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!