigenous peoples and the colonial oppression of the majority of the world for the benefit of the white world.

In his presentation on the meaning of socialism Chairman Yeshitela expanded on the question of the Labor Theory of Value. Noting that traditionally political theoreticians including Karl Marx and V.I. Lenin—though they struggled for a revolutionary trajectory—left out of this theory the reality of the stolen labor of enslaved African and colonized peoples whose unpaid toil unearthed the minerals and natural resources needed for the existence of the factories that provided jobs for the white workers of Europe.

He made the point that African and colonized workers are the true proletariat leading the world revolution through struggles for national liberation, not the white workers sitting on the pedestal of the enslavement of Africans. If white workers want to destroy the capitalist system of bosses and workers they must stand in solidarity with colonized workers leading the anti-imperialist struggles.

The Chairman also educated us about the question of Anarchism, stating that he unites with anarchists in their hatred of the state, which is always a repressive institution upholding the interests of the class in power. He believes that eventually after imperialism is destroyed and control over the land, resources and political institutions are in the hands of the working class there will be no more need for a state.

However, in the meantime, colonized workers who have conquered state power have to defend their power through the workers’ state which represses the former elite bourgeois class that is always striving to regain its power at the expense of the people. Everyone interested in destroying the white power bourgeois state must support the workers’ state on the road to true communism in which the institution of the state no longer is necessary.

Uhuru on the Move!

On the opening day of the conference, African People’s Socialist Party Economic Development leader Ironiff Ifoma led an informative discussion on “Uhuru on the Move: Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going.”

Laying out all the victories of the Party over the past year, including the founding of the African People’s Socialist Party in Sierra Leone, Ifoma put out the goals for 2010 including the Party’s Fifth Congress to be held in Washington, DC in July.

Gaida Kambon, APSP’s National Secretary, gave an inspiring presentation about the history of the Uhuru Movement, her role in many of the Party’s leading community campaigns over the years and what motivated her to dedicate her life to African liberation.

APSC chairwoman Penny Hess gave multimedia presentations showing that African people are oppressed by colonialism inside this country. Africans in the U.S. are not struggling against racism, Hess exposed, but are waging an anti-colonial movement. She showed why it is in the interest of white people to take up the demand for reparations to African people and why a stand of white solidarity is the progressive stand that represents our genuine interest in joining humanity for justice and liberation.

Africa’s Resources in African Hands

Alison Hoehne, chairwoman of the APSC unit in Philadelphia, led a workshop on the work of Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM), APSC’s activist organization.

Lisa Burgess, Harris Daniels, Maureen Wagener, Ruby Gittelsohn, Scott Milinder, Stephanie Midler, Miah O’Malley-Thompson, Lisa Watson, Bill Canada and others reported on some of USM’s most successful campaigns of 2009, including the Earth Day Festival and Yoga for a Purpose which involved the participation of many yoga studios in raising money for projects of the Uhuru Movement.

Plans were laid out for 2010 focusing on building membership, launching the campaign for Africa’s Resources in African Hands and building the annual African People’s Solidarity Day which aims to raise $10,000 for the work of the African People’s Socialist Party.

Everyone who participated in the APSC conference was mobilized and renewed to build APSC and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement.

APSC member Kitty Reilly believed “the APSC conference was one of the best ever. I know I am eager to get out and build a powerful movement in the white community for reparations to African people!”

For more information on the African People’s Solidarity Committee visit www.apscuhuru.org

Uhuru!

Solidarity with Haiti & Africa's Resources in African Hands Organizing Meeting

Tuesday, January 26th, 7 to 8:30pm
Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library

6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland
oakland@uhurusolidarity.org 510-625-1106

Organizing meeting of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement.
Join the committee to build the Africa's Resources in African Hands Action Network!

We will start with a brief study on the situation in Haiti and throughout the African world.

We will then get started in discussing and organizing the work to build the Africa's Resources in African Hands - Reparations Now! Campaign and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement's Week of Action to Stop Obama's Colonial Wars Here and Abroad in March.

The African People’s Solidarity Committee and the Uhuru Solidarity Movementis calling on white people to support the African-led programs and campaigns to win self-determination for African people worldwide as the only solution to natural and human-made disasters.

The African People’s Solidarity Committee is calling on white people to support the African-led programs and campaigns to win self-determination for African people worldwide as the only solution to natural and human-made disasters.

Solidarity with Haiti Community Discussion by Uhuru Solidarity Movement Oakland

Tuesday, January 19th, 7 to 9pm
Niebyl Proctor Marxist Library
6501 Telegraph Ave, Oakland (near Alcatraz)

COMMUNITY DISCUSSION
Video presentation of current analysis on Haiti
from the African Socialist International

Join Africa’s Resources in African Hands Action Network and the Uhuru Solidarity Movement.
We are an activist organization that works under the leadership of the African-led Uhuru Movement. We organize solidarity & raise resources for the worldwide struggle of African people for control over their land, communities and resources. We are lookin for you to join!

oakland@uhurusolidarity.org
510-625-1106

The devastation began more than 200 years ago: Solidarity with African people in Haiti! Africa’s Resources in African Hands!

In the wake of the devastation following the 7.0 earthquake on January 12, 2010, the African People’s Solidarity Committee, a white organization working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, expresses our deepest solidarity with African people in Haiti.

With at least 50,000 dead, hundreds of thousands injured and more than 3.5 million homeless, the conditions on the island have been described as unimaginable. With relief efforts moving slowly and the threat of mass starvation mounting, U.S. military occupation forces are being sent in, raising the specter of the brutal treatment of African people in New Orleans following the 2005 Hurricane Katrina.

U.S. president Barack Obama has promised a massive U.S. relief effort with a pledge of $100 million to be sent to Haiti as an outpouring of support comes in from throughout the U.S. and around the world. All major media sources have sent reporters to the country’s capital, Port-au-Prince.

We unite with the efforts to send massive resources into Haiti as quickly as possible.

But the disaster hit Haiti 200 years ago and its problem is the colonial devastation that has long subjected this proud and once independent and prosperous African-led country to live on a diet of mud pies and dwell in tin shanty towns.

A strong earthquake is deadly, but a 7.2 tremor in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989 resulted in 63 deaths as opposed to the tens of thousands in Haiti.

We are forced to ask, where was the North American outcry and outpouring of support over the past 25 years as Africans from Haiti were locked up in vile U.S. detention camps in their desperate attempts to escape the conditions imposed on them by U.S. economic policies that force the people to live on less than $2 a day?

As the bodies of Africans struggling for asylum from Haiti washed up on south Florida beaches where was the mass mobilization of resources to the already devastated island?

Where was the outrage when Haiti’s democratically elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was kidnapped by the Bush administration in 2004, deposed from his position and exiled to Africa?

We recognize that Africans in Haiti are the people who freed themselves from enslavement by waging the first successful workers’ revolutionary movement against French colonial powers in the Western Hemisphere. They are the people who defeated Napoleon’s army of 30,000 French troops in 1804, declaring Haiti a free and independent country open as a refuge for anyone in the world seeking to escape oppression and injustice.

Following the victorious revolution in Haiti, the U.S. and much of Europe imposed an economic embargo on the island. France then forced the Haitian people to pay “reparations” for its lost “property” which included enslaved African people themselves on land stolen from the indigenous Taino people who now have been wiped off the face of the earth.

As an article on the Uhuru News website states, “The United States occupied the island from 1915 to 1934. This U.S. occupation dismantled Haiti’s revolutionary constitutional system that prohibited land being purchased by foreigners.

“The U.S. occupation reinstituted the enslavement of African people to build roads, and established the National Guards that ran the country after the marines left. In the process the U.S. looted the entire treasury of Haiti.

“This is why Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere today, why Africans are forced to live in shanties, subsist on a diet of mud pies and are regularly shot down by U.N. armed forces! Africans continue to have no control over our resources, our Africa and our lives everywhere.”

The reality is that the U.S. is a wealthy and powerful imperialist country built on the enslavement of African people and the genocide of the indigenous people for the benefit of the white population. All of the U.S.-pledged relief aid will never transform the colonial devastation imposed on Haiti.

The Uhuru Movement led by the African People’s Socialist Party is calling for African people worldwide to join together for a united relief effort to African people in Haiti under the slogan of “One Africa, one people, one destiny!”

The Uhuru Movement is leading the campaign for Africans on the Continent of Africa, inside the U.S., the Caribbean or wherever they have been forcibly dispersed around the world to organize to reunite and liberate Africa under the leadership of the African working class. This is the goal of the Party-led African Socialist International which has been built in the U.S., Canada, the U.K, Sierra Leone and other places in the African world.

The African People’s Solidarity Committee is calling on white people to support the African-led programs and campaigns to win self-determination for African people worldwide as the only solution to natural and human-made disasters.

We are calling other white people to join us in standing for reparations to African people and to join and support the Uhuru Solidarity Movement campaign for Africa’s Resources in African Hands.

The only way to transform the horrendous conditions that African people suffer under colonialism and neo-colonialism is by African workers themselves taking control over all their resources and land. Charity only keeps the power and resources in the hands of imperialism and the white world.

We understand that the only sustainable future for the planet, for us and for all humanity lies in genuine solidarity with self-determination and liberation for African people and all oppressed people, not in the continuation of imperialist war, plunder and hoarding scarce resources at the expense of others!

Solidarity Not Charity!

To contact the Uhuru Solidarity Movement national office call 215-387-0919

www.uhurusolidarity.org

Earthquake and colonial domination equal deadly combination in Haiti

Reposted from UhuruNews.com

The island country of Haiti where African people waged the first successful workers’ revolution that brilliantly defeated the French colonial slave master militarily in 1804 today faces an estimated 100,000 dead, thousands homeless and vast devastation following a massive earthquake on Jan. 12. Read the full article

LIVE Broadcast of the African People's Solidarity Committee National Conference!

On UhuruNews.com - Sunday, January 10th - Monday, January 11th

Special broadcast January 10-11 of the National Conference of the African People's Solidarity Committee

In St. Petersburg Florida. It starts 9:30am US Eastern.

You can listen to the audio here, or instead view it live at Live Video

African People's Solidarity Committee Annual National Conference

Sunday, January 10 - Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Uhuru House
1245 18th Ave. S., St. Petersburg, FL 33705

PROGRAM

Day I—Sunday, January 10
8:30	Registration and Breakfast
9:30	Welcome
9:45	A New Kind of Relationship for White People in Solidarity With the African Liberation Movement African People’s Solidarity Committee Chairwoman Penny Hess opens the conference with an introduction to the philosophy of the Uhuru Movement and its program for a just and sustainable world based on an end to a system of oppressors and the oppressed. She will present an overview of the current crisis of global capitalism, the rise of anti-colonial struggles and the principled role for white people in the growing international movement for African freedom. Hess is author of Overturning the Culture of Violence and longtime leader of the movement for “white solidarity with black power” under the leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the African People’s Socialist Party.
10:05	Uhuru on The Move; Where We’ve Been and Where We’re Going Ironiff Ifoma will present a multi-media review of the political and economic accomplishments of the Uhuru Movement in 2009 and its plans for 2010. Ifoma is the Director of Economic Development for the African People’s Socialist Party and a longtime member of the Party’s Political Bureau. She has guided the development of the Uhuru Movement’s economic self-reliance institutions throughout the U.S. for decades.
10:25	A New Day: Beyond Protest to a Genuine Anti-Imperialist Movement Struggling for Power African Socialist International Chairman Omali Yeshitela will deliver the conference’s keynote presentation. His visionary analysis of world events is expected to include commentary on the Obama presidency, the new Black is Back! Coalition, the causes of the global economic crisis, and the growing struggle of African workers against imperialism. The prolific theorist and revolutionary strategist explains the role of growing people’s movements in oppressed countries around the world in weakening U.S. and European world dominance. Having completed successful organizing tours this year in Kenya and Sierra Leone, Yeshitela will discuss the centrality of Africa to the world-wide anti-imperialist movement, the unity of African people everywhere and the significance of the African People’s Socialist Party.
11:25	Discussion, Questions and Answers
12:00	Lunch
1:00	Pictoral Review of Uhuru Movement African Community Programs Presented by Kitty Reilly and Janice Kant. Enjoy a beautiful slide show presenting the dynamic community empowerment programs of the Uhuru Movement in the U.S. and Africa, including the economic development institutions of the African People’s Education and Defense Fund, the international technical and scientific collaborations of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Projects, the sustainability work of the African Village Survival Initiative, and the independent media programs of Uhuru News. Share and appreciate the on-the-ground fruition of the African “do-for-self” philosophy of the African People’s Socialist Party.
1:45	Fundraising Tradition Facilitated by Kitty Reilly (St. Petersburg, FL), Bill Canada (Oakland, CA) and Maureen Wagener (Oakland, CA). At the core of solidarity is active reparations to African people. This is our chance to give back and contribute to a growing and vibrant African liberation movement that is changing the world.
3:00	The Day of Reckoning: Colonialism, National Liberation and Solidarity African People’s Solidarity Committee Chairwoman Penny Hess explains why “it’s colonialism, not racism” at the root of the oppression of African people in the U.S. and around the world. Using a dynamic slide presentation, she will illustrate how the U.S. was born from the enslavement of millions of African people and the genocide and theft of the land of the indigenous people of the Americas. She will chronicle the actions of white people across the right-left political spectrum in relation to the black rights struggles in the U.S. and internationally. She will review the various fronts in the current re-emergence of national liberation struggles and present a challenge to white people seeking change today to join in solidarity with the anti-imperialist resistance movement under the leadership of the African revolution.
5:30	Dinner and Get together
7:00	Video of the African People's Socialist Party in Sierra Leone
Day II—Monday, January 11
8:30	Registration, Breakfast
9:00	Welcome
9:15	The Colonial Police State and Counterinsurgency View and discuss a video presentation prepared by the Uhuru News team of the African People’s Socialist Party on the State, the institution of violence protecting the status quo for the powers that be. What is the role of the State’s fronts in enforcing oppression: the police, the army, the prisons, the courts, and how does the State function differently in white and African communities?
10:30	What We’ve Been Struggling for All These Years – It’s Happening! African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) National Secretary Gaida Kambon will speak about the heroic legacy of the APSP and recent advances in its revolutionary trajectory both in the U.S. and in Africa. Kambon is a fiery fighter for African liberation, having led numerous Uhuru Movement campaigns over the years. Born in Panama, she grew up in Brooklyn and was an organizer for the 1st World Tribunal on Reparations for African People held in NYC in 1982 and a leader in many of the Uhuru Movement campaigns for the democratic rights of African people over the years. A powerful example of women’s leadership in the African revolution, Kambon inspires courage and optimism in all who aspire to take up the struggle for freedom and justice.
12:30	Lunch
1:30	Build the Uhuru Solidarity Movement 2010: Practical Grassroots Organizing Uhuru Solidarity Movement organizers will provide an overview of the major events, fundraisers and campaigns of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement for 2010. They will review the USM’s membership program and how to build a branch in your area. Learn how you can participate in recruitment and fundraising through USM events, institutions and programs like Earth Day, African People’s Solidarity Day, the Week of Action, Yoga with a Purpose, online auction, flea markets, and food booths.
5:00	Dinner
6:30	The Power of the People: Why We Are Socialists African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela and APSC Chairwoman Penny Hess will explain what socialism means according to the philosophy of African internationalism. How does socialism as led by African workers differ from the European/white model? How is the struggle for socialism expressed through the growing movements for national liberation? What is neo-colonialism and what part does it play in the struggle of African workers for power? Hear the African revolutionary perspective on these questions and more.
Day III—Tuesday, January 12
8:30	Registration, Breakfast
9:30	Welcome
9:45	Annual Reports African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) organizers present an analysis of the political environment of their communities, report on the work of 2009 and discuss plans for 2010. How you can join the solidarity work on all its fronts including Uhuru Foods, Uhuru Solidarity Movement, UhuruNews.com and The Burning Spear newspaper.
1:00	Lunch
2:00	Using Social Media for Outreach and Organizing Learn protocols and share tips for getting the word out online about the campaigns and fundraisers of the Uhuru Movement.
3:00	Adjourn

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