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!