We Stand With Iran - Statement by the All-African People's Revolutionary Party

We Stand With Iran

19 June 2025 By A-APRP

The illegal zionist state of Israel started bombing Iran on Friday, June 13th, 2025. The aerial bombing coincided with the assassination of a number of scientists, generals and civilians. This unprovoked, criminal assault was accompanied by sabotage of government facilities, drone attacks on civilian infrastructure and the unleashing of internal cells loyal to the west, determined to dismantle the Iranian state. Taken as a whole the military assault is eerily reminiscent of the 2011 attack on Libya that killed Muammar Gaddafi and devastated Africa’s most progressive nation state.

This is all done to insure US dominance in the region under the pretext of stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The capitalist mainstream media, the US Government, and Israel are claiming Israel is protecting itself from a powerful nuclear neighbor. But a careful analysis reveals a quite different reality. Firstly, Israel is the state that possesses nuclear weapons. They are aggressors claiming to be victims. Secondly Israel is nothing more than a proxy of US led imperialism, which wants to economically and militarily dominate the region. This is part of the imperialist plan to dominate the world.

The zionist state of Israel was created to serve the interests of imperialism by establishing an imperialist fortress in Western Asia. The US provides its zionist outpost with diplomatic cover, military aid, finances and intelligence, and in exchange Israel serves as the front line of Western aggression in the region. Iran is sanctioned and labeled a state sponsor of terrorism, while Israel operates as a living terrorist state, with impunity.

Israel’s strikes on Iran pursues broader imperialist interests by destroying its nuclear program, sabotaging civilian infrastructure (churches, schools, roads, and power grids) and reducing its ability to provide support for legitimate liberation organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas.

Since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the illegally installed puppet Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, imperialism has targeted Iran for destruction. Through the use of sanctions, proxy conflicts, and the promotion of alliances between Israel and Gulf states, the US limits Iran’s power and weakens their regional influence. Whether the US rhetorically calls for “de-escalation” or wages a proxy war through Israel, the goal is the same; controlled conflict and prevention of genuine peace. This is a pattern consistent with decades of US policy in the region. Saving Israel is not the end goal; saving imperialist dominance is.

Imperialism’s Strategic Objective is Full Spectrum Dominance

The US, European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (US/EU/NATO) make up a gang of three called the Axis of Evil. Together they are engaged in a coordinated, continuous, long term, geo-strategic plan to dominate the planet. Imperialism targeted Russia, by embroiling her in military hostilities with Ukraine that limits its capacity to support its allies militarily. This has been followed by a strategic assault on Western Asia that includes the genocidal campaign against Palestinians in Gaza. Once the genocide was well underway the west, through its Israeli partner, attacked Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen to destroy the “Axis of Resistance,” an alliance that grew around the Palestinian resistance with the support of Iran. All of these actions are enforced through a ring of US military bases in Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria, that surround Iran and provide rapid response capabilities. All of Israel’s military actions against Iran must be understood and viewed within this broader geopolitical context.

Since the first imperialist World War, the west has maintained an increasingly significant military, geopolitical, and economic presence in Western Asia (commonly, but incorrectly referred to as the Middle East). This presence is driven by “vital interests,” mainly securing oil and natural gas supplies. Located at the crossroads of Africa, Asia and Europe, imperialism dominates trade routes, and is strategically placed to militarily counter any challenge to its domination. The vast oil, natural gas, and other resources along with its position as a global transit hub have made this region a focal point of US led imperialist foreign policy. And make no mistake, nothing that we’re witnessing is new or spontaneous.

Western Dominance

We rarely hear about the extent to which the US-led imperialist system is seeking to shape a future global economic order that keeps Western dominance firmly at the helm. This is accomplished through control of energy markets, labor, financial systems, and military/technological supremacy. In short, they safeguard the profits of monopoly capital, using all available means.

One of the primary resources employed to safeguard Western interest is the terrorist state of zionist Israel. Israel’s economy is based on war and plunder. It is number seven in the world in military arms production and number four worldwide in arms sales. The plunder and theft of the world’s natural resources is most clearly demonstrated by their near total control of the world’s diamond industry. In spite of the fact that there are no diamond mines in occupied Palestine, Israel exports 70% of the world’s processed diamonds that are largely mined in Africa and makes up 12% of the settler state’s GDP. The arms manufactured in Israel and supplied by the U.S. assure them military supremacy over all the other states in the region. Through these and other nefarious arrangements Israel is sustained and their assault on humanity continues unabated.

Petro Dollars

In addition to military domination of the region and, ultimately, the world, imperialists also seek to maintain financial hegemony and safeguard the US Dollar as the global financial instrument. They will do anything to ensure that global oil trade remains dominated by the dollar, a key requirement to sustaining US financial hegemony. Imperialism tolerates no threats to this domination. They enforce dollar hegemony through diplomatic pressure, financial coercion, sanctions, and military interventions. Any nation attempting to bypass the dollar faces economic warfare, psychological warfare and military regime-change. Imperialism resorts to the complete destruction of” states that refuse to bow down and surrender their sovereignty. We have witnessed this in both Iraq and Libya.

The rise of BRICS, digital currencies, and de-dollarization trends, have led to even more aggressive financial tactics. This is what Iran is facing, but we have seen these tactics before. Iraq’s announcement that they would sell oil in euros instead of dollars, Libya’s announcement that they would introduce a Pan-African currency, and Yugoslavia’s move away from the dollar in trading in Europe, resulted in all being subjected to US invasions and overthrow of their governments.

When Iran tried to bypass dollar-based trade (e.g., selling oil in euros, yuan, or cryptocurrencies). The US responded with severe sanctions, partially cutting Iran off from SWIFT, (the global dollar-based messaging system) and pressuring other countries to avoid non-dollar transactions with Iran. When Venezuela launched the oil-backed “Petro” cryptocurrency in 2018 to evade US sanctions, the US banned their citizens from trading it and pressured other countries to reject it.

After the formation of BRICS and the 2014 US sanctions against Russia over Crimea, Russia developed its own alternative payment system, System for Financial Messaging, (SPFS) and promoted de-dollarization. The U.S. has since escalated sanctions, frozen Russian reserves, and pressured allies to limit Russian access to alternative currencies.

Additionally, the US has suppressed digital and cryptocurrency development that could challenge US dominance in Africa and Asia, stopping China’s Digital Yuan expansion and pressuring its allies to reject China’s digital yuan in cross-border trade. The US understands that a Chinese digital Yuan would weaken dollar dominance in Africa and Asia. And while the U.S. has pressured allies to reject rival currencies, it has weaponized SWIFT (imperialism’s global dollar-based messaging system) by restricting Iran and Russia, and punishing foreign banks that facilitate non-dollar trade with sanctioned states.

Understanding Dollarism and Resistance Against it

So why is Iran a target? Iran is labeled a threat to the US and Israel. But the real threat is economic, and understanding the concept of dollarism helps to make this clear. The US dollars’ dominance in the global financial system (often called “dollarism”) is a cornerstone of the United State’s economic and geopolitical power. Maintaining this system provides enormous benefits but also comes with risks if it were to weaken.

Here’s a breakdown of why this is crucial for the US, the economic advantages, and what’s at stake.The US enforces a worldwide system where certain commodities, such as oil, can only be traded using the dollar, thus forcing other countries to maintain vast reserves of US dollars. The US literally “prints money” that the world relies on, earning vast profits from currency circulation outside the US. The dollar system and the Central Banking System provides a massive financial and geopolitical advantage to the US economy, including lowering borrowing costs, enabling sanctions, and sustaining US economic supremacy. If this system erodes, the US would face higher debt costs, inflation, and weakened global influence and coercive power.

Iranian attempts to bypass dollar sanctions through a variety of means, including the China-Iran 25-Year Cooperation Agreement (2021) undermine dollar dominance. Israel’s current attacks on Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure disrupts these alternative economic networks, reinforcing US leverage.

But perhaps of greatest significance are major geopolitical acts of resistance to imperialism. These include, the BRICS Initiative, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution, Iran’s Gas Pipelines, and Increasing challenges to Neo-Colonialism in Africa.

The BRICS Initiative represents a real challenge to Western economic dominance. BRICS is a block of countries which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, representing 45% of the world’s population and 36% of global GDP. An additional thirty nations have either formally or informally expressed an interest to join.

The establishment of alternative payment systems and mechanisms capable of eliminating reliance on Western-dominated financial networks, pose a serious challenge to the present economic order.

The US continually threatens countries against joining any BRICS initiatives that promote non-dollar trade. Iran’s pipeline Initiatives represent attempts to funnel its natural gas to the world market outside the ambit of imperialist control. Initially the Iran-Iraq-Syria Pipeline (IIP) was designed to supply those nations plus Europe. The US imperialist war against Iraq, along with sanctions against Iran halted the project. The Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) “Peace Pipeline” was again stopped because of US sanctions on Iran. These pipelines would have brought 60 billion dollars into Iran’s economy annually, and up to 100 billion without the sanctions. This is the reason the US has attacked Syria and overthrew the government—to block pipeline construction. This is the real reason that Iran is portrayed as a pariah, as dangerous, as an enemy of humanity; not because of anything they’ve done to harm the US or Israel, but because of the threat of unseating imperialism’s global economic dominance.

Venezuela is a key player in this equation, possessing the largest oil reserves in the world. Following the victory of the Bolivarian Revolution, US imperialism imposed stifling economic embargoes and sanctions, severely damaging the economy and all social networks. As a result, 90% of the oil engineers fled Venezuela due to the economic crisis created by the US actions, further damaging the oil industry and causing enormous hardships to the Venezuelan people and the entire region that shared Venezuelan oil resources through the ALBA agreements instituted by Hugo Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

Last Gasp Of A Dying Monster (The Imperialist Military Assault)

Imperialism (through the zionist entity in Israel) instituted regime change in Syria, and executed genocide in Gaza and the West Bank. Iran supports the Palestinians with arms, money, training and material. Iran is now being targeted for regime change.

We must also take note that these Imperialist/zionist forces are not confining their military activity to one country or region. While a new war rages in Iran, imperialism creates ongoing conflicts of various types in the Western Sahara, Eritrea, Zimbabwe, DRC, Sudan, Guinea Bissau, the Alliance For Sahelian States (which includes Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso), Venezuela, Nicaraqua, Cuba, North Korea, Haiti, Russia, China and other places throughout the world. This is in fact an imperialist policy of Full Spectrum Domination.

The U.S. has at least 45 military bases surrounding Iran and the US has already threatened Iran declaring,“If Iran attacks any U.S. military bases we will bomb Iran with the likes they have never seen”. After lying about their involvement in the attacks on Iran by Israelis the US president went on to say, “We gave them a chance to negotiate a peace agreement and they wouldn’t agree to our terms.” So, now they will have to come to the negotiation table and agree to our terms.”

This is how the dying capitalists/imperialists act in their last stage of existence. They engage in multiple wars, terrorism and genocide as they are declining. They try to kill, terrorize as many people and nations as possible. But, they have been losing militarily, economically and politically everywhere. Including losing the propaganda war around the world.

An increasing number of the people are seeing the contradictions more clearly as the U.S./E.U./NATO/zionist axis attacks, kills and destroys more people. The underpinning of colonialism, settler colonialism and neo-colonialism is violence They are losing everywhere on many different fronts all over the world including Europe, Asia, Latin America, Africa and especially Palestine.

We know the masses of the people will win and destroy capitalism and imperialism. Because we know nothing can stop the will of the people especially when they are organized into a fighting force on a global scale.

The Significance of Pan-Africanism

A new wave of anti-neo colonial resistance that is sweeping Africa is reshaping oil and gas politics, challenging imperialist dominance, and aligning with the BRICS led push to “de-dollarize” the world’s economy. This movement is driven by youth uprisings, military coups, formation of alliances, and rising ideological awareness that imperialism is the enemy of humanity. As a result, Western oil companies which have long exploited Africa, are losing their grip while Russia, China, and Iran are viewed as more trusted partners. As this momentum spreads, African resources are increasingly being used for Africa and African people. Additionally, China, Russia and Iran could be granted greater access to Africa’s resources locking out the US and Western Europe. And every time Africa trades in a currency other than dollars, the grip of the dollar weakens. So Africa is the real battleground for control of oil, gas, and critical minerals such as cobalt and lithium. We know that when imperialism thinks it has weakened Africa’s allies, they will not hesitate to militarily attack Africa. We must resist the trap of neo-colonialism and fight to maintain the gains that we’ve made. We must ensure that imperialism and capitalism will find their graves in Africa!

We Stand With Iran

The flagrant violation of human rights, the trampling over the sovereignty of nations that resist, the blatant racist domestic policies, police brutality, and military threats, are all examples of the lengths to which imperialism will go to survive. Capitalism cannot be reformed or humanely applied. The only solution to the problem is the total destruction of the US-led capitalist system and its twin, global imperialism.

Imperialist wars will only increase, but people in general and Africans in particular, must not be misled into fighting for, or sending our sons and daughters to fight in any imperialist or neo-colonialist militaries. We must reject the racist, capitalist narrative that always frames the US and the Global North as the “good” while framing those who resist oppression as “evil”. Liberation requires a clear mind. We cannot afford to be deceived. Iran is not our enemy, the US and EU imperialism and zionism are our enemies. The institutions such as NATO, AFRICOM, the IMF, the World Bank, etc. are our enemies; designed to exploit our labor, maintain our oppression, steal our resources and land, and dominate our economies. Whether we live inside or outside of Africa, we must unite, across borders, to fight against capitalism, neocolonialism, zionism, imperialism and all forms of injustice. We must study, and understand the world so that we can clearly distinguish our friends from our enemies.

We encourage Africans everywhere to join organizations that are wedded to our people’s collective interests. As individuals we are weak and easily defeated, but history has demonstrated that the people united can never be defeated.

The AAPRP calls for the permanent coordination of our fighting forces, in the framework of an All African Committee for Political Coordination (AACPC). Given the global nature of African domination we must merge all the revolutionary Pan-African political parties in Africa, and its diaspora under an international strategy to defeat imperialism.

Africans must unite under the banner of Pan-Africanism–the total liberation and unification of Africa under scientific socialism.

The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party condemns in the strongest terms Israel’s unprovoked, indiscriminate, illegal, terrorist attacks against the peoples of Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen. We condemn zionism’s inhumane, genocidal slaughter being waged against the Palestinian people, and the deplorable silence or complicity of much of the world. We condemn the forced displacement of peoples that result from immoral and illegal sanctions and blockades, and theft of resources, which drive people from their homelands. We stand in unity with the people of Iran, the people of Palestine and all peoples who are fighting for their liberation and sovereignty against US led imperialism.

ORGINAL SOURCE

Community Movement Builders-Newark Statement on the Delaney Hall Uprising

CMB Newark Statement on the Delaney Hall Uprising

On Thursday, June 12th, 50 kidnapped immigrants revolted against their inhumane conditions at Delaney Hall, a private detention facility operated by GEO Group in Newark. By the time the tear gas settled, captives had torn down a wall, family visitation was cancelled, and protestors mobilized to interrupt facility operations from the outside. At least four captives successfully liberated themselves from their unjust detention. At the time of this writing, the actions of those inside, supported by solidarity actions on the outside, have increased the urgency in calls to shut Delaney down.

Guided by our values of Humanity and Solidarity, Community Movement Builders-Newark stands unequivocally in solidarity and support with the captives still inside, those already transferred since the rebellion, and those who escaped. We see all those who have been targeted and captured by the federal government’s reactionary and fascist campaign against immigrants as prisoners of war. Accordingly…

Resisting Dependency: U.S. Hegemony, China’s Rise, and the Geopolitical Stakes in the Caribbean

Resisting Dependency: U.S. Hegemony, China’s Rise, and the Geopolitical Stakes in the Caribbean

By Tamanisha J. John

Introduction

The Caribbean region is an important geostrategic location for the United States, not only due to regional proximity, but also due to the continued importance of securing sea routes for trade and military purposes. It is the geostrategic location of the Caribbean that has historically made the region a target for domineering empires and states. As both geopolitical site and geostrategic location, U.S. foreign policy articulations of Caribbean people and the region have been effectively contradictory, but the contradiction has allowed the U.S. to maintain its hegemonic position: Caribbean peoples in U.S. foreign policy are rendered backwards, unstable, and dangerous or targets of xenophobic harassment; while the physical region is rendered as a place where U.S. foreign policy must maintain one-sided power relations, lest these sites come under the influence of other states that the U.S. views as impinging upon its sphere of influence. One can most readily look to Haiti to see these contradictory dynamics at play. Haiti has not had democratic elections for two decades and instead has been under United Nations (UN) sanctioned “tutelage” or occupation via the CORE group, of which the U.S. is a part.[i] Over the past two decades, Haiti has been subject to a massive influx of U.S. manufactured weapons that fuel gun violence and murder in the country.[ii] Meanwhile those Haitians fleeing this violence to the U.S. have been met with whips at the U.S.-Mexico border, deportation flights from the U.S., and dehumanizing mythological hysteria accusing Hatians of  “eating pets.”[iii]

Given the domineering impact of the U.S. and its allies in Canada and Europe in the Caribbean region, states in the region remain deeply dependent on foreign investment and tourism from these powers. ‘Foreignization’ of Caribbean economies makes it hard for the peoples of the region to make a living. Many Caribbean governments, neoliberal in orientation, willingly support this dependent development scheme by promoting migration for remittances, service industries for tourism, and temporary foreign worker schemes abroad due to lack of worthwhile opportunities at home. A large part of what maintains this dependent relationship—that many would find to be demeaning in most circumstances—is the securitization of the Caribbean region by the U.S. and its allies, as well as the invocation of “shared cultures,” rooted in colonial histories which continue to impose multiple hierarchies of domination on Caribbean peoples.

Washington’s aim of permanent hegemony in the region is being challenged by an increasingly multipolar world, and this accounts for the US attempt to limit China’s influence in the Caribbean. For example, U.S. tariff assaults on the People’s Republic of China (PRC) stems from U.S. insecurities about China’s economic growth alongside its manufacturing and technological developments.[iv] China’s extension of infrastructural, technological, and other tangible material developments to states lower down on the global value chain, and at smaller costs to them is referred to by the U.S. and other western policy makers as “China’s growing influence.” This includes states in the Caribbean, which have not only become consumers of products from China but have also increased their exports to China since the 2010s. Unsurprisingly, the U.S. fears that China is gaining too much influence in the Caribbean given its developmental hand there. Although the U.S. is not directly competing with China on development initiatives, Washington’s reluctance to support meaningful progress in the Caribbean—where U.S. corporations continue to profit from structural underdevelopment—has led it to pursue strong-arm diplomacy as a symbolic stand against China instead.

China’s alternative to dependent development challenges Western Hegemony in the Caribbean

Western capitalist modernity, as an ideological, political, and socioeconomic project, is threatened by improvements to the global value chain. The issue at hand is that the U.S. and the Western-led capitalist system have long relegated states of the ‘Global South’ to lower positions on the global value chain. This has rendered development elusive for many states, to the sole benefit of Western corporations and their allies. Lack of development in places like the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, and Latin America actually benefits capitalist enterprises headquartered in the ‘Global North’ which extract surplus value by exploiting cheap natural resources, labor, and land in these regions. China’s accelerated advancement within the global value chain—alongside the rise of other partner states positioned lower on that chain—has not depended on economic or political subordination to the west. This trajectory is actively interpreted as eroding Western hegemonic dominance—even as the improved developments of states like China within the global value chain, have expanded global capitalism. Since 2018, the U.S. tariff assault on China, which has intensified under the second Trump administration, is a direct response to China’s economic growth propelled by China’s added value to the global value chain. In essence, the fear is China’s rise, while not reliant on the west, has made the West more reliant on importing cheap products and manufactured goods from China.

After the global 2007/8 financial crisis, China’s expressed strategy was to diversify its exports and import markets through helping other states improve their own conditions in the global trade value system. This of course, was due to the negative impacts felt by China in its export markets from the 2008 global financial crisis. Since then, China has increased the internal demand within China for Chinese goods, which also saw the purchasing power of Chinese citizens rise. This helped the growth of a middle class in China, and also allowed the Communist Party of China (CPC) to think more broadly about its continued growth strategy. By the early 2010s China sought to develop a wider external market that was not dependent on the U.S. and the other Western states. As China began formulating a broader development strategy, the growing purchasing power of Chinese citizens made the U.S. and other Western countries increase demands on China to have unfettered access to China’s internal market. The 2010s thus became rife with false accusations by Western commentators of China manipulating its currency to amass reserve wealth, and maintain competitive exports[v] – which helped to spark Trump’s trade assault on China in 2018, and again during the second Trump administration in 2025.

While conversations in the West hinged on conspiracy, the CPC acknowledged that neither internal consumption nor reliance on the U.S. and Western markets would promote long-term sustainable development and growth of China’s economy. Greater emphasis was placed on increasing and improving relations with other developing states. In essence, helping the development of states lower down on the global value chain would be necessary—in order to make them consumers (thus importers)—of products from China. This became part of China’s long-term strategy to diversify its import and export markets. Thus, after the 2008 global financial crisis and especially after 2010, China’s investment in places like the Caribbean had a marked and noticeable increase. A decade later, this strategy has proven beneficial to China’s growth and development – as well as to growth and development of other developing countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean with more states engaging in, and pursuing trade and other relations with, China.

The impact of U.S. tariffs and fees on the Caribbean

Despite growing U.S. security concerns over China’s engagement in the Caribbean, the region remains largely dependent on the United States, and Caribbean states consistently run trade deficits in favor of the U.S. These trade deficits usually come at the expense of local Caribbean growers, producers, and artisans. According to Sir Ronald Sanders, Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States: “In 2024, the United States ran a $5.8 billion trade surplus with CARICOM as a whole. For a tangible illustration, Antigua and Barbuda’s imports from the U.S. exceeded $570 million, while its exports in return were a mere fraction of that total.”[vi] Given Caribbean regional economic dependence on the U.S., Canada and Europe, many Caribbean people seeking employment and/or asylum opportunities typically see the U.S. as a destination of choice, contributing to the large Caribbean diasporic communities in North America and Europe. These Caribbean diasporic communities not only send remittances and goods back to their home countries to support family, friends, and communities – but also facilitate Caribbean state’s exports into the U.S. It is important to underscore these dynamics, as the longstanding U.S.-Caribbean relationship—rooted in dependency—remains firmly entrenched, despite growing investments in the region from China.

The U.S. tariff assault on China extended into a wider tariff assault by the U.S. against multiple countries, including states in the Caribbean. By April 3, 2025 the U.S. had imposed tariffs on 24 Caribbean countries: a 10% tariff on 23 of them,[vii] and a 38% tariff on Guyana[viii]—a Caribbean nation with extensive relations with China[ix]—excluding its exports of oil (dominated by U.S. and other foreign corporations), gold, and bauxite. The U.S. tariffs on Caribbean states—levied amid fragile post-pandemic recovery and lingering hurricane damage—underscores a troubling, though not surprising indifference to the region’s economic vulnerability and ongoing efforts toward stabilization and renewal.[x] During this time, the U.S. introduced a series of tariff increases on China, peaking at a 145% tariff after April 10, 2025, before settling on a 10% rate through an agreement reached on May 13, 2025.[xi] In addition to the tariffs that Washington placed on China, the U.S. also announced that it would issue port fees on Chinese built ships entering U.S. ports. In all, these tariffs and fees being imposed by the U.S. meant that there would likely be negative impacts borne by Caribbean states that import U.S. goods, and Caribbean states that export goods to China. The overall impact of the tariffs and fees would be two-fold: First, U.S. consumers of goods imported from the Caribbean would have to pay more to access those goods. Second, increased costs accrued to Caribbean state’s importing U.S. goods due to port fees, would make it more cost effective for those Caribbean states to import more goods directly from China. However, in the immediate term, Sino-Caribbean trade, lacking established relationships on a wide range of import products, has the potential to lead to import shortages – particularly of food and other essential imports from the U.S.—in the Caribbean. Given global backlash from the shipping industry, the U.S. revised and changed its decision regarding port fees a week later,[xii] and three weeks later, on April 28, it reduced the tariff on Guyana to 10%.

Political commentators recognize, contrary to the denials by the Guyanese government, that the initially high tariffs placed on Guyana were motivated by U.S. tensions with China. According to former Guyanese diplomat, Dr. Shamir Ally,[xiii] and Guyanese political commentator, Francis Bailey, Guyana “is caught in a geopolitical battle between the US and China. Or more specifically – Washington objects to Beijing’s “very strong foothold” in Guyana.”[xiv] This was made clear, when prior to the Trump administration’s announcement of the tariff’s on Guyana, Guyanese President, Irfaan Ali, pledged that the U.S. would “have some different and preferential treatment” from Guyana[xv]— given a shared stance between the two countries in relation to Venezuela.[xvi] This pledge by Guyana’s president took place within the context of the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s visit to the Caribbean, during which Rubio chastised the construction of infrastructure in Guyana that he deemed subpar, and alleged must have been built by China, even though it was not.[xvii] These kinds of geopolitical posturing by Washington stoke antagonisms, ignoring the negative impacts of Caribbean dependency, including that of Guyana. Caribbean economic dependency on the U.S. (Europe and Canada) will not be completely ameliorated by China, and neither will China be able to fill the role of the West for Caribbean exporters who, given histories of enslavement, indentureship, and colonialism, rely on diasporic taste and preferences for ‘niche’ exports (e.g., artisan goods, arts, entertainment). Given the high degree of U.S., Canadian, and European ownership in the Caribbean’s industrial and manufacturing sectors, the region’s capacity to produce “finished products” on an exportable scale remains limited. Despite the continued dependency relation of Caribbean states on U.S. markets, however, China can positively impact Caribbean economies by helping to diversify their trading partners, and by increasing local opportunities for people within Caribbean states, based on the kinds of new (or improved) infrastructure typically developed in partnerships with China.

Though on the rise, the trade relationship between China and states in the Caribbean is still quite limited. Caribbean states that are a part of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) saw a notable increase in their exports to China, from less than 1% of their total exports in the 1990s and 2000s, to between 1% and 6 % of exports going to China after the 2010s.[xviii] The majority of exports from the Caribbean to China from the 2010s forward have been agricultural and mineral in nature. Alongside the growing export potential of CARICOM states to China since the 2010s, there has also been an increase in Caribbean states importing Chinese goods. States such as Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Guyana, Jamaica, and Suriname import about 10% of their goods from China. On the other hand, states like the Bahamas, Barbados, Grenada, Trinidad and Tobago import less than 10% of their goods from China. The overall trend, then, is that CARICOM states have added some diversification to their trading partners since the 2010s but continue to remain firmly within the Western trading bloc. Given the structured dependency of Caribbean economies, they tend to import more from their trading partners than they export to them. However, as political analyst Daniel Morales Ruvalcaba points out, as a trading partner, China’s commitment to South-South partnerships has meant that trading disparities between itself and CARICOM states are “offset by investments flowing from China to the Caribbean […] broadly categorized into three key sectors: port infrastructure development, resource extraction, and the tourism industry.”[xix] This way of tending to the trade disparity has had beneficial impacts—that can also be seen very visibly by those who live and visit states in the Caribbean. Additionally, China’s investments have not been limited to CARICOM states, or to states that recognize China and not Taiwan. For instance, China invests in Belize, Haiti, St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines—these are Caribbean states that recognize Taiwan.[xx]

While China does not play a dominant import-export role in the Caribbean, given the system of dependency into which the Caribbean is already integrated, it also does not pose a security threat to the Caribbean region, despite Washington’s portrayal of China as a “bad actor.” The PRCs commitment to non-interference makes it extremely unlikely that China would use the Caribbean as a springboard for a security confrontation with Washington and its NATO allies. China does, however, have a strategic partnership with Venezuela, largely limited to a defensive posture given its relations with other states in the region, including the Caribbean. Further, with the large security presence of the U.S. and its allies in the Caribbean, China would have nothing to gain from an offensive military posture in the region. Though self-evident, this explains why the U.S has chosen to frame China’s presence in the Caribbean not in economic terms, but as a technological and geopolitical “threat”—going so far, on multiple occasions, as to allege that China is constructing covert surveillance facilities in Cuba to conduct espionage on the U.S.[xxi]

The China-Caribbean “threat” from the U.S. Perspective

In 2018, Washington signaled its intent to limit Chinese investments in infrastructure, energy, and technology abroad; by 2023, U.S. Southern Command identified the Caribbean as a key region where China’s growing economic footprint should be restrained. In its effort to push China out of the Caribbean tech sector, the U.S. has allowed U.S. and other Western companies to develop 5G networks in Jamaica at virtually no cost in the short term—effectively subsidizing the infrastructure to block Chinese involvement and investments in the sector. This campaign has gone so far as to include veiled threats of sanctions toward Jamaica and other regional nations should they pursue connectivity projects with China.[xxii] Since the 1940s, the U.S. has viewed government-controlled economies as threats to the Western capitalist order—a label that readily applies to China. In 2025, the trade offensive against China is markedly more severe, driven by Washington’s explicit goal of curbing the spread and stalling the advancement of China’s high-tech industries—an effort aimed at preserving U.S. dominance in the sector, which is increasingly seen as under threat. The trade war, which began openly during Trump’s first term, has only intensified in his second—driven in part by the growing influence of high-tech capitalists closely aligned with his administration. China’s advances in artificial intelligence, seen with the public release of DeepSeek AI, has only accelerated the U.S. assault.

According to  U.S. and other pro-Western security analysts who view China as a “threat” in the Caribbean, this threat manifests in three primary ways. First, they point to China’s development of internet-based infrastructure in Caribbean nations which they claim enables Chinese espionage operations that target the U.S. from within the region. Second, they highlight the fact that most Caribbean states recognize the People’s Republic of China, rather than Taiwan, under the One-China policy—a position they attribute to questionable dealings with Beijing, rather than to the exercise of Caribbean political agency in matters of state recognition. And lastly, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is portrayed as a nefarious development scheme that allows China to assert its influence globally. Notably, these accusations that form the “threat” narrative amongst U.S. and other pro-Western security advocates don’t hold up against the slightest scrutiny.

First, there is no evidence that there are “Chinese spy bases” in Cuba or in any other country in the Caribbean—despite these accusations being levied by both Trump White Houses, and various U.S. Republican politicians in Florida.[xxiii] Second, the PRC does invest in, and maintain diplomatic relations with, Caribbean states that recognize Taiwan.[xxiv]  This suggests that the PRC does not force a One-China policy on states in the Caribbean with which it has cooperative relations. Commenting on Sino-Caribbean relations, Caribbean leaders themselves often note that the recognition of China and not Taiwan is due to support for China safeguarding its sovereignty and territorial integrity, of which they include national reunification.[xxv] Ultimately, the alleged “nefarious” nature of the Belt and Road Initiative stems from its core premise: that developing countries receive meaningful support from China to pursue their own development goals. Such efforts inevitably draw scrutiny from the U.S. and the Westbroadly, as genuine development in the ‘Global South’ is often perceived as a challenge to Western capital and hegemony. The BRI also encourages signatory states to build greater regional relationships with their Caribbean neighbors. It reflects a highly agentic approach, in stark contrast to the traditional way U.S. and other Western initiatives are typically implemented.

Ultimately, the BRI is seen as a threat by Western policymakers because they would prefer China not pursue its own global initiatives. Given that the BRI also supports states in developing technological infrastructure and other advancements—with backing from China—these efforts are viewed by the U.S. as a strategic threat, ensuring the initiative will remain a target of sustained opposition. In the Caribbean, the U.S. push to end their tech relations with China comes off as brash, given that U.S. technology investments in the region have declined since the mid-1990s, while China technology investments have increased.[xxvi] In fact, the U.S. (and its Western allies) seem to only understand China’s investments, including the BRI, as lost market share. In essence, Washington and its Western allies seek to control economic development in the region. Two years ago for COHA, John (2023) argued that the U.S. and its allies were increasing their “diplomatic” presence in the Caribbean to maintain geostrategic influence, given China’s growing economic investments there.[xxvii] John maintained that the dismal track record of capitalism—led first by the Western European powers and later by the United States—has entrenched Caribbean states in a position of structural dependency within the global capitalist system. Key features of this dependency include persistently high levels of unemployment, underemployment, poverty, and a heavy reliance on labor exportation. This dependence made the region very receptive to Chinese investment.

John (2023) concluded that influence is gained only where it aligns with local interests—and that investments from the PRC stood in stark contrast to Western strategies, which for decades have indebted Caribbean states, privatized their economies in ways that deepened foreign control, and consistently disregarded regional calls for reparations. This track record, it was argued, would only lead to increased militarization in the Caribbean by the U.S. and its Western allies, who have no tangible goal of helping Caribbean states to develop—but want confrontation with China. Two years later and the concluding remarks still stand.

Concluding Remarks: Dependent Development is the price of Western Capitalism in the Caribbean

In the Caribbean, the U.S. and its Western allies have long profited from—and perpetuated—the notion that foreignization is the norm. This extends beyond economic structures to encompass both domestic and foreign policies that effectively surrender the state, and its people, to massive  exploitation by foreigners. Some governments and local elites have been brought on as “shareholders” to maintain this backwards dependent status. That is because imperialism, especially in the Caribbean, has always been intent on establishing what Cheddi Jagan called “a reactionary axis in the Caribbean.”[xxviii] U.S. ‘influence in the Caribbean region has historically centered around controlling the “backwardness” and “unstableness” of its people, in order to keep U.S. geostrategic and geopolitical interests intact. This is done in conjunction with Caribbean political elites, who subject their own Caribbean populations in perpetual servitude to Western capital. Caribbean neoliberal states have a disregard for the rights of their citizens (and diaspora), favoring almost exclusively (and predominantly) Western foreign corporations and wealthy individuals. Cuba, however, stands out as an exception to this trend, and this is why it has been under relentless attack by Washington for more than 62 years.  It is important to point this out, given that some in the Caribbean political elite classes also share the same regressive rhetoric from the Westabout the “threat of China” to produce reactionary mindsets and views amongst large swaths of Caribbean people— so that their hand in maintaining Caribbean dependency is not critiqued.

Caribbean people struggling to improve their societies for the better are continuously warned by the U.S. and its Western and Caribbean allies that they must maintain themselves in a dependent position. The truth is: So long as the majority of individual Caribbean states are importing finished products and agricultural goods from the U.S., Canada, and Europe—and to a smaller extent now China—the Caribbean will never have trade surpluses with these states. Lack of local businesses and the foreignization of Caribbean economies compound this contradiction that is perpetuated by the entrenched Western-led economic system. Political elites in the Caribbean frequently disregard local protests and locally developed alternatives that could threaten Western foreign corporations and investment. There is a real need for enhanced regional integration for Caribbean people, not only states, to improve their lot within the prevailing system. People will continuously be let down by formations like CARICOM, so long as these associations are dominated by Western development frameworks and have individual member states who care more about aligning their security interests with the West instead of their own region. While neoliberalism in the Caribbean is often attributed to structural constraints and the limited capacity of states to regulate foreign capital, such explanations fail to account for the extent to which Caribbean governments have themselves normalized and actively advanced neoliberal policy frameworks. The promotion of neoliberal policies both prolongs, and makes systemic, foreign dependence and domination.

U.S. fear mongering about China in the Caribbean is propaganda. It only serves to prevent people from questioning why Caribbean states are dependent and why there is rampant foreignization of Caribbean economies. Who owns these corporate entities that make life hard in the Caribbean? The “threats” from the U.S. perspective boil down to the fact that China, in the Caribbean, is taking advantage of Western policies that make the Caribbean exploitable. It is often noted—and indeed observable—that China imports its own labor for development projects in the Caribbean. However, this practice is neither new nor unique; countries such as the United States, Canada, and various European powers have long employed similar strategies. Understandably, this reliance on imported labor has generated frustration among Caribbean populations, particularly given the region’s high levels of unemployment and underemployment. Many local workers are both willing and able to acquire the necessary skills and trades to work on infrastructure and development projects that come to the region. Local Caribbean firms and entrepreneurs would also seize the opportunity to participate in these projects—including local sourcing of materials. But this beneficial type of development is not presently feasible given how Western capitalists have integrated Caribbean states into the global capitalist system.

The efforts of the Trump administration to cast China as a security threat in the Caribbean and to portray doing business with China as a security risk, have largely been unsuccessful. In the Caribbean, China simply takes advantage of Western policies that have made the region highly favorable and open to foreign investment, foreign entrepreneurs, and government dealings—in the form of Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) and Letters of Agreement (LOA)—with other states and corporations. The acceptance of these MOUs and LOAs receive minimal, to no input from Caribbean citizens. Debt traps have been normalized in the Caribbean by the Western capitalist system, making the Caribbean one of the most highly indebted regions in the world. Today, propagandists tend to invoke the myth of the  “Chinese debt-trap” to attribute to China this false label of being engaged in “debt trap diplomacy”—a term popularized in 2018 during the first trade assault against China.[xxix] In response to this myth, progressive commentators tend to highlight that China forgives a lot of debt, and has even helped Caribbean states to restructure debts owed to various financial institutions.[xxx] However, the biggest elephant in the room is that even if China ceased to exist in the Caribbean region, the region would still be one of the most indebted within the Western capitalist system. The debt-trap narrative not only deflects attention from the significant role Western powers have played in producing Caribbean indebtedness, but also unjustly shifts the burden onto China to forgive obligations for which Western capital is responsible.[xxxi] Lack of transparency in investment agreements and investor tax benefits, including profit repatriation, in the Caribbean has been normalized by laws first written by various European empires and later by Western capitalists that crafted structural adjustment policies. Yet, such arrangements, historically established by U.S. and Canadian capital interests, are often rebranded as evidence of corruption within the China–Caribbean relationship. Those concerned with the persistence of Caribbean dependency should critically engage with its structural causes and actively challenge Western propaganda regardless of the source from which it emanates.

Endnotes

[i] Pierre, Jemima. 2020. “Haiti: An Archive of Occupation, 2004-.” Transforming Anthropology 28(1): 3–23. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/traa.12174.

[ii] Kestler-D’Amours, Jillian. “‘A Criminal Economy’: How US Arms Fuel Deadly Gang Violence in Haiti.” Al Jazeera, March 25, 2024. web: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2024/3/25/a-criminal-economy-how-us-arms-fuel-deadly-gang-violence-in-haiti.

[iii] Mack, Willie. Haitians at the Border: The Nativist State and Anti-Blackness. Carr-Ryan Commentary. Harvard Kennedy School, 2025. web: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/centers/carr-ryan/our-work/carr-ryan-commentary/haitians-border-nativist-state-and-anti-blackness.

[iv] Ziye, Chen, and Bin Li. “Escaping Dependency and Trade War: China and the US.” China Economist 18, no. 1 (2023): 36–44.

[v] Wiseman, Paul. “Fact Check: Does China Manipulate Its Currency?” PBS News, December 29, 2016. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/fact-check-china-manipulate-currency.

[vi] Loop News. “More Caribbean Countries Respond to New US Tariffs,” April 4, 2025, sec. World News. https://www.loopnews.com/content/more-caribbean-countries-respond-to-new-us-tariffs/.

[vii] TEMPO Networks. “Here Are All The Caribbean Countries Hit By Trump’s New Tariffs.” Tempo Networks, April 3, 2025, sec. News. https://www.temponetworks.com/2025/04/03/here-are-all-the-caribbean-countries-hit-by-trumps-new-tariffs/.

[viii] Grannum, Milton. “Oil, Bauxite, Gold Exempt from US Tariff.” Stabroek News, April 4, 2025, sec. Guyana News. https://www.stabroeknews.com/2025/04/04/news/guyana/oil-bauxite-gold-exempt-from-us-tariff/.

[ix] Handy, Gemma. “Was China the Reason Guyana Faced Higher Trump Tariff?” BBC, April 28, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjeww5zq88no.

[x] John, Tamanisha J. 2024. “Hurricane Unpreparedness in the Caribbean, Disaster by Imperial Design.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). The Caribbean. https://coha.org/hurricane-unpreparedness-in-the-caribbean-disaster-by-imperial-design/.

[xi] Grantham-Philips, Wyatte. “A Timeline of Trump’s Tariff Actions so Far.” PBS News, April 10, 2025, sec. Economy. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/a-timeline-of-trumps-tariff-actions-so-far.

[xii] Saul, Jonathan, Lisa Baertlein, David Lawder, and Andrea Shalal. “United States Eases Port Fees on China-Built Ships after Industry Backlash.” Reuters, April 17, 2025, sec. Markets. https://www.reuters.com/markets/global-shippers-await-word-us-plan-hit-china-linked-vessels-with-port-fees-2025-04-17/.

[xiii] Credible Sources interview on February 26, 2025. Guyana in U.S.-China Crossfire? Ex-Diplomat Weighs In, 2025. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtCNBiKdj-0

[xiv] Handy, Gemma. “Was China the reason Guyana faced higher Trump tariff?” BBC, April 28, 2025. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjeww5zq88no.

[xv] Chabrol, Denis. “Guyana Pledges ‘Preferential’ Treatment to US.” Demerara Waves, March 27, 2025, sec. Business, Defence, Diplomacy. https://demerarawaves.com/2025/03/27/guyana-pledges-preferential-treatment-to-us/.

[xvi] John, Tamanisha J. “Guyana, Beware the Western Proxy-State Trap.” Stabroek News, December 25, 2023, sec. In The Diaspora. https://www.stabroeknews.com/2023/12/25/features/in-the-diaspora/guyana-beware-the-Western-proxy-state-trap/.

[xvii] Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Guo Jiakun’s Regular Press Conference on April 3, 2025. Beijing Says That Road in Guyana Criticised by Rubio Is Not Built by China, 2025. https://youtu.be/6gljwDyW1qk?si=2QXhDUythljBsIcJ.

[xviii] Morales Ruvalcaba, Daniel. 2025. “National Power in Sino-Caribbean Relations: CARICOM in the Geopolitics of the Belt and Road Initiative.” Chinese Political Science Review 10: 28–48. doi: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41111-024-00252-4.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid. 

[xxi] Qi, Wang. “Hyping Chinese ‘spy Bases’ in Cuba Slander; Shows US’ Hysteria: Expert.” Global Times, July 3, 2024. https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202407/1315376.shtml.

[xxii] Pate, Durrant. “US Warns Jamaica against Chinese 5g.” Jamaica Observer, October 25, 2020. https://www.jamaicaobserver.com/2020/10/25/us-warns-jamaica-against-chinese-5g/.

[xxiii] Belly of the Beast. Investigative Report. May 30, 2025. Big Headlines, No Proof: Inside the Hype Over “Chinese Spy Bases”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF87JJp8WIo

[xxiv] Bayona Velásquez, Etna. “Chinese Economic Presence in the Greater Caribbean, 2000-2020.” In Chinese Presence in the Greater Caribbean: Yesterday and Today, 599–661. Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic: Centro de Estudios Caribeños (PUCMM), 2022.

[xxv] Loop news. “T&T, Caribbean countries pledge support for One China policy.” May 6, 2022. https://www.loopnews.com/content/tt-caribbean-countries-pledge-support-for-one-china-policy/

[xxvi] Ricart Jorge, Raquel. “China’s Digital Silk Road in Latin America and the Caribbean.” Real Instituto Elcano, April 21, 2021, sec. Latin America. https://www.realinstitutoelcano.org/en/commentaries/chinas-digital-silk-road-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/.

[xxvii] John, Tamanisha J. 2023. “US Moves to Curtail China’s Economic Investment in the Caribbean.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA). https://coha.org/us-moves-to-curtail-chinas-economic-investment-in-the-caribbean/.

[xxviii] Jagan, Cheddi. “Alternative Models of Caribbean Economic Development and Industrialisation.” In Caribbean Economic Development and Industrialisation, 3 (1):1–23. Hungary: Development and Peace, 1980. https://jagan.org/CJ%20Articles/In%20Opposition/Images/3014.pdf.

[xxix] Chandran, Rama. “The Chinese “Debt Trap” Is a Myth.” China Focus, August 26, 2022,  http://www.cnfocus.com/the-chinese-debt-trap-is-a-myth/

[xxx] Hancock, Tom. “China renegotiated $50bn in loans to developing countries: Study challenges ‘debt-trap’ narrative surrounding Beijin’s lending.” Financial Times, April 29, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/0b207552-6977-11e9-80c7-60ee53e6681d

[xxxi] Kaiwei, Zhang and Xian Jiangnan. “So-called “debt trap” a Western rhetorical trap.” China International Communications Group (CN) , September 14, 2024, https://en.people.cn/n3/2024/0914/c90000-20219659.html

Featured image: Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi (centre) poses for a group photograph with representatives from the Caribbean countries that share diplomatic relations with China, May 12, 2025, at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, Beijing
(Source: Chinese State Media)

Tamanisha J. John is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at York University and a member of the US/NATO out of Our Americas Network zoneofpeace.org/

The Black Alliance for Peace Calls for Resistance Against the Accelerating Imperialist War on Black/African Peoples in Our Americas

The Black Alliance for Peace Calls for Resistance Against the Accelerating Imperialist War on Black/African Peoples in Our Americas

The Haiti/Americas Team of the Black Alliance for Peace condemns the increasing militarist aggression by U.S. imperialists in Our Americas that targets Africans, indigenous peoples and poor communities and calls for regional pan Africanist strategy and anti imperialist unity to defeat the war on Africans and colonized people at home and abroad. The increase of violence in the region, whether in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean, through armed paramilitary groups often with ties to neo colonial puppets and the US/West, is used as a justification to expand U.S./NATO militarism, economic domination, and interventionism in the region to guarantee full spectrum dominance.

African peoples, along with indigenous communities, across Our Americas bear the brunt of U.S.-led militarism, often with deadly interactions between state forces and armed groups in poor neighborhoods leading to fatal consequences for the masses, as part of a broader effort to expand militarism in the region. This must be framed as an escalation of war on Africans, colonized and poor communities at large by US imperialist forces to maintain its hegemony over the region, particularly against what it sees as threats to its interests from Russia and China.

The State Department’s recent designation of armed paramilitary groups in Haiti as both Foreign Terrorist Organizations and Specially Designated Global Terrorists to use as the justification to continue violating the sovereignty of the Haitian people, clear out and occupy land, and operate with even more impunity. The  U.S.-orchestrated Multinational Security Service Mission (MSS) in Haiti that has only further degraded safety and violated national sovereignty has not slowed down any of this violence, in fact it has increased. Now, declaring Haitian armed paramilitary groups as terrorists will only serve as justification for further militarized assaults on the nation and its people, with little regard for their wellbeing. Amidst a three month long teachers strike, the Executive Board of National Union of Haitian Educators (UNNOH ) wrote, “in the current context of cynically manufactured chaos—orchestrated by powerful international criminals and their local collaborators—” and call for international mobilization amid a “silent genocide.”

Looking at another assault on Africans in Our Americas, on April 13 in Ecuador, Daniel Noboa declared himself president in a still contested run off election amidst heavy militarization at the polls, which the Revolución Ciudadana opposing candidate Luisa Gonzalez has publicly denounced.  Despite attempts to limit international observers , the North South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, in partnership with Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano and Global Black, were able to observe intentional oppressive tactics by Ecuadorian state forces leading up to and throughout the electoral process that have not subsided post-election.

Furthermore, cases like the Guayaquil Four become all too normalized as the war on poor African communities in Ecuador intensifies through US-led militarism as President Noboa changes the constitution to allow foreign military bases, along with reaching a “strategic alliance” with private mercenary Blackwater’s Erik Prince to “fight organized crime.” Prince also negotiated contracts in Haiti last month to provide attack drones and training for an anti-gang unit. The increase in violence in the region also means profits for the private mercenaries, not to actually address violence against African peoples throughout the region, including in the United States, but to use as a proxy to intervene and support their geopolitical and imperialist interests.

The expanding role of SOUTHCOM not just in Haiti, Ecuador or the Caribbean but throughout the region, particularly through joint military exercises such as Operation Tradewinds with militaries in the region under the command of the US and NATO and increased military bases, from the Panama Canal down the Pacific Coast, is not unrelated to this expanding crisis of violence throughout the region. The war on crime, war on drugs and war on terror have exposed the parallels behind the use of state violence as a trojan horse for resource extraction whether in West Asia, including the genocidal onslaught in Palestine, violence against Yemen, Lebanon and the people of Syria, or the expanding use of violence in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana or Suriname for resource extraction of fossil fuels. US imperialism is using the same playbook to justify its presence, expansion and full spectrum dominance.

While member states of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) have condemned the intervention in Haiti, they do so while also upholding the Kingston Declaration , continuing a historic trend in the region of supporting neocolonialism in Haiti led by Brazil. Whether officially sanctioned as a UN mission or not, Western interventions have never been the answer for the Haitian people. More importantly, the lack of solidarity with Haiti undermines the sovereignty of all nations as Haiti is used as a laboratory for the rest of the region. It was precisely the lack of solidarity with Haiti that Nicaragua highlighted as to why they did not sign the Tegucigalpa Declaration - “[the text must] reject the extortions against and express unequivocal solidarity with the brotherly people of Haiti without external interventions.”

BAP invites organizations and individuals to join the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network as a platform to collectively develop regional Pan-Africanist strategy to oppose intervention in Haiti, a core demand of the Zone of Peace campaign, through mass based popular struggle. As Haitian Flag Day approaches on May 18th, we call for renewed and strengthened solidarity with the people of Haiti, in connection with all African peoples, oppressed peoples, and popular movements of Our Americas struggling to free our region of US military and economic dictates.

The Black Alliance for Peace asserts the right of African/Black peoples across Our Americas to self defense and organized resistance in response to this escalating imperialist war against the masses of our people, whether in Port au Prince, Guayaquil, or Los Angeles. No compromise, no retreat!

Banner photo: An image of Erik Prince meeting with Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa shared on Noboa's official X account. Daniel Noboa/X

Black Alliance for Peace and MANE Reflect on Ecuadorian Elections

PRESS RELEASE

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Black Alliance for Peace and MANE Reflect on Ecuadorian Elections

April 14, 2025 - The Black Alliance for Peace and Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano (MANE) reported back on the Ecuadorian presidential elections held on Sunday, April 13, 2025. Despite the fact the current president, Daniel Noboa, issued a last-minute decree (Decree 597) that sealed the northern and southern borders, intending to deny entry to international observers, the election team for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) was able to enter and observe the elections on the ground.

The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral) has declared Daniel Noboa the winner of the second round of elections, with over an 11-point lead. With this win, it is certain that Noboa’s declared “internal armed struggle” will continue to negatively and disproportionately impact Ecuador’s poor and AfroEcuadorian communities. While the election process ostensibly adhered to international standards, BAP observed several troubling elements, including an excessive military presence, particularly at polling stations located in predominantly AfroEcuadorian precincts. This is precisely why MANE invited an election observation delegation from the BAPs North South Project for People(s)- Centered Human Rights to monitor the situation in those majority African precincts in Guayaquil. It is also reflective of the ongoing human rights issues AfroEcuadorians continue to face since the illegal kidnapping and vicious murder of four AfroEcuadorian youth by Ecuadorian military officials nearly one month ago. These murders are indicative of the human rights crisis Ecuadorians, but particularly AfroEcuadorians, are facing due to the current government’s heavy-handed approach to the phony “War on Drugs.”

BAP’s delegation met with the families of the latest egregious violations to, and systemic dehumanizing of AfroEcuadorians who police snipers shot during an apparent raid on a Black community in a Guayaquil barrio. One died from the attack, and another is now permanently disabled, while a third teenager remains hospitalized and permanently paralyzed. All of these victims’ main crimes are that they are Black and poor.

These conditions directly connect to the situation in the region of Esmeraldas, which is more than 70% AfroEcuadorians, that was recently devastated by an oil spill after a pipeline operated by the state-owned petroleum company PetroEcuador ruptured and released approximately 25,000 barrels of oil.  Roughly 300,000 of the region’s 500,000 people and the livelihoods of fishermen, farmers, and others are facing dire conditions. The inadequate response to the devastation by the Ecuadorian government, as well as the global environmental community, showcases the environmental racism experienced by AfroEcuadorians in Esmeralda, which is endemic of environmental injustice shouldered by all oppressed Africans from Cancer Alley in the U.S. to Port Au Prince in the Revolutionary Republic of Haiti. BAP affirms the axiomatic nexus between increasing militarism and an increasing climate crisis that disproportionately impacts Africans and Indigenous peoples the world over.  

With Noboa’s win, these conditions will certainly deteriorate further. BAP’s concerns are highlighted by the very real danger of the fulfillment of ongoing efforts to expand the U.S. military’s presence in Ecuador as part of a larger conquest of South America’s Pacific coast. This, in turn, will exacerbate the existing militarized presence in Ecuador under the guise of security, already subjecting Afro, Indigenous, and poor Ecuadorians to daily human rights violations. The development of an independent, national AfroEcuadorian politics is even more urgent than before to not only counter U.S. and Ecuadorian reactionary right-wing forces but to ensure the human rights of AfroEcuadorians through the power of the people and popular mass movements.

To this end, BAP will continue to support MANE in developing an independent national AfroEcuadorian formation that will be able to identify and defend the fundamental human rights of the AfroEcuadorian people. The last nine months of collaboration between BAP and MANE exemplify this development and commitment to a popular process.

No Compromise 

No Retreat 

Banner photo: A woman votes at a polling station in Manabí, one of the provinces where changes were made to the polling stations for the presidential runoff, April 13, 2025 (Courtesy Photo AFP).

Nuestra América and the Black Radical Peace Tradition

Nuestra América and the Black Radical Peace Tradition

By: BAP Haiti/Americas Team

The Revolutionary Foundations of Our Americas

On April 8, 1804, a few months after leading Ayiti (Haiti) to independence after a bloody 13- year revolutionary war against European enslavers and colonists, the new nation’s leader, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, articulated the most radical vision of freedom in history. In the proclamation, ‘Liberty or Death,’ Dessalines pronounced “I have avenged America,” decrying the barbarity and violence of racist Europeans. At the same time, he delineated a vision of a new Ayiti, and the world, based on sovereignty, dignity, and respect. 

On January 1,1891, 87 years after Dessalines’s proclamation of an independent Haiti, and exactly 62 years before the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, José Martí published his famous work: Nuestra América or “Our America.” In this, Martí called for Latin America to unite against ongoing colonialism and in protest of U.S. domination through the Monroe Doctrine. 

On December 10, 1963 in Detroit, Michigan, Malcolm X delivered his “Message to the Grassroots” speech where he criticized the Civil Rights Movement’s appeals to U.S. white supremacist foundations, individualism over grassroots organizing, and the failures of Black/African peoples in the U.S. to unite with the anti-colonial movements of the Global South. Significantly, Malcolm demanded more than “civil rights” for Black/African peoples in the U.S.; he called for true and complete human rights that would be the basis for the liberation of all African peoples globally. In this sense, Malcolm also urged us to reject the idea that the political identity of Black/African people is tethered to the U.S. settler project, proclaiming "[we are]... not 'Americans'. We are victims of Americanism." 

All three of these visionaries died waging the struggle for liberation in the Americas. Dessalines was betrayed and assassinated two years into Haiti’s independence, a victim of the unresolved contradictory ideologies that fractured the nascent nation with tragic consequences. Martí, the writer and organizer, would die in battle in the struggle for Cuban independence. While Cuba would win flag independence in 1902, it would not escape the direct neocolonial chokehold of the U.S. and its corporate vultures until the revolution of 1959. Malcolm was slain by reactionaries and counterintelligence operatives in 1965, crippling the movement for Black/African liberation within the U.S. 

In the ensuing years, and despite continuing resistance through individual and mass struggles, the promise of liberation has yet to be realized. Moreover, Malcolm would likely be disappointed with our failures, especially in the U.S., to carry on the vision of a Black/African struggle that is anti-colonial, Black nationalist, and internationalist. 

Yet Malcolm’s words on that cold December day in Detroit still ring true. Like Martí, who called for Latin American unity, Malcolm argued for unity against a common enemy, calling for a revolutionary anti-colonial struggle of all African and colonized and oppressed peoples against white supremacy and imperialism:

We have this in common: We have a common oppressor, a common exploiter, and a common discriminator. But once we all realize that we have this common enemy, then we unite on the basis of what we have in common. And what we have foremost in common is that enemy — the white man. He’s an enemy to all of us…In Bandung back in, I think, 1954, was the first unity meeting in centuries of Black people. And once you study what happened at the Bandung conference, and the results of the Bandung conference, it actually serves as a model for the same procedure you and I can use to get our problems solved…These people who came together didn’t have nuclear weapons; they didn’t have jet planes; they didn’t have all of the heavy armaments that the white man has. But they had unity….They began to recognize who their enemy was. The same man that was colonizing our people in Kenya was colonizing our people in the Congo. The same one in the Congo was colonizing our people in South Africa, and in Southern Rhodesia, and in Burma, and in India, and in Afghanistan, and in Pakistan. They realized all over the world where the dark man was being oppressed, he was being oppressed by the white man; where the dark man was being exploited, he was being exploited by the white man. So they got together under this basis — that they had a common enemy.

It is this perspective that would, towards the end of his life, push Malcolm to form the Organization for Afro-American Unity, a Pan-Africanist revolutionary project. 

Malcolm’s understanding of militant grassroots struggle, self-defense, and uncompromising principles are key to the Black Radical Peace Tradition that underlies the work of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP). While we take inspiration from the struggle of these heroic ancestors, we know that this struggle is far deeper and broader than the actions of individual men. This work is fundamentally about building collective power to oppose and defeat the militarization, repression, destabilization, subversion, and permanent war against our peoples. As our ancestor, and former Black Panther and political prisoner Safiya Bukhari reminds us, in order to engage in the battle against imperialism and build a new society, we must also revolutionize our collective practices and consciousness through our political programs. 

In building collective power, we see it as critical to link the unifying compass of Martí’s “Nuestra América” with the militant struggle of the Black Radical Peace Tradition, and the fire of Dessalines call to avenge the Americas. “Nuestra América” is the call of revolutionary forces in the Americas to rally all the historically oppressed peoples of the region against colonialism and imperialism by claiming one contiguous land mass stretching from Canada to Chile. In understanding the political, social, and economic position of working class Black/African peoples in the United States as united with the working peoples of the Caribbean and Latin America, we take inspiration from “Nuestra América” and push for the liberation of “Our Americas”.

Our first step is to recognize that working class Black/African and Brown peoples of Latin America, the Caribbean, and within the U.S. have a common enemy that seeks to exploit and dominate the region. Our joint struggle is to defeat this enemy by attacking its various forms of domination – (neo)colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism, and imperialism. The second step is to organize ourselves to build meaningful alternatives to this domination that are based on popular sovereignty, collective self-determination, and human dignity. Both steps require an Americas-wide consciousness toward collective, grassroots, anti-imperialist struggle.

De facto Colonialism in the Americas

In the first month of Donald Trump’s second term as President of the United States, he and Secretary of State Marco Rubio proclaimed that U.S. will recapture the Panama Canal and annex Greenland and Canada; publicly threatened Mexico, Colombia, and Canada with tariffs; and all but declared war on Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua – calling them “enemies of humanity” for refusing to capitulate to U.S. interests. Rubio also visited Panama, El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and the Dominican Republic on a tour aimed to strong-arm these nations into strengthening ties with U.S. corporate and military interests and severing developmental agreements with China.  

But the brute tactics of the Trump regime, in trying to ensure U.S. “Full Spectrum Dominance” in the region, are not exceptional. “Full Spectrum Dominance” is the bipartisan doctrine articulated clearly in the Pentagon’s “Joint Vision 2020” paper that commits the U.S. to exercising military, political, and economic control across the globe to protect imperialist investments and interests – a stance that requires aggressively countering any threats, real or imagined, to its dominance. Trump’s regime, therefore, is building on the foundation laid by the U.S. duopoly’s economic and political agendas of exploitation and domination.  

It was not Donald Trump who initiated the current U.S.-led occupation and anti-democratic transition process in Haiti, or who recognized (for a second time) a sham President of Venezuela, or who provided U.S. military support to the right-wing narco-capitalist government of Daniel Noboa in Ecuador. These violations of national sovereignty in our region, and more, occurred through the Biden White House and Blinken State Department. Just as it was also not the Trump regime that oversaw the repression of the Stop Cop City movement and the Student Intifada in response to the U.S.-Israeli genocide on Gaza. Again, this was the Biden-Harris regime and the mayors of the U.S.’s largest cities, almost all of whom are Democrats. Even Trump’s decision to send deported immigrants to Guantanamo Bay, a military base which the U.S. has occupied in Cuba since 1903, is just making good on a threat that Biden issued in 2024. And Biden’s declaration was simply a revival of Bush Sr. and Clinton’s use of Guantanamo to hold captive Haitian migrants. 

Nevertheless, the current actions of the Trump regime have a different character. The U.S. has reverted to its brazen call for colonialist expansion, including full military control of the hemisphere, aggressive economic coercion, and divide-and-rule tactics – all wrapped up in vulgar white supremacist nationalism. The U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination is now more open and defiant!

The tools of this Axis of Domination are clear: military domination through the U.S. Southern Command (Southcom); economic warfare through sanctions, tariffs and other unilateral coercive measures; continuation of corporate extractivism over national development; and usurpation of state sovereignty through policies as the Global Fragility Act. And, of course, U.S. imperialism also depends on a captured class of neocolonial compradors (e.g., William Ruto in Kenya, Luis Abinader in the DR, Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador) who work to uphold its Full Spectrum Dominance. Indeed, the Americas region remains under de facto colonial rule. And, despite years of anti-colonial resistance throughout the hemisphere, the current bold articulation of U.S. power seems calibrated to accelerate this full spectrum dominance while simultaneously attempting to paralyze and demobilize legitimate united resistance.

Black Struggle in the Heart of Empire

We understand that Black/African communities in the U.S. hold a unique position in the heart of empire. With a long and relentless history defined by enslavement, economic exploitation and underdevelopment, political subjugation, environmental degradation, and state violence, these communities suffer the brunt of domestic white supremacist domination. Black/African organizers and scholars have described the Black/African condition in the U.S. as akin to a colonial relationship. Robert Allen, for example, understood the colonial relationship in these terms: “[the] direct and over-all subordination of one people, nation, or country to another with state power in the hands of the dominant power.” In this case, white supremacist, capitalist power with direct control over Black/African peoples and communities. Economist William Tabb agreed with this and outlined the conditions faced by Black/African people in urban ghettos in the 1970s: a lack of labor freedom, suppressed wages, disposability and vulnerability of labor, and dependency on external aid (welfare) and political power (patronage) at the price of comprising collective needs.

This analysis of the internal colonization of Black/African people comes from a long and rich tradition of struggle and scholarship, outlined comprehensively by many including Harry Haywood and later Claudia Jones, Kwame Ture, and Robert Allen, as well as organizations as diverse as the Communist Party USA, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Africa, and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. As scholar Charisse Burden Stelly details in Black Scare/Red Scare, Haywood and other Black communist organizers conceptualized the Black Belt Nation Thesis in the 1920-40s, understanding Black peoples predominantly residing in  the U.S. South (the “Black Belt”) as an internal colony with the right to national self-determination. After the second imperialist world war, Jones laid out the distinctions between Black populations in both the North and South, while furthering the analysis that all Black people represented a nation within the borders of the U.S. – a community of people with common language, economic life, and culture – all under assault by the racist U.S. state. 

While the “internal colony” model is an important way to understand the position of Black/African communities in this white supremacist country, we must also acknowledge how class dynamics of the U.S. Black/African communities have continued to shift over years. Bruce Dixon, for example, asked us to come to terms with the reality that, “Today there are thousands of actual black people in the actual US ruling class…There are black lobbyists and corporate functionaries…the two dozen or so black admirals and generals…There are black media figures…and black near billionaires success stories are built on low wage viciously exploited black labor…”. We agree with Dixon in recognizing the Black compradors aiding and abetting U.S. white supremacist domination. Nevertheless, we think it imperative to assert that the majority of our Black/African communities are poor and working class, and bear the brunt of the domestic side of U.S. imperialist terror. 

In 1969, Robert Allen predicted that, after the Black revolts of the late 1960s, a “neocolonial re-direction” would occur that would continue to subjugate the majority of Black people in the U.S. This re-direction would replace direct white rule and power over the internal colony with Black comprador intermediaries (e.g., national politicians, mayors, corporate executives and managers) who would be more palatable to the people they dominated. This follows the analyses of Kwame Nkrumah, Amilcar Cabral, Stephanie Urdang, and others on neocolonialism on the African continent. Allen argued that regardless of colonial or neocolonial rule, only a true and comprehensive anti-colonial struggle could lead to liberation for Black people in the U.S. This would require an economic program on a national level and the proliferation of international solidarity with ‘Third World’ peoples to defeat imperialism. For Allen, like for Malcolm, this would be a Black struggle that is anti-colonial and internationalist:

[T]his struggle would aid materially in breaking black dependency on white society…The establishment of close working relationships with revolutionary forces around the world would be of great importance. The experiences of Third World revolutionaries in combating American imperialism could be quite useful to black liberation fighters. For the moment, mutual support between Afro-American and Third World revolutionaries is more verbal than tangible, but the time could come when this citation is reversed, and black people are well advised to begin now to work toward this kind of revolutionary, international solidarity. 

In this sense, we link the struggles of the Black/African poor and working masses both to other marginalized communities in the U.S., and to all colonized and marginalized peoples’ globally. 

This means the need to join the other liberation struggles of the colonized in the U.S., including Native peoples and lands, as well as the people of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The framework of internal colonialism helps us see that the Black/African liberation struggle is not simply against racism or a pursuit of state-sanctioned civil "rights." Instead, together with the global majority, we are engaged in a struggle for self-determination and sovereignty against a common enemy. We have a common struggle of liberation against empire. 

For BAP, like for Malcolm, ours is a struggle for liberation, comprehensive human rights, and dignity – or what we call People(s)-Centered Human Rights. This is, for us, an anti-colonial struggle, and a movement of solidarity, and collective resistance.

Where do we go from here?

In outlining necessary actions for Black radicals in 1969, Robert Allen asserted that “the continuing main task for the black radical is to construct an interlocked analysis, program, and strategy which offers black people a realistic hope of achieving liberation.” Any road to liberation requires challenging, disrupting, and defeating imperialism, domestically and globally. In terms of building a program to support radical and revolutionary struggle in “Our Americas”, we learn from freedom fighter Assata Shakur and the BLA who knew that any revolutionary struggle in the U.S. must engage in meaningful material solidarity with the struggles of the peoples and nations of the Global South. 

In this moment, we aim to help advance this solidarity and struggle through the development of the U.S./NATO Out of Our Americas Network – a mass-based, people(s)-centered, anti-imperialist structure to support the development of an Americas-wide consciousness, facilitate coordination of our unified struggles and build from the grassroots a ‘Zone of Peace’ in Our Americas. Along with BAP’s recently inaugurated North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, the Network and the broader Zone of Peace campaign are efforts that consciously joins the Black/African liberation movements with the struggle for true popular sovereignty, self-determination, and decolonization in the Americas and globally.

This Network is a component of the collective Campaign for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas, which calls for an activation and coordination of grassroots movements and organizations to expel from our region the structures of U.S.-led imperialism that generate war and state violence—colonialism, patriarchy, capitalism. This campaign’s vision of “Peace” follows BAP’s principle of the Black Radical Peace Tradition: 

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but rather the achievement by popular struggle and self-defense of a world liberated from the interlocking issues of global conflict, nuclear armament and proliferation, unjust war, and subversion through the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy, and white supremacy. 

Achieving a lasting, durable peace in Our Americas requires deepening our coordination, internationalizing our grassroots struggles, resourcing our efforts toward effective solidarity, and growing our capacities for resistance.

We know that advancing the revolutionary consciousness of the people of Our Americas is a necessary foundation for the grassroots struggle for our sovereignty, self-determination, and dignity. We know that struggling in Nuestra América through the Black Radical Peace Tradition necessitates centering the ongoing resistance of the people of Haiti, defeating the neocolonialism that has co-opted unity and integration in the Caribbean, and supporting those nations fighting to assert their sovereignty and determine their destinies, particularly Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. We know that we can establish the collective power to oppose the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

For our own survival, and the survival of the oppressed masses of the world, we must avenge Our Americas. The time is now.

Solidarity Brigade "Power and Protagonism - Women in Nicaragua"

Solidarity Brigade "Power and Protagonism - Women in Nicaragua"

Enviado por tortilla el Dom, 16/03/2025 - 17:56

A brigade * of international activists in solidarity with Nicaragua visited Nicaragua during March and after completing their program of visits and interviews issued the following press release about their visit.

Press release by the Solidarity Brigade "Power and Protagonism - Women in Nicaragua"

Nicaragua Ranks Highest in Gender Equity in the Americas and #6 Globally, According to the World Economic Forum, So Why Are They Under Sanctions?

If you asked 100 people in the U.S. or the U.K. to name the country leading gender equity in the Americas, it’s unlikely anyone would correctly answer Nicaragua. This lack of awareness reflects the success of a decades-long imperialist campaign to discredit and undermine Nicaragua’s remarkable achievements since the 1979 revolution.

The U.S has continuously attempted to destroy the Sandinista revolution…

Koreans, Africans: Solidarity and Shared Struggles

Koreans, Africans: Solidarity and Shared Struggles

In January, BAP Atlanta’s Musa Springer participated in an international delegation at the DPRK University in Japan. Subsequently, they were invited to publish an article in the university’s newspaper. The article was published in Japanese; you will find the English version below.

 “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 towards world communism, under which, every society is ordered on the principle of: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” — Osagyefo Kwame Nkrumah

 I am deeply grateful to Korea University and Chongryon for inviting me to return for the 4th annual delegation this January 2025. The meticulously organized trip provided profound insights into the Korean community in Japan. A special mention to the Korea University cafeteria and cooks—the meals were exceptional, and if I could bottle and bring home that gochujang, I certainly would!

 Reflecting on the historical bonds between the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and the Black Panther Party, a notable instance comes to mind. In 1970, Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver, prominent Black Panther Party leaders, spent their summer in Pyongyang. The two leaders of the virulent Black liberation struggle in the US were enthralled with the socialist development they witnessed inside the DPRK, especially inspired by the nation's commitment to self-reliance and anti-imperialism. Attending anti-imperialist conferences in Pyongyang and grounding with key Korean revolutionaries, even receiving guerilla training from Korean fighters, the Cleavers’ admiration led to a mutual respect between the two movements.

 Kathleen Cleaver, who has continued a long life of revolutionary activism and lawyering to this day, wrote in her unpublished memoir: “The North Korean’s official denunciations of the United States’ imperialists matched the most virulent sentiments Black slaves and their descendants felt, making it easy for Black Panthers to identify with the fervor of their ideological antagonism.”

 In honor of this solidarity, and the excellent medical care Kathleen received during her pregnancy in the DPRK, the Cleavers named their daughter Joju Younghi, with "Joju" reflecting the Korean pronunciation of "Juche," altogether meaning “a young heroine born in Juche Korea.”

 This history is perhaps unknown among most. However unspoken this history is, it is the stories of deep solidarity such as these that compel me to rekindle such connections— among Koreans and also within Black/African communities back home. Participating in these delegations provides a foundation to pursue this endeavor, and a platform to drive the historical tendency towards ‘solidarity’ as a verb among our communities.

 Returning for a second visit this time allowed me to deepen my understanding of the Korean community's struggles in Japan. Building upon relationships established during my previous trip, I engaged more profoundly with professors and students, gaining a closer perspective on their experiences and resilience.

 “Do you remember me, I was your translator last time”, one young woman student said to me at the KU campus. “I remember that you are African in America, the same as we are Korean in Japan.” I indeed recognized her, and felt profoundly proud that she remembered this important point from the lecture I gave in the last delegation.

 During my stay, I had the privilege of participating in two panels at Korea University. In my discussions, I emphasized that as anti-imperialists, our perspective on Korean-U.S. relations should extend beyond the confines of Asia. It's imperative to consider U.S. imperialist actions not as distinct to any one region, but dynamic, as is the case in Latin America and Africa, where they are rich in the resources that they U.S. uses to fuel global conflicts. While there may be perceptions of shifting U.S. focus offering hope for peace in Korea, which would sincerely open a world of opportunity for my new Korean friends, we must remain vigilant to how Trump has turned toward these other areas, perpetuating long-term unrest and the plunder of resources to rebuild U.S. weapons stocks. As anti-imperialists, we must oppose imperialism in all its forms, recognizing the interconnectedness of these systems regardless of location.

 Once again in my remarks I was able to make connections between the motions of Korean Reunification and Pan-Africanism, a guiding objective and revolutionary ideology for my organization, The Black Alliance for Peace. As Koreans seek peaceful reunification of their land, we seek a reunification of Africa; as Koreans wish to repeal colonial borders, we wish to abolish colonial African borders; as Koreans fight to reclaim their names, dances, music, and heritage from the colonizers, so too do we. As Koreans identify fondly with their ‘Fatherland’ at home, encouraging all Koreans to take a similar stance, we, too, identify with our ‘Motherland’ on the continent.

 The parallels between the Korean experience in Japan and the African experience in the United States are striking, and they teach us that we are never alone so long as we understand our history and the true meaning of solidarity. I want to repeat myself to emphasize to my Korean comrades in Japan: you are not alone. The struggle you endure — forced name changes, forced labor, suppression of your culture, discrimination — mirrors what my people have endured now for 400. Just as you were compelled to adopt Japanese names, we were stripped of our African names and given Euro-American ones. Just as you were forced to labor in the tunnels under imperial rule, so too were Africans in the U.S. (and we still are).

 As we walked in Harajuku with our KU student tour guides, we noticed a man on the sidewalk near the train station. He had many signs written in large, red Japanese, and was shouting quite loudly into a microphone — he resembled the hateful preachermen who I know often in the Southern U.S., where I live.

 “What is he talking about, can you translate?” I asked one of the students.

 “It is election time,” replied the student. “And he is saying that Koreans are taking all of the tax money, that Koreans are the problem, that we are bad.”

 The moment was chilling, because it broke through ‘kawaii’, calm, peaceful appearance Japan prides itself on; the anime, J-pop, cutesy sidewalks suddenly felt like I was back home again, only with a different language. In the U.S. we refer to our position as “within the belly of the beast”, meaning inside the belly of the imperialist beast. For Koreans in Japan, as I wrote last year, they are inside the belly of another beast. Inside of this belly they are the scapegoat for the ills of the body (society), as Africans are the perpetual scapegoats for the ills of the body within the U.S.

 Perhaps most importantly is the spirit of resistance that is not only shared between Koreans and Africans, but by people everywhere under the thumb of colonialism and imperialism. I felt this spirit deeply during my time with my new comrades. Just as you have resisted-through guerilla struggle, escaping the forced mines to create maroon communities, and now through the revolutionary education of Chongryon and KU — we, too, ran away from the slave plantations, directly confronted the slave masters with machetes, formed entire communities of maroons, and built freedom schools to preserve our culture.

 I don't name these similarities for the sake of sentiment or emotion. Rather, it shows a commonality in our material conditions, and a commonality in our struggle for dignity, self-determination, and ultimately, liberation. With a reunified Korea standing as a beacon of hope for Koreans, it inspires us Africans in the U.S. and elsewhere to fight for Pan-Africanism with as much determination as you all do. The lessons you teach us are invaluable, and the bonds we forge here will only grow stronger in the struggle for global liberation. When I return again next year, we can explore these themes of solidarity more and even deeper.

Forward Ever, Backward Never!

View the Japanese article from DPRK University Newspaper

The Struggle for a Zone of Peace Continues!: A Conversation with Austin Cole

The Struggle for a Zone of Peace Continues!: A Conversation with Austin Cole

The US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network officially launched on February 21, the anniversary of the assassinations of two legends in Nuestra América, Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El-Shabazz) and Augusto C Sandino. An auspicious date, one that marks the next bold, action-oriented and mass-based phase of the Zone of Peace campaign. Black Agenda Report contributor Clau O’Brien Moscoso spoke to Austin Cole, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) National Co-Coordinator and Haiti/Americas Team Co-Coordinator on the recently launched network, the machinations of the US/EU/NATO Axis of Domination,  and what the masses must do to “avenge Nuestra América.”

Clau O’Brien Moscoso: So, to start us off, can you introduce yourself  and touch base on what happened this weekend?

Austin Cole: My name is Austin. I am a co-coordinator of Black Alliance for Peace, and one of the co-coordinators of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team, and I’m based in the Boston area. 

Back in April of 2023, we launched the Zone of Peace campaign, which calls for and takes up the 2014 Community for Latin America and Caribbean States (CELAC) call for a zone of peace in The Americas. And our focus in that campaign is really to activate the grassroots aspects of that call, towards popular struggle and popular sovereignty and self-determination for the peoples of The Americas, to expel capitalism, imperialism, patriarchy, and colonialism from the region. 

This call for a zone of peace in our Americas is really a call for the peoples to come together under our different and unified struggles to guarantee peace. i. And by peace, we don't mean the absence of conflict but the presence of liberation. 

And so in that vein, on Friday, February 21, which was also the commemoration of the assassination of Augusto Sandino, the Nicaraguan revolutionary, and the sixtieth anniversary in commemoration of the assassination of Malcolm X, El Hajj Malik Al-Shabbaz. And so that really important date marks the various aspects of the struggle in our Americas, from Latin America and The Caribbean and also with African/black peoples in The United States. We launched, not just BAP, but the collective organizations of the Zone of Peace campaign and what we call the Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas. We also launched the US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network.

CO: Can you talk a little bit more about how we connect that struggle in the local context? How do we talk about what's happening, whether it's here in Lima, Peru, in Guayaquil, in Haiti? 

AC: A few of the really critical aspects of the campaign in terms of how we do this, that we're focused on is, really, one, building deeper coordination among our anti-imperialist organizations, political parties, labor and social justice organizations and movements throughout The Americas. 

Another one is really connecting the shared struggles across our different regions and across the different nations of the region and peoples and communities to really build power and internationalize those local struggles. And then, finally, the third focus is really around developing popular education, advocacy, grassroots organizing campaigns, and things like that.

Nuestra América goes back to 1891 to Jose Marti, the Cuban revolutionary, who fought for the independence of Cuba and also the anti-colonial unity of Latin America and The Caribbean. And so he published a piece in 1891 called, Nuestra América, or Our America. And so that really focused on conquering colonialism not only from Spain but also the impending kind of neocolonialism from the Monroe Doctrine of the US in the region.

So in terms of how we think about that with the Black radical peace tradition, which understands this idea that peace is not the absence of conflict, but it is the overcoming or the defeat of the forces of imperialism, white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, patriarchy that destroy our people, that destroy our communities, that wage war against us. 

We achieve that by popular struggle, self-defense and resistance. That is not only for black or African people. But it is a struggle for black and African liberation as part of the struggle for the liberation of all peoples. So when we're talking about the black radical peace tradition when we talk about folks like Malcolm X or Franz Fanon or Patrice Lumumba, all of whom it's the centennial of their birthdays this year. And we talk about others in the tradition, at least that I come from in terms of the US, we talk about Fannie Lou Hamer. We talk about Assata Shakur. We talk about Jalil Muntaqim. We talk about many, many other people who have fought, and struggled, for liberation of African peoples here.

And we see that as the same form and certainly the same enemy that is destroying the lands, the peoples, the cultures of North America, of Latin America, and the Caribbean, as well as on the African continent, in Asia, in Palestine, throughout the world. And so when we think about connecting these things, it's about understanding, as Malcolm X said, that we have a common enemy.

We can understand that those are the same structures, systems, and interests that marginalize and oppress and maintain domination over black and African peoples within the US. And while that may be a different form because we who are in the US are inside the belly of the beast, it does not change the fact that we are fighting the same enemy just because the conditions are different.

And the fact that we all speak different languages also doesn't help. The fact that many times, Haiti is left out of the discussion of Latin America and The Caribbean, partially because of white supremacy, partially because of language, and for many other reasons as well, and for convenience oftentimes. And so we also say while we're talking about Marti, while we talk about Malcolm, while we talk about others, we have to talk specifically as well about this idea of avenging our Americas and understanding that the Haitian Revolution offered an alternative whereby the enslaved Haitians who fought for thirteen years to free themselves from one of the most brutal and depraved regimes of colonialism and slavery that the world has ever seen, where enslaved people in Haiti had a life expectancy of three years. 

That when the Haitian Revolution overtook not just France, but Britain and Spain, and in certain instances, aspects in the US of economic isolation, they offered a different path to understand not only are we talking about a liberal form of freedom, which is the freedom to own property and the freedom for capital to move beyond borders. But we're talking about actual human freedom. 

Dessalines said, “Let us walk down a different path, let us not have a missionary spirit to overtake our neighbors, but let them live in peace.” So while Dessalines was living in a very different time, and the Haitian people were living in a very different time in 1804, he was at that time, before Marx, before others had theorized around socialism, was talking specifically about peace and about having self-determination and sovereignty in a peaceful and harmonious, and fraternal community.

CO: How do you see the struggle that's happening in Haiti since 2004 and predating that, but definitely since the overthrow of Aristide and the formation of The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and The United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH). One of the core demands of the campaign is opposing intervention into Haiti. Why is it important for us to be talking about Haiti, to study Haiti, to advocate around this? 

AC: There are clear, material interests that the US, NATO, EU - these architects of world imperialism have in maintaining a Haiti that is subservient, that does not have self-determination, and that cannot be an example of what black or African liberation looks like in the world. In addition to a very strong material interest in exploiting Haiti as a source of human labor, as a source of minerals, and as a geographical strategic location within the Caribbean in the middle of the Caribbean. So why should someone in the US care about Haiti? When the Clintons through the Clinton Global Health Foundation helped to, and even before then, Bill Clinton as president helped to destroy the Haitian rice industry by flooding the Haitian market with US rice. One of the main reasons to do this is to open up new markets for capital. In this case, for rice farmers in the US.

And these are large rice farmers. We're not talking about the small rice farmers in Louisiana who are black, who are themselves struggling to survive. We're talking about these large companies, many of whom are sending their lowest quality rice to Haiti, which has been shown recently to include arsenic and other toxic chemicals.

They did so because it helps to create a new market for cheap goods that are subsidized by the US so that farmers in the US can have a place to sell their goods that basically has to accept it because they now have the rice industry in Haiti that did exist has been destroyed. And so when things like that happen, it provides no incentive for US capital to try to renegotiate its relationship with labor, with communities in the US and to do anything about the crisis of capitalism.

Instead of them having to potentially reshape relationships between labor and capital here in the US, they get government subsidies, and they push their products out to other markets that can't complain about the quality because they have no place for recourse to take any action. And then those farmers are gonna do whatever they can to hold on to those subsidies. They become completely intertwined with the politicians at the US level who are then very incentivized to make sure that the Haitian rice industry does not pick back up. 

And how are they getting subsidized? Because of US imperialism in Haiti and because of the destruction of infrastructure in Haiti. So all of these things are connected as well when it comes to the export of labor in Haiti. When Obama was president, I believe in 2009, Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State. There were protests in Haiti over garment manufacturers wanting higher wages in the country. And the government in Haiti was considering increasing the minimum wage because it was so low. The Clinton State Department said no.

“Under no circumstances will you increase the minimum wage.” Why is that? Because companies like Levi's and others that have factories in Haiti don't want to pay their workers more. And in Haiti, just like in many other countries, those factories have been offshored.. Because they can suppress wages very easily, there's going to be no pushback in the US because people don't even know about it. And then, even if they do know about it, they consider it as “Well, it’s Haiti, they should be lucky to have to get $2 an hour. That’s a good job at least.”

They don't have to consider that because the US government is helping to protect their corporate interests in these other countries. And Haiti is so close that it is very attractive to the US. People might not know that Haiti has the largest population of any island in The Caribbean. There's over 11 million in Haiti. It has a greater population than the entire English-speaking Caribbean combined. And it is very strategically placed.

And so those are kind of really small examples. Another one I'll just mention as our comrade, Dr. Jemima Pierre, has mentioned many times, Haiti is a laboratory. In the same way that Palestine and Gaza in particular, but Palestine as a whole is a laboratory for Zionist occupation and settler colonialism in modern settler colonialism, with weapons manufacturing and surveillance and forms of social and physical confinement and all of these things.

Haiti has also been a laboratory for exercises in neocolonialism but also with other forms of aid and disaster capitalism, as I already mentioned, with the Clinton Health Foundation, the UN, many NGOs, the USAID all of these organizations have basically tried out many, many different tactics of control and of a form of humanitarianism that is a liberal humanitarianism.

So, barely any of the money is actually getting to the people of Haiti, and they are being blamed for the lack of “progress and development of infrastructure”. Not only that, Haiti has been a pilot country for neocolonialism- in the 1915 occupation of Haiti by US marines that lasted for nineteen years. They were a pilot in many ways throughout the Duvalier dictatorship and in many different forms.

Also, in the post-earthquake disaster relief and the disaster capitalism surrounding that event. And then, since 2004, this operation of the Core Group, which is an unelected, unaccountable group of countries and institutions that basically make the decisions behind the scenes in Haiti as well as the Global Fragility Act that the US has recently piloted in Haiti and in some African countries, in Papua New Guinea, and then the Multinational Security Support mission that is currently in Haiti that is a non-UN mission, that they are trying to convert to a UN peacekeeping commission, which will be a unique UN peacekeeping commission like the one in Somalia. If it happens, it will be funded out of a trust. And that will be like a UN peacekeeping mission previously, but even less accountable, under the guise of “financial feasibility”.

The US required any person who's going to take over in the transitional presidency in Haiti to accept an intervention and to accept whatever the US and the Core Group say will be the direction of Haiti. So this pseudo-democratic guise of this transition process is all of a laboratory, not only for Haiti and not only for The Americas but also for the entire world.

The exact same thing like Cop City, where there are corporate entities helping to support the Police Foundation in Atlanta to basically say we need to combat the violence that is rising in this city. And what violence were they trying to combat? The uprisings in 2020 against police brutality.

They basically flipped the defund police “demand” on its head and said, no we're actually going to fund police even more. We're going to “train them better,” and we're going to build these massive cop cities.

And this is not new. Folks have talked about this have noted this. Kenneth Clark talked about this with the Metropolitan Apolied Research Center, MARC, back in 1969 and understanding that organization was taking learnings from Vietnam and counterinsurgency and applying them back during the sixties and then would apply them even more in the seventies and eighties and even to this day.

CO: Well said. You mentioned Haiti, obviously, but I would like to speak more about its geostrategic location and how that relates to militarization in the region, whether it's through U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) bases expanding but also joint military exercises in that area. Particularly if you can speak more about Operation Tradewinds and what does that mean for what seems to be an eventual war with China? 

AC: So geostrategically, Haiti is relatively central within the Caribbean. If you just look at a map - Haiti is just east of Cuba. So when you're thinking about The Caribbean, that is almost directly Southeast of Florida. It is above Venezuela and Colombia. Folks might have seen the Colombian president Gustavo Petro visit Haiti about a month ago or so and pointed out how, you know, the lines for drug trafficking from Colombia to Florida to Miami, and all these areas, passed directly through Haiti. That is a critical drug smuggling route. But it's not just that, it's a critical route in general for any sea-based trade.

And it's actually where in 1492, the island where Columbus landed to begin the genocide and and the colonization of The Americas. So, in that area, the US has actually, in the past, wanted to purchase Mole Saint Nicolas, which is an area in Haiti, like an island just off of Haiti. They've wanted to purchase many other parts of Haiti or wanted to use Tortuga, the island right by Haiti, and that is a place which was a really important place for piracy and shipping during colonial and precolonial times.

 Those sea lanes are not less important than they were back in the 1700s when piracy and these wars were happening. They're still critical. There is a reason Trump, in one of his first announcements, was so strong about the US wanting to retake the Panama Canal.

So, shipping lanes are really critical. And then another aspect of what you mentioned is Operation Tradewinds. Another aspect of this pivot to focus really strongly on SOUTHCOM, which Trump in 2017 started to focus more on SOUTHCOM. And then particularly towards the end of his presidency, really made that an emphasis, and then Biden deepened that even more.

Trump has now come on to build off of what the Biden administration did and the Biden/Blinken State Department. Now the Trump/Rubio State Department is really intensifying its focus on The Americas and on SOUTHCOM. And one of the critical aspects of that is these training exercises.

They do these training exercises like Operation Trade Winds, which many of them are nominally training exercises for environmental disasters. But, obviously, they're all through military agreements.

And all of this is to really merge the military processes of all of the countries of the Caribbean in in terms of Trade Winds, not just the islands of the Caribbean, but all the countries in the Caribbean Sea, as well as other operations that happen throughout Central And South America with the US/EU/NATO axis of domination. They bring in EU countries, NATO countries to come to the Caribbean and to take part in these exercises along with the US military.

And they even bring in the National Guard, especially from the South and all across the US. They train with folks in Costa Rica and Panama and Colombia and Chile and Barbados and all in The Bahamas and all of these countries. And so that is under the guise of “climate change is happening, disasters are happening more frequently, so we need to be prepared.”

But they're also creating this military infrastructure that serves US imperialism and US domination 100%. They are building coordination to be able to do that and to be able to do things like threaten Venezuela with this “border dispute” with Guyana and threaten Nicaragua.

Like they attempted a coup in Nicaragua in 2018 or threatened Cuba and intensified the blockade. And so not only are they sanctioning those countries already economically, not only are they trying to politically subvert them right into causing coups, but they're also encircling them militarily and building more coordination with these various countries. I think it was just in the news recently in Trinidad and Tobago, as well as in Guyana, how close those countries' militaries have become in the last few years with the US military.

This broader push for all the solutions runs through the US military. All the solutions run through the Department of Defense. There is a reason that Laura Richardson, the former General Commander of SOUTHCOM, was the one throughout the Biden administration visiting all of these countries in South and Central America and The Caribbean. Not the diplomats, not Blinken even. Although he visited obviously for certain things, it was Laura Richardson that did tours around the region, meeting with presidents, ministers, and other military leaders. This is happening right now, this militarization of our region, and it's not subtle.

It's really critical in this battle when we think about Haiti, when we think about Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Honduras, countries that are really in the eye of the storm of US imperialism; all of these other things that are happening in the region are a critical part of the US encircling them and putting pressure on them and trying to really lock down complete control of this hemisphere in preparation for, like you said, potential war with China. That's why things like the Special Economic Zone in Honduras when Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama's State Department in 2009 helped perpetuate a coup in Honduras and overthrew Manuel Zelaya (current Hondurand President Xiomara Castro’s husband).

The right wing narco government that came in created agreements with the US and corporations to build these special economic zones to do all of this stuff where the US and these corporate entities could use part of Honduras as more than a free trade zone. It's like an entire land that they own, like a tech park that they could literally build up. Part of that strategy is to build up these areas of the Western Hemisphere to not have to rely on China. That's why it's such a big deal, when Xiomara Castro, the now president of Honduras, said no. That's why Biden said Latin America and The Caribbean are no longer our backyard. It's our front yard. We see Trump is very dedicated to it being the backyard. But it is still the same. It is the yard.

Whether it's physical, a hot war, or a cold war, they are gearing up for it. So we have to understand that it is our role as people in this hemisphere, and particularly as people in the US to defeat imperialism from the inside, to defeat it in this hemisphere, to build a zone of peace, to create a zone of peace, built through popular struggle in our region because that is the only way that we will survive.

CO: Is there anything else you wanna leave the audience with? 

AC: How are we going to organize, to coordinate, to communicate among the progressive, radical, and revolutionary movements and formations around our region to expel those forces of domination from our Americas. We’ll have an orientation webinar thinking about this, but this is something that we are not building only as Black Alliance for Peace or even the Popular Steering Committee for a Zone of Peace in Our Americas. This is something all of the forces that are aligned to do this are building, and that we want to include all of those forces and to build this truly from the bottom up through popular struggle understanding that we have to be coordinated in those actions. To quote Dessalines’ independence speech because this really sums up the goal:

Let us walk down another path. Let us imitate those people who, extending their concern into the future and dreading to leave an example of cowardice for posterity, prefer to be exterminated rather than lose their place as one of the world's free people. 

Let's avenge our Americas. The time is now. We must make our Americas a zone of peace.

The Struggle for a Zone of Peace Continues: US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network Launches

The Struggle for a Zone of Peace Continues: US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network Launches

For Immediate Release     

Media Contact

press@blackallianceforpeace.com

(202) 643-1136

February 21, 2025 - Today, the US/NATO Out of Our Americas Network officially launches, marking a bold and action-oriented next phase in the Zone of Peace campaign. This date, commemorating the assassinations of Malcolm X and Augusto C. Sandino, serves as a powerful reminder of the enduring struggle for sovereignty, self-determination, and liberation from colonialism, imperialism and all nefarious forces that impede peace. The Network is dedicated to building a coordinated, internationalist struggle to expel the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination from the Americas and beyond.

The Zone of Peace campaign has been building and coordinating resistance…

Marco Rubio - Ultrafascist Not Welcome in The Dominican Republic

MARCO RUBIO - ULTRAFASCIST NOT WELCOME IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

A Statement by Community Organizations of the Dominican Republic

On February 6th, 2025, social, political, and community organizations in the Dominican Republic held a press conference and read a statement denouncing the presence of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in their country. Calling for 'U.S. Out of the Dominican Republic'. In addition to rejecting Rubio's presence, the groups call for Dominican President Luis Abinader to stop selling out the Dominican people and their lands to U.S. imperialism. They issued the following call to their fellow Dominicans: 'We call on the Dominican people to remain steadfast in defending their country’s independence, sovereignty and dignity, and to demand the implementation of integrationist policies with our sister countries within CELAC and ALBA-TCP. These alliances promote peace in Latin America and the Caribbean based on respect for each nation’s sovereignty and the well-being of the region's people. We demand that the United States end the arms trafficking that supports the paramilitary groups in the Republic of Haiti, end the destabilization of our neighbor, and respect Haiti’s sovereignty.'

The statement and press conference clips are available on Instagram (@afrodominica). The English translation can be found by clicking the button below:

Banner photo: Representatives of organizations from the Dominican revolutionary left and progressive sectors express their repudiation of visit by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, courtesy Prensa Latina.

Police Repress Protests in Panama!

Movement News - Panama - 2/10:
"Amidst the Trump administration's assertion of claim over the Panama Canal, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio's visit to Panama was met with protests organized by workers' unions and students from Juventude Revolucionarios These protests were held throughout the city in defense of Panamanian sovereignty. The police reacted to this with violence, threats, and attacks on organizers. Organizers in the University Reform Student Association of the University of Panama [Asociación Universitaria Reforma Estudiantil] are asking for attention and support in calling out government repression and U.S. imperialist machinations (English translation below). BAP member organization AfroResistance and several Panamanian organizations have also expressed solidarity with student organizers."

Banner photo: Man holding Panamanian flag with fist other fist high in the air, courtesy Roberto CISNEROS / AFP.

The Black Alliance for Peace Welcomes New Leadership!

New National Coordinators, Austin Cole, Erica Caines, Tunde Osazua, and new Coordinating Committee Chaitperson, Jacqueline Luqman

Dear comrades and supporters,

The Black Alliance for Peace is proud to announce that we are entering a new stage in our struggle to defeat the war on Africans/Black people in the U.S. and abroad!

Beginning on March 1, 2025, BAP will experience a new change in leadership. We are honored to have a new BAP Coordinating Committee Chair, Jacqueline Luqman; Coordinating Committee Vice-Chair, Jaribu Hill; and our new National Co-Coordinators, Erica Caines, Austin Cole, and Tunde Osazua!

Please join us as we congratulate our new BAP leadership!

Jacqueline Luqman – Coordinating Committee Chair

“No compromise, no retreat must be more than just a slogan. It must become a mindset and a guide along with our Mission and Principles of Unity. These will keep us on the path to ultimate victory over imperialist domination and liberation for our people.”

Jaribu Hill – Coordinating Committee Vice Chair

"I am honored to be selected to serve as co-chair of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP). BAP's work as a revolutionary, anti-imperialist formation is exactly what we need to move our struggle for liberation forward. As an elder in this movement, I am inspired by BAP's inter-generational leadership model. I look forward to working with my comrades to advance our work that stands in opposition to all unjust wars and global oppression."

Erica Caines – National Co-Coordinator

“The Pan-European war on Africans can only be combatted through organization against systemic oppression rooted in colonialism, racism, and economic exploitation. We are organizing for Peace, which is not the absence of conflict but rather the achievement—through popular struggle and self-defense—of a world liberated from the interlocking systems of global injustice. True liberation demands collective action and our unwavering resistance.”

Austin Cole – National Co-Coordinator

"With the escalating crisis of U.S.-led imperialist capitalism across the globe, the need for Black radical unity has possibly never been so urgent. Meeting this moment requires not only struggling toward ideological clarity, but also sharpening our individual and collective organizational practices so that we can build real power and fight together more effectively in this generational struggle for Black/African and collective liberation."

Tunde Osazua – National Co-Coordinator

"The anti-colonial Black radical tradition, rooted in resistance, self-determination, and the fight against imperialism, is a guide for our liberation struggle. Reviving this tradition means rejecting reformist illusions, organizing for power, and forging unity among African people across the planet to defeat the systems that oppress us. Our future depends on it."

We are excited by these changes and the future of the Black Alliance for Peace.

“This marks an incredible moment in the continuation of the formation and the commitment to intergenerational revolutionary leadership.” (Ajamu Baraka, Founder and Coordinating Committee Chair)

The Coordinating Committee would like to acknowledge brother Ajamu Baraka for his many years of service to African people, the working class, and all colonized people, and his leadership in this revolutionary organization. That work will continue as Ajamu will continue as a member of the Coordinating Committee as the Director of The North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights.

Some members of the BAP Coordinating Committee and professional Meeting Facilitator, Janvieve Williams

The Lobito Corridor: US imperialism's latest plot against the Democratic Republic of Congo

The Lobito Corridor: US imperialism's latest plot against the Democratic Republic of Congo

“…The latest imperialist scheme against the DRC is the Lobito Corridor also known as the Lobito Atlantic Railway. This railway was originally built between 1902 and 1929 by the colonial governments of Belgium and Portugal to transport copper and cobalt stolen from the DRC and Zambia towards Europe. In September 2023, at the G20 summit in New Delhi, India, the U.S. government and the European Union signed an agreement to revive this old colonial railway linking the DRC to Zambia and the port of Lobito in Angola, to export critical minerals to Europe via the Atlantic Ocean.”

International Organizations Condemn the Ecuadorian Government in the Guayaquil Four Case

La traducción al español está más abajo

International Organizations Condemn the Ecuadorian Government in the Guayaquil Four Case

Justice and Reparations for Steven, Josué, Ismael, and Nehemías“…We are like the straw on the moor that is pulled out and grows back.” Dolores Cacuango

The Solidarity Roundtable for the Guayaquil 4 (MSL4 GYE), is a space created by the National Ecuadorian Afro-descendant Movement (MANE), the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH), the Pueblo Negro organization, the Center for Rural Promotion (CPR), the Association of Popular Artists, and countless civil associations, community organizations, and individuals are the signatories of this international complaint.
The MSL4 GYE denounces before an international audience the arbitrary detention and then the subsequent extrajudicial execution of the 4 children from Malvinas, Guayaquil, on December 8, 2024.

The MSL4 GYE demands from the Ecuadorian State, before international opinion, total transparency in the handling of the case and of the 16 detained military personnel as the material authors of the detention and subsequent execution of the four children from Malvinas, Guayaquil, Ecuador - Steven, Josué, Ismael and Nehemías.

The MSL4 GYE demands justice, transparency, and a speedy trial that is being carried out, and demands that the intellectual authors of the detention and subsequent extrajudicial death of the four children from Malvinas, Guayaquil, Ecuador - Steven, Josué, Ismael and Nehemías be identified.

The signatories of this document fully support what is expressed, and adhere with their signature to this international denunciation and to the Manifesto for the four children of the Malvinas, Guayaquil, Ecuador.

[See those signed on below]

———————————————- En español ———————————————-

Organizaciones Internacionales Denuncian el Gobierno Ecuatoriano en el Caso de los Cuatro de Guayaquil

“Justicia y reparación para Steven, Josué, Ismael, y Nehemías.”

“… Somos como la paja del páramo que se arranca y vuelve a crecer.”  Dolores Cacuango.

 La Mesa de Solidaridad por los 4 de Guayaquil (MSL4 GYE), es un espacio creado por el Movimiento Afrodescendiente Nacional Ecuatoriano (MANE), el Comité Permanente por la Defensa de los Derechos Humanos (CDH), la organización Pueblo Negro, El Centro de Promoción Rural (CPR),  la Asociación de Artistas Populares, y un sinnúmero de asociaciones civiles, organizaciones comunitarias, y personas naturales son los firmantes de esta denuncia internacional.

La MSL4 GYE denuncia ante la opinión internacional la detención arbitraria y luego la posterior ejecución extrajudicial de los 4 niños de las Malvinas, Guayaquil, el 8 de diciembre del 2024.

La MSL4 GYE exige al Estado Ecuatoriano, ante la opinión internacional, total transparencia en el manejo del caso y de los 16 militares detenidos como los autores materiales de la detención y posterior ejecución de los cuatro niños de la Malvinas, Guayaquil, Ecuador, Steven, Josue, Ismael y Nehemias.

La MSL4 GYE demanda justicia, transparencia, y celeridad, en el juicio que se está llevando a cabo, y exige que se identifique a los autores intelectuales de la detención y posterior muerte extrajudicial de los de los cuatro niños de la Malvinas, Guayaquil, Ecuador, Steven, Josue, Ismael y Nehemias.

Los firmantes de este documento están en total apoyo de lo expresado, y se adhieren con su firma a esta denuncia internacional y al Manifiesto por los cuatro niños de las Malvinas, Guayaquil, Ecuador.  

Firmado | Signed on

Black Alliance for Peace / La Alianza Negra por La Paz

Diáspora Pa’lante Collective - Puerto Rico, EEUU

Movimiento Evita - Argentina

AfroResistance - Panama, EEUU

Red de Organizaciones AfroVenezolana - Venezuela

Caribbean Movement for Peace and Integration - Barbados, Caribe

Assembly of Caribbean Peoples - Trinidad & Tobago, Caribbean

Oilfields Workers Trade Union - Trinidad & Tobago

Kallpawan - EEUU, Perú

Observatorio de Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos - México, regional

Acción Afro-Dominicana - Dominican Republic, regional

Red Barrial Afrodescendiente - Cuba

Alliance for Global Justice

Organization for Caribbean Empowerment

World Beyond War/Un Mundo Más Allá de la Guerra - regional

Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN) - Colombia

Coordinadora Política de Mujeres Cotopaxi - Ecuador

Frente de Migrantes Organizados de la Republica de Argentina - Argentina

Mujeres Luminosa de Napo - Ecuador

SOS Violencia Loja - Ecuador

Red de Guardianes del Patrimonio Cultural y Natural de Manabí - Ecuador

Asamblea de los Pueblos - Argentina, regional

Federación de Estudiantes Secundarios del Ecuador - Ecuador

Fundación Rehabilitación Desde El Corazón - Ecuador

Comuna Rio Santiago Cayapas - Ecuador

Colectivo Entretejidas - Ecuador

Fundación Servicios Integrados para el Desarrollo SIDE - Ecuador

Asociación Madre Sabia - Ecuador

Esmeraldas Libre - Ecuador

Fundación Semillas hacia el Futuro - Ecuador

grupo cultural ORISHA la bomba - Ecuador

Equipo Docentes, Capitulo Ecuador - Ecuador

Junta Patriótica del Ecuador - Ecuador

La Cubeta Batucada Feminista - Ecuador

Fundación Chapil - Ecuador

Centro de Documentación en Derechos Humanos "Segundo Montes Mozo S.J." (CSMM) - Ecuador

Nina sonkoy musica andina - Argentina

Comuna Ancestral Afrodescendientes e Indígena de Tapiapamba  - Ecuador

Colectivo Mujeres de Asfalto  - Ecuador

Observatorio Ciudadano de Servicios Públicos - Ecuador

Red Nacional de Feministas por kos derechos Humanos, Ecuador - Ecuador

Asociación de Artistas de la Economía Popular y Solidaria - Ecuador

Fundación Educativa Ecuador Sisakuna - Ecuador

Tejido Violeta Galápagos  - Ecuador

Acción Antiprohibicionista Ecuador  - Ecuador

Batuka Candelabras Galápagos  - Ecuador

La María Verde - Ecuador

Coordinadora Política de Mujeres Ecuatorianas de Chimborazo - Ecuador

FUNTUVRISA Ecuador F.Talentos Unidos por la Vida y la Familia RISA - Ecuador

Transformar Argentina - Argentina

Maestros por la Revolución - Ecuador

Movimiento de Mujeres de El Oro - Ecuador

Hood Conmunist Blog - United States

Asamblea Nacional Ciudadana-Guayas-Ecuador - Ecuador

ANC Santa Elena - Ecuador

Red de Maestros y Maestras por la Revolución Educativa  - Ecuador

Fundación Ali Primera por la Patria Buena - Venezuela

Bolivarianos Alfaristas de la RC5 - Ecuador

Frente de Defensa Petrolero Ecuatoriano - Ecuador

Partido Comunista del Ecuador - Ecuador

Instituto Cultural Nuestra América - Ecuador

Centro de Promoción Rural  - Ecuador

Unión Nacional de Periodistas Núcleo del Guayas  - Ecuador

Observatorio Sociolaboral y del Diálogo Social en el Ecuador OSLADE  - Ecuador

Foro del agua Santa Elena - Ecuador

La Esquina de la Resistencia - Ecuador

Arte Por La Vida - Ecuador

Casa de la Abuela Jaguar - Ecuador

Comité Proparroquialización de Monte Sinahí  - Ecuador

Colectiva de Mujeres Tejedora Manabita  - Ecuador

Mujeres Luna Creciente Ecuador - Ecuador

Fundación e-comunicar - Ecuador

Consejo Consultivo de Diversidades Sexo-genéricas del DMQ - Ecuador

Mesa Autónoma Representativa MAR LGBTIQ sede Quito DM  - Ecuador

Revolución Cultural - Ecuador

Centro Cultural Café Galeria Barricaña - Ecuador

Colectivo de Unidad Democrática  - Ecuador

Fundación Derecho al Buen Vivir - Ecuador

Danza Zoomorfa Ancestral - Ecuador

Colectivo Cultural la Vereda - Ecuador

Consejo Nacional de Derechos Humanos y de la Naturaleza del Ecuador - Ecuador

Colectiva de Antropólogas del Ecuador  - Ecuador

MUCT - Ecuador

Colectiva de Antropólogas del Ecuador - Ecuador

Confederación Comarca Afro ecuatoriana del Norte de Esmeraldas - Ecuador

Fundación Semillas hacia el Futuro (ORISHA)

Firmantes individuales

Marjorie Lopez Merchan - Ecuador

Marco Vargas - Ecuador

Gloria Zabala - Ecuador

Piedad Ortiz - Ecuador

Dr. Cinthia M. Campos-Hernandez - EEUU

Luis Vicente Pachacama Guallichico - Ecuador

Dolores Bolaños - Ecuador

Isabel Iturralde - Ecuador

Janneth Moreano - Ecuador

Byron Joel Castillo Tenorio  - Ecuador

Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations Reaffirm Sovereignty with President Nicolás Maduro

Statement from the Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations (ROA)

Reaffirming Our Sovereignty with President Nicolás Maduro

Today, January 10, 2025, President Nicolás Maduro Moros is sworn in as the leader of all Venezuelans.

We denounce the climate of tension deliberately created by racist, Zionist, and fascist elements within the national and international opposition. These forces, acting against the will of the Venezuelan people, have sought to destabilize our nation since July 28, 2024, when President Maduro was democratically reelected in accordance with the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. His victory was legally reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Justice, the same institution tasked with resolving electoral disputes in Venezuela and elsewhere, as recently demonstrated in Mexico.

Since its founding in June 2000, the Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations (ROA) has stood in steadfast support of the Bolivarian Process initiated by Commander Hugo Chávez Frías and continued by President Maduro. We remain unwavering in our commitment to defending Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Today, we confront the geopolitical ambitions of American imperialism, its complicit governments in Latin America and the Caribbean, and certain sectors of Europe. These entities seek to seize our nation’s resources and undermine the most sacred principles of any nation: sovereignty and dignity.

Our Call to Action:

We urge the Afro-Venezuelan people and our sister organizations to resist any attempt to delegitimize our sovereignty. At the same time, we encourage active participation in the Constitutional Reform process, as announced by President Maduro. This reform aims to ensure the inclusion of Afro-descendants for reparative justice, a historic step toward recognizing and addressing centuries of oppression.

We also raise awareness about Zionism, which we identify as a form of 21st-century colonialism, and call for vigilance against its influence.

Our Commitment:

ROA will continue its work across the regions of Caracas, Miranda, Yaracuy, Carabobo, Sucre, Vargas, Zulia, Guárico, Falcón, and Aragua, while maintaining strong ties with Afro-descendant organizations across Latin America and the Caribbean, including in the Dominican Republic, Curaçao, Colombia, the United States, Bolivia, Ecuador, Haiti, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Cuba.

Together, we stand firm in defense of our sovereignty, justice, and dignity.

ROA - Network of Afro-Venezuelan Organizations

Articulation of Afro-descendants of Latin America and the Caribbean

El Chorrillo: Living memory and Black resistance 35 Years after the U.S. invasion

The Author, Argelis Wesley, Circa 1989

El Chorrillo: Living memory and Black resistance 35 Years after the U.S. invasion

“December 20, 1989, is a date I will never forget. It was a Tuesday, an ordinary day, until something in the air warned me that the calm was about to shatter. After an appointment with the dentist, I noticed birds flying erratically, making strange noises. I wondered, Why are they so restless? What are they foretelling…?”

Banner photo: Black and white photo of White male soldier frisking a Black man with a line of more Black people fo follow him. (Courtesy afroresistance.org)

Western Powers Have Exposed Human Rights and International Human Rights as a Sham

Western Powers Have Exposed Human Rights and International Human Rights as a Sham

What is Needed is a new framework – a Non-Western, People(s)-Centered Human Rights Framework

For Immediate Release

Media Contact
press@blackallianceforpeace.com
(202) 643-1136

December 10, designated as International Human Rights Day has become a hackney, disingenuous ritual in which the United States and European imperialist powers, the main violators of human rights globally over the last five hundred years, speciously proclaim their commitment to human rights and what they define as “freedom” while simultaneously and continuously subverting democracy, starving, torturing, burning, raping, and imprisoning human beings around the world.

Baraka Obama referred to the United States as an “exceptional nation,” and it is. Exceptional as the nation responsible for engendering more egregious human suffering than any other nation or empire in human history. Yet, leaders of the United States, in their psychotic delusions, believe that the brutal history of U.S. conquest, slavery, subversion, wars, and racist violence visited on its own citizens, and countless peoples world-wide, somehow would not be noticed. But it was noticed, because U.S. policies have harmed so many around the world. So, with quiet bemusement around the world people would listen to the surreal declarations by U.S. politicians on their unwavering commitment to human rights and something they called democracy – until the genocide in Gaza, which lifted the veil and changed everything.

The images of Israeli atrocities, in what could only be honestly described as a savage rampage against humanity, has been justified by U.S. lawmakers with the most execrable, racist language that generated nods of agreement from their vile, racist allies in the government and across all institutions of “America,” finally stripped away any semblance of respectability for the white West, while also revealing the moral bankruptcy and hypocrisy that has always been at the core of its civilizational project.

At that moment of degenerate moral convergence, the Western human rights project expired. In its place, quietly but with a fierce determination to transcend the limitations and contradictions of the false universalization of Western human rights, activists and revolutionaries grounded in the Black radical tradition were producing an alternative approach to human rights. A decolonized, and therefore, relevant human rights framework for individuals, collectives, peoples and nations able to envision and work toward a new humanity guided by the highest ethical standards and principles.

“…liberated from the liberal, individual, legalistic, and state-centered apparatus that emerged at the conclusion of World War II as a ‘Western’ human rights regime that became, and continues to be, a conservative weapon for enforcing the geopolitical interests of Western imperialism… rejecting the ideological mystification of a neutral and objective human rights framework, the Project, through educational activities, building transnational cooperative structures and supporting popular struggles, will link oppressed communities, classes and peoples from the Global North and South that are moving toward developing movements committed to national and global anti-capitalist, de-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles for social justice, ecological sustainability, national liberation and authentic self-determination.” (taken from the mission of North-South Project)

The institutional and political systemization of this approach is the mission of BAP’s North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights.

“For those of us fighting from the margins for a new social reality in the U.S. and globally, we declare without apology that it is only through the radical transformation of society based on an alternative set of ethics and social relationships that the full potential of the human rights idea can be realized. For us, the fight for human rights is a life and death struggle with the future of our communities and peoples at stake. It is a fight that we have no other choice but to wage and to win, knowing that we are on the right side of history and in reciprocal solidarity among people around the world who understand that human rights and dignity are not granted but lived.”
(Ajamu Baraka, Project Director)

Therefore, unlike the phony proclamations of the fidelity to human rights led by the nations of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination, let this December 10 th be the day that the people reclaim the idea of human rights and refashion this idea into a theoretical weapon that completes a new dialectic of revolutionary human rights praxis, for the people and centered by the people.

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African Stream coverage of the Africans In Solidarity With Sahel Revolutions At Niger Conference

During 19-21 November, Pan-Africanists, anti-imperialists, and friends of the Alliance of Sahel States (AES) flocked to Niamey, Niger, for the Conference in Solidarity with the Peoples of the Sahel.

The AES is a revolutionary confederation consisting of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, West African countries that have made enormous strides toward ending neo-colonialism in recent years since their people-backed military coups d’état.

The conference, organized by the West Africa Peoples Organization, Pan-Africanism Today and Nigerien civil society organizations, marks a turning point for global solidarity with Africa’s new self-determining bloc. Delegates representing political and workers’ organizations came from Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela, the US, India, China and other countries.

From day one, African Stream was on the ground in Niamey to interview Nigerien locals, those involved in organizing the event and foreign delegates. In this video, we hear from people after the event’s opening ceremony.

PART 1 from African Stream

PART 2 from African Stream

DROP THE CHARGES AGAINST UHURU!

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns the Federal Indictments of the Uhuru 3 and Denial of their Fundamental Human Rights to Speech, Association, Information and Political Dissent

 Tampa, Florida — The process of jury selection on September 3rd, 2024, will mark the beginning of the federal trial of Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP); Penny Hess, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC); and Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM), together known as the Uhuru 3.

The Uhuru 3 were indicted by the U.S. government in April 2023 on the absurd charges of being “agents of a foreign government.” — charges very similar to the indictment of W.E.B. Dubois, the internationally known Black scholar and human rights defender. Dubois was eighty-one at the time of his indictment as a supposed agent of the Soviet Union for his anti-nuclear and pro-peace advocacy. Omali Yeshitela is similarly eighty-one with an international standing as a human rights and anti-imperialist fighter for more than 60 years. The African Peoples’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement that he helped to found have been organizing and advocating for African people and colonized peoples for over 50 years. 

Ajamu Baraka, Chair of the Black Alliance for Peace’s (BAP) Coordinating Committee who will be an official observer of the trial states that: 

“It is only in the imagination of white supremacists that African people would need smart white people from Russia to guide our people and movement to oppose the U.S./EU/NATO proxy war against Russia and analyze and comment on all aspects of U.S. foreign policy. Internationalism has always been a core principle of our movement from the Garvey Movement and anti-fascist struggles of Africans in America and in Spain in the form of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades, as well as the International Friends of Ethiopia that opposed the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, to our support for the liberation movements in Cuba, Haiti, Africa, Central America, and Vietnam. 

Omali Yeshitela is an outstanding product and an example of that tradition, which, among many other reasons, is why BAP gives its inexorable support to chairman Yeshitela, as well as to Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, who embody the highest example of revolutionary solidarity with African people. Hess and Nevel have stood with us, and we intend to stand with them against the criminal repression that the Uhuru 3 are targets of.”

BAP recognizes that the ridiculous charges leveled at the Uhuru 3 represent a shot across the bow of the radical Black movement. The U.S. understands that if it is successful in containing Black opposition to the increasingly aggressive militarism abroad and repression within the borders of the U.S., the broader movement in the U.S. will be more easily controlled.

BAP and our movement will not be intimated. We recognize that the complete abandonment of constitutional and human rights by the U.S. and other Western states represents an irreversible crisis of legitimacy. We will continue to stand in support of the right to resist as a core human right.