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.

What about the black community? Obama’s “post-racial America” is very far from reality

Obama Facts

Two Americas - Conditions in the African community

Uhuru organizer speaks out on why the struggle with Obama


When Diop Olugbala, along with others from the Uhuru Movement, protested Barack Obama at a town hall meeting in St. Petersburg, FL on August 1, the movement’s bold challenge was heard around the world.

“What about the black community?” is rapidly becoming the new mantra, targeting not just Obama but all the candidates large and small who are vying to lead the United States of America.

While Obama counts much of the African community in this country among his most enthusiastic supporters he has had no problem avoiding the pressing issues and ever-worsening conditions facing African people in America today.

African men are being shot down by police and rounded up for life long sentences in the prison system in epidemic proportions. The high school where Obama was speaking in St. Petersburg was attended by 17 year old Javon Dawson who was murdered by the St. Petersburg police in early June. Officer and Iraq war veteran Terrence Nemeth shot the unarmed Dawson twice in the back during a graduation party.

Instead of standing with African people Obama has taken every opportunity to use his campaign to attack them. These attacks include his disowning of Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his pastor and Obama’s Father’s Day presentation slamming black men with children.

Behind his slogans for “hope and change” Obama represents the forefront of imperialism’s strategy for neocolonialism, defined by the Uhuru Movement as “white power in black face.” In the U.S. and around the world African and oppressed representatives are hand picked by imperialist powers to carry out their bidding.

Obama’s campaign is portrayed as “populist,” representing the interests of “Main Street” America. But as an August 6 New York Times article revealed, a third of Obama’s $340 million raised for his campaign so far has come from donations of $1,000 or over. Obama has more than 500 “bundlers,” professional fundraisers, most of whom are lobbyists for big corporations.

After 8 years representing the 13th District of Chicago, the most impoverished area of the city, living conditions there are reportedly far worse for black people than before. Obama’s district was home to the infamous Jon Burge, the Chicago police captain exposed for torturing African men, women and children for more than 20 years. Obama has yet to denounce Burge.

This country is built on the enslavement of African people, along with the genocide of the Indigenous people and theft of their land. The oppression of African people, as well as the theft of the labor, land and resources of oppressed peoples around the world make up the economic and political pedestal on which the white population of America and Europe sit.

The history of slavery, genocide and colonialism does not just go away or morph into a post racial America. This history is the basis for every contradiction festering in this country today, from the reality of two Americas – systemic poverty of African communities in the face of U.S. prosperity, to the fact that more young black men are sent to prison than go to college.

Some of us in the white population are beginning to feel pangs of the current U.S. economic crisis. But no one is talking about the long standing economic devastation of African communities where U.S. government imposed illegal drugs, foreclosed homes, gentrification, martial law and policies of police containment feed the multi billion dollar prison industry that has fed the failing U.S. economy for the past 35 years.

The Uhuru Movement understands that Africans are one people inside this country and around the world. The movement is working for the liberation of Africa and all its resources as the birthright of every African person anywhere in the world. This is only just.

The crisis of imperialism is deepening daily because of the resistance of African and oppressed peoples worldwide who are fighting to regain control of their resources, land and self-determination. They are determined to feed their children and build a future for themselves.

It has never been more obvious that the white world is in a crisis because it cannot function without oil, minerals and resources commandeered from others. Today the capitalist legacy of slavery, genocide and colonial extraction that fueled our world for hundreds of years is collapsing.

In the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, we are white people who believe that the future of the planet and the well-being of all peoples will be found in the movement to answer the question, “What about the black community?”

To really bring about hope and change we have to organize under the leadership of African workers struggling for liberation and justice. They are the ones transforming and changing the world from the ground up. Join us – be part of creating a future that all people can believe in. Uhuru!

Vigilante McCullough shot 16-year-old black neighbor; Fronts for white gentrification, would deepen division, inequity, insecurity in Oakland

(left, Patrick McCullough in 2005, being given a party by a Rockridge family following the shooting of 16 year old Melvin McHenry)

In 2003 George Bush led the U.S. bombing and invasion of Iraq. It is a war that many now agree is an unjust assault on an oil-rich nation that has left massive death, displacement and destruction in a vain attempt to maintain cheap and plentiful gas for the U.S.

In 2005 Patrick McCullough shot his unarmed 16 year old teenaged neighbor, Melvin McHenry as he was coming home from school.

As a black man fronting for the interests of property and white gentrification in the long-standing African community of Bushrod, McCullough’s assault on an African child could be compared on a neighborhood scale to Bush’s aggression against the people of Iraq.

Like the U.S. war, the stance upheld by McCullough represents the arrogant assumption that the “haves” can forever ramrod their interests over the “have-nots” regardless of the human and societal price to the victims.

Like the Bush government’s attempt to seize other people’s oil resources, McCullough represents the white community drive for real estate in what many up until recently believed to be an endless Bay Area housing boom.

As the low interest rates of the early 2000’s fueled a frenzied housing bubble, many white people who were priced out of the trendier Oakland neighborhoods found “bargains” in West and North Oakland areas that have long been African communities.

As the white people move in with renovations, privacy fences and landscaping, they set up vigilante and police organizations such as neighborhood watch to push out and contain the African community, whose incomes are often way below those of the new homeowners.
If the gentrifiers can find a black man like Patrick McCullough to front for this community invasion, all the better.

In Oakland the gap between the more affluent white and the impoverished African communities has deepened and intensified over the past few years. While the top 20 percent of Oakland lives on nearly $100,000 a year, a recent article in the New York Times stated that one fifth of Oakland subsists on less and $15,000, well below the federal poverty level.

While most white children in Oakland expect to go to college and find meaningful and gainful employment, an African child born in Oakland today faces the high probability of poverty, joblessness, prison or early death. There are no bright futures for thousands of Oakland residents on the other end of the gentrification equation.

In the face of the recent “invasion” robberies –the result of deepening poverty and desperation, some politicians are pushing for more and more police.

Clearly, the ever-growing resistance in Iraq should show us that oppression, martial law and containment policies will never make Oakland more secure.

As long as one community continues to live at the expense of another there will be no security, safety or peace in our town. McCullough’s campaign for City Council represents the same oppressive approach as America’s failed war against the Iraqi people.

For security, peace and prosperity in Oakland we need genuine and massive economic development to uplift and stimulate the conditions faced by the entire African community, to give a future to all children and the opportunity to develop their talents, skills and abilities.

Say no to Patrick McCullough, gentrification and injustice on June 3rd.

Say yes to peace the only way peace ever works—peace built on a foundation of social and economic justice and true community solidarity, no one community at the expense of another.

Join the Uhuru Movement, an African working-class led movement for liberation, self-determination and economic and political development for African people in Oakland and worldwide.

Uhuru Solidarity Movement provides and opportunity for white people to come together to participate in righting these long-standing historical wrongs in a country whose wealth is built on slavery and genocide. USM is for white people who find living at the expense of African and oppressed people intolerable.

Oakland must not be the command center for the war against the African community. Let’s make it a model community for the world to emulate.

Election Rally and Community Forum on Thursday, May 29th, 7pm
Humanist Hall, 390 - 27th St., Oakland

For more info 510-625-1106
oak_office@apscuhuru.org
http://uhurusolidarityoakland.blogspot.com/