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Black Liberation

Revolutionary Organizing: An Interview With Ahjamu Umi

August 24, 2022 Ahjamu Umi and Roberto Sirvent , Black Agenda Report. , ,
My very first recollection of becoming aware of the need to do something to change this society happened when I was 11 years old. I was on a city bus in San Francisco traveling from school back to my neighborhood.  The bus was extremely crowded.  At one point, four teenage African (Black) young men rapidly boarded the crowded bus.  They were each carrying firearms and I recognized all of them immediately as hell raisers from the neighborhood.  They proceeded to force the riders to empty their wallets, purses, jewelry, etc., into garbage bags.  They didn’t waste any time with me.  They didn’t even look in my direction, or at least that’s what I thought.  When they started to disembark the bus, one of them reached over towards me, slapped me across the face, and yelled towards me “don’t say s - - !”  Then they were gone.  Like the other traumatized passengers, I sat there frozen in fear. 

Assata Shakur, Black Liberation Struggles And The Cuban Revolution

August 18, 2022 Abayomi Azikiwe, Popular Resistance. , , ,
As far back in history as the period of enslavement of African people in North America, resistance and rebellion has been met with retaliatory repression from the ruling interests. Freedom fighters such as Gabriel Prosser, Denmark Vessey, Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, among many others named and unknown, have been either brutally executed or left with no alternative other than to seek flight from oppression. This same legacy of confinement, brutality and lynching continued into the post-slavery era of the 20th and 21st centuries. Between the 1880s and the Great Depression of the 1930s, thousands of African Americans were extra-judicially murdered by mobs of law-enforcement agents and vigilantes.

Anti-Russian Hysteria Used By FBI To Target Black Organizers

August 8, 2022 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. , , ,
On July 29, the FBI conducted a surprise raid on the homes and offices of leaders of the African People's Socialist Party and Uhuru Solidarity Movement (APSP-Uhuru) in Florida and Missouri under the pretext that they were co-conspirators in an indictment of a Russian national, Alexander Ionov. In the raid, documents and electronic devices were stolen. The raid was coordinated with the Biden Administration. Clearing the FOG speaks with Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the APSP - Uhuru about the raid and the broader implications of it for activists in the United States. This raid is connected to the anti-Russian narrative that has been developed in the US to justify the conflict in Ukraine and it sends a warning to all who dare to work for justice and speak the truth. Visit APSPUhuru.org to find out how to show your support.

FBI Attack On The Uhuru Movement Is A Warning

August 5, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
On July 29, 2022, the FBI raided the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida and the Uhuru Solidarity Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The raids were connected with the indictment of a Russian national who is accused of attempting to “cause turmoil in the United States” by engaging with “Unindicted Co-Conspirators” to act as agents of the Russian Federation. The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) is the organization targeted by the FBI for a very simple reason. It is a Black organization which has dared to confront and oppose U.S. imperialism. The alleged connection with the Russian government kills two birds with one stone. The Russiagate hoax is continually resuscitated as it gives new life to claims of election and other interference and Black people’s organizations are as always the first to be targeted by the State.

The Movement Sorely Misses Glen Ford

August 3, 2022 Danny Haiphong, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
It has been one year since the death of Black Agenda Report Executive Editor, Glen Ford. The turbulence of the past year has been as intense as Glen Ford’s loss to the movement. President Joe Biden is facing a crisis of legitimacy. Inflation and recession loom over a flailing U.S. capitalist system. A U.S.-led imperialist war with Russia and China is closer than it has ever been and Black America is no better off with a Democrat controlling the White House. Such conditions demand that we remember and emulate Glen Ford’s tireless contributions to the Black liberation, peace, and socialist movement. Ford was a student of revolution. Every word written and spoken by Ford was done in the name of developing a movement capable of bringing about the end of the American Empire.

Lumumba’s Politics Are What Really Need To Return

July 17, 2022 Perry Blankson, Tribune Magazine. , , , ,
After sixty-one years, the gold tooth of the assassinated Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba has been returned to his family and laid to rest. It is the only part of him that remains. After his brutal murder in 1961, Lumumba’s tooth was pocketed by a Belgian police officer and later held captive by the Belgian government. Its repatriation was preceded by a grotesque ‘colonial guilt’ show, in which Belgian King Phillipe expressed his ‘deepest regrets for those wounds of the past’. The King of the Belgians did not go so far as to formally apologize, nor did he offer reparations for the devastation inflicted upon Congo by Belgium. These two events so close in proximity illustrate clearly that despite supposed ‘decolonization’, Congo continues to be ensnared in the grasp of its colonial oppressors.

Building Black Wealth: Understanding The Limits Of Black Capitalism

June 25, 2022 Robert Raymond, Resilience. , , ,
Beginning in the 19th and 20th century, during the United States’ reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, an important debate emerged in this country. It was during the era after slavery was officially abolished — after Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865 — what we now commemorate as Juneteenth — to spread the word. The debate, that in many ways is still alive and well, went something like this: what is the best way to end class and racial injustice in the United States and what is the role of Black leadership in this? Two leaders of the Black community during this period , W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, can be seen as the two main voices of this debate representing each side.

The Problem With Juneteenth

June 18, 2022 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
"The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor. The freedmen are advised to remain quietly at their present homes and work for wages. They are informed that they will not be allowed to collect at military posts and that they will not be supported in idleness either there or elsewhere." General Order Number 3, June 19, 1865 *The fact that members of the United States Senate voted unanimously to make Juneteenth a federal holiday proved that the commemoration is of no political value.

A Statement On Ukraine From The Black Liberation Movement

May 5, 2022 Black Liberation Movement Organizations, Black Agenda Report. , , , , ,
The ongoing crisis and war in Ukraine threatens to pull the world into a disastrous nuclear confrontation. Disinformation, lies, and propaganda from the US and other western media are aimed at confusing millions of people inside the US and around the world to view Russia as the aggressor, while hiding the US role in the evolution of this conflict. One major example of this manipulation is that western media has not been honest about the massive role that the US played in facilitating a 2014 coup in Ukraine that overthrew the country’s democratically elected president, and funneled support to neo-Nazi forces who were favorable to US/EU interests, helping them rise to power in Ukraine.

Glen Ford: Legacy Of A Black Revolutionary

January 26, 2022 Mary Uyematsu Kao, Black Agenda Report. , , ,
As 2021 comes to an end, and the U.S. approaches the one-million mark of American lives lost to Covid-19, I would think holiday celebrations should include more somber notes than usual.  Instead of seeing street behavior that would acknowledge grieving over 800,000 people in the U.S. who have died of Covid-19, we witness the convulsions for survival in a society and nation that is imploding as the wealth gap stretches far beyond our imaginations.  In a nation inundated with death, whether from school shootings, the up-tick in crime rampages, fentanyl overdoses, alongside Covid-19 deaths, those who have passed may or may not have received the deserved attention due to their lives and legacies.

The Suppressed Martin Luther King Jr.

January 18, 2022 Solomon Commissiong, A Hip Hop Activist. , , ,
This is the first installment of the series, "Reclaiming History from the Revisionists". In this episode we take a closer look at an often suppressed aspect of the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Many throughout mainstream US society do they best, year after year, to suppress the revolutionary and radical aspects of MLK. They don't want youth to know why the United States government vilified and targeted this man. The do this, in part, to prevent others from following in the enormous footsteps of this social justice giant. We must do our part to expose this often untaught history to as many as we can, especially the youth. A brighter and better future depend on it.

The Annual Resurrection Of A Fake Dr. King

January 17, 2022 the Black Alliance for Peace. , , ,
It is January, and in the U.S. this means it is time for the annual ritual of revisiting the white-washed, de-radicalized, pro- “American” M.L. King fairytale as part of the official celebration of King’s birthday.  In the official story, Dr. King was not the creation of the movement that was fighting for the democratic and human rights of Black people. No, it was Dr. King who created the movement, according to the colonial white elite and the neocolonial Black misleadership. In this story, the objectives of the movement were not for radical social transformation and Black self-determination but the redemption of the U.S. settler-colonial nation/state and the quiet integration of Black people into the state. In other words, to complete the establishment of a “more perfect nation,” as Obama would put it. 

Martin Luther King, Jr., Internationalist

January 15, 2022 Khury Petersen-smith, Other Words. , , ,
We celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day not only to commemorate King’s historic role in overcoming racism and other injustice, but because his work and vision remain relevant. Today’s persistent racism in policing, health care, housing, and elsewhere, and attacks on voting rights — particularly for Black Americans — show that Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is not just about the past or the South. King got arrested in Alabama. He marched in Chicago. He spoke truth to power in Washington. He worked with countless activists and ordinary people to take action that transformed the Jim Crow South and impacted this whole country. But his outlook went well beyond our borders. Martin Luther King was an internationalist.

The Pendulum Swing Of Black Liberation

December 23, 2021 Bedour Alagraa, ROAR Magazine. , , ,
In June of last year, I wrote a piece about the call-and-response between movements for Black liberation in the United States and elsewhere, focusing on the upheavals that happened in Sudan in late 2018, and of course the protests that erupted in Minnesota and spread across the country after the murder of George Floyd in May of last year. In this piece, I encouraged all of us to refuse the enclosures of hemisphere, market, nation and language, to embrace urgency and refuse to concede to the divisions presented by nation, market and geography. This piece focused on the activation of struggles, and less so on the reality that each movement for liberation was met with a deepening repression and political conservatism.

bell hooks – Rest In Power

December 17, 2021 Robin D.G. Kelley, Portside. , , ,
Gloria Watkins/bell hooks Presente! Here we go again. Another passing of an intellectual giant, a Black revolutionary love warrior and fugitive from an academy that doesn't love us. After nearly two years of relentless premature deaths, we lose four comrades in six or seven days (Julius Scott, Greg Tate, Tyler Stovall, and now bell hooks), all in their 60s. Too much. I discovered bell hooks in 1981, when I read Ain't I a Woman in college and realized that we can't claim to be radical without being feminists, and as Barbara Smith told us, feminism is not white-owned. bell refused to be disciplined by the academy, living life on her terms and writing for a much larger audience when it wasn't in vogue.
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