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Voice of the
International
African Revolution!
Volume 23, Number 1 • April 2003
$1.00/ £1
African People’s Socialist Party • P.O. Box 11281 • St. Petersburg Fla • 33733-1281
Inside:
Parents arrested for protecting
child from police
(page 3)
Iraqi invasion and occupation
obscures crisis of imperialism
(page 7)
Letter from sister of Conscientious
Objector
(Page 12)
Military coup brings French army
back to Central African Republic
(Page 17)
Chairman Omali Yeshitela gives an
overview of the world situation
(Page 18)
2
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
Reports from
THE U.S. WAR ON THE
While the world is focused on the murder and mayhem the U.S. government is currently wreaking on the Middle East and the rest of the world, the U.S. remains
undistracted from the centuries-old war it inflicts on the domestically-colonized African community. In fact, this war against our people provided the foundation
for the U.S. to be capable of committing atrocities in Iraq and the rest of the world. In this section, the Spear provides only a few brutal examples of the war on
our community from some of the cities in which the African People’s Socialist Party is active. Spear readers are urged to bring to the Spear news from the frontlines in your community for publication. Write to P.O. Box 11281 • St. Petersburg, Fl • 33733-1281, or email [email protected].
Oakland police assualt
anti-war student protest
1
3
to participate in the walkout were
threatened by the school administration with expulsion. However in the
nearby, mostly white Berkeley school
district, students were officially
excused from class, encouraged to
participate in anti-war actions, and
given extra-credit for doing so.
This component of oppression of
African people is just another front of
the U.S. war against colonized people. Iraq is another.
Peace will come only through
true liberation of African people
Sequence of a police attack: demonstration of predominately African and Raza highs school students convenes
peacefully at Oakland’s “Jack London Square.”
Motorcycle police coral demonstrators, driving directly
into them, riding over their feet, and forcing them into
an ever-tightening pack.
Dozens of Oakland domestic military units attack on
motorcycles
Police violently throw people onto the ground, arresting
them for attmepting to excercise “free speech.”
2
On March 5, 2003, the U.S. was
on the brink of a military assault
against defenseless Iraqi men,
women and children. Meanwhile,
thousands of miles away, Oakland
police had already begun their
assault on young African and
Indigenous students who dared
speak out against U.S. imperialism.
On this day, 300 to 400, mostly
non-white students from high
schools and middle schools militantly
marched out of their classrooms in
defiance of the status quo, while the
U.S. threatened its brutal “shock and
awe” slaughter campaign in Iraq.
This walkout was reminiscent of
35 years ago, when young folks took
a similar militant stand against that
time’s manifestation of U.S. white
power - the “Vietnam War.”
After walking out of their classes,
the students converged on downtown
African People’s Socialist Party
4
Oakland and marched to Jack
London Square, a gentrified tourist
neighborhood on the waterfront. The
march was fully non-violent and fell
within the parameters of basic democratic civil rights described in the U.S.
constitution. When they reached Jack
London Square, the police encircled
them with a phalanx of approximately
30 motorcycle cops.
The pigs began using their vehicles as weapons, running over the
feet of the young comrades and pushing them closer together - in effect,
corralling them as if they were cattle.
It was during this attack that J.R.
Valrey and Sister Rashida, two
African reporters for a local black
community news journal the San
Francisco Bay View, were arrested
on charges of assault on a police offi-
Police attack peaceful protest
cer and resisting arrest.
The public policy of police containment of the African community
has not missed a beat, even in the
face of the City of Oakland paying
out nearly $11 million to 119 people
as part of a court settlement for the
police terror and brutality which has
come to be known as the “Oakland
Riders” scandal.
In addition to the brutality on the
streets of Oakland, many African students were prevented from participating in the walkout.
Students from Oakland high
schools testify that school gates and
doors were locked to hold up the students. This is a blatant violation of
school and district fire codes. In the
Oakland school system, which has
55,000 mostly African, Raza and
Asian students, those who dared to
consider exercising their conscience
Inside the U.S., and in the San
Francisco/Oakland Bay Area in particular, we see the absence of
African, Indigenous and other
oppressed people at these peace
rallies where hundreds of thousands
of people attend. This is because the
“peace movement,” led by the white
left, will organize marches and rallies against a war in Iraq, but refuse
to address the domestic war against
African people.
In response, the African
People’s Socialist Party is building
a contingent of African people to
converge on an anti-war march
and rally scheduled for April 5,
2003 in Oakland. It is necessary to
bring significant numbers to this
mobilization.
If the students who were attacked
seek to join forces with those who
are truly their allies, brothers and sisters in the struggle for peace and
social justice, they will join the Uhuru
Movement contingent.
The Uhuru Movement not only
fully supports the right of the Iraqi
people for self-determination, but we
also are determined to raise the
rights of African people for social justice and national liberation as the
basis for peace. If African people are
not free, there will be no peace for
anyone.
The time is now for African people
to be selfish with building our own
movement for our own benefit.
The days of supporting what
white people think peace should look
like — a peace on the plantation,
where the slave is prevented from
rising up and fighting by any means
necessary, for total, unequivocal
freedom — are over.
Time to struggle! Time to win!
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
3
the Frontline
AFRICAN
St. Pete Police Aim To Provoke Another Rebellion
Police attack child;
arrest parents for protecting him!
BY SATEESH ROGERS
ST. PETERSBURG, Fl — On
Monday, April 14, the St. Petersburg
Police Department attacked 13 yearold Elijah Harrison near the corner of
14th Street and 7th Avenue. After the
attack, the police brutalized and
arrested his parents, Tammie
Harrison and Kenneth Nichols for trying to protect their child.
Since Mayor Rick Baker took
office in 2000, police attacks against
the African community have been on
a steady rise. The city is attempting
to bring back the brutal terrorist policies that led to the police murder of
TyRon Lewis in 1996 and sparked
righteous rebellions. However, the
African community grows increasingly intolerant of the city’s activities,
carried out in the name of preserving
peace for the white community at the
expense of every African man,
woman and child in St. Pete.
African parents brutally
attacked in attempt to protect
son from police harassment
The police initiated the dispute
when they stopped 13 year-old
Anthony Haygood for "running a stop
sign on a bicycle," according to
police and witness accounts. Though
there was no stop sign in the direction the child was headed, the police
felt it necessary to harass this young
man.
While police were questioning
Anthony, 13 year-old Elijah, who was
walking home after being let off the
school bus, was also attacked in
plain view of his father who waits
every day in front of his house for his
son’s return from school.
"I saw Officer Barber shove my
son and I didn’t understand why.
He’s just walking home," said
Kenneth Nichols. So as any loving
and concerned parent would do, he
went over to see why a grown man
with a badge
would
be
attacking his
son.
Mr.
Nichols asked
Officer Barber,
"Why did you
put
your
hands on my
son?" Barber
replied, "You
Elijah Harrison
don’t have
anything to do with it."
Being that Elijah is his son — and
a minor — Nichols had everything to
do with it. So he took Elijah’s hand,
turned around and was going to take
him home.
"Then someone yelled, ‘Watch
out!’ and Barber said that I was under
arrest," Nichols explained. He asked
what he was being arrested for but
no one would tell him.
By this time, Ms. Harrison had
already come out of her kitchen,
where she was busy preparing dinner for her family. She came to protect her son who, by the time the
police were done with their attack,
had been shoved to the ground and
had had his lungs severely bruised.
Ms. Harrison described the situation. "I stepped in front of Kenneth
because I just didn’t understand why
they would attack my son and
fiancée for no reason. I tried to ask
what was going on. I just wanted to
know what was going on."
Officer Barber told Elijah’s
mother, "Mind your business. This
doesn’t concern you." But any parent
see Harris, page 9
Police thugs brutalize 19 year old
African woman; 13 year old child
CLEARWATER, Fl — While
George Bush contemplated carrying
out terrorist assaults on innocent
women and children in Iraq, a young
woman and child were victims of terrorism right here in the African community in Florida.
On March 8, 2003, 19-year-old
Ashley Talley and her 13-year-old
brother, Arron Scott, were attacked and
brutalized by Clearwater police officers. At a concert being held by a local
radio station, police snatched Ashley
over a barricade as she tried to protect
her 13-year-old sister from being
squished against it by the crowd.
The burley officer choked Ashley
while she cried out for her little sister
who was left behind the barricade.
The officer pressed his thumb into
her neck in a choke that the police
use to knock out their victims, often
killing them.
Meanwhile, two other officers
snatched Ashley’s little brother Arron
over the barricade by his neck and
slammed him to the ground.
As one officer had 13-year-old
Arron in a headlock, choking him, the
other wrapped his hands around his
neck, telling Arron that if he kept
moving the officer would break his
neck.
Clearwater police officer chokes African woman attempting to protect
younger sister
Witnesses say that after this, several officers “dog-piled” Arron and
handcuffed him.
Arron was released shortly thereafter and was never charged with any
wrongdoing or told why the police
decided to terrorize him. In fact, the officer who handcuffed him was just as
clueless as Arron himself as he questioned Arron about whether he knew
what he had done.
Ashley, however, was handcuffed
and moved from paddy wagon to
paddy wagon after she refused to leave
without her younger siblings.
Officers told her siblings that Ashley
was only charged with “disorderly conduct,” a misdemeanor, for arguing with
someone while trying to protect her sister, and that they could meet her outside the concert. Only later did they find
out that she was charged with the
felony “battery on a law enforcement
officer.”
This charge is ridiculous!
The police report says that Ashley,
5-foot-4 and 110 pounds, “tried to box”
the officer who was about twice her
size. Witnesses say she never hit the
pig. The police report also says that she
“unlawfully brawled in public.”
Witnesses say that the only physical
movement she made, was after the
police snatched her over the barricade
and started choking her!
So, how did the charges change
from “disorderly conduct” to “battery on
a L.E.O.”? If she had a felony charge
from the beginning, then why were the
police going to let her go?
We know better! It is no new thing
for police to brutalize an African and
then charge the African with a crime to
cover up their own terroristic actions!
This is why the 8th point of the African
People’s Socialist Party’s 14-Point
Platform states: “We want the immediate withdrawal of U.S. police from our
oppressed and exploited communities.”
We understand that their purpose is to
contain and terrorize us; to keep our
communities destabilized and continuously under assault.
Both Ashley and Arron have been
traumatized by this assault. Ashley has
been unable to sleep or eat. She can’t
function at school because she shakes
nervously. Her family moved her from
room to room because she feared that
police were looking in the window. It
took some time before Arron would
even begin talking again.
These terrorist actions against our
community by the police must stop!
We demand that the trumped-up
charges against Ashley Talley be
dropped!
We demand justice for Ashley Talley
and Arron Scott!
African People’s Socialist Party
4
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
APSP intervenes in “peace movement”
opposed to anti-colonial resistance
ST. PETERSBURG, Fl — As of
this writing, U.S. forces have toppled
the Iraqi government through massive slaughter and treachery, and
Baghdad is in flames.
The ancient city is currently in a
state of anarchy that is all too convenient for American imperialist goals
of re-colonizing the Middle East and
the majority of the world.
Even as U.S. marines stand by
and watch impoverished Iraqis
search for meager resources in Iraqi
cities after 13 years of U.S. economic sanctions, an impenetrable
band of military forces guard the Iraqi
oil fields, the real loot that the imperialist masters will guard at any price.
Over the past several months,
during the U.S. government’s buildup
to the invasion of Iraq, a massive
anti-war movement has sprung up
inside the U.S. and around the world.
Millions of people marched internationally and hundreds of thousands
inside this country. The clear message that masses of people did not
want this genocidal massacre
against the Iraqi people was ignored
by Bush and his war cabinet.
For the first time since the U.S. war
against the people of Viet Nam, a
mass movement emerged in cities
and towns inside the U.S. and across
the globe, a movement aided this time
around by the internet and the heady
sense of global communication.
Under the surface, though, this
emerging movement has been riddled with struggle and contradictions
that reflect the colonial realities
inside the belly of parasitic capitalism. As the current situation unfolds,
the question facing the peace movement is more critical than ever:
peace for whom?
Recent polls show that the African
community is strongly opposed to the
U.S. military massacre of the Iraqi
people. According to statistics, 78
percent of white people supported
the war once the U.S. invaded, while
71 percent of African people in the
U.S. were against it.
According to a column in USA
Today, “Though African-Americans
have no love for Saddam Hussein, a
survey of chat rooms on black Web
sites and discussions on black radio
talk shows suggest that many, if not
most, disbelieve the reasons Bush
has given for ordering troops into
Iraq. They think the war has more to
do with Iraq’s oil than with the
weapons of mass destruction the
administration claims Saddam’s
regime possessed.”
Several times a week, members of
the African People’s Socialist Party
organize street rallies in the African
communities where we are located.
These rallies elicit an enthusiastic
response from African workers.
Nevertheless, African people for the
most part do not come out to the
white-led peace rallies because these
rallies do not reflect the conditions
that Africans suffer in this country.
Around the country, wherever
Struggle in the peace movement
African People’s Socialist Party
organizations of African and colonized people attempt to work inside
the peace movement, similar struggles emerge.
A paper by a group of New York
“anti-racist” activists describes the
“resistance by predominantly white
organizations to sharing leadership”
with colonized organizations — much
less following their leadership. The
New York forces cite the failure of
predominantly white organizations to
endorse or participate in anti-war
activities sponsored by colonized
people.
White peace groups consistently
control the programs at rallies, allowing only those African and colonized
speakers who would not challenge
“mainstream” white America. African
movie stars and cultural workers are
acceptable; people working for
African liberation are not, and our
Party and members of the Uhuru
Movement are generally censored.
Pacifists,
U.S.
patriots,
Democratic party members, Zionists
and the loyal U.S. opposition have
attempted to gain control of the
peace movement. The view that “all
violence and all war is wrong” predominates, a line that maintains “a
monopoly of violence in the hands of
the oppressor state,” as African
People’s Socialist Party Chairman
Omali Yeshitela explains.
Peace on the plantation versus
national liberation
As colonized subjects, African people inside the U.S. experience the full
force of U.S. imperialism and imperialist violence every day. Twenty-eight
percent of all African men will go to
prison in their lifetimes. Millions of us
are imprisoned by unjust laws; our children are doomed for failure in hostile
white school systems and poverty is
ever rampant in our communities.
African people live under a militaristic
containment policy as vicious as any
that the U.S. will impose on the Iraqi
people.
Living in a country built on slavery,
genocide and colonialism, the white
population sits on a pedestal of the
oppression of Africans and others.
White people’s affluence and wellbeing comes at the expense of African,
Iraqi and all the other oppressed peoples inside this country and around the
world.
These two realities produce two different concepts of “peace.”
The peace sought by most of the
white peace movement is not that
much different than the peace George
W. Bush is working for. As long as the
Iraqi people are not in a state of uprising there is “peace.” Chairman Omali
describes it as “peace on the plantation,” peace for white people through
the absence of anti-colonial resistance.
This is why there are fewer participants
in the white peace rallies since the
onset of the war and the subsequent
occupation of Iraq.
The essential question is not the
end of military action, but the fact that
there can be no genuine peace without
Over the past year, huge, predominately white, peace demonstations have
occured in the U.S. What these peace demonstrations have not articulated is
“peace for whom?”.
Pacifists,
U.S. patriots, Democratic
party members, Zionists
and the loyal U.S.
opposition have
attempted to gain
control of the peace
movement... African
movie stars and cultural
workers are acceptable;
people working for
African liberation are
not, and our Party and
members of the Uhuru
Movement are generally
censored
national liberation of colonized peoples
around the world and inside the United
States. It is the right of all African and
colonized peoples to struggle for our
liberation by any means necessary,
and the peace movement must be
based on that premise.
Party builds principled peace
movement
Just weeks after the events of
September 11, 2001, our Party helped
to form the Florida Alliance for Peace
and Social Justice in an attempt to
bring together as many peace activists
from around the state of Florida to
stand against the U.S. government’s
threatened attacks against the people
of Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries.
The Florida Alliance is unique in that
it has united a broad array of peace
groups of all persuasions in one organization, which has the Party and the
American Indian Movement in its leadership.
During 2002, the Alliance held three
highly successful statewide anti-war
mobilizations at the MacDill Air Force
Base in Tampa, the central command
of the U.S. war drive. All the MacDill
peace rallies were remarkable for their
emphasis on national liberation and
social justice.
Those rallies featured speakers
such as Vernon Bellecourt, National
Director of the American Indian
Movement; Pam Africa of Friends and
Family of Mumia Abu Jamal; Dorothy
Lewis, leader of the movement for
Reparations to the African community
and Dr. Sami Al-Arian, the now-imprisoned University of South Florida professor who was targeted by the U.S.
government for supporting the just
cause of the oppressed Palestinian
people.
Pacifists claim AIM, Uhuru
Movement potentially violent
Over the months, predictable contradictions emerged within the Florida
Alliance, including charges by some
white peace groups that AIM and the
Uhuru Movement posed a potential for
violence. These backwards allegations
flew in the face of the fact that
oppressed people inside this country
are the ones who have endured genocide, slavery and colonial violence for
the past 500 years.
As a concession to white pacifists,
our Party is committed to tactical nonviolence in Florida Alliance actions.
Obviously we are not ready to go up
against the military forces at MacDill Air
Force base during a peace rally!
Chairman Omali Yeshitela led in creating the principles of unity, which are
based in nonviolent tactics, and he has
coordinated the nonviolent trainings
before the marches.
Some white people in the Alliance
were more honest when they stated
flatly that the organization spends “too
much time on black and Indian issues.”
These struggles culminated when
Mark Kamleiter, leader of the Florida
Green Party, pulled out of the Alliance
and joined with others to form United
Voices for Peace, a new all white group
which excluded AIM and the Uhuru
Movement from participating in their
peace actions.
At the MacDill peace rally in
November, 2002, Kamleiter had angrily
and rudely confronted Chairman Omali
Yeshitela after his presentation during
Continued on next page
April 2003
Continued from previous page
which the Chairman stated that it was
the responsibility of the slave “to kill the
slavemaster and destroy the system of
slavery.”
In an unprincipled and subjective
manner, Kamleiter accused the
Chairman of using “violence of words,”
even as Kamleiter routinely talks about
U.S. patriotism and the American flag,
the symbol of the most violent social
system on Earth, responsible for centuries of genocide, slaughter, terror and
rape across the planet.
It is interesting that Kamleiter and
other white pacifists are never seen
demonstrating against police brutality
and other forms of colonial violence
that plague our community. Nor do they
seem to have a problem with the hundreds of white anarchists and students
who violently tore up the city of Seattle,
Washington during protests against the
World Trade Organization.
The main concern of pacifists is to
protest African people’s right to speak
out against our colonial conditions and
express our goal to liberate ourselves
from the grip of imperialism.
In Oakland CA, our Party was also
instrumental in pulling together the All
People’s Coalition Against the War (All
Peeps), an organization with African,
Mexican, Filipino and Arab people in
leading roles. All Peeps has held several successful actions on the terms of
colonized people, including the march
last May across San Francisco’s
Golden Gate bridge.
At the same time All Peeps and the
Uhuru Movement have struggled for
Omali Yeshitela censored
THE BURNING SPEAR
Chairman Omali Yeshitela and other
African People’s Socialist Party members to be able to speak at the large
Bay Area anti-war rallies, many of
which have been coordinated by
A.N.S.W.E.R., a peace group formed
by the white-led Workers World Party.
In the past months, A.N.S.W.E.R
has been red baiteded — a tactic of discrediting a group, person, project or
idea with the claim of communist
involvement or association — by pacifist, Zionist and patriotic peace groups.
This attack was a response to speakers
supporting the African struggle of
Mumia Abu Jamal and for supporting
the struggle of the Palestinian people at
A.N.S.W.E.R -sponosored peace rallies.
Despite the fact that A.N.S.W.E.R
has been attacked from the right, it has
always arrogantly censored Chairman
Omali and prevented him from speaking at its rallies. All Peeps did succeed
in getting the Chairman to speak at the
peace rally held in Oakland on April 5.
After weeks of intense struggle with
organizers, the Chairman was grudgingly granted three minutes at the end
of the program. Nevertheless,
Chairman Omali’s presentation was
clearly the most dynamic and profound
of the day and the crowd cheered in
enthusiastic support.
To give leadership to these struggles raging inside the peace movement, Party-led forces called together
forums entitled “Peace for Whom?” in
St. Petersburg on March 8 and in
Oakland on April 8. “Is there room for
Africans, Arabs, Indians, Mexicans and
other non-white people in the peace
Peace for whom?
movement?” asked the fliers circulated
for these events.
In St. Petersburg, about 90 people
came out to enthusiastically participate
in this critical discussion, which was
facilitated by Jim Harper, the new editor
of the Weekly Planet, the popular
Tampa Bay free weekly paper.
Panelists included Sheridan
Murphy, Director of the Florida
American Indian Movement; Beth
Schrivener of the Community Coalition
Against War and Terrorism of
Gainesville; Harry Simon, Union del
Barrio, San Diego; Bob Tancig, Florida
Coalition for Justice and Peace,
Tallahassee; Omali Yeshitela, Florida
Alliance and Chairman of the African
People’s Socialist Party and Mark
Kamleiter, co-chair of the Florida Green
Party and member of United Voices for
Peace.
Needless to say, Kamleiter’s white
nationalist stance was clearly exposed
in a principled way.
In Oakland, the event opened with a
salute to Stephen Funk, U.S. marine
conscientious objector. Stephen was
followed by a lively panel featuring
Noura Erakat, Arab Anti-discrimination
Committee; Quetzaoceloaciua, Barrio
Defense Committee; Angelica
Cabande, Filipinos for Global Justice
Not War; Penny Hess, African People’s
Solidarity Committee and Chairman
Omali Yeshitela.
At both events, the majority of the
audience united with the struggles
being made by the very unified colonized forces that the only true peace is
peace through national liberation and
social justice.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela
summed up in St. Petersburg:
Philadelphia Uhuru movement
leads anti-war demonstrations
ples! InPDUM is calling for “$$$
billions for reparations, not for
war, police and prisons!”
Distinguishing itself from
other anti-war rallies, which simply called for “peace,” this
demonstration called for liberation and self-determination for
Iraqi, Palestinian and all
oppressed peoples. Speakers
rallied the people to stand
against the U.S. government
attacks against the African community in the U.S. and other colonized people in the U.S. and
around the world.
Participating organizations
included
InPDUM, the AfricanAnti-war demonstration in Philadelphia, PA
American Freedom and
Even before the US-Anglo invasion
Reconstruction League, the African
of Iraq officially began, the Philadelphia
People’s Solidarity Committee, the
branch of the International People’s
Moorish Unification Council of the
Democratic Uhuru Movement
World Incorporated, Friends and
(InPDUM) mobilized a powerful
Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal,
demonstration in the crowded Monday
Palestinian activists, students from
evening rush hour of Center City on
Moore College of Art, the Germantown
March 17th.
Unitarian Church and various peace
Thousands of city workers on their
and anti-war groups.
way home heard the chants, saw the
After a spirited rally, the demonstrabanners and got a flyer in their hands
tors joined with a student “die-in” to take
denouncing the U.S. terrorist aggresover the streets around City Hall and
sion against the people of Iraq. The
blocked rush-hour traffic for over an
demonstration called for no African
hour. This demonstration was the first
community participation in Bush’s war
of several led by the Uhuru Movement
in the Middle East and demanded
in Philadelphia, which stood in unity
peace through social and economic
with the millions of people all over the
justice, reparations and liberation for
world denouncing U.S. terrorism.
African, Arab and all oppressed peo-
The Palestinian and Arab participants were especially appreciative that
the Uhuru Movement called to “Free,
Free Palestine!” and for self-determination for Iraqi and Arab peoples.
The other anti-war mobilizations, led
by predominantly white left groups, did
not voice unity with the right of the Arab
peoples to sovereignty. In fact, mobilizations that had originally supported
the Palestinian people’s liberation
struggle against Israel had capitulated
to criticism by white nationalists. The
white left had dropped this demand,
raising instead such slogans as “Bring
the troops home,” and calling to stop
anti-Semitism!
The movement also participated in
daily rallies and demonstrations in the
week after the invasion began, including a massive student walk-out from
high school and university campuses.
Students expressed enthusiastic
support for the presentation made by
Philadelphia InPDUM President
Kamau Becktemba at their rally. He
deepened their understanding of the
world situation by explaining that the
U.S. is at war with the oppressed and
colonized peoples of the world in a desperate struggle to keep control of the
people’s resources.
Becktemba called on the students
to unite with the national liberation
struggles taking place all over the
world, including in Colombia, Palestine,
Africa, the Philippines and the Middle
5
“It’s no secret that historically the
peace movement has been a white
movement. It may be that I will not be
able to participate in the peace movement as it has historically been understood in this country, because that is
not the peace that I am looking for.
“When you talk about peace you
have to talk about national liberation.
That is the fundamental question. If you
start with the question of national liberation — the right of peoples to be free
then you start off recognizing that the
conditions of existence for most people
in the world, including Indians, Africans
and others inside this country are
always violent.
“There is never a nonviolent period
when black people, Native people and
oppressed peoples around the world
are not suffering from violence.
Violence is not something that just disturbs the peace of the white community.
“People invoke the names of
Gandhi and Martin Luther King. What is
profoundly important to understand
about both Gandhi and King is that they
were both participants in a struggle for
self determination of oppressed peoples. They weren’t just standing above
the fray.
“The question of peace is not just
some purely abstract question. It
requires us to take sides. If you know
that you live in a country that constructed itself of the oppression and
blood of the masses of people around
the world, then you must take a stand
on the side of the liberation of
oppressed peoples.”
Peace through national
liberation and
self-determination!
What you can do!
Tribunal organizing meetings
open to the community to join
are held every Wednesday
night at 7:30pm at the Uhuru
House at 1021 S. 49th St, at
Chester Avenue in West
Philadelphia.
Call 215-724-3535
to find out how you
can participate!
East, and to join the struggle led by the
African community inside the U.S. for
reparations and social and economic
justice.
In March, InPDUM and the African
People’s Solidarity Committee also
held successful anti-war forums on
campuses around the Philadelphia
area: at Temple University, Rutgers
University, New Jersey and at Moore
College of Art, as well as at Robin’s
Bookstore in Center City and the Uhuru
House in West Philadelphia.
The anti-war efforts of the Uhuru
Movement brought people to realize
that there can be no meaningful peace
in the world today without genuine justice and liberation for African, Arab and
all oppressed people. Armed with this
understanding, people signed up to
participate in building the World
Tribunal for Reparations for African
People that the International People’s
Democratic Uhuru Movement is sponsoring in Philadelphia on November 1516, 2003.
African People’s Socialist Party
6
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
Worldwide demonstrations against U.S. led Iraq
On Saturday, March 15th, two
days prior to the Bush administration’s “ultimatum” to Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein, 100,000 people
came out in San Francisco for the
“Stop the War Convergence” to display their opposition to this latest
threat of imperialist aggression by
the United States.
Although there were very few
African people participating in the
mobilization, the International Action
Center organizers chose a march
route from the Civic Center through the
Fillmore District and into the Western
Addition’s Jefferson Square Park.
These San Francisco neighborhoods
represent a few of the last remaining
African communities in the city.
The African community in San
Francisco has faced years of vicious
attacks by the police and the city, as
part of the U.S. government’s war on
African people.
African students at Thurgood
Marshall High in San Francisco were
recently attacked by the police following an alleged fight between two
students. Across the Bay, students at
Oakland High attempting to walk out
of the school to oppose the war were
locked inside the high school in violation of their democratic rights and
city fire codes.
Speaking at the Civic Center rally
preceding the march, local African
People’s Socialist Party leader Bakari
Olatunji called on the anti-war movement to oppose both the United States’
war on the peoples of Iraq and the war
on African and other oppressed peoples inside U.S. borders.
Olatunji challenged the predominantly white crowd to oppose the war
on African and Mexican people carried out under the public policy of
police containment and through the
California prison system, known to
be the fourth largest prison system in
the world.
He cited examples of the San
Francisco Police Department’s notorious brutality. He also reminded the
crowd about the brutality of the
Oakland Police Department, which
had to pay out money to the victims
of the “Oakland Riders,” four
Oakland cops who beat, harassed
and trampled on the rights of
oppressed African people in West
100.000 anti-war protestors joined March 15, 2003 San Francisco demonstration
Iskenderun, two dozen activists
chained themselves to the wheels
of a truck and blocked a side
entrance of a Turkish port where
U.S. forces were unloading military
equipment.
Demonstrations in Egypt targeted the use of the Suez Canal by
U.S. warships moving from the
Mediterranean to the Red Sea. In
Cairo, around 100 student demonstrators clashed with police at the
American University when they rallied in defiance of an emergency
law that bans street demonstrations.
Nearly half a million people
marched in Milan, Italy against the
war and against the Berlusconi
government’s complicity with the
Bush administration.
Spain saw more than half a million people demonstrating in
Madrid and 300,000 in Barcelona.
Protests took place in front of
the U.S. embassies in Greece and
Nicosia, Cyprus. Thousands of
marchers demanded the closing of
Britain’s Royal Air Force base in
Akitori, the largest British air base
outside of the UK monitoring the
air over the eastern Mediterranean
and the Middle East. Roughly 300
protestors climbed to the snowcovered top of Mount Olympus,
where military radar is located, to
demand that “the bases of death”
be shut down immediately.
Demonstrators confronted
Australian Prime Minister John
Howard as he tried to conduct an
election tour in Adelaide and
Sidney. Despite public opinion,
Australia has several thousand
military personnel stationed alongside those from the U.S. and the
UK in the Persian Gulf.
I n To k y o , 1 0 , 0 0 0 p e o p l e
protested the Japanese government’s recent decision to join the
Bush-Blair coalition despite public
opposition.
Thousands also demonstrated
in France, Belgium, Denmark,
Hungary and the former Soviet
Republic of Kyrgyzstan, where 350
people marched to denounce U.S.
use of their country’s air space for
the war against Iraq.
Oakland.
Worldwide
Olatunji quesprotests
Pacifists,
tioned a peace
attempt to
U.S. patriots, Democratic
movement based
stop new
on upholding the
party members, Zionists
U.S. assault
status quo. He
and the loyal U.S.
called for a
During the
opposition have
movement based
same weekon social justice
end, massive
attempted to gain
and national libdemonstracontrol of the peace
eration, repretions
took
senting the leadplace across
movement... African
ership of African
the globe, repmovie stars and cultural
and oppressed
resenting
workers are acceptable;
peoples.
2,000 cities in
Henry Clark
98 countries
people working for
also addressed
according to
African liberation are
the crowd at the
wire service
Civic
Center
reports.
not, and our Party and
rally. Clark is an
For several
members of the Uhuru
African commuweeks, proMovement are generally
nity organizer
testors had
who leads the
camped outcensored.
West
Contra
side the Royal
Costa County
Air
Force
Toxics Coalition. This is an organizaBase in Fairford, Gloucestershire
tion that exposes the role of Chevron
where the U.S. recently sent its Band other oil companies in the war
52 bombers preparing for the
on African people from Richmond,
attack on Iraq. In Germany, protesCalifornia to Nigeria.
tors exposed their government’s
Other speakers included the
complicity with U.S. war efforts by
Bayan International, speaking on the
demonstrating at the U.S. airbase
U.S. war on the peoples of the
near Frankfurt. A few hundred proPhilippines, and a representative of
testers blocked the entry of the airthe Leonard Peltier Committee
base for several hours.
addressing the U.S. war on the
Hundreds
marched
in
American Indian Movement waged
Bucharest, Romania, calling for
see Demos, page
under the U.S.
the 3,000 to
government’s
4,000
U.S.
COINTELPRO
troops stationed
program. This is
at an air base in
the same prothe Black Sea
gram
that
port
of
v i c i o u s l y
Constanta to
attacked the
leave.
Black Panther
Turkish proParty and was
testers carried
responsible for
a n t i - U . S .
the
military
posters as they
defeat of the
demonstrated
Black Power
against
the
Movement in the
deployment of
1960s.
U.S. troops in
Tu r k e y. A t t h e
Protestors in Pakistan burn a U.S. flag in opposition to
In Bangladesh, a protestor kicks a burning effigy of
port city of
U.S.-led war on Iraq.
George W. Bush.
African People’s Socialist Party
10
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
7
Build the APSP
Iraqi Invasion and Occupation
The vicious
U.S.
military
sits
machine
astride the dignity and freedom
of the Iraqi people, after successfully overwhelming
an
obscenely outmatched Iraqi
military.
Moving from a
population base
ten times larger
than that of Iraq
and an economy
more than a hundred
times
greater, leaders
and media of the
U.S. are boastfully self-congratulatory over the
ease with which
the U.S. appears
to have achieved
Iraqi boy holds sign to express popular sentiment of Iraq
its immediate aim
of overthrowing
tionaries who might have contributed
the government of Iraqi President
to the mobilization of the Iraqi people
Saddam Hussein as its first step in
against the invasion.
attempting to reshape the power
Although Iraqi nationalism among
relations of the Middle East and the
the masses prevented the people
world.
from simply capitulating to U.S. terror
The initial arrogant miscalculation
as U.S. war planners had predicted,
of the U.S. military — it's rush headnationalism was not enough to win
long toward Baghdad that left an
the people to mass organized resisexposed supply line stretched out for
tance in defense of the government.
hundreds of miles and resulted in the
In addition, the repressive policy
first U.S. captives and casualties —
of the Iraqi government toward the
led many to hope the Iraqis would
oppressed Kurdish people in northsucceed in inflicting enough damage
ern Iraq deprived the people of the
to tie U.S. forces down in Iraq long
unity necessary for an effective
enough for the worldwide anti-imperidefense of the country and governalist revolutionary forces to join the
ment. The Kurdish issue has funcfray from various fronts in earnest.
tioned like a time bomb for the
region, threatening the stability not
Iraqi mass resistance was faced
only of Iraq, but also of Turkey and
with limitations
Iran, and to a lesser degree Syria.
However, the fact that Iraq had
The Kurds are a distinct people
been starved under U.S.-driven
with a distinct culture, language and
United Nations’ sanctions and reguhistory who have been denied the
larly bombed by U.S. and British
right to a national homeland subseimperialists for the last 12 years
quent to what has been declared
guaranteed that the weakened,
"de-colonization" of the region. The
aspiration of the Kurdish people for a
national homeland has been seen as
a threat of varying significance to the
different governments in territories
where the Kurds are located.
In other words, the united population necessary for the conduct of
People's War as successfully
employed by the Vietnamese against
French and U.S. imperial white
power and by China against Japan,
Kurds have been denied a nation
did not exist in Iraq.
Viet Nam, China and Algeria are
badly-equipped Iraqi military would
examples of how poor countries with
prove highly inadequate.
limited resources can prevail in conMoreover, the nature of the Arab
tests with rich and powerful counnationalist Iraqi government itself
tries.
placed severe limitations on its ability
The 1980 U.S.-instigated and
to initiate a more effective resistance
supported attack on Iran, and the
to U.S. colonial aggression. The rulsuppression of socialists and revoluing Baath Party had viciously suptionary internationalists in Iraq itself,
pressed all opposition in the country,
also limited the ability to mobilize an
including socialists and other revoluorganized resistance from through-
forces that has made the North
American people gun-shy, afraid to
attack anybody lest they invite the
humiliating defeat imposed upon
them by the Vietnamese.
September 11 provided the U.S.
government with the momentum for
attacking Iraq, although there was no
connection between Iraq and
September 11. But the white people
of the U.S. were forced to tussle with
the idea that there is no longer any
way to hide from the possibility of
defeat, whether on the battlefield
miles away or within the malls and
suburbs of the U.S.
Behind the backdrop of
September 11, the U.S. regime of
George Bush picked Iraq as the tar-
out the region from the masses of
workers and peasants whose hatred
of U.S. imperialism was made obvi-
The looting of
museums and libraries
is a typical story of
white imperial
marauders that
stretches back
through the annals of
history.
Iraqi man mourns his children, murdered in U.S. bombing campaign
U.S. marine swaggers over captured
city, Bahgdad
ous in the mass demonstrations held
throughout the region, mostly in defiance of the regional Arab governments who worked to support the
Imperialist invasion of Iraq behind
the backs of their people.
get for an easy victory that could
make the white people less reluctant
to support imperialist military ventures that could rescue the system
from its crisis. This crisis has been
caused by the unrelenting struggles
for self determination by various peoples of the world, upon whose domination the white power world capitalist system depends for its continued
survival.
U.S. attack on Iraq designed to
win white support for
imperialist aggression
Recognizing this is important
because the invasion of Iraq was
deliberately designed to attack a
country where imperialist logic determined it could be achieved with relative ease.
For the U.S., the lesson of Viet
Nam has up to now limited its ability
to win the mass of North Americans
or white people to support imperialist ventures. This is because the
Vietnamese inflicted a defeat on U.S.
Resistance against U.S.
occupation continues in Iraq
But, despite the earlier, U.S.staged demonstrations of Iraqis welcoming the conquering Americans, it
is not over in Iraq. Indeed, it may
very well be that the real struggle is
now going to begin.
Already thousands of Iraqis have
see Iraq Crisis, page 8
African People’s Socialist Party
8
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
National Conference of Black
Lawyers blasts U.S. attack on
The National Coalition of Black
Lawyers is a coaltion of African
lawyers. Their stated mission is “to
serve as the legal arm of the movement for Black Liberation, to protect human rights, to achieve selfdetermination of Africa and
African Communities in the diaspora and to work in coalition to
assist in ending oppression of all
peoples.” The following Spear article is a reproduction of their statement to expose amd condemn
U.S. intervention in Zimbabwe
The National Conference of Black
Lawyers (NCBL) condemns in the
strongest terms an Executive Order
by George W. Bush that freezes the
U.S. assets of more than 70 officials
of the Zimbabwe government.
In a March 7, 2003 Order, Bush
invokes the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act and the
National Emergencies Act to freeze
all property and interests in property”
of 77 Zimbabwe government officials. The Order accuses the targeted officials of politically motivated
violence, intimidation, the undermining of democratic processes and
institutions and contributing to the
deliberate breakdown of the rule of
law in Zimbabwe. The Order provides no specific bases for the referenced allegations.
NCBL regards the right to selfdetermination as one of the most
fundamental of human rights. Article
1, paragraph 2 of the United Nations
Charter specifically cites the development of self-determination as one
of the organization’s primary purposes. Toward that end, Article 2,
paragraph 7 of the U.N. Charter
specifically speaks against the organization intervening “in matters which
are essentially within the domestic
jurisdiction of any state...”
The Bush executive order constitutes a reckless, provocative, irresponsible act of intervention into affairs that
are strictly within the domestic jurisdiction of Zimbabwe. The targeted
Zimbabwe government officials have
all been duly elected or appointed pursuant to democratic processes that
have been subject to scrutiny by the
international community.
In fact, given the undemocratic
method by which George W. Bush
seized the U.S. Presidency, any
accusations he might make about
the undermining of democratic
processes must be dismissed from
the outset. To the extent that there
may be any problems with government leadership in Zimbabwe, it is
the right of the people of Zimbabwe
to address those problems without
the unsolicited intervention of a lone
member of a foreign government.
Finally, NCBL regards as intellectually dishonest, at best, the Order’s
accusation that the actions of the
Zimbabwe officials “constitute an
unusual and extraordinary threat to
the foreign policy of the United
States,” and that such justifies the
declaration of a U.S. “national emergency.” In the context of the Bush
Administration’s recent fabrication of
excuses for all-out war against Iraq,
any time this Administration makes
shrill, obsessive, unsupported condemnations of targeted foreign government officials (such as those
directed at Zimbabwe leaders) there
is cause for genuine alarm.
NCBL calls upon all people of
good will to reaffirm Zimbabwe’s right
to self-determination, and to condemn unwarranted U.S. intervention
into Zimbabwe’s domestic affairs.
This is particularly important during
this period when government attention should instead be focused on a
failing U.S. economy.
NCBL was founded in 1968 to
Iraq Crisis
continued from page 7
begun to demonstrate against the
U.S. occupation, leading U.S. troops
to open fire on unarmed civilians,
killing many. This has added other
crimes for which the U.S. government of assassins will have to
answer before a people's tribunal
when the toiling masses of the world
take power, as we surely will one
day.
The looting of museums and
libraries is a typical story of white
imperial marauders that stretches
back through the annals of history.
Hospitals and morgues are filled with
the maimed bodies of Iraqis who fell
victim to the highly developed U.S.
war technology. This technology is
enabled by a U.S. war budget that is
larger than the next 20 countries
combined.
There is hardly an Iraqi who has
not suffered as a consequence of the
U.S. colonial invasion.
However, there are daily reports
of resistance: sporadic attempts at
ambushes of U.S. troops; the stoning
or execution of Iraqi puppets who
support the U.S. occupation; the call
for united resistance between the
Shia and Sunni Muslims, etc.
U.S. aggression not limited to
Iraq; Opposition to U.S.
imperialism growing
Nevertheless, the fact is that the
Iraqis cannot be expected to carry
this battle against imperialism alone.
This understanding requires recognition that it is not enough for us to simply talk about peace. Iraq is just one
of the more obvious examples of
U.S. imperial aggression. U.S. mili-
tary forces are at work in Colombia
and the Philippines and a wide range
of arenas in Mother Africa.
Moreover, the U.S. is attempting
to subvert the Venezuelan process
and is threatening to rachet up its
historical aggression against Cuba.
Within the Middle East, Syria is
being targeted by U.S. war mongers.
The
Palestine
Liberation
Organization cannot prostrate itself
enough before the U.S. and its white
nationalist military outpost of Israel to
satisfy the Bush regime's demand for
complete capitulation as a condition
for achieving a neo-colonial statehood.
The outstanding lesson of this latest era of struggle, as crystallized by
the occupation of Iraq, is the growing
politicization of millions of peoples
around the world in opposition to
imperialism and the general lack of
revolutionary organization that could
give consequential leadership to the
masses.
Peace movement must support
national liberation and selfdetermination
Within the U.S., this politicization, as
it is concentrated in opposition to the
Bush regime's policy of war and occupation, has been generally incapable of
criticizing U.S. imperialism as a system.
It can criticize various acts of U.S.
imperialism while at the same time
make excuses for U.S. imperialism
itself. Therefore, the peace movement,
as such, is generally a lily-white exercise in protecting the imperial status
quo, while protesting the obvious use of
imperial violence to do so.
It is a peace movement that refuses
to recognize the attack on Iraq as an
attempt to protect the international economic arrangement that feeds Europe
and North America at the expense of
the toiling masses of the world. It is the
ongoing struggles of the toiling masses
for national liberation and self-determination that have created the crisis that
the Bush regime is attempting to solve
NCBL regards the right to
self-determination as one
of the most fundamental
of human rights. Article
1, paragraph 2 of the
United Nations Charter
specifically cites the
development of selfdetermination as one of
the organization’s
primary purposes.
serve as the legal arm of the movement for Black liberation, to protect
human rights, to achieve self-determination of Africa and African communities in the Diaspora and to work
in coalition to assist in ending
oppression of all peoples.
(Quoted excerpts of this statement are attributed to Mark P.
Fancher, chair of NCBL’s Section on
International Affairs and World
Peace.)
for all imperialists — including its feuding partners of France and Germany.
It is a peace movement that refuses
to recognize that Iraq is part of an historical trajectory that flows from the theft
of the land of the native people of the
U.S. and the historical capture,
enslavement and domestic colonization of African people within current borders of the U.S.
The real struggle begins now with
the colonial occupation of Iraq. The significance of the peace movement within
the U.S. and the world will be determined by its ability to move beyond the
issue of peace and join the world in
demanding national liberation and selfdetermination.
For
revolutionary
African
Internationalists and others, we must
assume our responsibility now to take
advantage of the current crisis of imperialism and the extraordinarily rich political environment that it is providing.
We must lead. It is that simple.
We must intervene in the political
arena provided us by this naked colonial aggression by U.S. white power
and win our own people to conscious
involvement in the struggle for African
liberation, independence, unification
and socialism. We must build the
African People's Socialist Party and the
African Socialist International.
Izwe Lethu i Afrika!
(Africa is our Land!)
Subscribe!
April 2003
Harrison
continued from page 3
reading this knows that if that was
your child, it definitely would concern
you.
Ms. Harrison let Officer Barber
know, "This is my son." With that,
Ms. Harrison was shoved out of the
way by Officer Barber, who, at this
point, was going to try and arrest Mr.
Nichols. At the same time, a crowd of
more than 30 people began to swell,
watching in anger as the family was
attacked.
Mr. Nichols initially dodged Officer
Barber, causing the officer to fall on
his face. Then Ms. Harrison told him,
"Kenneth, don’t run, you haven’t
done anything." With that, he stood
still and was slammed to the ground
and arrested. He was later charged
with obstruction of justice.
"I was crying as I screamed to
Elijah, ‘Run home baby, just run
home!’ Then I grabbed the fence,"
Ms. Harrison tearfully recalled, "and
said, 'I’m not running away, I haven’t
THE BURNING SPEAR
followed the squad cars to 14th and
7th. When we got there, we realized
there had just been a terrorist attack
– the police were the terrorists."
All this took place as Tammie
Harrison’s son cried out, "Why are
you doing this to my mom?!" It was at
this point that Officer Barber pushed
Elijah for the third and final time to
the ground before Barber took Ms.
Harrison and Mr. Nichols away. It is
likely that this third and final attack
resulted in Elijah’s bruised lungs and
increased respiratory problems.
After being arrested, Ms. Harrison
was forced to endure several body
searches on the side of the road and
on her way to jail. For this incident,
she was placed in maximum security
surrounded by males. "I was crying
as I was forced to lift my breasts and
bend over and part my {buttocks}
and cough over and over", Ms.
Harrison said as she described how
the police in C-1 Max examined her
anal and vaginal cavities.
"One shower had no curtain at all
and the other had one made of clear
plastic, so a man could walk by and
Tammie Harrison and Kenneth Nichols were locked up for defending their
child against police terror.
see me naked in the shower— so I
done anything.'"
couldn’t wash myself."
That is when the police slammed
This must have been especially
her to the ground and dragged
difficult considering the filth she was
Elijah’s mother more than 15 feet,
surrounded by in the cell, that she
causing her breasts to be exposed
characterized as being unfit for even
and her legs "cocked wide open for
an animal. "I will never ever forget
the world to see", according to Ms.
this as long as I live. I know now what
Harrison. "It was so humiliating, they
it feels like to be raped and lynched.
wouldn’t even let me adjust my
These are things I used to cry about
clothes."
when I heard about them on televiAfrican community challenges
sion and now it has happened to me.
police attack
I would never wish this on anyone. It
Meanwhile, the crowd swelled
was like I was back in the 1930s or
and as the police, becoming more
something."
and more nervous that the people
Police Chief Chuck Harmon
would enact justice right then and
responded to the situation by stating
there, pushed their panic button.
that, "It doesn’t raise any concern
Squad cars soon scrambled to the
with me."
scene from every direction.
Well, Chuck, why should you be
It was during this time that two
concerned? After all, these are the
African People’s Socialist Party
type of practices that you have
(APSP) organizers saw the
helped to make routine in the African
onslaught of police who were driving
community. It is a war against African
so recklessly to the scene that they
people, in which the police troops will
almost injured several pedestrians.
murder, brutalize and detain in conOne of the organizers recalls,
centration camps (prisons) anyone in
"The way the police were respondthe African community at any time —
ing, you would have thought there
with or without reason.
was some sort of terrorist attack. We
What you can do!
Demand:
• All charges against Ms.
Harrison and Mr. Nichols
must be dropped
• Officer Barber must be fired
immediately
• Reparations be made to the
family for physical injuries
and emotional and psychological distress
Over 30 people, most of who
were younger than 20 participated in a protest issuing the
above demands. We are calling
for all readers of The Burning
Spear to do the same.
Call Mayor Rick Baker at
727-893-7201.
Call the State’s Attorney’s
Office at 727-464-6221.
Please Call 727-502-0575 for
more information.
Police protect imperialist
system that exploits Africans
When the police are in our community you would have to be more
than a little dumb to seriously believe
that they are there to protect the
interests of the African community.
They are there however, to "protect
and serve" the interests of the State
and the white power system at large.
Africans and other colonized people
inside this country are a particular
threat to these interests because
they depend on our exploitation for
their very existence.
The police are protecting the
same system that built itself by
bleeding dry the masses of Africans
through centuries of slavery.
It is the same system that murdered millions of Native Americans
and then stole all of their land.
It is the same system that stole
the land of the Mexican people in
1848.
It is the same system that is in
Iraq now, stealing their oil and trying
to position itself to be the number
one slave-master in the world.
It is the same system that floods
your streets with drugs, but can’t produce a drip-drop of a job.
It is the same system that killed
Tyron Lewis.
It is the same system the Uhuru
Movement had to file a lawsuit
against for its attempted murder of
our organizers in November of 1996
during the rebellions.
It is the same system that locks
up African people for more than a
quarter century for "stealing a slice of
pizza," or a half of a century for
“stealing a golf club”, so that there
will be slave labor and containment
of Africans — forever.
So, what is the point here? The
point is that the United States, the
"good old" red white and blue, made
itself the power that it is by making
everyone else in the world powerless
and destitute at the point of a gun.
In this way, it has made itself
"oppressed people’s public enemy
number one." Look around the world
and what do you see? Look down
your block and what do you see - a
whole lot of poor, hungry, landless,
struggling people.
9
Wealth of imperialism came at
expense of African people
Now look at Europe and the U.S.
and what do you see? You see all of
the riches, food, land and wealth that
have been taken from you.
Conspiracy, one may say, but it is
hardly that. All you have to do is open
your eyes and look, for it is as clear
as the ground you walk on.
In order for this handful of white
people to be wealthy, the overwhelming majority must starve and die. If
you’ve got a problem with that, the
police troops are there to help you
either find a cozy bed in a concentration camp, or a nice six-foot pile of
soil.
It has always been this way and
will always be this way as long as
this social system, known as "imperialism" is intact. This is the current
order of the world that domestic
police troops and international police
troops (military) maintain by any
means necessary.
When the police brutalize an
entire family, like they did the
Harrison’s, this is the order that they
are protecting. They are protecting
and expanding the parasite’s relationship that keeps everyone in the
world, including right here in St.
Petersburg, in misery, poverty and
bondage. That is their job. That’s
what the troops are doing in Iraq, and
in St. Pete, in Colombia and
Chicago.
African community must
organize for independence
Police Chief Harmon was quoted in
the St. Petersburg Times on Saturday,
April 19 as stating that African people
are happy with this relationship -- that
this is a "single situation" and that he
didn’t "want people to get the perception that this is a continual occurrence."
It stands to reason that if he really
believes that, then he must be getting
high on his own supply of narcotics that
he helps to push in the African community and that he himself should be
under investigation for drug use.
Every African in this country can
bear witness to the continual violence
we face at the hands of the State every
day in one form or another. Just ask
around. It seems as though everyone
has his or her own personal terror story.
Our freedom will not come simply
because we wish it so. It will come as a
consequence of our day-to-day struggle to make our freedom manifest.
Billions of people around the world
share the same problem. We must
organize to win our independence, selfdetermination and national liberation.
Organize, Resist and Defeat
U.S. Imperialism!
Defend all African Mothers,
Fathers and Children; End
Police Occupation.
Join the Uhuru Movement.
Self-Determination and
National Liberation for
Africans and all Oppressed
People!
Defeat the War in Iraq and
Defeat the War in the African
Community.
African People’s Socialist Party
10
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
U.S. and Europe rivalry continues to explode in the Balkans as
Serbian prime minister
Yugoslavia is one of the countries
through which the oil and gas
pipeline from the central Asian
republics in the former Soviet Union
flows to Europe. The U.S. and
Europe, led by the German-Franco
alliance, are competing for control of
Yugoslavia. They both supported the
break up of the former republic but
without agreeing on how to share the
spoils.
Germany supported the secession of Croatia and Slovenia, whilst
the U.S. supported the secession of
Bosnia, as well, from the federal
republic of Yugoslavia.
Between 1999 and 2003, the U.S.
has been using the terrorist Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) to further
break up Yugoslavia. The CIA
encouraged the KLA terrorists to
Kosovo Liberation Army soldier
Demos
continued from page 6
In Patna, India, protesters
chanted, “Vajpayee government,
stop being agent of America.”
Major marches and rallies were
also held in Hanoi, Viet Nam, in
Seoul and other South Korean
cities, as well as in cities in
Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka,
Malaysia, Yemen, Guatemala and
El Salvador.
Marches and rallies took place
in Auckland, New Zealand;
Calcutta, India; Ankara, Turkey;
Amman, Jordan; Beirut, Lebanon;
Mexico City, Mexico and in many
Palestinian cities and refugee
camps. In Buenos Aires,
Argentina, 10,000 rallied in front of
the American embassy. In Canada,
thousands took to the streets of
Montreal and Toronto.
Demonstrations intensify when
U.S. led bombing begins
On March 19th, when George
W. Bush announced the beginning
of the genocidal assault on the
people of Iraq, peoples worldwide
presented strong gestures of dissent and disapproval.
Thousands of people demon-
African People’s Socialist Party
attack southern Serbia, Macedonia
and Montenegro, which are all
republics of the former Yugoslavia
federal republic.
In addition to this, the U.S.
bombed Serbia, destroying the
Chinese embassy, Serbian roads,
bridges, television and radios stations, and oil tankers. Thousands of
innocent civilians were killed. This
aggression against Serbia resulted in
the kidnapping of Sobodan Milosevic
and his imprisonment in The Hague
in Holland. He is charged with war
crimes against humanity.
This aggression against Serbia
has resulted in the fracturing of the
Serbian society, with the nationalists
led by Milosevic on the one side and
the pro-Westerners led by Zoran
Djindjic and Kostunica, the actual
president of Serbia, on the other side.
This last tendency itself is split
between pro-Europe and pro-U.S.
forces.
The assassination of Prime
Minister Zoran Djindjic in the government car park on March 12, 2003 is
a reflection of the power struggle for
control of State power inside the
Serbian ruling class.
It is said that the Milosevic
camp is taking revenge against
those who sold him to the imperialist rulers in The Hague international world tribunal. The suspect,
Zvezdan Jovanovic, a member of
the special elite troops known as
the Red Berets created by
Milosevic, was arrested on March
25. More than 1,000 people have
been arrested, including several
members of the Red Berets,
j u d g e s ,
policemen
and members
of the Secret
Service,
including
J o v i c a
Stanisic, former chief of
the Milosevic
Zoran Djindjic
security and
Franko “Frenki” Simatovic, former
commander of the Red Berets, as
well as other sympathizers of
Milosevic.
The
daughter-in-law
of
Milosevic has been placed under
house arrest. The Red Berets special operation units, known as
JSO, are being dismantled. A state
of emergency has been enforced
since the assassination.
The Western press is presenting these forces as part of organized crime and members of some
powerful clan bent to a life of
crimes.
The U.S. wants to keep NATO
in Europe to maintain U.S. hegemony in Europe, and to maintain
and extend its military superiority
over Europe.
France and Germany want a
European army that will allow them
to muscle in their diplomatic goals
in Europe and around the world.
U.S. strategists see the end and
r e p l a c e m e n t o f N AT O b y a
European army as a challenge to
U.S. hegemony in the world.
Control of the Balkans is hotly contested between the U.S. and the
Franco-German alliance, as part of
the struggle for domination of
Europe.
It appears that the white imperialist rulers want to have a Serbia
run by either supporters of Europe
or supporters of the U.S., but not
by Serbian nationalists.
The alliance between the CIA
and the Kosovo Liberation Army,
which wants self-determination for
Albanians of Kosovo, is worth noting. The KLA would unite with
Albania to form the greater
Albania. According to the German
press, Albanians from Kosovo
have become a serious force in
distributing drugs in Western
Europe.
It is our view in the African
People’s Socialist Party that the
Serbian nationalists who want to
see a free Serbia and peace in the
Balkans have to join the rest of the
non-white world and fight against
white power led by the U.S. and
Europe.
They have to turn their back on
any form of white nationalism that
requires the theft of the resources
of Africans, Arabs, Asians and the
populations of South and Central
America for their existence.
Anything else is just the status
quo, peace with imperialism, the
sharing of our stolen resources by
white rulers with white people.
strated across the United States.
In San Francisco, protesters literally shut down the financial district
for the day. Over 1,400 people
were arrested in acts of civil disobedience.
In the Middle East, thousands of
people took to the streets.
Lebanon and the Palestinian
Authority issued fierce denunciations of the U.S.-led attacks, while
the Egyptian government daily AlAhram declared that the war
marked “the beginning of an era of
U.S. colonization that will benefit
only Israel.” Syria’s State radio
accused the United States and its
allies of wanting to get their “hands
on Iraq’s oil and wealth and
impose their hegemony on the
world.”
Hundreds of students gathered
in Beirut, Lebanon calling for the
assassinations of U.S. President
George W. Bush and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair.
In Yemen, two protesters were
killed after a crowd estimated at
more than 30,000 attempted to
storm the U.S. Embassy.
As the bombing continued,
demonstrations were staged
relentlessly the world over with
student walk-outs, traffic stoppages, and protests at U.S.
embassies amidst cries of “Bush
killer!,” “Yankee go home” and
“Bush Blair — Stop killing the
babies!”
In Occupied Azania (South
Africa) demonstrations were held
at the U.S. consulates and
embassy in Pretoria, Cape Town
and Durban. The Landless
Peoples Movement in Gauteng
province staged a march against
the war on Iraq, combined with a
protest against the evictions by the
South African government of
African people on their own land.
In Durban, an anti-war protest
held on the University of Natal
campus characterized the U.S. war
on Iraq as a war against the international community. The Centre for
Civil Society exposed the subsidiaries of the U.S. company
Halliburton’s role in polluting the
desperately poor communities of
South Durban Basin. The subsidiaries, including Engen and
Kellogg, Brown and Root, have
U.S. contracts in post-war Iraq.
As of the writing of this article,
the United States is entering the
third day of its brutal and murderous bombardment of Baghdad that
it has so grotesquely named its
“shock and awe” campaign.
As the days unfold, the chasm
continues to widen between the
increasing militancy and intensity
of the global opposition to the
United States’ massacre of the
Iraqi people and the arrogant disregard of the U.S. white ruling
class to that opposition.
As African Internationalists, we
understand that this chasm is evidence of the ever-deepening crisis
of an imperialism that is fighting for
its last breaths. It is clear that the
United States, Britain and a handful of puppet governments are carrying out cold-blooded murder and
terror against the will of the world’s
peoples.
We stand in solidarity with the
Iraqi people and their resistance to
t h e U . S . ’s v i c i o u s , b l o o d y a n d
unfathomable attack on their livelihood as a people and a nation.
Uhuru!
Stop the war on Iraq!
Stop white power and U.S.
imperialism!
Stand with the national
liberation struggles of African,
Arab and all oppressed peoples
of the world!
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
11
BUILD TO WIN!!
False Decolonization: the Root Cause of Arab Disunity!
BY MAMMO MUCHIE
The Arab rulers are hopelessly
divided. The rulers of Kuwait, Qatar
and Bahrain openly provide bases to
the U.S. and British regimes to attack
Iraq. In the middle are states like
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and others that
seem to provide support to the invasive forces. The Arab public is united
more than at any time in history
against the U.S.-British violation of
the Arab nation and dignity.
Consequently the Arab street is
exploding with anger and resistance.
There is a new dialectic: Arab ruling
circle disunity and growing Arab public unity. This may create an Arab
national renaissance. I propose that
the current war against Iraq could
never have taken place had there
been a strong Arab nation in the first
place, as envisaged by the first generation independent Arab leader,
Gamal Abdel Nasser.
If the departure for the renewed
unity of the Arab public and disunity
among rulers is the Iraq war, the destination must be the real birth of the
Arab nation.
The Arabs and Africans suffer
from the failure of the National
Project
Gamal Abdel Nasser wanted to
create a strong Arab nation. Kwame
Nkrumah wanted to create a strong
African nation. The idea behind their
visions was to avoid the kind of
humiliation that the Arab nation is
subjected to right now by an all-out
invasion by forces from other hemispheres and internal elites, such as
the rulers of Qatar, Bahrain and
Kuwait, aligned to foreign interests.
Instead we have now either an
Arab nation badly divided or a nation
whose birth is so protracted that it
may not even be born as a unified
entity in the foreseeable future. The
birth of a united Arab nation seems
like one of the longest pregnancies in
the world.
Often when we speak of decolonization gone wrong vivid images of
African fragmentation and impotence
spring to mind. Now to this ugly
image one is reminded cruelly how
impotent the Arab nation is in the
face of danger to its security and survival.
To the false decolonization of the
African, I have added the false decolonization of the Arab. The Arab may
feel different from the African for having enslaved the latter in yester
years. In actual fact, Arabs are in the
same boat as the Africans — they
have at the moment only the power
of the weak: the kind of power that is
displayed in the TV images served
as a daily diet to an anxiety-stricken
world by Iraqis since the start of this
unjust, immoral and illegal war.
We must wonder about the false
start in Arabia — its false decoloniza-
tion that has invited its present humiliation. Like Africa, it is fragmented
with official Arabia serving imperialist
interests and the grassroots marching and dying to give birth to independent and free Arabia. Like our
wish to create free Africa, the ordinary people of Arabia, by their
actions, are trying to create free
Arabia.
Free or emancipated Arabia can
be a potential ally to free and emancipated Africa. Fragmented and
falsely decolonized Arabia is no ally
to free Africa as unfree Africa is no
friend to Iraq at present.
The imperialist powers know this
and they leave no stone unturned to
weaken states by breaking them.
The most dramatic break up in
recent years is the former Soviet
Union. Smaller break ups in Africa
occurred in my own country: Eritrea
and Ethiopia. Both the Arabs and
Africans have to confront head on
the false decolonization that has
made them prey to the misfortune of
war, insecurity and unending conflict.
Humiliation is a function of
false decolonization of the Arab
and African
I have been thinking about the
false decolonization of the Arab and
the African.What is it about them that
they are perceived so weak by the
imperialist powers that massive force
is made to rain over them with disdain and contempt? The Indian
nation is born; the Chinese nation is
born. I cannot imagine the imperial
powers waging punitive wars to disarm these two nations to remove
their weapons of mass destruction.
They would not dream of regime
change in China. India, of course, is
a democracy and it may be envied
for possessing weapons of mass
destruction, but the regime follows
democratic principles for making lawful transitions of power. Both India
and China have not only been born
as nations, but they have stood up
and grown. They risk no pre-emptive
strike!
We cannot speak so confidently
even about the birth of the Arab
nation. Like the African nation, the
Arab nation is not yet born as a unified nation. The innocent blood of the
Iraqi people may accelerate the birth
of an independent Arab nation.
Africa has the African Union. The
Arab states have the Arab League.
One would have thought that these
two unions, theAfrican Union and the
Arab League, would come together
and oppose the doctrine of pre-emptive strike and regime change in principle. Regimes must be changed by
the Arabs in Arabia and Africans in
Africa and not by far away powers by
flaunting international law and displaying arrogant power with stunt
and irrational exuberance.
Gamal Abdel Nasser, who was leader of the United Arab Republic, struggled
for a united Arab nation.
Ethiopia, Eritrea and the African
Union?
In Africa, some states are playing
games with principles. Eritrea and
Ethiopia are part of the "coalition of
the willing." One wonders what
brought about this situation? There
must have been a prisoners dilemma
situation. If Eritrea makes a move to
join the "coalition," Ethiopia will be
left out in the cold. If Eritrea supports
or joins the so called "coalition,"
Ethiopia has to, in order not to be
outdone for the possible future or
present crumbs from London and
Washington DC.
This provides proof that the separation of Eritrea from its motherland
will always destabilize Ethiopia from
following wise courses in African,
Arab and international relations. This
negative competition will no doubt
repeat itself to the detriment of
Ethiopia's wider and long-term interests.
For Ethiopia, its main interest lies
in playing a leading role in the making of the African nation/union and a
friendly role in assisting and forging
enduring relationships with the Arab
nation. At present both the African
nation and the Arab nation are not
real. That provides no excuse not to
strive to make them real by focusing,
amongst other things, Ethiopia's
international posture in a way to
accelerate the creation of these two
nations including their strategic
alliance reflecting the reality of geographical proximity and cultural
transaction between them. Any role
Ethiopia assumes that undermines
its constructive role in Africa and the
Arab world will create long-term
obstacles to Ethiopia's enduring stability and security.
With Ethiopia and Eritrea break-
As an EthiopianAfrican citizen of the
world I am deeply
ashamed that Eritrea
and Ethiopia have
joined the "coalition
of the willing" to
bombard the Iraqi
people with inhumane
horror. I believe this
action is anti-African,
anti-Arab, antiinternational law,
anti-civilization, antihuman, immoral and
unjust!
ing ranks from Guinea, South Africa
and others, they made the African
Union look silly by their own silly
positions. Lost is the opportunity to
manifest an independent national will
through the African Union. Lost also
is the opportunity to speak with one
voice and get the African Union on
the map.
Instead the country that hosts the
seat of the African Union shows no
backbone to build the African Union
to speak for an independent and free
Africa. This is proof that we are still a
long way off from the birth of a free
see Opinion, page 12
African People’s Socialist Party
12
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
Letters to the Editor
Read and Distribute The Burning
Spear!
To the Editor of The Burning Spear
Newspaper,
Uhuru! In last month's issue of
The Spear, there was an interview
entitled "Anti-War Sentiment
Infiltrates Ranks of U.S. Military." The
article was an interview with a young,
colonized man enlisted in the U.S.
Marines who refused orders when he
was activated for the war against
Iraq. At that time he was in the
process of filing his conscientious
objector papers and had to remain
anonymous.
"Soldier" as he was named in The
Spear interview, has since publicized
his case, and it is no longer necessary that his identity remain
unknown. I would, therefore, like
Spear readers to know that the article was about my brother, Stephen
Funk. I am writing this letter in appreciation of the Uhuru Movement for its
unwavering support and involvement
in my brother's case.
When Steve was in boot camp he
wrote many letters to me talking
about his trainings and the experiences he was going through, as he
described in The Spear interview.
For the most part, I found it difficult
writing back, because I was very
subjective and critical of my brother
for joining the Marines. I was lost on
how I should respond.
It was a member of the African
People's Solidarity Committee
Opinion
continued from page 11
African nation. Africa' s pregnancy
with an unborn nation is even longer
than that of the protraction of birth of
the Arab nation!!
As an Ethiopian-African citizen of
the world I am deeply ashamed that
Eritrea and Ethiopia have joined the
"coalition of the willing" to bombard
the Iraqi people with inhumane horror. I believe this action is antiAfrican, anti-Arab, anti- international
law, anti-civilization, anti- human,
immoral and unjust!
I appeal to the regimes of Eritrea
and Ethiopia to withdraw from the
coalition and learn to work consistently to create the African nation and
the Arab nation.
It appears that Fanon's warning of
a false decolonization rings more
true than ever now. It is not the
African interest that you are protecting by being fellow travelers to a
classic imperialist war — where
might is equated with right. It is
somebody else's interest that you
are serving. In fact you are serving
the interest of those who protect the
international financial institutions,
banks and corporations that have
African People’s Socialist Party
(APSC), a cadre formation under the leadership of the African
People's Socialist Party
(APSP) who stated to me the
importance of providing leadership to my brother. When I did
write back to Steve, I would try to
provide him with the political education I had access to through my relationship with the Uhuru Movement.
I could tell some of this was
reaching him because, as time went
on, his letters would express his
growing understanding of what the
U.S. military is, and what it represents to oppressed people, including
Filipino people, like our family.
When he finally got out of training,
I tried to spend more time with Steve
and continued to politicize him. He
read Overturning the Culture of
Violence and I talked to him about
the history I read from "Philippine
Society and Revolution." After only a
month of getting out of training, he
told me he was going to try to get out
of the military altogether.
Then, on February 9th, he was
activated. He called me up looking
for leadership. I then again called the
APSC cadre, looking for the same.
Through these discussions, the reality that my brother was being called
on to actively participate in the continued atrocities of U.S. imperialism
really hit home. Both my brother and
I realized that nothing could be
worse than being a soldier in the
U.S. military. He then decided he
would resist the military by refusing
to appear at Camp Pendleton and filing for Conscientious Objector status. Needless to say, I was very
proud and relieved that my brother
took this stand.
On February 12th, the day before
Steve was scheduled to ship out, we
had our weekly Wednesday night
rally of the International People’s
Democratic Uhuru Movement
(InPDU M), here in Oakland,
together over-burdened Africa with
debt.
Twelve African States have debt
over 100 percent of their Gross
Domestic Product (GDP). This
makes these countries exist only to
pay debt! What business do Eritrea
and Ethiopia have in supporting powers that lead such an unjust system?
Truth is the first casuality of
war
Blair and Bush believe their own
lies that the Arab Socialist Party of
Iraq is Saddam and that he is isolated. The Iraqi people have been
ready for 12 years to welcome them
with undulation!
It seemed that did not happen,
though there are reports alleging
manifestations of rebellion. There is
no doubt that there are people who
have resorted to native tactics to
undermine the superior power of the
invading U.S. and British air, sea and
land forces. The command and control of the resistance seemed to be
distributed and dispersed amongst
the civilian population.
First and foremost, all liars
deceive themselves first before they
deceive others. The graver the lie,
the graver the self-deception, and
the more dangerous the actions to
San Jose, CA: Stephen Funk walks
with mother, Gloria Pacis, left, and
sister and APSC member Caitlin
Funk to turn himself to Marine unit
California. Steve came with me to
the Oakland Uhuru House.
It was a special rally, where our
branch presented a video showing
the APSP’s trip to Azania and had a
special guest speaker, Chairman
Omali Yeshitela, himself. At one juncture in the program I got up and introduced Steve, and the stance he
decided to take. The Chairman
immediately put forward Steve and
deepened all of our understandings
about the significance of this stand. It
was very moving for everyone in the
room, and I believe this helped
Stephen become more consolidated
in his stand and find strength in the
support of the Uhuru Movement.
From there, Steve has since
found support from many other
groups. He has gone to teach-ins to
educate others on the Marines and
how to become a conscientious
objector. Now he has been in the
spotlight of international media and is
getting constant requests to speak
and provide interviews. Throughout
this, he looks to me for leadership,
and I in turn, look to the Uhuru
Movement.
Throughout this whole process,
the Uhuru Movement has been supportive, either through me, or directly
to Steve. I have to give so much
credit and appreciation to the political
understanding and education of the
Uhuru Movement. This is the foundation of the stand my brother has
taken.
When we do something wrong,
such as join the U.S. military, the
Uhuru Movement teaches us to
make the appropriate self-criticism,
and then set right the wrongs we've
caused. This is what we call a rectification process. I am so proud of my
brother for doing this. I am also
deeply appreciative of the Uhuru
Movement, and especially Chairman
Omali, for providing the political foundation and support for my brother to
do the right thing. A year ago, I did
not think he would be joining with us
on the right side of history. But with
the support of the Uhuru Movement,
he has.
Uhuru!
Caitlin Funk
Member, African People’s
Solidarity Committee
The Burning Spear welcomes your questions, feedback, criticisms
and viewpoint. Please send all corresponance to:
The Burning Spear
P.O. Box 11281, St. Petersburg, Fla, 33733-1281
or [email protected]
What we seem to
see are a people who
have identified the
invaders as aggressors
who came to help
themselves to their
oil, their land and
who wish to install a
regime that is as
foreign interestserving as the others
of their Gulf
neighbors.
others from the lie. Iraq has been
turned into hell on Earth by a successive series of lies that led the
U.S.-British military to burn that
country with hell-fire.
They lied to get in. They continue
to spin and lie to stay in there longer.
To cover up what journalists understood as a 'pause' they have to
increase the bombardment many
times more.
Their crime is limitless and there
seems to be no earthly or divine law
or authority to restrain them from
their misguided policies. They must
be forced by the pressure of world
public opinion and continuous pressure to enter quickly a voluntary
ceasefire for the sake of humanity
and spare all of us from universal torment and torture from the daily diet
of horrific deaths.
The invaders continue to believe
that only those who benefit by the
regime's survival and who have
much to lose are fighting. The longer
they continue to believe in this lie,
the more the killing will mount and
the harder the return to political
means of stopping this post-modernistic theatrical festival of violence.
What we seem to see are a people who have identified the invaders
as aggressors who came to help
themselves to their oil, their land and
who wish to install a regime that is as
foreign interest-serving as the others
of their Gulf neighbors.
What we appear to see is the
resourceful effort of what seemed a
determined people unwilling to be
subdued by the terrifying might of
superior military technology. Most of
see Opinion, page 26
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
13
WE ARE THE
AFRICAN PEOPLE’S
SOCIALIST PARTY
Basic Line of the
AFRICAN PEOPLE’S
SOCIALIST PARTY
“All our work is guided by our understanding that
our struggle for national liberation within U.S.
borders is an integral part of the whole African
Liberation Movement; that the African Liberation
Movement itself is a part of the great contest
between the ever-emerging forces of international
socialism and the dying, but not yet dead forces of
imperialism; that the particular character of the
African Liberation Movement within the U.S. is a
struggle against U.S. domestic colonialism; that
the destruction of colonialism, led by a conscious
black revolutionary socialist party, will constitute
the critical blow in the struggle for socialism with-
RULES OF PARTY DISCIPLINE
At the June 2, 1974 Central Committee meeting the following
rules were drafted so that Party members would have a guide to
develop and strengthen our discipline.
ANY PARTY MEMBER WHO:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10
11.
Does not consciously strive to elevate his or her political
understanding has broken Party discipline;
Does not strive to unite our Party with the masses has broken Party discipline;
Reveals Party business without authorization has broken
Party discipline;
Discusses a Party member negatively to non-Party members
has broken Party discipline;
Exploits or oppresses African women through action or
statement has broken Party discipline;
Exploits or oppresses African people through action or
statement has broken Party discipline;
Fails to initiate constructive criticism or self-criticism has
broken Party discipline;
Uses words or actions to divide the Party has broken Party
discipline;
Refuses to recognize and follow Party leadership through
words or actions has broken Party discipline;
Discards or weakens Party leadership as opposed to
strengthening Party leadership has broken Party discipline;
Helps to divide and circumvent international African unity
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
through words or actions has broken Party discipline;
Uses criticism to divide and not unite the Party has broken
Party discipline;
Uses criticism or self-criticism on a personal level and not
a political level has broken Party discipline;
Uses criticism or self-criticism to hide her or his own shortcomings has broken Party discipline;
Does not carry himself worthy of emulation by the masses
has broken Party discipline;
Displays arrogance through actions or words has broken
Party discipline;
Displays negativism and reluctance in carrying out Party
tasks has broken Party discipline;
Does not strive to bring more Africans into the Party or
Party organizations has broken Party discipline;
Engages in adventurous and individualistic acts has broken
see NPDUM, page
African People’s Socialist Party
14
THE BURNING SPEAR
Central Committee
of the
African People’s
Socialist Party
April 2003
Point of the spear
Chairman Omali Yeshitela speaks on
REPARATIONS NOW!
We’re coming for what’s ours!
Omali Yeshitela
Chairman
Gaida Kambon
National Secretary
The following is the last in a three-part
series. This presentation was made by
Chairman Omali Yeshitela on November
17, 2002 in Philadelphia, PA at the event
"Reparations Now! We’re Coming for
What’s Ours!" This event was sponsored
by the Philadelphia branch of the
International People’s Democratic Uhuru
Movement (InPDUM).
As you know, America is ratcheting up the drive for war. The immediate target for this war is Iraq.
However, Iraq is not the real question. Iraq is important to America
because of the oil. In fact, Iraq may
have more oil than Saudi Arabia. It
may well be the largest oil reserve
that’s known right now.
There’s oil all over Africa and
Latin America. That’s one of the reasons the U.S. is in Colombia right
now — oil. The whole capitalist
industrial economy is based on
petroleum, so there’s an interest
there based on the oil.
U.S. intends to dominate the
world
Ironiff Ifoma
Director of Economic
Development
Bakari Olatunji
West Coast U.S. Regional
Representative
To the imperialists, not only is it
good for the corporations to have
access to all that oil, but it’s also
good for America to dominate the
rest of the world — not only the black
world, the brown world and yellow
people, but also Europe, because
Europe is dependent on oil also.
Therefore, if all or most of the oil is in
the possession of Uncle Sam, then
even Europe is on its knees in dealing with Uncle Sam.
This is why some Europeans
have been reluctant to go along with
what Uncle Sam is doing. If Sam
controls the oil, he controls everything. The Bush regime has made no
secret of the fact that it intends to
control the whole world.
They have just published what
they call their Strategic Defense
Plan. The first thing the Strategic
Defense Plan states is that it will not
allow any country in any region of the
world to achieve military parity with
the United States government.
Second, it says that the U.S. shall
be the dominant power from now on.
It says “if the U.S. sees any power
that is opposed to American interests
or the interests of our allies achieving
any kind of weapons of mass
destruction, we will do a pre-emptive
strike against them. That’s to say, we
will attack them whether they have
done anything to us or not based on
our assumptions of their intent.”
Third, it says not only will the U.S.
do those things, but also if necessary, they’ll do them without any
assistance from any other country on
Earth. Therefore, their intent is to
dominate the world. Make no mistake about it, and it’s naked. The rest
of the world knows it. All of Europe
knows it.
Up until recently, especially during
the time when the Soviet Union was
in existence, there was an appearance of solidarity between Europe
and North America to contend with
the Soviet Union. But, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, Uncle
Sam has said it’s going to take it all.
You saw what happened in
Rwanda and what’s happening in
Congo and in places like Ivory Coast.
You see the rebellions, the mutinies
there – that’s Uncle Sam fighting
against France to take over what
used to be French-controlled territories. The United States government
intends to control the world.
The U.S. used to concede territories to France as a zone of French
influence. They aren’t giving up anything now. They want the whole bit!
Europe is nervous as hell about
this. The last time they saw this, it
was Germany. That’s why the
German woman said about Bush,
Join the
African People’s
Socialist Party
Watu Mwariama
Northeast U.S. Regional
Representative
Nzela Kinshasa
Director of
International Affairs
African People’s Socialist Party
Contact:
1245 18th Avenue South
St. Petersburg Florida,
33705
727-821-6620
[email protected]
During slavery,
prisons were white.
The actual end of
slavery was
approximately April
1865. So, they freed
you in April, but in
December they
passed the 13th
Amendment, which
said neither slavery
nor involuntary
servitude is
permissible except as
punishment for a
crime. Then they
wrote all the laws
directed at Africans,
designer laws just as
they have now. So
they didn’t end
slavery, they
changed the terms
for slavery. It was no
accident.
"He’s like Hitler."
But I want to tell you something.
All the bluster and all the weapons —
Imperialism in crisis
see Spear, page 16
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
15
The Working Platform of the African People's Socialist Party
WHAT WE WANT—WHAT WE BELIEVE
Adopted September 23, 1979. Revised and adopted at the First Congress of the African People's Socialist Party, September 6, 1981.
1
We want peace, dignity, and the right to build a prosperous life through
our own labor and in our own interests.
We believe that the U.S. North American government and society were founded on the
genocide of Native people, the theft of their land, and the forcible dispersal, enslavement,
and colonization of millions of African people. We believe that the present condition of
existence for African people within current U.S. borders is colonialism, a condition of existence where a whole people is oppressively dominated by a foreign and alien state power
for the purpose of economic exploitation and political advantage. We believe further that
this colonial domination is the primary basis of the problems of African people within the
U.S. and that we shall know neither peace, prosperity, nor human dignity until this colonialist domination is overthrown and the power over our lives rests in our own hands.
2
We want the rights to economic development and creative and productive employment which promote the needs and well-being of our
entire people.
We believe that colonialism is a blood-sucking system which causes all economic development
to benefit the colonialist ruling class state and society at the expense of our colonized people. We
also believe that the massive, habitual unemployment and underemployment of our people benefit the U.S. colonialist ruling class and capitalist system and that a struggle by African people
for jobs must be combined with a struggle for socialism and independent economic development.
3
We want an end to all local, state, federal, and other taxation of black
people by the U.S. government and any of its agencies.
We believe that such taxation is illegitimate, that black people have no real or meaningful
authority within the U.S. government, and that U.S. taxation of African people is therefore
taxation without representation. We believe that in the absence of such real or meaningful
authority we have nothing to say about how such monies are used, and that therefore the
taxes taken from black people are often used against us and other oppressed and exploited
peoples within the U.S. and around the world.
We believe that the use of taxes extracted from the African population to build more prisons to stuff us in and to hire more police to kill us with is criminal, as is the use of these
taxes to hire soldiers to intimidate and plunder peoples oppressed by this same system
internationally. We also believe African people must refuse to pay taxes to a government
which uses such taxes to prop up and support brutal dictators around the world who keep
their own peoples oppressed and living in squalor in order to maintain U.S. and Western
imperialist economic and political domination.
4
We want the right to free speech and political association, a guarantee of
the right to work for the betterment and emancipation of black people
without fear of political imprisonment and the loss of life, limb, and livelihood.
We believe that the liberation of African people throughout the world will come primarily as
a result of our own efforts. We believe it is our duty to our mothers and fathers, our children
and ourselves, to organize ourselves to overcome our oppression. We believe that the rights to
organize and speak out against our oppression are basic human rights and that the U.S. government must discontinue its attempts to smash these rights and must discontinue criminal
attacks on those African patriots who work for the betterment and emancipation of our people.
5
We want the right to international political and economic association
with Africans and all other peoples anywhere on the face of the Earth.
We believe that all black people are African people and are a part of a single national entity.
We believe that the genuine freedom of African people everywhere is irreversibly linked to
the creation of an independent, united, and socialist Africa. We believe the struggle of African
people within the U.S. represents the U.S. front of the worldwide movement of African people for African liberation, political independence, and socialist democracy. We believe that
the worldwide struggle for African liberation is in unity with the struggles being waged by
the majority of the peoples of the world to end the oppression of nations by nations and to
create a new world, within which the toiling masses will end the system of workers and bosses and slaves and masters and will own and benefit from the means and products of our labor
and will have political authority over our own lives. We believe that the natural, objective
friends of our struggle for African liberation, independence, and socialist democracy are all
the toiling masses of the world — the people of the Middle East, the Asian and Latin
American peasants and workers, the democratic forces throughout Eastern and Western
Europe and the U.S., and the truly socialist states of the world, and that we must therefore
have the absolute right to free political and economic international association.
6
We want the immediate and unconditional release of all black people
who are presently locked down in U.S. prisons.
We believe that all the African men and women who are locked down in the U.S. concentration camps commonly known as prisons are there due to decisions, laws, and circumstances which were created by aliens and foreigners for their own benefit and as a means
of genocidal colonialist control. We believe that these decisions, laws, and circumstances
were created and are enforced without our consent and are therefore illegitimate. We
believe that the African men and women who are locked down in these concentration
camps are victims of U.S. colonialist ruling class justice which maintains our enslavement
and terrorizes our people, and that they should therefore be released immediately to the just
representatives of our struggle for liberation, independence, and socialist democracy.
7
We want complete amnesty for all African political prisoners and prisoners of war from U.S. prisons or their immediate release to any friendly country which will accept them and give them political asylum.
We believe that U.S. prisons are also used as the illegitimate tool for torturing, murdering,
and holding captive those courageous daughters and sons of Africa who through their patriotic deeds or spoken or written words in support of the cause of our liberation have become
political prisoners and prisoners of war. We believe, along with the majority of the peoples
of the world, that it is the duty of the colonized and enslaved to resist slavery and colonialism and to fight for socialism and those who do so are patriots and heroines and heroes
and should be held in the highest esteem.
8
We want the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. police from our
oppressed and exploited communities.
We believe that the various U.S. police agencies which occupy our communities are arms of
the U.S. colonialist state which is responsible for keeping our people enslaved and terrorized.
We believe that the U.S. police agencies do not serve us, but instead represent the first line of
U.S. defense against the just struggle of our people for peace, dignity, and socialist democracy. Therefore, we believe the U.S. police is an illegitimate standing army, a colonial army in
the African community and must withdraw immediately from our community, to be replaced
by our liberation forces whose struggles in defense of our community and against our oppression demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest.
9
We want an end to the political and social oppression and economic
exploitation of African women.
We believe in the absolute, unequivocal, political, social, and economic equality of African
women and men. We believe that a fundamental test of the progressive or revolutionary
character of any organization, party, movement, or society is its commitment, confirmed in
practice, to the destruction of the special oppression of women and the elevation of women
to the rightful place as equal partners and leaders in the forward motion of the development
of human society and as leaders, makers, and shapers of human history.
10
We want the right to build an African People's Liberation Army.
We believe that true freedom, although often taken away, cannot be given to a people. We
believe that African people are our own liberators, and that we have a right and obligation to
build an African People’s Liberation Army to defend our political gains, our freedom fighters and communities, and to win our actual freedom from our oppressive colonial slave masters. We believe that neither meaningful freedom, nor guaranteed political and social gains,
nor genuine liberation are possible without the assuring existence of an African People’s
Liberation Army. We believe further that the only legitimate wars are wars of national liberation, and wars to oppose imperialist aggression, and that therefore, the only legitimate military forces for black people to serve with are military forces which defend liberty and repel
imperialist aggression. Such a force would be the African People’s Liberation Army.
11
We want the U.S. and the international European ruling class and
states to pay Africa and African people for the centuries of genocide, oppression, and enslavement of our people.
We believe that U.S. and European civilization were born from, and are presently maintained by, the horrendous theft of human and material resources from Africa and its people. We also believe that this theft of human and material resources is responsible for the
present underpopulation and underdevelopment of Africa and her people and the political
servitude, material impoverishment, and cultural discontinuity and disintegration of
African people throughout the world. We believe that Africa and African people are due
reparations, just economic compensation, billions of dollars which must be paid to the
Organization of African Unity or any other legitimate international organization of African
people, for equitable distribution for the development of Africa. We also believe that reparations must be distributed to the various independent African states dispersed throughout
the world, and to the legitimate representatives of African people forcibly dispersed
throughout the world who have not yet won liberation.
12
We want an end to the vicious, self-serving U.S. and Western
European political, economic, and military interference in the
affairs of Africa and African people throughout the world.
We believe that African people in Africa and elsewhere have a right and responsibility to
solve our own problems, free from the unwanted, and self-serving interference of U.S. and
Western imperialists. We believe that the U.S. and Western imperialist interference in the
affairs of our people is designed to maintain the continuation of the theft of our human and
material resources and our oppression and impoverishment.
We believe that African people must be free to organize and struggle for an end to colonialism
and neo-colonialism without interference from U.S. and Western imperialism which supports
neo-colonialism and colonialism in Africa, the U.S. and elsewhere, and which has deposed progressive and revolutionary African leaders and replaced them with neo-colonialist stooges.
13
We want an end to U.S. colonial domination of African people
within the U.S.
14
We want the total liberation and unification of Africa under an AllAfrican socialist government.
We believe that the primary struggle of African people within the U.S. during this period is
to throw off the alien U.S. colonial domination which is responsible for virtually every hardship imposed on black people by this government that is identifiable as a “black problem.”
We believe that our problems with education — from our inability to control our own
schools and determine the education of our own children, to the inferior and racist quality
of the education we do receive — are caused by colonialism. We believe that our problems
with health care — from the absence of black controlled and operated health clinics and
institutions throughout our communities to the hazardous health conditions imposed on us
by poverty and callous government decisions — are caused by colonialism.
We believe that our problems with housing — from the unavailability of decent and adequate housing for the majority of our people, to the dilapidated and vermin-infested housing we are forced to live in — are caused by colonialism.
We believe that our problems with food and clothing — from the terrible quality and
quantity which are imposed on us by blood-sucking merchants, to our inability to produce
and distribute them for and among ourselves — are caused by colonialism, where our
whole people is dominated and oppressed by a foreign and alien state power for the purpose of economic exploitation and political advantage.
We believe that “the total liberation and unification of Africa under an All-African socialist government must be the primary objective of all Black revolutionaries throughout the
world. It is an objective which, when achieved, will bring about the fulfillment of the aspirations of Africans and people of African descent everywhere. It will at the same time
advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and the onward progress
toward communism, under which every society is ordered on the principle of — from each
according to his (her) ability, to each according to his (her) needs.” — Kwame Nkrumah
INDEPENDENCE IN OUR LIFETIME!
see NPDUM, page
16
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
Africans has been greater since the
end of slavery. Just think about it. They
were working us for free, from "can’t
continued from page 14
see" to "can’t see," and they made a
whole bunch of money off that. I’m
and they’ve got a bunch of weapons;
saying the rate of exploitation has
there’s never been in history anything
been greater since slavery ended.
comparable in terms to the military
That includes convict leasing.
power that you see in the United
During slavery, prisons were white.
States — represent a crisis. It’s a
The actual end of
power that’s fightslavery
was
ing for its very life.
approximately
I say this
April 1865. In
because in the
December 1865,
past when you
the United States
saw imperialism in
government
motion, it was a
passed the 13th
dynamic motion,
Amendment. So,
of just taking over
they freed you in
everything, colApril, but in
lecting all the
December they
resources and
passed the 13th
growing stronger
Amendment,
and bigger as a
which said neither
consequence.
slavery nor involNow what you
untary servitude
see with imperialis permissible
ism in motion is an
The prison system — which began to fill with Africans immediately after slavery “ended” — sells inmates’ labor to
except as punishattempt to defend
continue to create material wealth for the U.S. on the backs of Africans.
ment for a crime.
and hold everyThen
they
thing it stole in the
wrote all the laws directed at Africans,
and you see all the clothes taken off
past. There’s nothing dynamic about it.
designer laws just as they have now.
the Emperor. It is naked, wide open.
It’s an attempt to stop the revolutionary
So they didn’t end slavery, they
With the failure of neo-colonialism, the
process that’s happening all over the
changed the terms for slavery. It was
United States government is trying to
world. Sometimes it doesn’t look
no accident.
put direct white power back in control
exactly like revolutions, but people are
For 50 years after that, they didn’t
of the whole world again. They can’t
taking back and fighting for their own
build many prisons. They had what
trust the Shah. They can’t trust
resources. They’re removing their
they called convict leasing. They made
Saddam Hussein, who used to be
resources from the absolute control of
laws, particularly throughout the
almost in the employ of the United
the imperialists and that undermines
South, because Africans weren’t workStates government. If we’re not carethe whole social system itself. It is
ing for white people any more. Not
ful, we’ll be back on the plantations
fighting for its very life.
only wouldn’t Africans work for white
again at the rate this thing is attemptThis crisis has been deepening for
people, we started wandering. If they
ing to move now.
a very long time, certainly since the
passed a place and saw some chickYou really have to understand. This
second imperialist war that they like to
ens and vegetables, we would take
is not about Iraq. It is about a social
refer to as the Second World War or
them, because we grew them. We
system, which was founded on the
World War II. World War II was white
saw the product of our labor and would
theft of the human and material
power fighting to re-divide the world.
take it.
resources of the rest of the people of
Did you know that there were no good
Now black people wouldn’t work.
the world, attempting to rescue itself
guys in World War II? You don’t know
All the white people wanted black peofrom a terrible crisis that’s been bleedthat because you hear on the news
ple back on the job again. Not only did
ing it for a very long time now.
that World War II was the last honest
they want us on the job, they wanted
That’s why we talk about reparawar made by America. There was
us to work on terms that were unfavortions. We are a part of those stolen
nothing honest there. It was a war to
able to us. We couldn’t leave if we
resources that gave rise to the crere-divide the world.
wanted to quit. That was true of the
ation of imperialism and white power. I
In the first imperialist war, Germany
North and the South.
know we like to say we’re against
had lost a lot of its colonies and other
So there was this incredible
injustices and we are, but we need to
resources to the rest of Europe. In fact,
upheaval. They began to pass laws
and he even went to Africa to try to
learn how to be for our selfish selves
Rwanda was then a German colony,
that said if you didn’t have what they
make that revolutionary process hapas well. In order to be for your selfish
and when Germany lost the war, the
called a "visible means of support,"
pen.
self, you need to know what the real
white people gave the black people in
they could lock you up. That’s what the
Since that time, you’ve seen this
contradictions are that we’re conRwanda to Belgium, to punish
vagrancy law was. They passed the
incredible revolutionary process. In
fronted with.
Germany. Hitler was fighting to take
so-called pig law. It said that if any1979, James Earl Carter made that
back for Germany what all the other
Reparations due for more than
body stole a pig they could be senfamous speech at the banquet in Iran.
white people had all over Europe, and
slavery
tenced to 10 years. They’d lock you
He told the Shah of Iran how much he
he was not only going to take that, but
Some people handle the question
up, then they would pay the white man
appreciated him, because, he said,
the white people too.
of reparations as dealing simply with
(sometimes the same white man who
"You’re an island of stability." Then he
World War II was a war to re-divide
the issue of slavery. I disagree, and I
you were working for on the plantation
got on the plane to go back to
the world and there was nothing good
think that was one of the major contrifor free) so much per African.
Washington, and the Shah almost
or decent about it. Don’t tell me that it
butions that the Party brought to the
This white man would then put us
beat him there because the people
was wonderful because they rescued
whole discussion of reparations. I
back to work on the plantation. We
overthrew the government.
the Jews. It had nothing to do with that.
wrote a book in 1982 called Stolen
rebuilt the modern economy of the
They’ve been trying to put a cap on
How can somebody be good for resBlack Labor, which, for the first time,
South by African convict leasing. We
the revolutionary process. That’s what
cuing some white people in Germany
using a relatively scientific approach,
built railroads, cleared swamps and
gave rise to Ronald Wilson Reagan.
when they’re murdering black people
quantified the value of stolen labor of
went into the mines in Alabama,
Carter was a thug. Don’t make any
all over the planet, which is what they
African people. We came up with a
Birmingham and places like that.
mistake about that. Brzezinski, who
were doing? They were murdering us
total of $4.1 trillion. It was a relatively
That’s what we did. They say you all
was the National Security Advisor for
in Philadelphia and down South when
scientific process. If I did it again it
won’t work, but hell, we’re tired.
Carter, is the one who created the
that was going on.
would be done differently, and it would
Convict leasing was characterized
modern jihad. Osama bin Laden and
This war created space for peoples
be many, many, many times more than
as worse than slavery. When we were
the so-called Islamic fundamentalist
all around the world to push for revoluthat amount, but it was the first attempt
"slaves," when white people owned
movement were created by the Carter
tion. Immediately following that war,
at quantification. It actually put a figure
us, they had an investment that they
regime. It was created to destroy the
India became free and independent in
on it, saying that there were "X" numwould try to protect. Now the State
Soviet Union in Afghanistan. They
1947 and China in 1949. In the ‘50s
bers of Africans brought into slavery
was the owner of African people, and
sucked the Soviets into Afghanistan,
Cuba was liberated and there were
who produced "X" amount of cotton
the white people who we worked for
and they brought Muslims from all
activities in Kenya with the Mau Mau;
and tobacco, etc.
didn’t care if we lived or died. It was no
over the world and destroyed the
Nkrumah was active in Ghana. There
The thing that was very interesting
skin off their backs. They had a saying,
Soviet Union there. Carter did that.
was revolutionary work happening
about this investigation was the real"One dies, get another." Literally!
Brzezinski was on the Afghan border
everywhere.
ization that the rate of exploitation of
bragging about it on TV.
Going into the ‘60s there was Viet
Spear
Nam and people like the Tupamaros in
Uruguay; the Sandinistas were trying
to make revolution in Nicaragua. All
over places like South Africa, there
were revolutionaries under the influence of Kwame Nkrumah. All over,
African people were trying to do
things. Che Guevara had Latin
America in flames during that period,
Then, Ronald Reagan came in with
a mandate from the American people
to stop revolutionary activities all over
the world, to get black people off welfare, and to do the whole bit. They’ve
been trying to put the genie back in the
bottle. They’ve been trying to stop the
revolutionary process.
Now you have Bush Jr. in power,
We rebuilt the
modern economy of
the South by African
convict leasing. We
built railroads,
cleared swamps and
went into the mines
in Alabama,
Birmingham and
places like that.
That’s what we did.
They say you all
won’t work, but hell,
we’re tired.
see Spear, page 17
African People’s Socialist Party
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
17
Military Coup Brings French Army Back to Central African Republic:
Divided Africans suffer in French, U.S. turOn March 15, 2003, in a classic
neo-colonial military coup supported
by French imperialism, Idriss Deby of
Chad, and Joseph Kabila of Congo,
General Francois Bozize seized
power in Bangui, Central African
Republic (CRA), overthrowing the
10-year-old regime of Ange Patassé
while the president was abroad. This
coup is part of the bloody contest
between the U.S. and France for the
rape of Africa.
General Francois Bozize
Ange Patassé was nearly overthrown in November last year, but
was rescued by the troops of Jean
Pierre Bemba, the anti-Kabila
Congolese rebel leader backed by
Museveni, a U.S. puppet chief in the
Spear
continued from page 16
There were instances where they
would not even feed us. They would
get hundreds of us, take us into the
swamps in Louisiana, for example,
and work us in the swamps with
snakes and the rest of it. They didn’t
give us any food.
You think I’m making that up. You
don’t have to make up things on white
folks. Just look at the damn history.
They don’t teach any of us this history
that I’m talking about right now.
Sometimes they talk about George
Washington Carver and peanut butter.
Then they leave out the fact that Jiffy
owns it all, and at best, we get a job
with them.
So, the rate of exploitation has
become greater since then. It’s not
just about slavery. We have to explain
the phenomenon of what’s happening
to us right now. If you talk about reparations, it’s really important to make a
claim that our current condition of
existence owes itself to our relationship to American imperialism.
This is the point that I want to make
though: Slavery isn’t something that
happened to black people in America
as such. Slavery is something that
happened to Africa. It took an attack
on Africa to get us here.
It was an attack on Africa that even
today sees Africa under-populated.
They like to say that Africa’s poor
because there are too many of us.
They say the birth rate is too high.
region. As expected, Bozize
declared himself president,
suspended the constitution
and promised to work with
political parties to prepare
future elections in the country.
This is clearly part of the
ongoing neo-colonial crisis
that has split the African petty
bourgeoisie between the
French and U.S. imperialist
rivals in the rape of Africa.
Four years ago, the
French army was forced to
leave the CAR as tension
grew between their neo-colonial regime and French imperialism. Patassé had escaped
three mutinies and two military putsches. He flew into
exile in Togo.
Masses of people flooded the streets in Central
Now, Joseph Kabila hopes
military coup d’etat.
to deny Bemba's rebel troops
French imperialism is the main
the use of the Central African
cause of the poverty of our
Republic as a rear base to launch
people in CRA
military attacks on Congo. Equally,
With a population of less than five
Idriss Deby, the president of Chad
million
people, the Central African
hopes to secure Chad’s southern
Republic
has been impoverished
frontier in order to protect the oil that
beyond
recognition
by more than a
is to be pumped out to white imperiof
French
imperialism.
It is a
century
alist countries later this year.
land-locked
country
the
size
of
the
Colonel Ghaddaffi of Libya is
of
Texas,
located
between
the
state
another loser in this coup, because
Democratic
Republic
of
Congo
he had provided soldiers to protect
(DRC), Cameroon, Sudan, Chad and
Ange Patasse.
Republic of Congo.
It is a nation with no railways,
equipped with just 429 kilometers of
paved highway. Under the control of
French imperialism, it exports diaCongo alone has the same area in
monds, uranium, gold, oil, and timber
terms of territory as India. There are a
to white imperialist countries. The
billion people in India and only 50 milimperialist crisis has accelerated
lion people in Congo.
since January 12, 1994 when the
It has nothing to do with birth rate.
French government devalued the
It has to do with exploitation rate. It
African Financial Community (CFA)
has to do with the fact that Africa is
currency used in 14 African coununder-populated because Africans are
tries. The French devalued the CFA
not there. Africa is under-developed,
currency to 50 percent of its previous
for lack of a better term, because
value. Most of the workers and state
Africans have been developing for
civil servants have not been paid in
white power everywhere else except
30 months.
in Africa.
This coup is designed to protect
I think it’s fundamentally important
the
shaky French parasitic imperialfor us to understand that. I don’t think
ism,
which in reality will accelerate
it’s possible to have freedom as an
the
crisis
of imperialism in CRA.
African person that’s separate from
Africa itself. I believe that all Africans
New black ruler but the same
everywhere need to recognize the
old white power imperialist
connection to Mother Africa that gave
domination of CRA
birth to us.
General Francois Bozize is in
There are monuments left in Egypt
power
due to the military backing of
that are estimated to be 15,000 years
France,
Chad and the DRC. This is
old. That’s a long time! You have huge
enough
to
know that the suffering of
monuments — things like the pyraour
people
will continue without end,
mids, which are five, six, seven thoubecause
these
armies are in peace
sand years old.
with
white
power,
whose existence
Now if somebody makes somerequires the depoliticization, disorgathing to last five or six thousand years,
nization, exploitation and constant
they didn’t make it for themselves, did
repression of our people.
they? They made it for us who were
Bozize stated that he stands for a
coming behind them. They made it for
"consensus transition," which will be
all of us. Yet, everything that has come
defined at a later date. He also
out of Africa is in the control of someannounced a "program of reconbody else.
struction" breaking with "10 years of
It is our responsibility as Africans to
democratic impasse."
take back what belongs to Africa, so
Abel Goumba, a medical profesthat Africa and her children all over the
sor who is the head of the Patriotic
world will be able to know freedom
Front for Progress, is the new and
and prosperity!
first prime minister of Bozize's govUhuru!
ernment. His role is to give a civilian
African Republic after a French-backed
cover to the military regime of
Bozize.
Abel Goumba is one of several
neo-colonial parties opposed to the
ousted President Ange-Felix
Patasse. He stated "I remain
attached to my principle: those who
want to come into the government
must have clean hands, not those
that have dipped their hands into the
state’s coffers." This is a stupid statement since the French control the
currency and the state’s coffers in
the first place. This is a government
of the status quo, a Negro government that supports business as
usual. It will transfer our resources to
Europe, loot the country and repress
the masses.
In their first week in power, the
government has been shooting anyone who thought they could use the
chaos created in the early hours of
the coup to seize some food, medicine and other products of basic
necessities. They were shot on sight
by the new regime.
The African Socialist International
is the only way
This new situation continues to
expose the trend that emerges in
every neo-colonial crisis: the
absence of a revolutionary party of
the African working class equipped
with a vision and strategy to defeat
the sell-out primitive African petty
bourgeoisie and white imperialism,
and achieve the total liberation of
Africa and the unification of all
African people dispersed around the
world.
That is the task of the African
People’s Socialist Party. That is why
we are organizing the State of Black
People Around the World conference
in London this July. That process will
take us to the creation of the African
Socialist International, an organization of African workers in alliance
with poor peasants that will organize
the resistance and the offensive of
Africa to kick out U.S.- and Frenchled white imperialism.
Uhuru !
African People’s Socialist Party
18
THE BURNING SPEAR
April 2003
Transcription of Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s
World Summation
St. Petersburg, FL — February 27, 2003
On February 27, as it was becoming clearer that U.S. verbal bellicosity toward Iraq
was close to expressing itself in a new
invasion of that already impoverished
and brutalized country, Chairman Omali
Yeshitela called together the local Uhuru
Movement for a meeting in St.
Petersburg, Florida for a discussion about
the world situation. This discussion was
designed to help our movement understand the underlying bases for the pending invasion and occupation.
My point is that
all along, the real
contest has been
the contest for
national liberation.
The Soviet Union
was hated and
dreaded because it
would give a gun
to somebody in
Nicaragua or Cuba.
It would give a gun
to somebody in
some place in the
world who would
really change the
fundamental
relationships that
existed between
the oppressed
nations and the
oppressor nations
of the world.
The following is an edited transcript of
the Chairman's presentation. While we
recognize that there are many who will
not take the time to read such a long presentation, we have, nevertheless, decided
to publish it here. We publish this presentation with the understanding that
those Party members, militants and other
activists attempting to respond to the
obvious acts of U.S. imperial aggression
will be better served with this explanation of the real motive forces of the current U.S. war drive.
We’re living in a world where
more than half the people on Earth
live off less than two dollars a day.
I’m convinced that it is not necessary
to live in a world where the vast
majority of the people don’t have
access to clean drinking water or
enough food and shelter and are
confronted with all kinds of violence
all the time.
I’m convinced it’s not necessary
to live in a world where ignorance is
imposed upon masses of people on
the one hand, while their wealth and
resources are stolen and information
is concentrated in these imperialist
centers on the other hand.
I’m a revolutionary. I’m not
involved in a movement to try to
make a better imperialism. My objective — as arrogant as it may seem —
is to transform the world. Many people have problems with that because
an assumption of our own insignificance has been imposed on us by
the social system we live under.
But as arrogant as I am about
being intent on changing the world,
I’m not so arrogant as to insist that
everybody who participates in this
discussion has to agree with this
serious need for world transformation as a condition for being in action.
I want to be clear that I work from
a bias. Everybody does. I know what
mine is. Many times people do not
understand what their biases are.
Main contradiction in the world
is between oppressed and
oppressor nations
In the African People’s Socialist
Party we have said that the fundamental contradiction in the world is
one that exists between oppressed
and oppressor nations. This is the
most profound contradiction. It does
not deny the existence of other contradictions, but we say this is the
contradiction around which every
other contradiction revolves.
African People’s Socialist Party
Oppressed peoples around the world have become determined to rid themselves of bloodsucking imperialists. Picture created by Reefa-1
We recognize that even as there
are oppressed nations and oppressor nations, and that this relationship
is the most dynamic relationship in
the world, there are contradictions
within the oppressed nations themselves.
There are contradictions between
men and women. There are contradictions between workers and
bosses. There are contradictions
between heterosexuals and homosexuals. There are similar contradictions within the oppressor nations –
between men and women, between
workers and bosses, and between
heterosexuals and homosexuals.
There is a whole array of other contradictions that I have not touched
upon.
I’m not suggesting that these
other contradictions do not exist. My
statement is that the most dynamic,
fundamental contradiction, the one
around which all the others revolve
and the one which the others require
for their existence is this contradiction between oppressor and
oppressed nations.
Capitalism is a parasitic system
that was founded on slavery
In fact, this is a contradiction that
began with the rise of capitalism
itself. Capitalism was born as a world
system and it was born as part of a
process. I’m not suggesting that
there was never oppression or
exploitation before capitalism. Of
course there was. Slavery existed
before capitalism.
I’m not talking about the generic
slavery that people like to remind us
about. I’m talking about the real kind.
I’m talking about the kind that people
talk about when they talk about the
relationship between Africans and
other peoples around the world. I’m
not suggesting that contradictions
did not precede the existence of capitalism.
Of course, there were contradictions. But the ones that we are fighting, the ones that we have to contend with, the ones that set the terms
for the relationships that we have in
the world, are those contradictions
that were given birth by the rise of
capitalism in the world.
A capitalist social system dominates the entire world. It’s not feudal.
It’s not socialist. It’s capitalist.
Whether we are talking about capitalism as it manifests itself in the
United States or Belgium or whether
we’re talking about capitalism as it
manifests itself in Haiti, Burma or
Congo, the same capitalism dominates the entire world.
Marxist theory, as developed particularly by V.I. Lenin, talked about
imperialism as being capitalism
developed to a certain stage. Lenin
called imperialism "capitalism that
had become rotten ripe." Lenin said
that one of the manifestations of this
development was that capitalism
became parasitic.
I pose to you that capitalism was
born parasitic. There was never a
time that capitalism was not parasitic. It was born off the slave trade.
Marx referred to "primitive accumulation" -- the accumulation that didn’t
come as a consequence of capitalist
production, but was its starting point.
Capitalism was born off the slave
trade.
The slave trade created the world
economy that was a precondition for
the rise of capitalism as a world system. Things like the 1841-42 war
against China, called the "Opium
Continued on next page
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
19
Continued from previous page
War" — that turned China into a
nation of junkies — gave rise to capitalism as a world system. The
French turned Viet Nam into a drug
colony.
The tremendous amounts of loot
and resources coming from places
like this into Europe transformed the
relationship for peoples who used to
be free and independent. We had the
ability to meet our own needs, but
our resources were going to what
had been an impoverished and disease-ridden Europe.
Europe was not only poverty and
disease-ridden but it was absolutely
un-free. In Europe, there was feudalism. There was no such thing as
"home ownership" or the things that
Europeans and North Americans like
to brag about today. Those things all
came as a consequence of the pillage that Europe initiated against the
rest of the world.
The rise of capitalism as a social
system was parasitic. It came at our
expense and that of other peoples
around the world.
We want to talk about the situation in the world. We want to struggle
to understand what is going on.
Some things are very glaring to us.
We see a Bush Administration up
against the entire world in its
absolute urgency to deepen the war
that was initiated some 11 or 12
years ago against Iraq.
This is a glaring manifestation.
We see millions of people in the
streets protesting. We saw a few million here, within the United States.
We’ve seen perhaps up to 18 million
people throughout the world marching, demonstrating against this genocide that the United States is intent
on waging against the people of Iraq.
Folks are searching for answers
and we ought to be searching for
some kind of answers in trying to
understand what’s going on as well.
What we concluded some time ago
was that the whole empire, the imperialist system, is in a state of severe
crisis. It almost sounds like a cliché,
especially for anyone who has been
involved in the struggle for social justice, as it is often characterized. You
always hear the socialists talk about
the crisis of imperialism.
The imperialists are experiencing
a severe crisis. That’s not to say that
they understand that it’s a crisis,
even though some thinking leaders
of the imperialists have expressed
some recognition of crisis.
The crisis has its origin in a
process that has been going on for a
long time. It clearly began to manifest itself after the second imperialist
war. That’s the war that the pundits
like to refer to as the last honest war
that America pursued. Of course, in
reality, that’s just a bunch of garbage.
The second imperialist war, like
the first one, like the Korean War and
like virtually every war that’s existed
for the last 400 or 500 years, was a
war to re-divide the world. There
were no good guys in that war. The
heroes of that war – the guys that
were fighting for "democracy" – were
all countries and states that had
colonies. As much as people like to
talk about Hitler, the truth of the matter is that Churchill presided over
what they like to refer to as "an
Imperialism in crisis
How do you
explain the fact
that fundamental
economic crisis can
happen in America,
England and other
places as a
consequence of
what some poor,
starving country is
doing? The oil
workers go on
strike in Nigeria
and the gasoline
prices go up in St.
Petersburg, Florida.
It’s because of this
parasitic
relationship.
empire upon which the sun never
set." That seems to suggest to me
that Hitler was a piker. He was a boy
scout compared to Churchill. In that
war, a group of cutthroats was fighting to re-divide the world.
Anti-colonial struggles emerge
after second imperialist war
One of the things that was significant about that war is that it offered
up a certain type of political space for
oppressed peoples around the world.
The empire was at war with itself. I
was taught in school that Africans
went off to Europe as soldiers and,
for the first time, we saw freedom in
places like France. That inspired us
to come back to fight for freedom
here in the United States.
Supposedly, we have to see freedom in that fashion before we have
an inkling of what it is we should be
struggling for. That’s nonsensical.
The truth is, it was precisely because
of the confrontation that the empire
had within itself that the political
space emerged and other people
began to wage struggle for independence and freedom from colonialism.
When you talk about imperialism,
you’re talking about white power that
created itself off the colonial domination of the rest of the world.
Ugandan soldiers leaving the town of Bunia in Congo where hundreds of
Africans have died as a result of imperialist proxy wars.
As a consequence of that war, in
1947 we saw the independence in
India. In 1949, it was China. In the
‘50s, revolutionary struggles
emerged all over Africa. The Mau
Mau were fighting against the British
in Kenya. Ghana achieved independence. Even Iraq, I think, became
nominally independent from England
in ‘58. Of course, in ’59 there was the
magnificent Cuban revolution that
contributed to revolutionary fervor,
particularly throughout the Americas.
Anybody who’s familiar with Che
Guevara knows that he didn’t stop
just in Latin America. He was also in
Africa.
In the ‘60s, we saw the incredible
and most magnificent struggle of the
people in Viet Nam, who in the ‘50s
had defeated the French before they
saw colonialism propped up by the
United States government. In the
‘50s, we also saw the people of
Korea come close to total independence. Then the United States intervened in Korea to prevent the total
liberation of Korea.
In fact, in many ways, the first
humiliating defeat of the United
States was Korea. China came
across the Korean border because it
was clear that part of the objective of
the United States was also to attack
China. The Chinese pushed the U.S.
back across the 38th parallel. They
ended the war by having an
armistice there that resulted in the
Korean people being divided even
today.
We hear discussions about the
North Koreans and the South
Koreans as if they are two separate
people. They’re one people. They
are people who have been divided
just as the people of Viet Nam were
divided and just like various peoples
around the world have been divided
— by imperialism.
You saw the emergence of these
kinds of struggles after the second
imperialist war. They just took off.
These struggles created serious
crises. People talk about the "domino
theory." They talk about how many
troops went to Viet Nam, how many
people were killed by those troops,
and how many of those people coming from here died in Viet Nam to
stop this domino thing.
The backdrop to all of this of
course was the communist "boogie
man." The communist boogieman
was represented mostly by the
Soviet Union and to a lesser extent
China because China was poor.
Even though China gave significant
political support, and sometimes
more than political support, to struggles for national liberation, when they
talked about the communist boogieman it was really the Soviet Union. I
would remind you, however, that
Continued on next page
The International African Revolution is at Hand!
Conference on
July 25 - 27, 2003
London, England
for more info contact
the African People’s Socialist Party in the US:
727.821.6620 or [email protected]
or in Britian:
020.8265.1731 or [email protected]
Build the
African Socialist International!
African People’s Socialist Party
20
THE BURNING SPEAR
tive branch of the United States government. It has been rather obvious.
Kennedy was assassinated — I
would say that’s a crisis of sorts.
Subsequent to that, you had
Johnson who could only stay one
term as president because of Viet
April 2003
These books decry the fact that, from
their view, the world is spinning into
there was never an incident of real
chaos and anarchy because of all
confrontation between the U.S. and
these struggles of oppressed peothe Soviet Union.
ples around the world.
The thing that made the Soviet
Brzezinski is the one who created
Union such a bad entity in the world
the modern day "Jihad." When you
was not some direct contest
talk about Osama bin Laden,
between the U.S. and the
thank the wonderful James
Soviet Union. It was the fact
Earl Carter. He’s the one who
that the Soviet Union, when it
goes about seeing if people
was in the interest of the Soviet
have honest elections. He
State, would support struggles
says he’s the most honest exfor national liberation at various
president.
places around the world.
Carter ’s Administration,
They had to fight against
through Brzezinski, created
encirclement by the United
Osama bin Laden and the
States and by the other impermodern Jihad. There was no
ial powers. They would support
such thing as Jihad in modern
struggles for national liberation
history. They resurrected it to
around the world. This was the
destroy the Soviet Union. They
contest. You saw these proxy
succeeded in doing that in
struggles happening all over
Afghanistan. They organized
the world. My point is that all
Muslims from throughout the
along, the real contest has
world to go into Afghanistan.
been the contest for national
They sucked the Soviet Union
liberation.
in and then wiped it out. The
The Soviet Union was hated
U.S. could not afford the
and dreaded because it would
deadly battle that the Soviet
give a gun to somebody in
Union was engaged in.
Nicaragua or Cuba. It would
The situation with Osama
give a gun to somebody in
bin Laden is what the CIA calls
some place in the world who
"blowback." It’s when you put
would really change the fundasome program in motion and
mental relationships that
then it comes back and hits
existed between the oppressed
you in the face. That’s what
nations and the oppressor
9/11 effectively was — "blow
nations of the world.
back."
Now, subsequent to the secPeople have illusions about
In Panama, demonstrators — whose country has experienced the massacre of thousands of
ond imperialist war, we saw this
the good guy — the moderate
civilians at the hands of the U.S. government — burn a U.S. flag in protest against the mas- imperialist versus the other
escalation of struggles by peosacre of Iraqi people.
ple to win their freedom. In the
imperialist. Carter still goes to
process, they were depriving
Venezuela and other places as
capitalism of those resources that
the "nice imperialist."
Nam. Then following Johnson you
keeps it strong. I’m not here to try to
However, Carter had a problem.
had the guy who was a crook. His
spout off some type of doctrine to
In 1979, Carter was in Iran. They had
vice president was kicked out. He —
you. What I’m saying is relatively
a huge banquet for Carter in Iran.
Nixon — was kicked out.
obvious. Even now, as they try to
Carter praised the Shah of Iran, who
Then you had Ford, who could
explain the gouging that’s being
had been put in power by the CIA in
only be there one term because of
done at the gas stations, they talk
1954 after they overthrew
the deal that he did with the crook.
about the impending war with Iraq.
Muhammad Mossadegh. The Shah
Following Ford, the Georgia plantaThey talk about the troubles in
was a dirty criminal tyrant who brution owner came forward. This was
Venezuela. I was in a meeting the
talized the people of Iran in ways that
the system’s attempt to resolve this
other day when someone asked how
people in this country cannot imagcrisis so they could get to these other
American oil got under Iraqi sand.
ine.
kinds of crises that were out there in
You might also ask how American oil
Carter went there with his human
the world. There was also crisis
got under Venezuelan sand.
rights policy and he praised the Shah
inside of America itself that was
How do you explain this contraof Iran. He said the Shah of Iran was
caused by the Black Liberation
diction? How do you explain the fact
the island of stability in the Persian
Movement. It was making a fundathat fundamental economic crisis can
Gulf. Then he caught an airplane
mental ideological assault, among
happen in America, England and
back to Washington D.C. and the
other things, upon the basic assumpother places as a consequence of
Shah almost beat him here because
tions of Americanism and white
what some poor, starving country is
the people overthrew him. His island
supremacy, which in the final analydoing? The oil workers go on strike in
of stability was overthrown and the
sis is the ideological underpinning of
Nigeria and the gasoline prices go up
mullahs took power in Iran.
America and imperialism in general.
in St. Petersburg, Florida. It’s
The mullahs took power in Iran,
Carter administration foreign
because of this parasitic relationship.
because the Shah was under U.S.
policy based on "human rights"
tutelage. The Shah was the policeU.S. administrations attempt to
So you have this crisis. Then
man of the United States in the
deal with crisis of anti-colonial
James Earl Carter’s theme for his
Persian Gulf. He was so brutal, and
struggle
presidency was a statement, a
the dictatorship was so severe, that
places, here’s Carter with a human
For a long period, we’ve had this
response to the crisis in the executhe masses of people did not have
rights foreign policy. Not only did he
on-going struggle. I can’t say when it
tive branch and the crisis that existed
the political space to organize.
have a human rights foreign policy,
reached a critical level, but I do know
between the government and the
Therefore, the mullahs were the only
but who was his UN ambassador?
that it has contributed to the political
people — all the people — in this
ones who could organize. The
Who did he put out to front this forcrisis in this country and in other
country. Carter said, "Trust me, I will
churches became the centers of
eign policy? Andrew Young. He put a
places. I believe that this struggle
never tell a lie." Do you remember
organization. That’s how they were
Negro out to front this foreign policy
contributed to the crisis that led to
Carter saying this? That was his
able to take power.
for him. So, it’s not white power or
the death of John F. Kennedy. I canwhole theme. His foreign policy was
If there’s not a secular or some
white nationalism that’s out there. It’s
not say exactly how. I believe it was
based on human rights. Carter was
other kind of progressive governa Negro forwarding this policy.
tied up with Viet Nam and other
first trying to resolve this contradicment in Iran, it’s because of the U.S.
This is Carter’s response. Even
questions like that. I believe those
tion in this country among the people
policies that supported the Shah by
as he was talking "human rights" and
questions are so deeply significant to
who have come to be so suspicious.
overthrowing Mossadegh. They put
saying, "trust me," Carter also put
the existence of imperialism itself
They were doing regular polls at the
the Shah in place to repress the
Brzezinski in motion. Brzezinski was
that the weapons of criticism became
time that showed that the sanitation
Iranian people. There was no politithe National Security Advisor under
the criticism by weapons in the
workers and people like that were
cal space available for any genuine
the Carter Administration. You should
instance of John F. Kennedy.
more trustworthy and popular than
progressive force to rise up there.
read his books. He wrote one book
I believe that subsequent to that
the president of the United States
Carter and Brzezinski played a
called Out of Control and another
there has been a crisis in the execuwas. That makes sense to me.
called The Grand Chessboard.
Continued from previous page
Then of course the peoples
around the world hated the United
States for how it was treating them.
After what they’d done with Viet
Nam, after what they’d done to
Cuba, after what they’d done to
Guatemala, Iran and all those other
The crisis is so
profound that you
saw most recently the
theft of an election. I
mean the public theft
of an election. That’s
not something that
democracies like to
do. Democratic
capitalism is a hidden
dictatorship. The
dictatorship rose up
and bared its fangs
for everyone to see.
Continued on next page
African People’s Socialist Party
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
21
Continued from previous page
role in creating even Khomeini with
this modern day Jihad and the
Muslims took power in Iran.
Then, in 1979 the Iranians captured that nest of spies in the
embassy in Tehran. A crisis emerged
then that was similar to what we saw
happen after 9/11. This was a new
experience for white people in this
country.
Here you have the "rag heads" —
and all the other terrible things that
the people who wear turbans in that
part of the world are characterized as
— taking the U.S. embassy. Not only
had they taken the U.S. embassy,
but also this notion of the old flag
never touching the ground was
thrown in the wind because they
were publicly taking out the garbage
using the American flag. They were
taking out the garbage for TV cameras and things like that.
They went into the embassy. As
you know, the U.S. had shredded all
the documents in the embassy. The
Iranians got all the shredded documents and pasted them together.
They were selling them in the streets
in Iran. These documents showed all
the terrible stuff that the CIA and the
United States government had been
doing to the people there.
It was considered a real catastrophe. In that same year, 1979, the
Sandinistas marched into Managua
and overthrew Somoza, who had
been put in power by the U.S. government. The U.S. government
trained Somoza’s National Guard.
Crisis abounded.
Reagan administration calls
national liberation movements
"terrorists"
Then you had Ronald Reagan,
this white guy on his white horse,
attacking both the contradictions
inside this country by attacking the
black movement and the African
community in general, and raising
the most reactionary, raciallycharged characterizations. He used
terms like "welfare queens." He did
this because there was a serious
economic crisis that emerged in this
country in part because of the success of peoples’ struggles.
So, the African community was
taking all the shots. Internationally,
Carter was talking about how our
friend the Shah got overthrown and
how there was struggle in Panama.
Somehow, the Panama Canal is
"our" canal. There didn’t even used
to be a thing called Panama. What
they now call Panama was a part of
Colombia. The United States government wanted to draw out the canal
there. They needed to allow shipping
between the Atlantic and the Pacific
Oceans that would save them a lot of
money. So, they created a false revolutionary movement in what is now
called Panama. They went in there to
help their friends become independent. After their friends became independent, their friends gave them permission to build the canal.
So, here was Reagan rescuing
America from all of these things outside the U.S. White people in this
country were not accustomed to
being afraid. That’s bad, because
fear is a normal emotion. Most people experience it as a regular condition of existence. That isn’t true for
I’m not trying to
find a way out of the
crisis for imperialism,
because everybody
else lives in crisis...
The fact that people
are trying to resolve
those crises is causing
the crisis for the
parasite that feeds
off of them.
It seems to me that
we’re confronted with
the question of how
we move to unite with
the vast majority of
humanity that wants
to be free!
white people as a rule. That’s why
they have to make up games like
bungee jumping — to experience
fear. Most of us know fear readily. It’s
such a new phenomenon to white
people, who are easily frightened. If
anything happens they call 911, you
know. There’s always that ability.
So now, the world was closing
down on America. The Iranians took
"our" embassy. They were treating
"our" guys so bad and "our" guys
couldn’t come home. The Iranians
wouldn’t let them come home.
Whoever heard of a situation
where white guys can’t go where
they want to go when they want to
go? Then, of course, there was the
so-called rescue attempt. A grain of
sand got into the helicopters and that
was a failure. It was just a mess out
there.
There was revolution in
Nicaragua. Revolution seemed to be
threatening El Salvador. So, white
people were afraid. They were also
losing their money. That was the
emergence of the angry white man.
You saw the whole struggle against
big government. Of course, big government was government that was
paying welfare and food stamps.
Reagan took that on seriously
and he won the election. He won
incredible support from the white
population to take things back to the
way they used to be. Under the
Reagan Administration, you began to
see a pattern emerge. His Secretary
of State was Alexander Haig. He was
not a diplomat but a damn general.
That was a suggestion about what
they had in mind. It indicated how
their foreign policy was going to be
conducted.
I was in Nicaragua when Reagan
took office, during the inauguration.
I’ll never forget Alexander Haig, who
declared himself the vicar of foreign
policy. He was one for strange elocutions. He said that those groups that
had been called "national liberation"
organizations would henceforth be
known as "terrorists." That came
from the Reagan Administration.
One of many Iraqi children brutally murdered by U.S. troops
Reagan also had a moderate
The crisis is so profound that you
imperialist as his vice president. That
saw most recently the theft of an
was George Herbert Walker Bush.
election. I mean the public theft of an
He was a moderate. Do you rememelection. That’s not something that
ber that?
democracies like to do. Democracies
Everybody was apologizing all the
always talk about capitalism.
time for this ex-CIA agent. I don’t
Democratic capitalism is a hidden
know if you’re ever an ex-CIA agent.
dictatorship.
I think it’s like the Mafia. Once you’re
The dictatorship rose up and
in, it’s for life, you know. George
bared its fangs for everyone to see.
Bush was the head of it. Like the
They actually stole the election in
Mafia, I don’t think they can let you
broad daylight. People saw them
go. You know too much.
steal the election: "Stop the count,
Anyway, George Herbert Walker
stop the count, stop the count." It
Bush was the moderate imperialist.
was televised. They didn’t just steal
Somebody in this room is old enough
an election. They stole an election
to remember some of this.
through the public policy of disreThey created this thing they
garding the votes of the African popcalled the "arc of crisis." They charulation.
acterized Iran, much of the Persian
In my view, the political crisis is so
Gulf, the Middle East and certain
severe that the Democratic party,
other areas in parts of Asia as the
certainly Al Gore and those who he
"arc of crisis." They said they had to
represents, could not even win the
deal with it. They recognized this crielection.
sis even back at that time.
When I say couldn’t win the elecWe’ve been looking at this
tion, I mean that they had the ability
attempt all along to try to put the
to win the election but they wouldn’t
brakes on this process of people windo what was necessary to win the
ning their freedom, winning their
election. To win the election, they
national liberation. All these strughad to call into question the Civil
gles for national liberation always
Rights Act of 1965. That Act was put
seem to contradict the national interinto place exactly so the kind of thing
est of the United States government.
that happened to the black commu"Our" national interest is to have all
nity could not happen anymore.
the oil in the Middle East. It’s "our"
Africans were denied the vote in
national interest to do this kind of
Mississippi and Alabama. That’s why
stuff. This was the serious manifestathe Civil Rights Act was passed in
tion of crisis.
1965. That’s why people like Martin
Luther King were out there dying.
George W. Bush steals
That’s why people like Julian Bond
presidential election: denies
marched. That’s why they wanted to
Africans right to vote
lynch my ass in Madison, Florida,
when we tried to get the right just to
They have been trying to resolve
vote.
this crisis all along. I believe that the
situation is becoming crystallized.
Continued on next page
“You might not have the Black
Panther Party, but you
you have The Burning Spear.
they really haven't done
have the Uhuru House.
anything by crushing
You might not have
one organization.”
- Huey P. Newton
The Black Panther
newspaper,
So
but
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22
THE BURNING SPEAR
Continued from previous page
In 1965, the U.S. passed the
Voting Rights Act. Not one time did Al
Gore raise that question, nor did he
ever raise the question of the black
community being disenfranchised.
He would rather lose an election
than raise up this contradiction that
would mobilize African people
against the system that had denied
us the right to vote.
So, of course he’s not in power. I
should say he was not elected.
I think that is a reflection of the
crystallization of the crisis that’s
emerging in this country. They stole
an election. Then, having stolen an
election, right away you began to
see an attempt to take on the crises
that exist in the world.
Again, we see a General as a
Secretary of State. This is the third
time that I’m aware of that this has
happened. The first time, of course,
was Marshall who was a general.
This was after the second imperialist
war when he became Secretary of
State, and the so-called Marshall
Plan was initiated that white people
in this country like to talk about. They
say how we helped poor friends and
poor Germany. In reality, financial
deals almost rendered Europe into a
colony of the United States. It was no
giveaway. The U.S. was raking in the
loot and the resources.
Now we saw Bush make General
Colin Powell Secretary of State.
Some people consider him the
moderate imperialist. That’s because
Bush creates war cabinet
The contradiction
[with North Korea] is
one that the U.S.
initiated because it
saw the growing
movement towards reunification of the
Koreas. If Korea
reunifies, the U.S. has
no basis for having
almost 40,000 troops
there. Those troops
ostensibly protect
South Korea from socalled North Korea. Of
course, we know those
troops are there for
the 800-pound
gorilla, China.
they don’t know Colin Powell. Colin
Powell was a cover artist for the Mai
Lai massacre in Viet Nam. He tried to
cover that up. In 1992, Colin Powell
was also working as part of the
Reagan Administration, along with
Cheney, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld.
They created the plan that is
being initiated now with the U.S.A.
P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act and the pre-emptive strike. They had been floating
these ideas around since 1992. They
only now got in power. This is why
they’re implementing this stuff now.
Even Madeline Albright, of all persons, said that this crew that’s
around the President has wanted to
do this for more than ten years.
We’re not looking at a new phenomenon.
So, you have this crew that
includes Colin Powell. You have
Rumsfeld who previously was
Secretary of Defense, if I’m not mistaken. You have Cheney, who’s also
been Secretary of Defense. You
know he was CEO of Halliburton, the
largest oil entity of its kind in the
world.
There’s Condoleeza Rice, a frothing-at-the-mouth person tied to the
oil corporations. There’s an oil tanker
named for her, the Condoleeza.
Then there is this religious fundamentalist, Ashcroft. You know, given
the opportunity he would exchange
the Constitution for the bible. This is
the crew that’s in power.
Now, even as this is going on,
there are other manifestations of crisis. I mentioned Brzezinski’s books.
There are other persons tied to these
think tanks, like Samuel Huntington
who is out of Harvard University. He
wrote a book The Clash of Cultures.
It had a subtitle, something about
how the world is getting out of hand.
He opens his book up with a dis-
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African People’s Socialist Party
April 2003
cussion about a demonstration at the
Republican Convention in San
Diego. I forget what year it was. He
was concerned because the
Mexicans who were marching at that
demonstration were carrying
Mexican flags, not American flags,
and they were "Mexican-Americans."
He began to anticipate this cultural
clash between Muslims and others.
Then there’s Pat Buchanan’s
book, Death of the West. It is another
expression of the crisis. Many liberals like to discount Buchanan
because he’s supposed to be so far
out. But, Buchanan, Huntington and
Brzezinski are running the same
essential line. Buchanan was a
speechwriter for Nixon and Reagan.
This guy is as legitimate as any other
imperialist thug in the world is.
Buchanan’s concern is that by
2050 or sooner, white people will be
a serious minority. I think he said
they would make up around ten percent of the world’s population.
White people are not reproducing,
he said. Other people are reproducing. Even in places where there
seems to be quite a few white people, they’re old.
He was decrying the Muslims and
the declining influence of Christianity,
which he characterized as the ideological glue of the Western world.
They are all seeing the same kind
of threat. This threat is coming from
these hordes of oppressed peoples
around the world. The world is
descending into chaos because it is
no longer being controlled by Europe
and North America. That’s the crisis
that they’re hell-bent on trying to
resolve.
I don’t know any more than anyone else does in this room about who
did 9/11. In my estimation, it could be
argued effectively that the United
States government did it. The fear
that I have about that argument is
that it also could represent liberals
running from another possibility. I
think they might fear even more that
there are oppressed peoples around
the world who are so fed up with the
relationship with U.S. imperialism
that they’ll do any damn thing they
can to bring it down.
I think that some people might
rather believe that the Bush regime
did it than believe that there might be
Arabs and other people who are out
there trying to find any way they can
to bring America and imperialism
down. I believe there are people like
that.
I was listening to a presentation I
made some years ago and I said
then that if there were a nuclear accident in America that wiped it out,
then there are peoples all around the
world who would celebrate. That is
an objective truth. I wasn’t saying
that to be alarmist. It is true because
of the stranglehold that America has
had on the people around the world.
I’m not trying to offend any patriots. I’m really struggling for objectivity. I’m open to being challenged and
struggled with. I am not just saying
these things to be saying them. I’m
not trying to hand out some doctrine.
I believe what I’m saying.
I told you my biases. I told you the
foundation of where I’m coming from
so that you can check it with some
type of logic yourself. I believe what
I’m talking about. You can go to any
Continued on next page
April 2003
Continued from previous page
library, even right down the street,
and pick out books that will show you
the historical data that backs up what
I’m talking about now.
My concern now is that people in
this country are the most politically
backward people in the world. They
base their politics on raw and naked
emotion. How silly is it for a whole
population, when talking about 9/11,
to be saying, "I don’t care why they
did it"? You ought to care why they
did it. Hell, they might do it again!
It seems to me that you want to
know why the hell they did it. There
might be something you can do to
stop it from happening again.
So to say, "I’d rather be stupid, I’d
rather be dumb and ignorant," is just
the most ridiculous thing. That’s the
kind of thing that permeates the political culture in this country. It makes it
difficult to have the kind of discussion
that we need to have if we’re going to
move things forward.
Obviously, we have a situation.
Either way it’s a statement of crisis.
The Bush regime could be so desperate that they would do what happened on 9/11. There’s no morality in
the politic of imperialism. I’m not suggesting that it’s outlandish to assume
that they would kill 3,000 people in
the Trade Center. Hell, they’ve killed
more than that in Afghanistan in the
last period and regularly in other
places.
Someone attacked symbols of
U.S. financial and military power and
they were willing to kill themselves in
the process of doing that. That is a
statement of crisis. In my opinion,
this is something that needs to be
recognized.
THE BURNING SPEAR
ion of the Party, the Bush regime
can’t do anything right. There’s nothing right they can do. That’s the place
where they are.
The government says it is fighting
get the white guy that did anthrax in
this country. There was a guy right
over here in Seminole. They found
him with weapons of mass destruction, but they haven’t characterized
Around the world the sentiment is the same. Whether they are chanting it in
South Korea or displaying it in the Philippines, the people around the world
are demanding that the “Yankees Go Home!”
Bush regime attempts to recolonize world
So, now the Bush regime is in a
process of attempting to rescue the
entire imperialist system. It does it in
the most selfish way, because it’s
objective is not simply to rescue
imperialism, but to rescue the imperialism in which America would have
absolute hegemony.
In fact, in September, they put
forth the so-called Strategic Defense
Plan. This Strategic Defense Plan
had three components to it:
One, it stated quite clearly that
America is the most powerful country
in the world, and that it would never
allow any other country to become
as powerful.
Two, that if any power who is
opposed to U.S. imperialism, in any
region in the world, begins to acquire
weapons of mass destruction, the
U.S. would use pre-emptive attacks
to wipe them out.
Three, they would do it unilaterally, by themselves, if necessary.
All these other arguments are
nonsense. We’ve been hearing
about the United Nations, and having
somebody else with the U.S. If you
read just the document they have put
out themselves, they have stated
that their policy is world hegemony.
Their objective is to re-colonize the
world. It is to stop the bleeding of the
imperialist system that comes as a
consequence of oppressed peoples
around the world fighting and winning their freedom, whether it is in
the Middle East or any place else.
That’s what seems to be happening.
Now, in my opinion and the opin-
against violence. It has characterized
this massacre that it wants to commit
against the people of Iraq as somehow rescuing the people from the
violence of Saddam Hussein!
So, I’m truly, truly, truly concerned
about that. I think that we are in a
very serious and tenuous place in
the world. We need to struggle for
more political clarity and maturity in
our movement. We need to be willing
to look objectively at what America’s
about.
U.S. fighting in Asia, Africa and
Latin America, as well as Middle
East
There’s another reason that I’m
concerned. I’m concerned because
the situation with Iraq is obvious to
everybody. What’s not so obvious is
what the U.S. is doing in all these
other places.
They have now effectively
declared war in the Philippines.
Initially they were just going to send
somebody over to help and advise in
the Philippines. Now they say they
are going in ostensibly to get the Abu
Sayaf.
Who is America to go and get any
damn body? I mean they can’t even
him as a terrorist. They didn’t do to
him what they’ve done to Sami AlArian.
We’re confronted with a serious
question, particularly in Africa.
You read about the million
Africans killed in Rwanda, because
of so-called contradictions between
the Hutu and the Tutsi. Many of
those Africans died in 1998 and
1999.
Then, of course, every day you
pick up the newspaper and there’s
something about the situation in
Congo. There’s the situation in Ivory
Coast. There’s a near-situation in
Central African Republic.
All over Africa, you see this stuff.
What most people do not understand
is that what you’re looking at in
Rwanda, Congo, Ivory Coast, and
Central African Republic is a contest
between France and the United
States. France used to be the dominant force in these so-called
Francophone states.
The United States no longer recognizes the French sphere of interest
in Africa. It has now moved to take all
of it away from France. You’re looking at proxy wars that sometimes
have resulted in skirmishes between
23
U.S. and French troops in Africa.
We’re not just looking at Iraq.
When we talk about peace, we have
to be talking about a peace that
comes as a consequence of national
liberation. People have to be free.
Latin America has to be considered, also. The most dynamic force
in the world is the struggle for
national liberation. This is the most
progressive force. Anybody who’s
standing in the way of that is standing in the way of progress, whether
it’s in the black community in
America or in Bolivia which just had a
major uprising. It’s in a very unstable
situation.
You don’t even know half of
what’s happening in Colombia. I
talked to a comrade who just got
back from Venezuela. It’s nothing like
what you think because the media
only lets you see what they want you
to see. It’s boiling in Venezuela. In
Venezuela, comrades from the
FARC from Colombia are passing
out leaflets on the streets. It’s that
serious there.
Then of course, U.S. troops have
made it clear why they went to
Colombia. They went there to fight
the revolutionaries.
Then in Brazil, which is huge, you
have a changed situation with the
election of this social democrat.
You know about the economy in
Argentina. You know about the situation in Peru. It is an extremely volatile
situation all over the world. There is
no way that the U.S. can do what it
wants to do and come out of it the
way it wants to come out. It’s
attempting to re-colonize the world,
and it is serious. That is the context
for everything that we’re looking at
right now, including this war that
they’re talking about making against
Iraq.
This is the crisis that imperialism
is looking at.
I’m not trying to find a way out of
the crisis for imperialism, because
everybody else lives in crisis. When
you have a world where more than
half the people live on two dollars a
day, that’s a damn crisis for the rest
of the world. The fact that people are
trying to resolve those crises is causing the crisis for the parasite that
feeds off of them.
It seems to me that we’re confronted with the question of how we
move to unite with the vast majority
of humanity that wants to be free! I
think that’s what we’re contending
with.
You have this interesting contradiction. It’s not all that it looks like.
Almost everything is up for grabs.
Europe fears U.S. hegemony
over entire world
Europe is uneasy with the United
States. It has been for a while, especially since the so-called Soviet
threat has disappeared. Europe has
been trying to move as rapidly as
possible for unification.
It has been clear that there are
two objectives of the European
Union (EU). One of them was to contain Germany. Every time Germany
flexes its muscles, it kicks everybody
else’s ass in Europe. So, they want
to contain Germany.
They also want to grow an economy and a military that is as strong or
stronger than those of the United
Continued on next page
African People’s Socialist Party
24
THE BURNING SPEAR
Continued from previous page
States. They’ve even commented on
this in their journals. This is one of
their intentions. With the so-called
Soviet threat gone, there was no reason why they could not do that.
Now, you have forces in Europe
with their own interests that are separate and distinct from those of the
United States. They have interests in
Iraq. They want the loot from Iraq
and Iran.
France was trading seriously with
Iran and Iraq. China was as well,
although China’s not part of Europe.
These countries and entities want
their own relationships. They want to
look after their own interest.
Sometimes that’s in contention with
the interests of the United States.
Now, everybody’s concerned
about the United States taking Iraq.
They say that Iraq has more oil
reserves than Saudi Arabia. In fact,
they call it the second largest. They
say that every time you dig a hole in
Iraq you get oil. They say they have
enough oil, I think, for the next hundred years.
The problem is that Europe is
dependent on oil too. So is Japan. If
the United States sits astride all the
oil in the Middle East, then they’ve
got control of Europe, period!
That is the real concern. Another
concern is the arrogance of U.S.
imperialism. It disallows these
spheres of interest that I was talking
about. It is quite blatant in its statement of world hegemony.
It doesn’t even pretend that the
Europeans are equal powers. They
say this is how it’s going to be and
you fall in line or you get left out.
This is creating serious contradictions among the populations in
Europe. There is a form of nationalism: European nationalism, French
nationalism, British nationalism.
They resent America telling Tony
Blair what to do. They are ashamed.
They hate it. They write in newspapers that Blair is Bush’s poodle.
Just yesterday, in the House of
Commons, Blair received the largest
defeat in the history of England.
More than a third of his own party
fought him against this war resolution. He won the resolution, but he
won it because the Tories, many of
who were against him, carried the
day for him. They said it was a humiliating defeat for Blair.
You have all these people who
hate that their fallen empire is a footstool for U.S. imperialism. The same
thing is happening with the French
and the Germans.
There is a kind of nationalism
that, even as it uses expressions
about sympathy for the people in
Iraq, is opposed to it being dominated by the United States the way
it’s being dominated. So, millions of
people are in motion around that
question.
You have certain sectors of the
ruling elite in England who are afraid
of the European Union, because if
Europe united as it’s talking about,
Germany and France are going to be
the primary forces in Europe. To contend with them, England is hanging
with the United States, come what
may. That’s going to be their seat at
the table. They would be eaten up by
a Europe dominated by Germany
and France.
African People’s Socialist Party
It exposes this
fantasy of so-called
western democracy.
Bush would say that
it’s democracy at
work because people
are marching. That
isn’t democracy.
Democracy is when
the majority says
don’t do something,
and then you don’t do
it. That’s democracy.
tile.
It has already been suggested
that the bases would be going in
Germany. You know that U.S. troops
are training so-called Iraqi dissidents
in Hungary. Now there’s a military
base in Hungary, so they’re anticipating that.
You know there was a time when
this contradiction we’re looking at
now might have caused a war
among the imperialists themselves.
The problem now is that the United
States has a military budget that is
larger than the next 20 countries
combined.
You aren’t going to get one of the
other imperialists to be willing to take
on the U.S. The EU might have the
muscle to try to push the U.S. around
sometime in the future, but there is
not a single one of the European
nations that’s capable of challenging
the United States now.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il doesn’t hide that North Korea has nuclear
weapons and can do pre-emptive strikes just as U.S. can.
The U.S. is taking advantage of
Europe in some interesting ways.
The former Soviet states are being
brought into the European Union and
they are on the payroll of the United
States.
There is the notion that their socalled development is going to come
from the United States. So, that’s
why Rumsfeld is playing the game of
the old Europe versus the new
Europe. He’s telling Germany and
France to go to hell, because he has
Hungary, Poland and the Czech
Republic. He is going to try to play
the new Europe against the old
Europe.
Because they’re in the pocket of
Uncle Sam, England is struggling
with Germany and France about
where they are trying to take Europe
and the European Union.
The type of EU that France and
Germany want is problematic. They
want a closely-knit, single economy
and a single military. These new
forces coming in are struggling for
something loose. They’re going to be
the U.S. Trojan Horse inside this situation.
So, you have a highly volatile,
unstable situation where the U.S. is
exposing itself to the whole world.
That’s no little thing. It’s antagonizing
so many allies. One of the ways the
U.S. gets to project its imperial
power around the world is through
military bases stuck in these other
countries that it’s now making hos-
It seems France is going to jump
on board once the war starts,
because they want their own action
in Iraq. They want to have their own
relationships with the economy
there. But if the U.S. takes it, then
everybody gets left out, unless they
jump on board now.
So, if France wants contracts for
rebuilding, or any kind of favorable
business deals, then they need to be
on board when the U.S. goes into
Iraq. That’s why some people are
suspecting that France will jump in at
the last minute. It won’t want to be
left out of the business deals that are
going to come with the conquest of
that territory.
It’s all cold-blooded. All their
moralistic nonsense has nothing to
do with morality. It’s all cold-blooded.
U.S. fears China will defend
Korea in struggle
The Korea issue is blatant to
everybody, too. They’re going to kill
Saddam Hussein. They don’t make
any bones about that. They’ll kill him,
his family and everybody who’s close
to him because he might one day
have nuclear weapons, and he might
have some weapons of mass
destruction.
Well, Korea says, "We’ve got
them!" — nuclear weapons. Korea
said America’s not the only one that
can do a pre-emptive strike. We can
do one too. Korea said, well bring it
April 2003
on, no matter what they do. Every
day they do something new. They
crank up the nuclear reactors. They
shoot a missile over Colin Powell
when he goes to the Middle East to
try to calm things down.
This is an interesting situation. It’s
going to be hard for the U.S. to attack
Korea because if the U.S. attacks
Korea there’s an 800- pound gorilla
that nobody’s talking about — China.
I do not see how China could
stand aside and see that happen.
This is true, not because China has a
love affair with the Korean people
necessarily. China has its own interests, and it is not interested in U.S.
hegemony over that area of the
world. China expects to be the dominant force, not only there, but maybe
in the whole world.
Given an opportunity, China will
just go along, industrialize and build
itself. But if the U.S. attacks Korea, I
don’t see how China could sit by and
watch that happen. That’s the 800pound gorilla that’s sort of out there,
and no one’s talking too much about
it.
Colin Powell went over there and
talked to China. He said, "Say something to Korea." China responded,
"That’s your problem, you deal with
it!" Guess what? Not only did China
tell them that, but also the new president of so-called South Korea said
in his inaugural presentation that
they are not going to be a lapdog of
the United States. They said they
were not going to allow the United
States to tell them what to do. They
said that their move is now towards
re-unification of Korea.
This brings us to the basis of the
contradiction
between
the
Democratic Republic of Korea and
the United States. The contradiction
is one that the U.S. initiated because
it saw the growing movement
towards re-unification of the Koreas.
If Korea reunifies, the U.S. has no
basis for having almost 40,000
troops there. Those troops ostensibly
protect South Korea from so-called
North Korea. Of course, we know
those troops are there for the 800pound gorilla, China. That’s a serious
contradiction.
Now, everybody in the whole
world is watching this thing happen.
There’s no mystery here, it’s not like
Viet Nam. It’s not like the Second
Imperialist War. It’s not like Korea.
Bush says, "We’re not going for
the oil." Companies say, "We don’t
want their oil." Colin Powell says,
"We don’t want their oil." All of them
have to say that because the whole
world knows what’s going on.
The whole world knows that millions of people came out in opposition to this war, yet the Bush regime
still intends to do it. It exposes this
fantasy of so-called western democracy. Bush said that the demonstrations show that democracy’s at work.
He’s a fool. I’m sorry. To say Bush
and fool is being redundant.
Bush would say that it’s democracy at work because people are
marching. That isn’t democracy.
Democracy is when the majority says
don’t do something, and then you
don’t do it. That’s democracy, you
understand.
The imperialists have this very
cavalier attitude. They’re even using
words like imperialism in their own
Continued on next page
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
Bush says, "We’re
not going for the
oil." Companies
say, "We don’t want
their oil." Colin
Powell says, "We
don’t want their
oil." All of them
have to say that
because the whole
world knows what’s
going on.
That’s one of the reasons that Islam
itself is under assault.
Turkish government opposes
Kurdish struggle for homeland
Arab demonstrators set fire to likenesses of George Bush, Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair outside a
McDonalds in Manama, Bahrain.
Continued from previous page
journals. You should read Foreign
Affairs.
Bush’s statement is so cavalier!
He would actually liquidate that a
real democracy would require him to
be bound by the interests and wishes
of the masses of people.
Iraq war will have serious
implications for imperialism
If Bush doesn’t go to war against
Iraq his career and his regime are
gone. Make no mistake about it.
Bush isn’t doing this as an individual.
As an individual, he would certainly
be concerned about his career.
If he goes to war, which is very
likely, he’s going to unleash forces he
cannot even imagine.
This whole notion of some democratic space will be gone. It’s gone
for people in this country who actually thought there was democracy.
Jimmy Wickets asks, "You mean
there’s no democracy?" No! You
should have listened to what people
were saying to you in the Barrio 30
years ago.
That’s going to be an extraordinary event for many people.
You think it was bad when people
learned that Richard Nixon used all
those curse words on the tapes! For
this guy to go to war while all these
people are out there demonstrating
and all kinds of people went out there
to try to bring some kind of reasoning
to this thing is going to have consequences. I can’t say what they all
are.
I don’t mean there’s going to be
some kind of calamity the next day.
But, I’m telling you it’s going to have
serious implications. It’s going to
deepen the crisis. Nobody will have
respect for this thing.
Around the world, he’s causing
major contradictions between peoples and governments everywhere.
In the Middle East, all these puppet
governments — who deny it — are
backing Bush up behind the backs of
their people.
He’s creating severe crises
between the people and the governments there. He’s creating a crisis
between the people and the government in England, and other places.
It’s a serious, critical crisis that’s
emerging.
He’s revealing that the imperialists have no respect for any kind of
law. What might have seemed
shocking on 9/11 in 2001, in my view,
will possibly be looked upon in four
or five years as child’s play.
Nobody plays by the rules. Bush
is making up the rules as they go
along. That’s something that all the
peoples in the world will be looking
at.
Bush is talking about occupying
Iraq. He’s talking about putting forces
down there. He’s saying that they’re
going to have to occupy Iraq. They
used to wonder how to do this
because it causes all kinds of destabilization in the Middle East. They
don’t care.
In fact, they have been concerned
about Saudi Arabia for some time
now. They’re concerned about the
stability of the government and the
ideological influences there. Now
they take Iraq and they intend to
dominate everything in the Middle
East.
They used to rely on the Shah of
Iran. They used to rely on the State
of Israel as the policeman. Both
proved to be unreliable. When the
U.S. goes into Iraq, the situation in
occupied Palestine that already had
been getting worse every day, will
get worse under the cover of all this
discussion and struggle around Iraq.
I suspect that they intend to remove
the Palestinian population with this
attack on Iraq.
One of the problems that the
imperialists have is Islam, because
it’s international, and it has some
kind of organizational and ideological
coherence. It is located in all these
places where people are poor and
struggling to win some freedom.
Turkey is an interesting question.
The Turks say that one of the reasons that they’re going into Iraq is to
rescue the poor Kurds who live in
northern Iraq. Then in the southern
part of Iraq, there are the Shiite
Muslims.
Iraq really controls a little less
than a third of its territory. The
integrity of Iraq’s territory has been
compromised severely. U.S. and
British forces bomb Iraq regularly.
The Kurds are a group of people
who were left out when the imperialists redrew the lines in that area.
They are a distinct cultural national
entity. Because they were left out
when the borders were drawn, the
majority of the Kurdish populations
are in Eastern Turkey, Northern Iraq,
Syria and Iran.
The Kurds want a national homeland. They are oppressed everywhere. They are oppressed because
the imperialists drew borders in the
Middle East and left them as they
did. The Kurds can’t get a homeland
except at the expense of the territorial integrity of one or another of the
states where they now live.
So, none of those states want to
say the Kurds can have a homeland
because the homeland comes at the
expense of what is characterized as
the national territory. The Kurds have
been played off all the time. The
imperialists use the Kurds against
one or another state. They use them
against Iran or against Syria.
Turkey is most vicious in its attack
on the Kurds. The Kurds can’t even
use their own language. The Kurds
can’t dress in their national clothing.
Every now and then, the Kurdish
resistance is attacked militarily.
When they’re attacked, they go over
the border. Turkey and northern Iraq
are contiguous, so the Kurds go over
the borders.
The Turkish army chases Kurds
into northern Iraq, just killing them.
The Kurds want Kurdistan, a
national homeland in northern Iraq.
The Turks say if you give the Kurds a
national homeland in northern Iraq,
it’s going to threaten the stability in
Turkey, because the Kurds who live
in Turkey are going to want a
national homeland as well. That’s
going to destabilize our situation. So,
25
Turkey tells the U.S., "We’ll go down
with you, if you give us enough
money. We’ll support you, if you let
our troops occupy northern Iraq
where the Kurds are."
You have the Shiite Muslims in
the southern part of Iraq. The
Americans are also helping them
solve their problem. But if the Shiite
Muslims assume national autonomy
or some kind of independent status
there, all the other Arab states, Saudi
Arabia included, will feel threatened.
Iran is also Shiite Muslims, and many
are concerned that Iran will have
influence among the Shiites who are
in southern Iraq.
This situation is very volatile and
extremely dangerous. They’re about
to unleash some stuff they’ve never
seen before and cannot even imagine.
Turkey’s been trying for a long
time to be white. The European
Union won’t allow Turkey to join,
mostly because they’re a Muslim
state. So, Turkey crushes down any
meaningful evidence of Islam.
Muslims always win the election
because Turkey’s a Muslim state.
Under Attaturk, Turkey was made
a secular state, but everybody’s a
Muslim there. However, you can’t act
as if you’re a Muslim if you’re in
power or the army will kick your ass.
Ninety percent of the people in
Turkey don’t want to participate in
the war.
That’s the real deal. It’s a very,
very tenuous situation all over the
world.
Peace movement denies right of
colonized people to struggle
against our oppressors
We have some serious concerns.
We have concerns about a peace
movement that would define itself
only in terms of what they call stopping the violence. That is a discretion
that comes about while not recognizing violence as an absolute component of the conditions of existence of
colonized people on the planet. It’s
always violence.
If you’re black, you’re always confronting violence. That’s what living
seven years less than white people
on average means. In the concentration camps that they call Indian
reservations, the life span is in the
‘40s. All the other places around the
world people are locked into the
imperialist system.
A real pacifist in this country
would be exhausted just from lying
down in front of the police cars that
are trying to get to the black community on a regular basis everywhere in
this country.
However, they want to talk about
"pacifism" and "stopping the violence" and sort of stopping everything in place. This pacifism that they
talk about in the peace movement is
effectively a pacifism that would
guarantee the permanent monopoly
of violence in the hands of the imperialists. The only time they talk about
stopping the violence is when the
oppressed people rise up to try to
take back our freedom. That doesn’t
play well. I’m concerned about that
for a number of reasons.
A peace movement like that will
validate the attack that the government is making on peoples by allowing them to characterize any
Continued on next page
African People’s Socialist Party
26
THE BURNING SPEAR
Continued from previous page
response to the violence of imperialism as violence equal to what the
imperialists are doing.
The struggles in Colombia now
are characterized as being waged by
terrorists, and that is "violent."
The Palestinians are being massacred on a daily basis. Just over the
last week, maybe 40 or more
Palestinians have been murdered.
Their response is "violence." Then
you have the "good violence" versus
the "bad violence." The "good violence" is violence by the U.S. and its
allies. The "bad violence" is committed by anybody who is opposed to
that.
Therefore, I’m concerned about
the peace movement. I am truly, truly
concerned about a peace movement
that will validate the policy of the U.S.
government, which is fighting against
"terrorism" and "violence."
The thing that disturbs me is that
less than 44 percent of Africans are
for this war. In this country, Africans
are the largest group of people
opposed to the war, but Africans
don’t participate in the peace movement. The Africans can’t participate
in the peace movement because the
peace movement doesn’t recognize
the war that’s being made against
the Africans.
The peace movement calls on
everybody to fight for peace for white
people. It will not include on its
agenda the attack that’s happened to
Africans, Indians and other people in
this country.
In fact, the Quakers have said
Opinion
continued from page 12
the people of Iraq — not only
Saddam and his supporters — see
the war directed at them. Contrary to
the Iraqi exile opinion, it looks that
even if Saddam falls, the resistance
might outlive him. The native tactics
might test the power of the
microwave bombs, the bunkerbusters, oxygen-depleting bombs
and other B-52 bearing cruise missiles. It is looking more and more that
way.
I read a report that when Iraqi
people see dollars, they will side with
the invading force. Such lies and
contempt directed at a basically
nationalist-patriotic people can be
very self-deceiving. The people may
take the dollars and sweets and continue to fight the invaders. Has that
occurred to the invaders who think
dollar power will neutralize what
seems a self-motivated, spirited and
determined resistance?
Most of the leadership of the Arab
Socialist Party of Iraq has been
weaned in Cairo University under the
Arab nationalist leadership of Gamal
Abdel Nasser. Saddam graduated
from Cairo University in the ‘60s. His
main political content has been Arab
nationalism even when he fought the
Kurds and the Mullahs of Iran — the
latter not being Arab!
The defining content of nationalism is to try to use the resources of a
country first and foremost to develop
that people. Saddam and his followers may have shown cruel and
deceitful conduct, but they are above
all Arab nationalists. Saddam would
probably be seen and hailed as an
African People’s Socialist Party
This contradiction
between oppressed
and oppressor
nations is really
busting wide open...
You see they’re not
occupying France.
The war is
happening in all
these other places
where people have
been living under
colonial domination
all this time. They’re
trying to stick
people back in that
situation.
that they don’t even want to participate in the anti-war movement that
we helped to build because it was
taking up too many causes of Indians
and black people.
We don’t live in peace. We don’t
have any peace in our communities.
We are opposed to the war because
we are witnesses to what the
American war is all about right here,
where the movement that is supposed to be for peace won’t open the
Arab (even Muslim) leader at the
grassroots level in the Arab world. If
this war becomes drawn out and
long — dead or alive — he will be
immortalized in the Arab world and
perhaps even in the Muslim world.
An old civilization is being razed
to the ground and no one is rushing
to put a stop to this madness. The
UN is mute. China, Russia, France
and Germany make meek statements. The Arab League makes
banal remarks while Qatar's foreign
minister walks out.
The African Union has uttered
hardly a murmer or blib.
The world must not see Iraq burn
like hell. The images we see are
deeply disturbing and the scar they
leave will not be healed for generations. We must try to be resourceful
and try to save lives — on all sides.
As the soldiers displayed as P.O.W.s
from the USA show that they are
from ordinary families why should
they die too?
The African-American father who
waved the picture of his killed sonsoldier in the war to the world media
demanded to Bush that he be held
responsible for taking his only son's
life. That was a display as heartrending as it is symbolic of all those
soldiers who may die for the simple
reason of being in Iraq — not
because they know anything or care
about the Iraqis, but because they
are doing a 'job.' Moreover, as one of
the captured POWs said, "They are
there because they have to follow
orders."
The World is too silent!
What can be done to prevent the
Anarchy above international law
door to allow African people to participate.
This contradiction between
oppressed and oppressor nations is
really busting wide open. That’s what
September 11 seems to have been
about. That’s what Afghanistan is
about. That’s what Iraq is about.
That’s what Colombia is about.
That’s what the Philippines are
about.
You see they’re not occupying
France. The war is happening in all
these other places where people
have been living under colonial domination all this time. They’re trying to
stick people back in that situation.
Inside this country, the so-called
peace movements reflect imperial
assumptions as they relate to
oppressed peoples. They assume
that black people should not come in
and mess up their damn peace
movement. They have a nice peace
movement and here’s Omali. They
say, "Every time Omali talks, he’s
talking about oppression and imperialism and we just want it to stop." Do
you understand?
That’s what’s happening. Here’s
Sheridan from the American Indian
Movement talking about what’s happening on the reservations and they
just want the discussion to stop.
It’s happening even with folk who
are
being
redbait ed,
like
A.N.S.W.E.R. They are being redbaited, yet they’re trying to stop us
from speaking out.
Driving force in history is
national liberation
It’s an incredible, volatile situa-
They say they want
to save the people,
then bomb them and
their country to save
them. After their
conduct of
destruction, they
want to show them
compassion by
inviting ruthless U.S.
corporations,
government
development agencies
and NGOs to
reconstruct their
society and provide
them food and
medicine.
BUSH-BLAIR mad rush to destroy
Iraq under the guise of changing its
government?
What kind of world are they wishing to create?
Tomorrow, a small country can go
charge its neighbor to bring about
regime change and can point to the
Blair-Bush doctrine of pre-emptive
strike to bring change. And if this
country appears to be endowed with
some rich minerals that the big pow-
April 2003
tion, but it’s one that can bode well.
The fundamental problem is all
the millions of people who are out
there in opposition to what the Bush
regime is attempting to do. People
are opposed to imperialism, but the
fundamental contradiction is the lack
of organization.
There is no evidence of revolutionary organization. People need
organization.
Even with the Soviet Union being
the opportunistic entity that it was, it
was significant because it gave ideological grounding for many forces
throughout the whole world.
The contradiction in this world that’s
going to be kicking everybody in the
teeth is that oppressed peoples everywhere, including the black communities and Barrios in the cities and communities where you live, are moving
forward and are no longer going to live
like this.
That’s what’s defining the historical
trajectory that we’re moving along
today. Bush is trying to stop history.
That will not work. I think what revolutionaries struggle to do is to understand
the historical trajectories and join them
to facilitate the birth of a completely
new kind of social system. That in the
final analysis is what we’re fighting for.
People have to choose sides.
The driving force in history is
national liberation. There’s a real
attempt to re-colonize the world directly
under white power. I believe everything
they do will deepen this crisis as
opposed to lessening it for them. That’s
the world as we see it.
ers desire, they will use that as a pretext to get involved and bombard
hapless populations. This is a neat
formula for spreading world anarchy.
Ironically, this comes from the
power that wants — or says it wishes
— to police the world and create stability and security for the 21st century.
How can this power create security and order if it is seen as an outlaw and contemptuous of the international institutions and international
law?
This is a formula for a security disorder for the 21st century, not a new
world order.
Charity after the festival of
violence and willful destruction
Organized hypocrisy characterizes imperial politics and human
rights. Imperial power self-arrogates
the power to dictate the terms of any
engagement.
If opposed, it collects a number of
disparate countries and goes to
enforce its own actions against the
will of the world and international law.
It camouflages its own action under
the euphemism of a constructed
"coalition."
There is not only violence against
people, but truth is dead and language itself is casualized — having
been used and turned into fraud and
deception.
Ethics is thrown out of the window. The overriding animal instinct to
win war dictates how the war is
reported, played out, even thought
about. It is not a command and control of the physical battle. It is a command and control of everything. It is
Continued on next page
April 2003
THE BURNING SPEAR
ments of Africa and the African Union
condemn this war against Iraq as illegal, illegitimate and immoral.
Africa must stand for national liberation, not national humiliation.
It must stand for national independence not re-colonization in this day
and age.
Africa must stand for justice and
oppose an imperialist war for the
resources and control of the Arab
world.
If Africa does not stand on the side
of the Arab nation, it will have shown a
moral and political blindness that will
haunt it for generations.
It is time for Africans to show
strength by fighting the last frontier of
their damnation, confronting head on
their false decolonization to manifest a
true decolonization.
Iraq is now a litmus test to show
progress in attenuating the false decolonization of the African and Arab mind.
The innocent blood of Iraq may yet lead
to the sprouting of the Arab nation.
At this historical moment, Africa
should stand side by side with the Iraqi
people and country.
Continued from previous page
a nightmare when truth is turned into
falsehood, information becomes disinformation, P.O.W.s are pawns in
the war game and war dictates life.
The idea of destroying a country
and summoning U.S. private companies, governments and Non-governmental organizations (NGO) as
angels of mercy is the most hypocritical turn of this whole sordid episode.
It reminds me of a story about a
19th century Russian noblewoman
who went to an opera and kept
weeping while watching the opera,
and even after she came out of the
opera, at the death of a Russian poor
peasant. She kept weeping and
when she came out of the opera her
footman was frozen to death staying
where he had been ordered to stay
— outside suffering from the freezing
severe Russian cold winter weather.
She became angry at the inconvenience she faced by his death. Her
compassion for the Russian peasant,
borne by her weeping, was betrayed
by her conduct! Not wishing to have
any inconvenience. As long as her
privileges are not touched she can
afford to show compassion. As soon
as the privilege is affected, her conduct submerges her compassion.
The military destroyers of Iraq are
like this Russian noblewoman. They
say they want to save the people,
then bomb them and their country to
save them. After their conduct of
destruction, they want to show them
compassion by inviting ruthless U.S.
corporations, government development agencies and NGOs to reconstruct their society and provide them
food and medicine.
Why is it necessary to be emboldened in the first place with the conduct of destruction and wish to sanitize the effect of the willful and deliberate destruction with a false compassion? Destruction first, construction after. Why not construction ever
so that ones conduct and compassion flow together!
Blood and tears in Iraq are flowing
like rivers and there is not enough
protest to stop this orgy of violence.
The protest must be total and worldwide. It must be made to bite for the
sake of the Iraqi people and the U.S.
and British soldiers that are in harm’s
way.
The protest must continue to stop
this war that will no doubt generate
deep hatred and is spreading miscommunication across religions,
nations and population groups.
It is time to overcome barbarism
and promote civilization, control
anarchy and stand for legality,
uphold morality and reject moral
blindness, be counted for justice by
fighting injustice, and oppose forcedetermination and support self-determination.
I weep for my divided country
whose very division has forced it to
side with arrogant imperial power. I
do this as I continue to march and
oppose the Blair-Bush projection of
destructive(!) and retributive violence
against Iraq as a country and people.
For that matter, I do not wish any
country to be humiliated, in the way
Iraq has been, for the "sins" of its
leaders. Let that people cleanse the
sins of their leaders or remove them.
Others cannot bomb democracy into
The protest must continue
27
Where there is no love, there
is hate, enmity, enemy and war
An Iraqi man carries a child after a U.S. massacre of more civilians.
being.
The world deserves better than
gunboat diplomacy or democracy. It
is the people and the people alone of
that particular place (Iraq in this
case!) who must be in charge of their
own destiny. This is an important
matter of principle that brooks no
trespassing.
As Thomas Jefferson said, "In
matters of principle stand like a rock.
In matters of taste swim with the current." War and peace are issues of
principle and not taste. Africa must
stand united against the arrogant
concept of forced regime change.
Africa must say no to gun boat
democracy. The African Union must
express an African will of opposition
to the invasion of Iraq. The African
Union has to oppose arrogant power
coming any where and directed at
any people.
Africa should demand national
liberation and support the Arab
people
Africa must stand on the side of
the national aspiration of the Iraqi
people. If Africans allow this vast
injustice and criminal bombardment
to go unopposed, tomorrow their turn
will come.
It is thus vital that they stand for
principle and reject temptations to
side with invasion, aggression, occupation and externally-forced regime
change. These are matters of principle. Africa's own history and experience demands that Africa takes a
stand.
1. On matters of peace and war,
we demand that Africa learn to speak
with one voice.
2. African countries that overtly
and covertly joined the so-called
coalition of the willing should withdraw from it.
3. Africans must demand an
immediate ceasefire now. The U.S.-
The world deserves
better than gunboat
diplomacy or
democracy. It is the
people and the people
alone of that
particular place (Iraq
in this case!) who
must be in charge of
their own destiny.
British forces should withdraw
unconditionally and immediately
from Iraq!
4. The idea of regime change by
military means is wrong in principle
and cannot produce a regime that
the population can respect.
5. Africa must oppose the concept
of regime change and the military
strikes to bring it about. Gunboat
democracy is neither democracy nor
liberation. It is colonialism and a
modern form of conquest that
exposes a population to needless
humanitarian catastrophe.
6. Africa must join forces with all
the forces that support international
law.
7. Africa must actively seek to
support actions to bring to international justice the war criminals.
8. Africa's eminent lawyers must
volunteer to prepare to prosecute
war crimes committed by the invading powers.
9. Africans must support Iraqi
civilians in any way they can.
10. The citizens of Africa must
demonstrate, petition and do everything possible to make all the govern-
An American friend sent me this
thought and it is a good way to end my
remarks:
Where there is love, there is no
hate. Where there is no hate, there is
no enmity. Where there is no enmity,
there is no enemy. Where there is no
enemy, there is no war!
I write this as one who is deeply
affected by this war. It is difficult to carry
out normal life when the images of disorientated children, wounded and dead
people hit one everyday.
I must confess I find the provision of
this unwanted image an indictment to
civilization. The 21st century should
have been different. It has become a
throwback to the carnages of the previous world wars. Therefore, those who
see it as their birthright to lead this
world are dramatic failures.
They should have guided the planet
not to war, massive waste and colonization, but to peace, justice and prosperity. The current war is proof they
have failed, as they are morally feeble
and greedy.
Our planet should be governed with
the expression of many voices — not
only U.S. and British, but also Arab,
African, Indian, Chinese, Latin
American and European voices. We
need a multi-polar not a uni-polar, a
multilateral and not unilateral, a negotiating or dialogue- seeking and not warspreading world.
We need U.S.-British humility and
not arrogance to create order in this
world. Let us hope the current blood
and tears of Iraq end up watering the
birth of a just, equitable and tolerant
world. From this great tragedy, let there
be hope and victory for the wretched of
the earth.
About the author: Mammo Muchie is an
activist and university lecturer who has
been marching against imperialist wars
against Indochina, Africa and now
Arabia. He says of himself, "As a scholar
activist engaged in contributing knowledge to the creation of the African
nation, I shall be working on African
integration and ways to institutionally
participate in grass roots organizing for
African national liberation."
African People’s Socialist Party
Get the Tools You Need to
Books
Social Justice and Economic
Development for the African Community;
Why I Became a Revolutionary by Omali
Yeshitela. Presented in 3 chapters:
• The conditions and times that shaped my world view
• Why I took up the demand for black power
• Struggle for social justice based in genuine economic
development for African people 28 pgs. $5.
Overturning the Culture
of Violence by Penny Hess.
Working from the leadership of
Omali Yeshitela's writings and
speeches, Hess chronicles the
development of the world
capitalist economy through the
theft of indigenous land and
African labor and calls for “white
people to be a part of the future
through reparations to African
people”. 581 pgs. $22.95
Video Tapes
1) On September 11th. September
16, 2001 speech by Omali Yeshitela
at the Uhuru House in St.
Petersburg, Florida. Discusses the
bombing of the World Trade Center,
Bush’s plans for war against the nonwhite world and the expected attack
on Civil Liberties. $10.
2) The Value of Stolen Black
Labor. Speech by Omali Yeshitela
presented on Labor Day Weekend,
2002 at the Uhuru House in St.
Petersburg, Florida. Discusses the
critical role of the slave trade and the
continuing exploitation of African
labor in the development and
maintenance of world capitalism.
Argues the demand for reparations.
$10.
3) African Heroes and Martyrs.
Speech by Omali Yeshitela in 1995
at Li’l Bobby Hutton Park in Oakland,
California. Recounts the
development of the Black Power
Movement of the ‘60s, the U.S.
counterinsurgency war that defeated
it and today’s work to rebuild.
$10.
4) The Battle of St. Petersburg.
Includes footage from the rebellions,
demonstrations, tribunal and vigils
through which the African working
class community of St. Petersburg
rose up and forced the city to listen,
following the police 1996 murder of
TyRon Lewis. $10.
How to Order:
You can order from Burning
Spear Publications in 2 ways:
1) Fill out this form and mail in.
Make check payable to:
Burning Spear Publications
Mail to:
Burning Spear Publications
P.O. Box 11281
St. Petersburg, FL 33733-1281
2) Order online at
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Allow 2-3 weeks for delivery
This Time ‘Til It’s
Won...Power In Our Own
Hands by Omali Yeshitela. This
Political Report to the 2nd Party
Congress of the African People’s
Socialist Party (APSP) in 1987
features an overview of Yeshitelism,
an introduction to the development
of the APSP and an analysis of the
state and future of the struggle for
black freedom. 104 pgs. $4.
Audio Tapes
Izwe Lethu i Afrika! (Africa is
Our Land) by Omali Yeshitela. This
political report to the 3rd Party
Congress of the African People’s
Socialist Party in 1990 sums up the
current period as the “Era of Worldwide
African Revolution and Socialist
Unification of Africa and African People
Under the Leadership of the African
Working Class and Poor Peasants.”
122 pgs. $10.
The Dialectics of Black
Revolution; The Struggle to
Defeat the Counterinsurgency
in the U.S. by Omali Yeshitela. A
description of the forces that gave rise to
the Black Power Movement of the ‘60s,
the U.S. government military program
that defeated it, and a strategy for
African liberation. 39 pgs. $6.
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Discusses Current Events with
Local and International Leaders on the Front Lines of Struggle
Mohammed Aldouri, Iraqi Ambassador to the United Nations on the U.S. war against
Iraq.
Zhang Yuan Yuan, Chinese Embassy representative on the downing and holding of the
U.S. spy plane in China. Also discusses Chinese-African solidarity.
Abu Layla, Political Bureau member of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of
Palestine, direct from Ramulah on the morning following the DFLP’s carrying out of the first
Palestinian armed action penetrating an Israeli military post in the Occupied Territories.
Thami Daliwonga Ka Plaatjie Secretary General of the Pan Africanist Congress of
Azania (South Africa) on the continuing struggle for land and black power in Africa.
Minister Curtis Gatewood, President of the Durham, North Carolina branch of the NAACP speaks
against Bush’s war and his struggle to move the National NAACP and the country’s religious leaders to an
anti-war position.
Deadria Farmer-Paelmann, on her reparations research and lawsuits.
Lawrence Hamm, President of People Organized for Progess on their work to stop police
brutality in New Jersey.
NYC Councilman Charles Barron, shares his views on black power and economic development.
Paul Renne, San Francisco attorney who argued against HUD’s “1 Strike You’re Out” rule before the U.S.
Supreme Court and Robles Park Residents Council President Connie Burton on the rights of public
housing residents.
Also available on audio tape ...
1)The Value of Stolen Black Labor. 2)Sharpeville Commemoration/The Vanguard Party.
Item
Cost per item
Quantity
Cost
Book - Why I Became a Revolutionary
$5.00
Book - This Time Til It’s Won
$4.00
Book - Overturning the Culture of Violence
$22.95
Book - Dialectics of Black Revolution
$6.00
Book - Izwe Lethu i Afrika!
$10.00
Video $10.00
Video $10.00
Audio $5.00
Audio $5.00
Add $4. shipping cost for orders under $25.
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