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!
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