In recognition of African Liberation Day, May 25, 2021, the Black Alliance for Peace’s Haiti/Americas Committee salutes the historic and ongoing struggles for emancipation, independence and autonomy of African people world-wide.
On this African Liberation Day, we give thanks to those past generations of Africans who battled against slavery, colonialism and white supremacy. We recognize the current generation of toilers, strugglers, insurgents, and revolutionaries who continue the fight against neocolonialism and neoliberalism, and against the Black misleadership classes who have betrayed the revolutionary struggles of the African people.
We recognize the origins of African Liberation Day in the First Conference of Independent African States—convened by Dr. Kwame Nkrumah in 1958 in Accra, Ghana—and with the formation of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. We acknowledge the first efforts of organizing African Liberation Day in North America in 1972, and its message of solidarity with the armed struggle against settler colonialism and its corporate backers in southern Africa. We also support the longstanding work of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party to continue the radical tradition of African Liberation Day.
Today, we extend that message of Pan-African solidarity to Africa and to Africans in the Americas. In particular, we salute the people of Haiti. As a liberated African territory, Haiti nurtured the struggles against slavery, imperialism and white supremacy thoughout the Americas; the Haitian people have continued to pay the price for doing so. We acknowledge the mocambos, palenques, quilombos, and the cimarrón, mawon, and maroon communities throughout the Americas that have been necessary for Black survival. And we salute the African peoples of Brazil, Colombia, the United States, and elsewhere who suffer from economic austerity and deprivation, who are victims of legalized discrimination and targeted incarceration, and who are assailed by relentless police and militarized violence.
On this African Liberation Day, we stand in struggle with all African peoples against capitalism, imperialism, neocolonialism and white supremacy. Our time will come.
No compromise! No retreat!
Banner photo: African Liberation Day event in 1977 in Handsworth Park, Birmingham, U.K. (Vanley Burke)