The Enemy Has Not Changed. We Will Not Be Deterred

The Enemy Has Not Changed. We Will Not Be Deterred

The Enemy Has Not Changed. We Will Not Be Deterred

“No compromise. No Retreat” is more than a statement — it is a mandate. One we do not take lightly as we clarify and sharpen the contradictions of this colonial empire, irrespective of who occupies the seat within the White Man’s House. The recent presidential election and the electoral frenzy that preceded it, put on full display the shameless opportunism within our communities and the extensive propaganda employed by state actors to keep the masses caged within a system that tosses them between two hands of the same imperialist body.

The re-election of Donald Trump is seen as the ushering in of fascism. However, we know fascism will not suddenly emerge from the shadows in January 2025. Some may call the Democrats an “opposition party,” but many of us live, work, and organize in areas under Democratic leadership. We know all too well that this battle has been ongoing. 

In our latest statement, “The Face of the White People's House May Have Changed but the War on the Oppressed Working Class Hasn't” we asserted:

"We are clear. The anti-democratic duopoly is made up of representatives of the capitalist class and provides cover for what is, in reality, the dictatorship of capital. In this, the duopoly reveals the class nature of the state. This dictatorship, the true enemy of the people, is the target of our agitation and organizing."

We are experiencing increasing repression at the hands of this so-called “opposition”. Now is the time to rid ourselves of any doubts or misconceptions about the reality of this system. 

"Under Biden-Harris, we saw police, judicial, and media suppression of mobilizations in solidarity with the Palestinian people, the student intifada, the Uhuru 3, African Stream media, and many others. And it is no coincidence that so-called “cop cities” are being constructed across the country in those urban areas being managed by Black democrat party functionaries or, what Black Agenda Report refers to as the “Black Misleadership Class...”

As we close out the year and prepare ourselves for what is to come in 2025, we must keep our focus on the true enemy. Our task is to reveal the face of that enemy to the masses and organize a force against it – to continue to resist the pan-European, white supremacist, imperialist, patriarchy without fear. And we will. That is what we commit ourselves to every time we say,

No compromise. No retreat!

 
 

BAP Midwest hosted a Political Educational Teach-In event about Westwin Elements, a metal refinery plant being built in Lawton, Oklahoma. America's first refinery. They talked to the people of Lawton about how it affects them with environmental pollution, risks of diseases working in the plant, lies about job opportunities, the potential of climate disasters/explosion risks, and how it negatively affects the people of Congo with exploitation & the extraction of cobalt. See images here. See footage here.

On Saturday, Oct 19, BAP NYC NJ hosted a teach-in at the Conversation Room in Harlem, NYC for the Month of Action against AFRICOM. It served as an introduction to AFRICOM, its purpose, history, and its impact on the African continent as well as the domestic implications of its existence. It was well attended by other African and Anti-Imperialist organizations in the NYC area.

On September 6th, 2024, BAP-DC tabled and presented alongside members of the A-APRP DMV area to an auditorium of students at Howard University’s Radical Org Fair. The event was hosted by HU Revolutionary Community, a coalition of radical student groups and organizations seeking to reestablish the revolutionary potential and traditions of campus organizing into local neighborhoods and broader surrounding communities and alliances. Political propaganda, reading materials, sign-up forms, and fellowship were conducted throughout.



BAP NYC/NJ in collaboration with AMEDStudies and Teaching Palestine had a film screening on Nov 2nd of "Battle of Algiers" in White Plains NY as part of their "At the Root" film series. The objective of the film series is to explore the core contradictions that link colonized and oppressed people globally. Many stated that rewatching offered a new clarity towards contextualizing the current Palestinian liberation struggle. Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi gave a presentation on the importance of carcerality to the settler colonial project of Israel and the role of women and children in the Palestinian struggle.

On November 15th, 2024, BAP Member organization Pan-African Community Action paneled alongside comrades of Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Black Lives Matter DC at the Muslim Counterpublic Lab for a session titled, “Solidarity in the Face of State Violence & Empire”. Participants discussed the continued challenges and required commitments in organizing against repression regardless of what political party resides within the White House. Connections were made highlighting domestic and international surveillance tactics, political prisoners of war, anti-imperialist efforts, and united fronts such as the Alliance of Sahel States and the Axis of Resistance.


On October 12, BAP members as part of The Coalition for the Elimination of Imperialism in Africa, hosted a webinar called Challenge of the Congo: Impaerialism, Genocide, and the Struggle for Pan-Africanism. We featured guest speaker, Maurice Odingo, the general secretary of the revolutionary Pan-Africanist organization, Comité de Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The webinar's goal was to develop and share more clarity regarding the African revolutionary struggle in general and the liberation of Congo in particular. Watch here



On October 24th, BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team coordinated coalitions of activists in solidarity with the Haitian people under the banner of the campaign “Solidaridad Haitiana-Dominicana” to go to several consulates of the Dominican Republic situated in Boston, the Bronx, Puerto Rico, Colombia, and Jamaica to deliver a letter addressed to Dominican president Luis Abinader Corona, demanding him and his government to immediately stop the inhumane mass deportations of Haitians from the country. That night in the Bronx saw a large number of people come together on 149th Street in solidarity with the Haitian people and against these inhumane mass deportations being carried out by the Dominican government. More here

 
 

Margaret Kimerley published her post-election column in Black Agenda Report, "How Trump Won and What Black People Should Do". She also participated in an International Manifesto Group webinar, which took place two days before Election Day: Trump vs Harris - US Citizens Denied Choice for Peace, People or Planet.

Austin Cole wrote on the internal (neo)colonization of Black/African peoples in the U.S., how it creates conditions of war against our people, and the implications in urban planning and economic development. This is part of an ongoing series on Black/African Liberation and constructing grassroots economies: Black/African Liberation & Grassroots Economies pt. II: Situating  ‘economy’ and ourselves in the struggle from the internal (neo)colony.

Julian Kunnie published an article in the Cape Times on November 2, "How the West Continues to Shape Global Politics"  on the West's imperialist onslaught worldwide.

Africa is Rising. Are we Ready to Answer the Call to Rise with Them?

Africa is Rising. Are we Ready to Answer the Call to Rise with Them?

Mass protests in Kenya and Nigeria. The expulsion of France from numerous Sahel states. The withdrawal of French troops from Burkina Faso. Niger demands French troops and AFRICOM vacate the country. 

For all the attention paid to social movements in the US, mass protests and even government resistance to colonial domination throughout Africa are on the rise. The people are rising up against the International Monetary Fund and the corrupt puppet governments that play their games and governments are demanding an end to the colonial relationship the US and NATO exercise over African states. Is this the start of the second wave of the decolonization of Africa?

It is in this context that the Black Alliance for Peace enters our annual International Month of Action Against AFRICOM in October 2024. Through social media posts, essays, webinars and actions, organizations across the globe unite in a struggle against AFRICOM in a month of targeted political education and political action. We are supporting the rising call from inside Africa for a liberated and self-determined continent free from colonial domination.

It was no coincidence that the decolonization movement in Africa occurred simultaneously with the Black Power movement in the US. Likewise, today, it is no coincidence that social movements are growing simultaneously in Africa, throughout the Americas and inside the belly of the beast. African liberation is a virus for which there is no vaccine, and we are all catching the yearning to be free.

As you engage in your own local and national campaigns, make the additional effort to examine social movements in Africa and throughout the Americas. Identify similarities and differences. The sooner we understand that this is one global movement for liberation, the sooner we will be free.

 
 

On Sunday, August 25th, 2024, BAP Midwest hosted a Black August virtual teach-in, “Black August & Political Prisoners in the Midwest.” They discussed the history of Black August and the ongoing and historical struggles to free political prisoners/POWs, particularly in the Midwest.

On Saturday, August 24, BAP-DC held a town hall at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ to discuss the importance of solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles and invited comrades from Diaspora Pa'lante Collective, Friends of the Congo, Nodutdol, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and BAP-Baltimore to participate. To connect these struggles against U.S. Imperialism guests spoke to specific movements they are organizing around such as the anti-colonial struggle in Puerto Rico, the U.S. out of South Korea and reunification with the DPRK, the ongoing genocides in Palestine and the Congo and the neocolonial invasion of Haiti.

On Saturday, August 24, BAP-DC held a town hall at Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ to discuss the importance of solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles and invited comrades from Diaspora Pa'lante Collective, Friends of the Congo, Nodutdol, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and BAP-Baltimore to participate. To connect these struggles against U.S. Imperialism guests spoke to specific movements they are organizing around such as the anti-colonial struggle in Puerto Rico, the U.S. out of South Korea and reunification with the DPRK, the ongoing genocides in Palestine and the Congo and the neocolonial invasion of Haiti.

For the first weekend of Black August, BAP NYC/NJ held the Comrade Cookout at Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem — co-organized alongside Black Men Build NYC, The People's Senate (Spirit of Mandela), and Why Accountability. The event was held to commemorate our elders and revolutionaries who fought for our liberation. People received literature and wrote letters to political prisoners. They were encouraged to donate to BLA elder Dhrouba Bin Wahad’s GoFundMe. Although it rained briefly, spirits were high and attendants were engaged in deep conversation about our commitment toward collective liberation.

On Saturday, August 24, the Hands Off Haiti NYC Coalition presented State Violence from NYC to Haiti – a critical Black August teach-in that drew connections between the struggles faced by communities in New York City and the ongoing crisis in Haiti. The presentation was given by Kerbie from the ANSWER Coalition, Danou from Ransembleman, and Clau and Dwayne from BAP NYC/NJ. The event had 50 people in attendance, many of whom asked about ways to get further involved by the end. Special thanks to the December 12th Movement for allowing us to use their space, and to Health Stellium for bringing air purifiers and masks.

On Saturday, August 17th, BAP DC joined member organization Pan-African Community Action, as well as the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement in co-organizing the district's first-ever Curbfest for Political Prisoners. The commemoration drew over 100 neighbors in the Southeast DC area, as well as over a dozen organizations providing political propaganda, capoeira training, political prisoner writing, as well as free plates of food and a distribution of over 100 books and materials including contributions from movement writers Derecka Purnell and Orisanmi Burton. Additional photos from local photographer Brandon Forester can be found here: bit.ly/curbfestphotos

Comrade Djibo Sobukwe presented at the No to NATO Yes to Peace counter Summit Report back webinar on 8/28/24. Sponsored by the Canada–Wide Peace and Justice Network. SEE REPORT HERE

The last BAP Baltimore town hall of quarter 3, titled “Flip the Script,” covered a collective discussion on the underdevelopment of African and impoverished people in Baltimore being sustained by the city’s investment in policing, prisons and, crime and punishment policies despite knowing the city faces low wages and a tight labor market.


BAP Baltimore kicked off Black August with George Jackson University and an engagement of almost 30 attendees on political and politicized prisoners, the criminalization of Maryland’s youth, and the conditions that heighten incarceration in our communities for BAP Baltimore Summer School Series 2024.

On the final day of the DNC, BAP comrades in the Midwest took to the streets 11k strong, to denounce the genocidal agenda of the democratic party

As a part of a participatory democracy project with @apdhub for the past few months, BAP Chicago has been fostering connections through our Intergenerational Community Meetings. These gatherings bring together seniors and millennials to tackle local issues and build stronger bonds working towards political power. The group has chosen a project to rebuild communal practices! We’re excited to announce a new Political Education Series focused on solidarity, unity, and community organizing through BAP’s People-centered Human Rights Framework.

BAP Baltimore collaborated with Black Men Build for a discussion with up to 40 attendees dissecting the deep-seated ties between systemic patriarchy and imperialism, exploring how these forces perpetuate violence against women, non-binary individuals, and marginalized genders.

On Saturday, August 31st, BAP NYC/NJ, Westchester for Palestine, and the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) Studies, closed out Black August by holding a film screening and discussion of "George Jackson: Releasing the Dragon (a video mixtape)" by Dr. Jared A. Ball as part of our "At the Root Film Series”. We drew connections to the Palestinian liberation struggle by discussing the poem, "Enemy of the Sun," authored by Palestinian resistance poet and political prisoner, Samih al Qasim, which was found in George Jackson’s cell and mistakenly attributed to him. Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi and comrade Imani helped guide an intimate conversation on the two revolutionaries.

BAP Baltimore ended the summer school series alongside B.L.A.C.K Underground. Over 50 attendees discussed the colonial origins of HBCUs (Historically Black Colonizing Units) and the direct ties HBCUs maintain with the arms industry and collaborate with government agencies and military commands fueling global violence and oppression.

 
 

Nicholas Richard-Thompson was interviewed during the Democratic National Convention mass demonstrations by Press TV. Mass protests greet the Democratic Party's coronation of Kamala Harris.
 
Too Black published "Unburdened by Palestine: Shedding Black Liberalism for anti-imperialism” in Mondoweiss. “(Black) Liberals are demanding that Black people in the U.S. put aside our long tradition of anti-imperialism to support Kamala Harris and sacrifice Palestine in the process.”
 
Clau O'Brien Moscoso and Austin Cole, two of the Haiti/Americas Team Co-Coordinators, appeared as guests on Radio Resistencia, a podcast run by Juventud Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Youth) in Panama in their 6th episode: "Haiti en Crisis: Imperialismo". They discussed the crisis of imperialism in Haiti, how Haiti functions as a laboratory for imperialist exploitation and neocolonial oppression, the importance of solidarity across the hemisphere, and how BAP aims to support collective liberation by building a Zone of Peace in Our Americas. The conversation was held in Spanish. Listen on Spotify. Watch on YouTube.

Banner photo: Thousands rallied in Niger to demand France withdraw its troops, courtesy AFP

NATO Imperialist Insistence Will Continue to be Met with Global South Resistance

NATO Imperialist Insistence Will Continue to be Met with Global South Resistance

NATO Imperialist Insistence Will Continue to be Met with Global South Resistance

This July, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) held its annual summit in Washington, DC, where they celebrated themselves for continuing to exist for 75 years, despite the growing opposition around the world to Western hegemony that the US, EU, and their military gang of thugs NATO carry out.

Even after months of massive and consistent protests against the genocide in Gaza, it seems inconceivable that NATO would still gather to plan the next phase in maintaining Western imperialist hegemony over the world, but this is logical and necessary for their purposes because imperialism cannot continue to rule the world without the military might of the Western powers to enforce it.

The Mask is Off: The Hideous Connections Between Zionism, Colonialism, Capitalism and Genocide

The Mask is Off: The Hideous Connections Between Zionism, Colonialism, Capitalism and Genocide

The Mask is Off: The Hideous Connections Between Zionism, Colonialism, Capitalism and Genocide

 

In April, students across the US empire rose up with campus-based encampments designed to bring attention to the genocide against Palestine and demand that their universities divest from economies engaged in active genocidal campaigns. It came as little surprise to anyone who has ever read a history book that US universities chose to stand by the Zionist genocide machine and instead attack their own students.
 
Despite a well-documented live-streamed genocide, as late as December 2023 publicly calling for a cease-fire was too politically risky for many grassroots organizations. Mass demonstrations and agitation changed that calculation, and today a growing list of organizations have joined the call.
 
To be clear, BAP’s position has not changed one iota since our founding in 2017: end the colonial domination of Palestine by Zionists and liberate a free and independent Palestine. We don’t only want a cease-fire, we want a liberated Palestine.
 
But other organizations have evolved more on the issue of Palestine in the past few months than in their entire lifetime. What happened?
 
BAP has consistently asserted that as people rise up against the deepening crisis of capitalism, the veneer of Western civilization and enlightenment will fall, revealing the naked aggression and violence inherent in capitalism, imperialism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. The horror of the colonial Zionist campaign of genocide is that reveal.
 
This reveal of colonial violence is forcing people to rethink the propaganda they have internalized. But the revelation of facts is not the same as drawing correct conclusions.
 
For the entire duration of human existence, the sun has risen from the East and fallen in the West. Yet, only in the last 3,000 or so years, and only in the last 500 years for most Europeans, did large numbers of people recognize that the Earth rotated as it orbited the sun. The facts were the same, but the conclusions differed.
 
As the masses of African people examine with new eyes the relationship between Zionists and Palestine, what will we conclude? Will we fall for the ploy to scapegoat Benjamin Netanyahu for all of Israel’s crimes and then fall back to complacency after he is removed from office? Or will we make the connection between Israel and colonialism, colonialism and capitalism, and capitalism and genocide?
 
BAP was built for this moment. Since 2017, we have been preaching the very ideas that most people you know will not conclude for another 6 months or a year. And YOU will help them reach those conclusions. But reaching that conclusion is not forgone. The enemy is also fighting the war of ideas and is intent on spreading mass confusion.
 
BAP has been deeply engaged in the campus protests, providing strategic and tactical guidance. But most importantly, we are providing analysis. We are building a vision of the future that will end imperialism and usher in a world of peace. BAP was built for this moment, and we need you now, more than ever.

 
 

Haiti/Americas Team Co-Coordinator, Austin Cole also with MIT Scientists Against Genocide Encampment at MIT Austin Cole with Scientists Against Genocide Encampment at MIT is participating in the campus encampment. In addition to organizing for MIT’s divestment from Israel, he has been raising the connections between Haiti and Palestine.

BAP DC & Baltimore supported George Washington University (GWU) students' SJP/PYM encampment for Palestine. Students deployed the encampment at around 6 am, and BAP came out late morning and watched the crowd grow. The day was also BAP Haiti/Americas Team's Haiti Day of Action, so BAP DC's Jacquie Luqman raised Haiti in her speech to the students and Rafiki Morris filled the students' hearts with courage with his words. They stayed until we felt the students were safe from a pig incursion, well into the night. The kids are alright!

BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA), based in Washington DC also supported the encampment for Palestine at GWU by turning out on the initial day, delivering supplies, and responding to invitations from SJP/PYM to give teach-ins. The first was on May 2nd about the housing crisis in DC led by Garrett Harris and another on the following day, May 3rd about the DC Crime Bill led by Bree Hemphill and Garrett.

In March, Black Alliance for Peace NYC/NJ in collaboration with Westchester for Palestine and many other Westchester organizations, held a teach-in entitled "At the Root of it All: Legacies of Colonization from Mount Vernon to Palestine". Speakers included: BAP Philly member Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture, John Kane, and Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi. The event highlighted the historical and modern linkages between Palestinian, African/Black, and Indigenous American peoples.

In April, BAP NYC/NJ collaborated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation for a joint disruption at the National Action Network 2024 Conference during a speech by Hakeem Jeffries. BAP member Ewan Johnson courageously stood and called out the hypocrisy of the Black misleadership and their complicity in the imperialist interventions in Haiti. BAP BYC/NJ followed up this event by answering the call for Days of Action to support Haiti. They brought together a coalition of organizations to put together a Hands off Haiti Town Hall and Art Build for community members to engage with organizers and activists and a Hands off Haiti Community Speak Out to publicly raise the issue of the impending occupation and illegitimate transitional council.

As of April 13th, Justice Unity & Social Transformation (JUST) celebrated its 100th “community serve.” Every other Saturday they provide free hot food, clothes, and hygiene products to community members located on the Westside of Columbus, OH. They show up regardless of the weather. Collectively, they continue to resist oppressive and exploitative systems by building systems of care that put the people first.

Member Justin Liang with the Pittsburgh Black Worker Center conducted a banner drop on Bigelow Blvd, Pittsburgh PA. as a part of the call for actions in support of Haiti on the 4th Thursday of the month. The banner exclaimed, “Free Haiti from the Core Group”. It remained up for the better part of the day and the images were shared through social media as well.

On April 13th, 2024, BAP So-Cal member Gloria Verdieu and Ky (BAP Mid-Atlantic) tabled and presented at the 18th Annual Association of Raza Educators (ARE) Conference at the Logan Memorial Educational Campus in San Diego, California. Over 200 educators and organizers received propaganda literature, political education, and training materials, including from a BAP member’s workshop titled: Embodying Resistance - Confronting Contradictions in the Classroom and Community. The themes for 2024 were “Regeneración con la voz del pueblo- Revitalizing power and resistance”.

A reflection from Ky on participating in ARE San Diego’s International Working Women’s Day and Study Group events in March was featured in their recent newsletter publication, Maestr@s En La Lucha (Teachers in the Struggle), which was distributed throughout the event.

Black Alliance For Peace Baltimore Citywide Alliance and Africa Team hosted the event, “Why the Congo Matters: The Centrality of Congo to African Liberation” as part of their programming for African Liberation Month. Where they sat in conversation with Friends of The Congo Red Emma’s in Baltimore, MD. The event was packed with attendees looking to learn more about the importance of Congo and its liberation from imperialist forces.

Margaret Kimberly on the BAP Coordinating Committee participated in a Friends of Socialist China delegation hosted by the China NGO Network for International Exchanges and traveled to Beijing and other cities in China. See her report here

The Black Alliance for Peace, along with dozens of other organizations, attended the United Antiwar Coalition 2024 Conference from April 5-7. The theme of this year’s conference was “Unity in Action”. Some topics of discussion were the Palestinian resistance, No to NATO, opposition to U.S. aggression against China, and attacks on migrants. Coordinating Committee Chair, Ajamu Baraka, delivered the opening remarks and Coordinating Committee Treasurer, Margaret Kimberley closed out the conference. Read more here.

 
 

Chris Bernadel of the Haiti/Americas Team was interviewed on CounterSpin about the roots of the crisis in Haiti. Chris emphasized that the crisis in Haiti is not one of gangs but of imperialism and complicity by the Haitian oligarchs. In the interview, they discussed the history of imperialism on the island and the ongoing interventions that manufacture the conditions that are used as an excuse to deny Haitians their sovereignty.
 
Ewan Johnson of BAP NYC/NJ was interviewed for the April 23rd episode of Voices With Vision about a BAP/PSL disruption of a Hakeem Jeffries speech at the National Action Network 2024 Conference and the response they received from Al Sharpton. The segment covered the topics of black misleadership and the connections between Haiti and Africans in the United States.
 
BAP Africa Team Co-Coordinator Netfa Freeman has been writing about imperialist soft power in Africa. Recently he exposed the U.S. machinations on the continent with his articles “U.S. Imperialism Raising Its Ugly Arrogance Again in Zimbabwe” about which he was interviewed on KPFA radio’s Flashpoints and “Is U.S. Imperialism Maneuvering Toward ‘Humanitarian Intervention’ in Burkina Faso?” which was also picked up in NewsGhana. This article precipitated an interview on Inside the Issues with Wilmer Leon on Sirius XM 126 Urban View.
 
Member and Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of Missouri, Dr. Willie Mack published the article, "Black History Month: A Tradition Built Through Resistance" for People's World.
 
Bryan K. Bullock and his coalition of activists in EJ Disruption have been awarded a fellowship to address environmental racism in the state of Indiana.
 

 
 

BAP sees Gaza as another aspect of the war being waged on colonized people by the U.S. and we reject notions that juxtapose the struggle for a liberated Congo against the struggle for a free Palestine. BAP Africa Team and U.S. Out of Africa Network are calling for an African Liberation Month as a build-up toward African Liberation Day commemorations across the world on May 25th.

Wednesday, May 22: Commemorate, celebrate, and support African Liberation Day (ALD) with, Black Alliance for Peace-DC and member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) at African Liberation Day DC Teach-in about how the struggles of Africans on the continent are connected to that of Africans (Black people) in the U.S. | Time: 6:00 PM – 7:30 PM | Location: Sankofa Video Books & Cafe 2714 Georgia Ave, NW Washington, DC

Friday, May 24:  BAP member organization, the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) will hold the International ALD Webinar, “Same Struggle: Smash Settler-Colonialism in Zionist Israel, Africa, the Americas, and Oceania!” | Time: 12:00 PM EST, 9 AM PST, 4 PM UTC, 7 PM Nairobi | REGISTER HERE

Saturday, May 25: A-APRP’s official African Liberation Day, a historical institution that has been commemorated in Baltimore, Maryland for over 40 years. The theme for ALD 2024 is "SAME STRUGGLE: Smash Settler-Colonialism in Occupied Palestine, Africa, The Americas, and Oceania!" | Time: 12:00 PM – 6:00 PM | Location: Lafayette Square Park 600 North Carey Street, Baltimore, MD.

Saturday, May 25: BAP Atlanta is holding Atlanta African Liberation Day with performances, speakers, and discussions that highlight African struggles on the continent, throughout the diaspora, and right here in Atlanta | Time: 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM | Location: CT Martin Recreation & Aquatic Center, Auditorium 1, 3201 M.L.K. Jr Dr SW, Atlanta, GA | REGISTER HERE

Saturday, May 25: Join Black Lives Matter Boston to celebrate African Liberation Day. It will include a screening of the documentary "The Sun Rises in the East" and a community gathering with food distribution and engaging conversations with fellow community members | Time: 12:30 PM – 3:30 PM | Location: Urban Edge 1544 Columbus Ave, Roxbury, MA | REGISTER HERE!

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Austin, Erica, Jacqueline, Jaribu, Jemima, Margaret, Matt, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Rafiki, and Yasmin
Coordinating Committee

P.S. Freedom isn’t free. Consider giving today.  

From the Rivers to the Seas of the world, the Peoples’ of this Planet Must be Liberated from U.S. and European Domination If we are to Survive

From the Rivers to the Seas of the world, the Peoples’ of this Planet Must be Liberated from U.S. and European Domination If we are to Survive

From the Rivers to the Seas of the world, the Peoples’ of this Planet Must be Liberated from U.S. and European Domination If we are to Survive

Gaza dramatically stripped away the murderous hypocrisy and deadly intransigence of U.S. and Western imperialism’s commitment to maintaining global hegemony by “any means necessary,” including using the weapon of genocide. For the Black Alliance for Peace, we have not been surprised by the barbarism of the U.S. and Israeli settler states. In fact, everything that has transpired since our founding in 2017 was predicted, including the jettisoning of all pretense to any commitment to so-called liberal values by the  White West as it pursued its military-first strategies. We were not confused because we have consistently grounded our analysis and political work in our best understanding of the objective material realities that we are forced to operate in. We have rejected as irrelevant any analysis based on the psychology of any individual from Biden to Trump or Netanyahu. For BAP, the analysis of objective class and social forces is the only element that guides our social and political practices.

That is why we were ready when the South African state filed its case against the Israeli apartheid state at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). We understood that the Genocide Convention was going to be invoked and that it would provide another significant weapon for further exposing the true nature of the Western colonial project in general and in Palestine specifically. 

When the case was filed at the ICJ, BAP was instrumental in launching a new coalition, the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Gaza. BAP has always been clear that persuading the criminals running the various Western states to change their minds is a naive strategy. Instead, taking advantage of the inevitable mistakes of the oppressors to build alternative People(s)-Centered power must always be the real objective. Therefore, we understood that the South African legal challenge could help facilitate the development of the real material force – the organized global peoples – the only force that could compel the Israeli fascists to end the colonial oppression of the Palestinian people.  

It is this understanding of the challenges that the historical moment presents that has informed our work, from our opposition to the invasion of Haiti to organizing against the intensifying efforts to militarize the domestic police forces occupying our communities in the U.S., imposing and preparing themselves for even more draconian control over the population- cop-cities! The crazed response to the declining power of the U.S. and the West is to engage in the politics of death with their commitment to violence operationalized through the U.S. and its military-first policies from Atlanta to Ukraine. We must be prepared for this intensifying war on the people. 

The campaign to establish the Americas as a Zone of Peace that BAP launched last April 4th is another example of the formation recognizing the inherent vulnerabilities of the oppressor when it has to rely on the naked power of militarism and other illegal measures. The peoples of our region are prepared to eject the U.S. state from our region politically and physically in the form of closing the 76 U.S. bases in our region.

BAP is clear. From the streets of Atlanta and Baltimore to Haiti and Palestine, there can be no peace without justice and justice is an impossibility while subjected to racist colonial/capitalist domination.  This is a central ethical principle of our work.

In the pages below you will see all of the creative work that our membership is involved in as we continue to build the independent structures and people(s)-centered institutions necessary for survival, but also for eventual victory over the antipeople forces represented by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination.

With the People(s)-Centered Human Rights Framework and Black Radical Peace Tradition as our guide, we say:    

“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.”

This is our task and responsibility. Join us, support our work, donate your resources, your time and your physical presence.

 
 

On January 11th, Black Alliance for Peace Atlanta Citywide Alliance (BAP-Atlanta) hosted a teach-in alongside Demilitarize Atlanta 2 Palestine examining the institutions, systems, and technologies entangling Atlanta with Palestine. We explored Deadly Exchange programs like GILEE. We connected the dots between Cop City and Little Gaza, the Urban Warfare Training Center in Occupied Palestine. And we discussed the shared landscape of surveillance domination via structures like Atlanta’s Operation Shield and Connect Atlanta that share disturbing similarities to the Command and Control Center and surveillance technologies in Occupied Palestine. 

On Saturday, January 20th, at the Little Five Points Community Center the BAP-Atlanta and BAP member organization Friends of the Congo were joined by more than 80 community members for “Lumumba Lives: From the Congo to Atlanta,” which included a film screening, remarks from Friends of the Congo board member, Dr. Samory Livingston, and a reading of Lumumba’s “Parting Letter to Wife Pauline.” BAP member Leila uplifted the legacy and historical connections of Patrice Lumumba’s assassination to ancestor Amilcar Cabral who was assassinated 51 years ago on January 20, 1973. Attendees were later organized into small groups to discuss external interests in Lumumba’s assassination, self-determination, our role in the U.S., the neo-colonial city of Atlanta, and more. BAP-Atlanta was joined by community organizations that tabled and shared resources including Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and Access Reproductive Care-Southeast.

On January 28th, BAP-Atlanta co-hosted a Palestine Solidarity Rollout Skate Event alongside Demilitarize Atlanta 2 Palestine. Over one hundred flooded the Atlanta beltline with our chants and flags and signs, united in our calls for a ceasefire and for a free Palestine. Together we learned, we read, we joined new movement groups, and we reaffirmed our commitment to Palestinian liberation. 

On February 12th, BAP-Atlanta member Yasmin Forbes spoke on a panel at Oglethorpe University titled "All Our Struggles Are Connected." Hosted by the Radical Petrels of Oglethorpe University, the panel discussed the interconnectedness between the global movement to free Palestine and the national movement to Stop Cop City. 

On Saturday, February 17th, BAP-Atlanta co-hosted a teach-in in support of the International Campaign to Free Kamau Sadiki and MXGM's Black Love in Action Week of Action. Baba Kamau Sadiki is a devout Muslim, a loving father of two daughters and grandfather of five, and a veteran of the Black Panther Party. We discussed his plight and other political prisoners and incarcerated elders who suffer from medical neglect and elder abuse. 

On Tuesday, February 27th, BAP-Atlanta co-sponsored a vigil in honor of Aaron Bushnell and calling for end to U.S. military support for genocide in Gaza. Aaron was a 25 year old active duty member of the US military who self-immolated outside the zionist embassy in Washington D.C. in protest of the United States' ongoing complicity in the genocide on Gaza. Palestinian Youth Movement, Demilitarize Atlanta to Palestine, Atlanta Radical Art helped organize the action.

On Friday, March 8th, BAP-Atlanta co-sponsored a discussion of Black Scare / Red Scare between the book's author, BAP member Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly, and Community Movement Builders founder Kamau Franklin. 

On March 21st at 4PM at the Auburn Avenue Research Library, BAP-Atlanta will co-host a town hall with Georgia State University students to discuss the prioritization of militarism through the funding of the GILEE program and support of the genocide in Gaza over student needs. GSU Dissenters, the Sankofa Society, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and GSU Students for Justice in Palestine are collaborating with BAP-Atlanta on this event.

BAP Coordinating Committee Vice Chair Erica Caines, BAP-ATL core member Musa Springer, and BAP-Midwest member Too Black alongside King Trill participated in the “Revolutionary Pan-Africanism and the Anti-Imperialist Struggle” panel at the Indianapolis Liberation Center in Indiana on February 24.

BAP Baltimore citywide alliance coordinator, Erica Caines spoke with BAP Research and Political Education Team Member Charisse Burden-Stelly at Red Emma’s Bookstore in Baltimore about their latest book on radical explications of the ways anti-Black racial oppression has infused the U.S. government's anti-Communist repression titled "Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States."

BAP- Baltimore Dispelling The Myths of Baltimore Housing and Blockchain January 30, 2024 

This discussion featured insights from Zoey Howell- Brown of BAP- Baltimore and Roger Evans of Ujima People’s Progress Party of Maryland. Attendees engaged in a ‘blockchain’ activity, a breakout session on the reality of housing in Baltimore City, discussed the necessity of tenants unions and more over a meal, and were gifted ‘The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power’ by Dr Jared Ball in partnership with Liberation Through Reading and NoMü NoMü.

BAP- Baltimore x Maryland Council Of Elders Townhall 2024 Session #1: Black Power and Palestine with All African People's Revolutionary Party and Palestinian Youth Movement: DMV chapter on February 17, 2024 

Up to 70 attendees broke bread and engaged in a shared desire for unity, freedom, dignity, self-determination, and the importance of smashing Zionism from Baltimore to Palestine.

BAP- Baltimore x BAP Haiti/ Americas Team Hybrid movie screening of “Aristide and The Endless Revolution.” Up to 20 people attended online, while upward of 40 attended in person to watch the documentary and discuss what’s currently happening in Haiti followed by discussions with BAP Haiti/Americas co-coordinator Austin Cole and BAP member organization, MOLEGHAF. 

BAP- Baltimore Citywide Alliance members have supported and spoken at actions, marches and rallies in defense of Yemen, the Rafah, Palestinian resistance, Haiti and international working women’s day. Members participated in the Artists Against Apartheid Art Show at NoMü NoMü for the month of October. 

In March, BAP DC responded to the call made by the International Coalition to Stop Genocide in Palestine, which was co-founded by the Black Alliance for Peace, to fast at the beginning of Ramadan in solidarity with the people being starved in Gaza, and donate the amount the food would have cost to the South Africa-based C150 Palestinian Relief Fund.

In February, BAP DC also supported the first day of several Days of Action for Haiti called by BAP's Haiti/Americas Team in March with a social media campaign circulating the latest information about the planned invasion of Haiti on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. On the fourth Thursday of each month through May we will schedule another action!

In February BAP Mid-Atlantic, All-African People's Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) & PAIGC 2023 demonstrated outside of the African Union Mission in Washington, DC, demanding the president of Guinea Bissau open the People's National Assembly and allow the people's elected representatives - the PAI Terra Ranka Coalition - to be able to get to work with the agenda of the people.

Comrades of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement DC also turned out and one member spoke in support of PAIGC referencing Amilcar Cabral.

On February 8th, BAP NYC/NJ members Claudia Moscoso and Imani Lawrence took part in a meeting between Carlos Ron, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, and members of various movements and organizations to discuss the recent developments in Venezuela. The discussion at The People’s Forum covered the destabilization attempts by the United States such as Washington’s backing of the right-wing candidate, Maria Corina Machado, and the territorial dispute over the Essiquibo, highlighting Exxon’s role in the situation.

BAP’s Margaret Kimberley spoke at the February 20th NYC Free Assange protest at the UK Consulate in New York City, organized by NYC Free Assange, Assange Defense, Stand With Assange NY, Assange Countdown to Freedom, CODEPINK, Socialist Action, that marked the beginning of journalist Julian Assange’s two-day hearing in the UK High Court in London.

[Photo by Pamela Drew]

As part of their 6-month campaign to challenge Washington DC’s draconian police state policies, BAP member organization, Pan-African Community Action (PACA), turned out to help “pack” City Council proceedings that passed the so-called “Secure DC Omnibus Crime Bill”, bringing the radical message of self-determination and community control. They distributed palm cards that promoted their analysis, “DC’s 2024 Crime Bill Is More War on the Black Working Class”

 
 

A January 30th article of Baltimore Beat mentions BAP’s participation in its coverage of an Annapolis MD rally opposing zionist state genocide of Palestinian people and quotes BAP member, Erica Caines.

In February, BAP members engaged in actions and demonstrations in support of the resistance in Palestine and against the ongoing genocide. These actions gained the attention of outlets such as Worker’s World, BNN, NBC Philadelphia, and Patch. The statement from the U.S. Out of Africa Network, “Black Alliance for Peace’s U.S. Out of Africa Network Deplores Plans to Expand U.S. Drone Atrocities in West Africa” garnered mentions from InDepthNews and international notice in AFRICA24.IT, which discussed U.S. military expansion in Africa and the infringement on the sovereignty of African nations.

Two days in a row BAP’s Jemima Pierre, Co-Coordinator of the Haiti-Americas Team, was a guest on the March 11th and March 12th episodes of Democracy Now! Jemima was also interviewed for this episode of The Nation’s American Prestige podcast about foreign intervention in Haiti and quoted in this March 20th Common Dreams article. 

On February 30th, BAP Coordinating Committee member and Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report (BAR), Margaret Kimberley discussed the worldwide protests in support of Palestine on the Presstv network and was a guest on the Al Mayadeen network on December 20, 2023 discussing how the word “anti-semitism” is used to discredit critics of Israel's actions in Gaza. As Host of BAR’s Black Agenda Radio, Margaret interviewed All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) central committee member, member of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea Bissau (PAIGC), and fellow BAP Coordinating Committee member, Rafiki Morris about the struggle to open the Peoples National Assembly in Guinea-Bissau. Margaret was also 

BAP Baltimore's Rafiki Morris (also of the AAPRP) was also a guest on the February 16 episode of “Darker Than Blue” discussing the turmoil in the West African Federation countries (Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso), and Guinea Bissau. 

Comrades Tunde Osazua and Musa Springer of BAP-Atlanta published “A Materialist Guide to Media Literacy” in Hood Communist which was later picked up by Monthly Review and BAP-Atlanta member Salome Ayuak was the “U.S. Out of Africa: Voices from the Struggle” interviewee in AFRICOM Watch Bulletin #50. 

A Hood Communist delegation attended and presented at The Second International Meeting of Theoretical Publications of Left Parties and Movements in Havana, Cuba. Hood Communist Editors, BAP members, and delegates to the meeting in Cuba, Erica Caines and Onyesonwu Chatoyer did a report back interview on WPFW program and podcast Voices With Vision. 

On International Working Women’s Day, BAP DC's Jacquie Luqman talks to BAP Baltimore comrade Erica Ryan and AAPRP comrade Onyesonwu Chatoyer about the women who influenced them in their work on the weekly show “Darker Than Blue” on WPFW 89.3 hosted by Jacqueline and Sean Blackmon. In the second hour, Jacquie has a convo with the editors of Hood Communist - Erica Ryan, Onyesonwu Chatoyer, D. Musa Springer, and Salifu Mack about their recent trip to Cuba, strategies for combating propaganda, the usefulness of Afropessimism, and more!

Jacquie was a guest on the CGTN show The Heat in January talking very disinterestedly about Trump, Biden, and Black voters before the New Hampshire primary. 

BAP-Baltimore’s Jameela Alexander and Sister Sheena were guests on the March 19th episode of “Voices With Vision,” - hosted by Craig Hall and BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman - warning about the Maryland House of Delegates’ House Bill 814, legislation that expands the carceral state to lock up more of our children and at younger ages and highlighting the BAP-Baltimore and Ujima People's Progress Party joint statement on the matter.

 
 

March 30: Join Westchester for Palestine and Black Alliance for Peace New York chapter for the hybrid teach-in “At The Root of It All: Legacies of Colonization From Mount Vernon to Palestine” that will walk attendees through the historical and modern linkages between Palestinian, Indigenous American, and African/Black peoples. Mount Vernon Public Library, 28 South 1st Ave, Mt Vernon, NY 10550 or for online, register here.

March 27: The topic of BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA)’s next Assata Shakur Study Group is “The Women of The Eritrean Women’s Liberation Front” from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Participate in-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. or for online, register here.

May 1 - 31: Mark your calendars for “African Liberation Month,” an initiative of the BAP Africa Team and U.S. Out of Africa Network, as a contribution to strengthening African Liberation Day (ALD) and to build for a strong International Month of Action Against AFRICOM in October 2024. 

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,

Ajamu, Austin, Erica, Jacqueline, Jaribu, Jemima, Margaret, Matt, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Rafiki, and Yasmin

Coordinating Committee


P.S. Freedom isn’t free.Consider giving today.

Banner photo: Ethiopian migrants waiting to cross over to Saudi Arabia in the town of Haradh, Yemen (courtesy Khaled Abdullah/Reuters).

2023 and The Showdown between Colonized and Colonizer

2023 and The Showdown between Colonized and Colonizer

2023 and The Showdown between Colonized and Colonizer

In 2023 the U.S. colonial capitalist order stepped up its war against collective humanity. Despite the attempts by the U.S.-Israeli settler regimes to confuse and intimidate the masses into accepting war crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people, people around the world have registered their outrage through sustained protests for a Free Palestine. In their maniacal support for the zionist terrorist entity, the imperialist U.S. is also stirring up what will likely be a regional war involving Yemen, Lebanon, Iran, and Iraq. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to finance its proxy war in Ukraine.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) says that for the colonized residing in the bowels of the U.S. capitalist settler state and its Western European counterparts, we must recognize that our populations are an extension of the Global South and become more resolute in consolidating our alignment with the masses there. The domestically colonized in the U.S. still face state violence, poverty, constant surveillance, incarceration, and extrajudicial killings by the police, armed agents of the state whose power is being enhanced by plans for Cop Cities across the country. Black workers struggle to organize for their human rights against racist systems and the predation of Amazon and other corporations. Accordingly, the people, especially Black people, must build the structures needed to fight and defeat the warmongering U.S. colonial/capitalist setter state.

While the imperialist powers are notorious for waging wars that kill and cause widespread destruction, they rarely win.

BAP spent 2023 fighting back against the western enemies of humanity. Through protests, teach-ins, interviews, articles, and sociopolitical events, BAP members and member organizations highlighted the connections between western imperialist interests and policies in Niger, Haiti, and Cop Cities in the U.S. In battling western imperialism and its propaganda, BAP member organizations have also supported the people's centered movement for democracy that has gained momentum in Guinea Bissau. This movement is exposing the hypocrisy of compradors in Africa who claim to care about democracy in Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso. The African Party of Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), which is spearheading this movement, is on the Steering Committee of BAP's U.S. Out of Africa Network.

2024 must be a year of intensifying the class struggle. The western-supported ongoing settler colonial genocide of Palestinians, the NATO proxy Ukraine-Russia War, and the upcoming U.S. presidential election - all are opportunities to expose and take advantage of the contradictions of western white supremacist imperialism.

BAP will continue to mobilize wherever there is agitation against imperialism and capitalist structures, whether in Haiti or Atlanta or Palestine or Guinea-Bissau. As a counter to the Black misleader legislators espousing unconditional support for the zionist entity and the snake oil Pan-Africanists who peddle notions that the Palestinian struggle has nothing to do with Black/African liberation, or that a Kenya-led Blackface U.S.-sponsored invasion and occupation of Haiti is a form of “Pan-Africanism,” BAP has produced a cutting edge webpage of Black radical Resources on Palestine that dispels the falsities of these forces, while continuing to update its Haiti/Americas page.

With the coalition to counter impunity that BAP helped to establish at the very end of the year in response to the historic filing by South Africa in the International Court of Justice a case against the state of Israel for the crime of genocide, 2024 promises to be a year in which BAP’s work to link the international and the domestic will probably invite more scrutiny from the national security state. But organizationally, we are prepared. BAP has embraced our historic task to revive the “Black radical tradition” and will not let any obstacle divert us from successfully realizing that objective.

Where others might wither under the pressure and look for ways to accommodate the demands of the colonial state, betray our people by remaining silent in the face of oppression, BAP boldly proclaims that we will intensify our opposition. Because when it comes to serving our people and advancing the revolutionary project - there will be No Compromise and No Retreat!


BAP IN THE STREETS

On October 1, BAP kicked off the 2023 Month of Action Against AFRICOM with the webinar “From Niger to Haiti to Cop City, Defeat The War Against African People,” which was the theme for the month. The BAP Atlanta Citywide Alliance dropped a banner that read “U.S. Out of Africa Shutdown AFRICOM” over I-75 South near southwest Atlanta. On October 9, BAP Atlanta screened “Walter Rodney: What They Don't Want You to Know” followed by a discussion on how Rodney’s life relates to our current struggles, including the fight to Shut Down AFRICOM and Stop Cop City. 

BAP Baltimore on October 13, along with Archive Liberia, hosted a screening of “The Land Beneath Our Feet” which included a presentation from Erica Caines on AFRICOM. On October 21, BAP Baltimore partnered with member organization Maryland Council of Elders on the town hall “AFRICOM, Cop City, and You” which connected AFRICOM as the flip side of the domestic war and occupation being waged via Cop City by the same repressive state structures against African/Black and poor people in Baltimore. On October 26, BAP Baltimore partnered with student group Anti-Imperialist Action: UMBC (AIA) on a teach-in focusing on how the university is directly implicated in AFRICOM, which included a discussion on the Black Misleadership Class, the current situation in the Sahel, and Cop City. 

BAP DC & Mid-Atlantic hosted a virtual teach-in on November 5 focusing on the connections between the struggle to Shut Down AFRICOM in Africa with liberation struggles against U.S. militarism and repression in African communities in the U.S. and among Palestinians. 

BAP NYC joined KOMOKODA in protest at Kenya’s UN consulate in New York City on October 6 after the United Nations approved a new occupation of Haiti with Kenya playing the lead in Black face imperialism. Clau O’Brien Moscoso, JP Sloan, and Margaret Kimberley participated. 



In October, the BAP Haiti/Americas Team called for an Emergency Day of Action for Haitian Sovereignty on October 12th. On this day, BAP DC led, and BAP Mid-Atlantic members participated in a rally at the Kenyan Embassy in DC and marched to the Jamaican Embassy.


The team also organized a Diplomatic Day of Action Against Intervention and In Solidarity with the People of Haiti on December 4th. BAP DC coordinated a mobilization to deliver letters and informational packets to the embassies of 16 countries involved in the MSS at their embassies in Washington DC.

BAP participated in the Free Palestine Rally on November 4, the largest pro-Palestine protest in U.S. history with 300,000 people marching. A BAP-Philly member spoke on behalf of BAP. 

On the same day and also in DC, BAP also participated in the 15th Annual Black People’s March on the White House organized by the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. 

On November 9, BAP-Atlanta joined activists from Atlanta Jews Against Genocide, The Ruckus Society, Blackout Collective, Movement 4 Black Lives and Community Movement Builders to disrupt the GILEE headquarters, spreading the names of the tens of thousands Palestinians killed by the zionist occupiers over the past month and held a press conference by the sign for the GILEE office.

On November 10, BAP-Atlanta co-hosted “Stop Cop City and Free Palestine: Teach-In and Movement Building” with Palestinian Youth Movement and Community Movement Builders. The event kicked off with a discussion of the current reality in Gaza, historical context, settler colonialism, Deadly Exchange programs, GILEE, and Cop City. It was followed by breakouts in which there were discussions around the role of students in the movement, propaganda, anti-doxxing, and direct action, as well as a break out room dedicated to creating art.

On November 11, BAP-Atlanta members joined Palestine Action-US, the Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and Atlanta residents at City Hall to demand a complete end to the occupation, end to the GILEE program, end to Cop City, and an end to the zionist state.

On November 12, BAP-Atlanta hosted a screening and discussion of “COINTELPRO 101” with special guests Jihad Abdulmumit and Masai Eheosi of the Jericho Movement and Black Liberation Army.

In November, BAP Coordinating Committee member and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley traveled to Cairo, Egypt, where Black Agenda Report and the Black Alliance for Peace were among the organizations invited to participate in an effort to bring attention and help to the people of Gaza. The 20-person delegation planned to travel in an aid convoy to Rafah, a city on the border of Gaza. 


On December 16, community members in West Baltimore joined BAP Baltimore Citywide Alliance and the Maryland Council of Elders at the Douglas Memorial Community Church to discuss the Democratic Party and the Black Misleadership Class. We discussed the role this class of Africans play in the lives of African workers. Petros Bein and Sister Sheena of BAP organization member, Ujima People’s Progress Party, discussed the broader and local manifestation of the Black Misleadership Class. Chawki Irvin of BAP organization member, All African People’s Revolutionary Party and Friends of Latin America talked about the legacy of revolutionaries combating this class of Africans and centered the importance of organization. 

BAP members participated in the Southern Human Rights Organizers Conference (SHROC) in Nashville during the weekend of December 15- 17. In the photo are BAP members with Chris Smalls, leader of Amazon Union.

PRESS AND MEDIA

On the December 12th episode of “Voices With Vision” Imani Umoja of the PAIGC (African Party of Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), BAP member organization All-African People's Revolutionary Party, and the steering committee of BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network, gave an update from Guinea-Bissau on the political situation there and explains why it is important to the African continent and to the diaspora. The interview starts at 25:12 into the show. Imani also appeared on Remix Morning Show at 1:06:13 into the show, and on Black Agenda Radio.

On the January 2nd episode of “Voices With Vision,” - a great first show of 2024 hosted by Craig Hall and BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman - they speak with Libyan PhD student at the University of Illinois, labor organizer with the graduate workers union, and member of the Global Pan-African Movement, Essam Elkorghli about how the education of Palestinian youth is under constant criticism for “promoting violence” against the Zionist settler state, while the entire structure of Israel – including its education system - is oriented to generate an environment of violence against Palestinians. They also take a different look at how the colonization of Africa has superimposed gender social constructs in an interview with Pan-African Community Action (PACA) organizers Bree Hemphill and Oliver Robinson, who go into the takeaways from a two-part PACA Assata Shakur Study Group session that discussed “The Invention of Women,” a book by Oyeronke Oyewumi.

Netfa was one of several guests on Chicago's "Keep Hope Alive: Rev Jesse Jackson Show” hosted by Santita Jackson to talk about the liberation struggle in Palestine and the genocide being carried out by the Israeli and U.S. settler states on October 29  and November 19.

The Activist News Network hosted, on November 10, 2023, the Dar Al Janub webinar with Dhoruba Bin-Wahad, Kambale Musavuli & Netfa Freeman to discuss the geopolitics of Al-Aqsa Flood & Solidarity with Gaza. Netfa was on Black Policy Lab discussing the Congo on December 6. 

The Real News Network published Haiti/Americas Team Co-Coordinator Jemima Pierre’s article Haiti as Empire’s Laboratory. Jemima was also interviewed on the December 14th episode of The Critical Hour, starting at the 1:11:56 mark, about the U.S. trials of suspects of the assassination of Haitian president, Jovenel Moise; and explains, on the Maisha Kazini Channel, how the global dynamics of race distorts Black people’s understanding of ourselves worldwide and why Kenya and some Caribbean countries agree to send police to Haiti as part of an imperial occupation project. Millennials Are Killing Capitalism talks with Jemima about the UN Security Council approved so-called "intervention" in Haiti and how it relates to the struggle of Palestinians.

BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team member, Peter James Hudson wrote on Walter Rodney in Los Angeles in the essay "History, Method, and Myth: Walter Rodney and the Geographies of Black Radicalism" that appears in a special issue of the journal Small Axe dedicated to the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Walter Rodney's How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley was a guest on a November 30th excerpt of Revolutionary Blackout Network to discuss U.S. support of Israel and on December 14th’s episode of the Sabby Sabs Podcast to discuss Congo and other foreign policy issues and in Black Agenda Report, Margaret wrote about how “Black Agenda Report Joins in Gaza Relief Effort.” 

BAP Coordinating Committee Vice Chair and Co-Coordinator of the BAP Haiti/ Americas Team, Erica Caines joined BAP Mid-Atlantic region and A-APRP member, Dr. Jared Ball, alongside authors Dr. Todd Steven Burroughs and Dr. Orisanmi Burton for a discussion on the Star Wars series Andor, colonialism, resistance and Dr. Burton’s book, "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt."

Erica and BAP Coordinating Committee Chairperson Ajamu Baraka, came together on The Critical Hour to discuss the U.S. government's machinations in South America, including stirring up tensions between Venezuela and Guyana. Hood Communist Blog transcribed Erica’s discussion during the Rights of Indigenous and Afro-Descendant Peoples Session #1/4: International Solidarity webinar, connecting the Zone of Peace Campaign to the domestic fight for community control. Austin Cole, also a BAP Haiti/ Americas Team Co-Coordinator and Erica connect the colonial histories and current occupations of Haiti and Palestine.

Also in Hood Communist Blog BAP Haiti/Americas Team member Krys Cerisier connects Panama, Congo and Palestine through extractivist imperialism and Petros Bein, a member of Ujima Peoples Progress Party and BAP-Baltimore writes about Montgomery County's decision to side with Zionists over the people. 

In Struggle La Lucha, BAP member and organizer for the San Diego Coalition to Free Mumia and All Political Prisoners, Gloria Verdieu writes about “Mobilizing to Free Mumia and all Political Prisoners” on the 44th anniversary of Mumia's unlawful arrest and how “Criminalizing homelessness solves nothing – Socialist planning could end the crisis,” focusing on San Diego which has recently become the most expensive city in the U.S. to live in. BAP's John Parker also wrote a report back from his recent trip to Egypt, as part of an international delegation of activists who traveled to Egypt for the Global Conscience Convoy initiated by the Egyptian Syndicate of Journalists, a grassroots effort to deliver humanitarian aid to Gaza. John and 3 others were detained for 37 hours by Egyptian authorities.

BAP regional Coordinators Nick Thompson and Tunde Osazua appeared on the podcast Revolutionary Left Radio to discuss the life and legacy of Kwame Nkrumah. 

Musa Springer participated in a panel discussion about the role of artists against imperialism and apartheid that took place on November 29, 2023 in Atlanta, GA and was co-hosted by the Black Alliance for Peace-Atlanta.

Salome Ayuak contributed to this timeline of Black Palestinian Solidarity. The purpose of the timeline is to visually organize the rich history of solidarity among and between Black Palestinian, African, Non-Black Palestinians and Black-Arab solidarity around Palestine. The timeline is part of a project, West End 2 West Bank, which is meant to remind everyone in Atlanta (and across the world) that we all have a role to play in destroying settler colonialism. 

EVENTS

January 10: the topic of BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA)’s next Assata Shakur Study Group is “Remembering Alonzo Smith” from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Participate in-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. or for online, register here.

January 17: PACA’s Assata Shakur Study Group will be “The Radical MLK Jr.” from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Participate in-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. or for online, register here.

January 20: Join BAP-Atlanta and BAP member organization Friends of the Congo for  “Lumumba Lives: From the Congo to Atlanta,” an event to celebrate the life and legacy of Patrice Lumumba, a prominent figure in the struggle for independence in the Congo, 3 - 6pm EST at Little Five Points Center for Arts and Community, 1083 Austin Avenue Northeast, Atlanta, GA. More info here. 

January 15: The Pittsburgh Black Socialist Study Group (PBSG), a project of the Pittsburgh Black Worker Center, is hosting the hybrid event U.S. Out of Africa: #shutdownAFRICOM for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, 6pm EST at 3401 Milwaukee Street, Pittsburgh PA. Get more info and register.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,

Ajamu, Austin, Dedan, Erica, Jacqueline, Jaribu, Jemima, Margaret, Matt, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Rafiki, Tunde, and Yasmin

Coordinating Committee

P.S. Freedom isn’t free. Consider giving today.

Banner Photo: Young people celebrate PAI victory - Terra Ranka in Bissau (courtesy dw.com, Alison Cabral/DW)

From Niger to Haiti to Cop City, Defeat the War Against African People

From Niger to Haiti to Cop City, Defeat the War Against African People

From Niger to Haiti to Cop City, Defeat the War Against African People.

In the desperate bid for the U.S.-EU-NATO Axis of Domination to hold onto the unipolar world, the war on Africans globally intensifies. This reactionary legacy of Western colonialism is proving itself impenetrable to the fruitless reformist strategies of liberals. As the world is literally and figuratively engulfed by fire or drowning by floods, the most clear headed paths forward come from the radical Black left. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is consistent in doing our part.

This month, the Haiti/Americas Team of BAP has been leading a call to action on Haiti to counter the Biden administration’s call for the UN to send a military force to intervene in Haiti with Kenya volunteering to serve as the Black face of white supremacy in a perverse claim to “restore order” in Haiti by invading the island nation in the name of Pan-Africanism. In the face of this imminent imperialist intervention BAP remains vigilant and is exposing these intercontinental contradictions. Kenya is willing to assist white supremacist in Haiti at the expense of the wishes and aspirations of the Haitian people.

While plans for the invasion in Haiti are being finalized, Africans are rising up in Niger to kick France out and regain control of their country and its immense mineral resources. In response the French refuse to leave and, with their U.S. partners in crime, plan to use the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to invade Niger. Once again employing Black faces to carry out white supremist, imperialist designs.  Africans (black people) everywhere must be vigilant in defense of our interest. The imperialist, white supremacist empire is struggling with legitimacy and employing the age old tactic of “Divide and Conquer”.  As the repression increases, African resistance must also intensify.

BAP is acutely aware – while helping others become so – that the drive to build Cop City is not just in Atlanta but that there are similar projects in Newark and Baltimore to name a few and that the U.S. settler state is preparing to lash out even more as its empire continues to decline. It insists on sending billions to Ukraine and on the militarization of Africa, while more and more of its citizens join the ranks of the homeless, are denied the human right to healthcare, face obscene price hikes for basic necessities, crumbling infrastructure, and derailing trains. Look at the heavy handed approach to the organizers against Cop City. The same grand jury and prosecutor who is going after Trump and his associates with RICO charges, have also brought RICO charges against the Stop Cop City protestors. We will not forget that this follows the indictments against the Uhuru Movement earlier this year. Repression abroad and repression within the enclaves of those colonized in Western countries is what the Black working class has to look forward to. 

In the next month of October the Africa Team of BAP, and the organizing arm of our campaign “U.S. Out of Africa, Shut Down AFRICOM, will hold the 4th International Month of Action Against AFRICOM, under the theme “From Niger to Haiti to Cop City, Defeat the War Against African People.”

BAP Coordinating Committee Chairperson, Ajamu Baraka points out:

“The lived experiences of the colonized suggest that the difference between a white supremacist liberal imperialist order and something European activists label as fascism is indistinguishable.”

People are seeking and need an alternative which is why formations like BAP become more and more vital. There is no way out of the current moment we face except through revolutionary struggle and organization. BAP came in to fill a need - to rekindle the Black liberation movement, in particular the Black Radical Tradition; crystallizing the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist position of our people. With wars raging on between Russia and Ukraine raising the threat of a nuclear catastrophe, saber rattling against China over Taiwan that eerily resembles U.S. policy toward the Russia-Ukraine military conflict, and military destabilization across the entire African continent, there has never been a greater need to for the masses of the people to organize. It should be clear now that revolutionary struggle is the only solution.

With your support, BAP will continue to bring clarity to the context and the complexity of the struggle of African People around the world.

BAP IN THE STREETS

The Black Alliance for Peace - Washington, DC organized the “Hands Off Haiti! Rally & Demonstration” on Thursday, August 17 starting in front of the Kenyan embassy and marching to the Jamaican embassy saying no to foreign intervention and Black face imperialism.


Our members in Washington, D.C., came out for the #OffTheList actions on June 25 in support of removing Cuba from the US’s bogus list of state sponsors of terrorism.

BAP-DC, BAP-Baltimore and BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action tabled at the ONE DC Juneteenth commemoration on June 19.

The Black Alliance for Peace Western Region had a retreat building with each other and charting their course for the future. California, New Mexico, Arizona and Hawai’i were represented the weekend of Sept 15-16.

BAP - Washington, DC joined the #AfricaUnited Movement at the French Embassy on September 2 to demand #FranceOutOfNiger and #NoWarInNiger. A new generation of Africans is defending their homeland against imperialist oppression! BAP Coordinating Committee member and member organization Pan-African Community Action organizer Netfa Freeman spoke calling out the "Faux Pan-Africanism" of ECOWAS!

Watch All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP) Central Committee & BAP Coordinating Committee member Rafiki Morris speak at the #NoWarInNiger rally.

BAP-Baltimore participated in CurbFest for Political Prisoners on September 2 in Baltimore. They raised awareness of political prisoners with music, performances, speakers, children's activities, letter writing, and a film screening of ‘The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up.’

BAP was part of the International People’s Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism: Sanctions, Blockades, Coercive Economic Measures delegation on a fact-finding mission in Venezuela in July. BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley testified in a hearing on the impact of U.S. sanctions.

BAP's 5-member delegation spent 9 days in Nicaragua in July to advance the construction of a Zone Of Peace in Nuestra América.

BAP was out in DC in solidarity with Nicaragua and all our brethren and sistren throughout the Americas & The Caribbean on July 16.

BAP members were in Atlanta for the National Black Radical Organizing Conference, organized by BAP member organization Community Movement Builders the weekend of June 23-25.

PRESS AND MEDIA

On the September 12th episode of “Voices With Vision”, the radio program produced and hosted by BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman, along with Craig Hall and Latrice Vincent on WPFW (89.3 FM in Washington, D.C.), they pull BAP Coordinating Committee Chairperson, Ajamu Baraka and BAP Operations Team member and Community Movement Builders organizer coco (aka Malkia), in for a discussion about the fascist consequences of neoliberalism from the international to the local.

On the September 19th episode of “Voices With Vision” Netfa and Brother Craig talk to Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor of the Pan-African News Wire about what is transpiring in Niger and the broader Sahel region. They start this show off with the wisdom of freedom fighter and former political prisoner of 33 years until his release in 2014, Sekou Odinga, who is currently in the hospital recovering from serious health complications.

BAP Mid Atlantic Co-Coordinators Jacqueline Luqman and Rafiki Morris, as well as Netfa, are quoted in Sam P.K. Collins’ September 5, 2023 The Washington Informer article “Amid Power Shift in Sahel Region, Protesters Express Solidarity with African Masses” that covered the action outside of the French Embassy protesting France’s aggression against Niger.

On September 1, 2023, The News with Paul DeRienzo on WBAI in New York interviewed Netfa about “the coup in Gabon made in the West,” starting at the 12:50 mark. Netfa was also one of three guests on WBAI’s Voices of Resistance: A Collective of Women Fighters, with hosts Lucy Quesada Pagoada and Andreia Vizeu on September 10, 2023 discussing the 50th year after the coup in Chile, the assassination of Salvador Allende, and implications for revolutionary change today.

BAP is lifted up in the Pitchfork article, “Noname’s Fearless Complexity” profiling the rapper and BAP supporter Noname, by columnist Julianne Escobedo Shepherd.

Austin Cole, Co-Coordinator of the BAP Haiti-Americas Team and organizer with Black Lives Matter Boston and the MIT Graduate Student Union-UE, writes in the July 5th issue of Black Agenda Report, and talks on July 11th’s Voices With Vision, about how the Supreme Court decision which banned the use of race as a criterion for college admissions is indeed racist and also obscures the need for Black unity and for a new Black politics that explicitly calls for liberation. Austin is also interviewed both on the August 5th KPFA Evening News (starting 10 minutes in), and by BAP Coordinating Committee member and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley on the August 25th episode of Black Agenda Radio about Kenya's intervention in Haiti as "Imperialism in Black Face.” 

BAP Outreach Coordinator, Africa Team and Coordinating Committee member, Tunde Osazua broke things down on a public political education webinar about recent developments across West Africa, including the levying of sanctions and threats of military action against Niger, hosted by BAP Solidarity Network member organization Democratic Socialists of America Internationalist Committee's Middle East and Africa Subcommittee. Tunde also joined The Critical Hour to discuss how the cost of Africa’s relationship with the West exceeds the benefit and explained how trade and financial sanctions have been put in place to cripple Zimbabwe due to its move towards land reform. And he says that the new military alliance between Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso has an economic facet that can be built upon.

BAP Coordinating Committee members, Erica Caines and Ajamu, and BAP member Salifu Mack tag-teamed on the EYL 30 and ELY 29 episodes of Black Power Media’s “Earn Your Liberation” to unpack the political complexities around developments in the West and Central Africa Sahel region.

In two completed parts of a three part series, BAP member and national racial and climate justice advocate, Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright writes in Black Agenda Report about “How Joe Biden and The Democratic Party’s Climate Agenda Increases Environmental Racism More Than It Reduces Emissions”(Part1) and “How a Not So Secret Listserv Exercises white ‘Supremacy’ Ideology In Lieu of Climate and Racial Justice” (Part 2).

EVENTS

September 27: the topic of BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA)’s next Assata Shakur Study Group is “Fascism in DC: Police Surveillance, Occupation, and Militarization” from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Participate in-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. or for online, register here.

October 1: is the kick-off webinar for the International Month of Action Against AFRICOM, “From Niger to Haiti to Cop City, Defeat the War Against African People” from 1pm to 2:30 pm Eastern Time. Register here.

October 8: join BAP-Atlanta from 4-6pm for this film screening and community discussion about "Walter Rodney: What They Don't Want You to Know" at the Little Five Points Community Center, 1083 Austin Ave NE Atlanta, GA 30307. More info.

October 15: join The Maroon Legacy Keepers, a BAP member organization, at the free Seventh Annual Prisoners' Families Brunch, from noon to 4pm for free food, drinks, entertainment, speakers, and information. Celebrate beloved ancestor and freedom fighter Russell Maroon Shoatz, at One Art Community Center, 1435 N. 52nd Street, Philadelphia PA 19131. More info.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,

Ajamu, Austin, Dedan, Erica, Jacqueline, Jaribu, Jemima, Julie, Margaret, Matt, Netfa, Nnamdi, Noah, Paul, Rafiki, Tunde and Yasmin

Coordinating Committee


P.S. Freedom isn’t free.Consider giving today.




Banner phote: Ukrainian tank opens fire on targets in Avdiivka, in Ukraine's eastern Donetsk region, on April 17, 2023 (courtesy Muhammed Enes Yildirim/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images).

For the Anti-Democratic, Corrupt U.S. Duopoly, Peace Is a Four-Letter Word

For the Anti-Democratic, Corrupt U.S. Duopoly, Peace Is a Four-Letter Word

For the Anti-Democratic, Corrupt U.S. Duopoly, Peace Is a Four-Letter Word

Cuba was placed back on the infamous list of so-called state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. state, a state responsible for more terror than any other state or empire in the annals of human history. What was Cuba’s crime, according to the proto-fascist Trump administration, when Cuba was placed back on that list in December 2020? Cuba had hosted the initial round of peace talks between the Colombian government and the Colombians’ second oldest armed opposition group, the National Liberation Army, better known as the ELN.

When China brokered a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran that could lead to a possible peace agreement ending the horrific war in Yemen, the United States reacted with outrage. How dare these states exercise their own agency! Next, they might finally come to understand the war in Yemen and the tensions in West Asia (otherwise known as the Middle East) only benefited the United States.

The war in Ethiopia, the coup and violence in the Sudan, the introduction of U.S. troops into Peru to prop up its coup government, and the bloody and unnecessary proxy war between NATO and Russia in the Ukraine are just a few examples of the immoral and criminal activities of the United States that help to explain why global polls consistently identify the United States as the greatest threat to international peace in the world.  

Yet, there is no opposition to this madness, especially not from the Democratic Party.

Both U.S. capitalist parties support the militarist thrust of U.S. policies, internationally and domestically. The year 2024 will see a Pentagon budget of over $886 billion, overwhelmingly supported by both parties, and which is consuming over 60 percent of the non-discretionary federal budget. In other words, money for housing, education, public health, and spending that might actually improve the quality of life for workers is reduced, so that the people’s resources can be reallocated to war to protect and extend the interest of a rapacious capitalist class committed to global plunder.

But just calling attention to or opposing the dangerous logic that informs the U.S. commitment to the doctrine of global “full spectrum dominance”—with its military-first strategy—is now generating a repressive response from the U.S. legal apparatus.

The Black Alliance for Peace, however, will not be intimidated. Our commitment to peace is irreversible because we are absolutely clear on the issue of peace. We understand fully that there can be no peace without justice and that this position is not a cliché, but an axiom.

As the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, of which  BAP is a member, reminds us, the demand for peace should not be “interpreted to be an imperialist peace, the type of peace that the slave master can appreciate as long as the slaves are not resisting and the system of slavery goes unchallenged. When we say peace, we mean the peace that accompanies social justice, a peace that can only come through fierce uncompromising resistance designed to overturn the relationship between the oppressed and the oppressor…”

The U.S. political class has exposed itself as an enemy of peace. And for them, peace is a four-letter word. Through our campaign work and mass political-education work—from the struggles against Cop City in Atlanta to our new campaign to make the Americas a “Zone of Peace”—BAP demystifies the oppressive relationships that sustain dominance and points the way toward a liberated future, in which all can experience authentic peace and social security.

Help us build this new world.

BAP IN THE STREETS

BAP members from Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and southern California attended the Americas Policy Forum, on April 29 at American University in Washington, D.C. Haiti/Americas Team Co-Coordinator Jemima Pierre spoke about the West using Haiti as a laboratory for the repression it plans to unleash throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Watch her talk on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.

BAP-Philly member Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture speaking out on May Day or International Workers’ Day on May 1. Photo credit: Joe Piette 

BAP-NYC member Allendy and BAP Solidarity Network member Danny Shaw joined a KOMOKODA demonstration outside of Columbia University's commencement event to protest Hillary Clinton being appointed a professor for the 2023-24 academic year. 

BAP-NYC supported the #Uhuru3 on Saturday in Newark, New Jersey, during the May 27th Hands Off Uhuru Day of Action. Read BAP's position on the U.S. state's attack on our movement.

The Baltimore gathering was among the many African Liberation Day events that took place over the past few weeks. Watch BAP-Baltimore Coordinator Erica Caines’ whole talk on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Watch BAP-DC’s highlights reel on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

BAP-NYC members, BAP-Atlanta members and BAP member organization Malcolm X Center for Self Determination founder Efia Nwangaza gathered for a panel discussion hosted by The People's Forum. The discussion is one of the events taking place on the side of the second session of the United Nations’ Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. The discussion featured BAP member organization AfroResistance Executive Director Janvieve Williams Comrie and Clau O'Brien Moscoso, member of BAP-NYC and the BAP Haiti/Americas Team. The event was titled, “Racial Justice, Reparation and Development in the Context of International Crisis: Contributions to the Development of Afrodescendant Peoples from an Intersectional Perspective.” It can be viewed here.

BAP-Philly members Gassoh, Stoke (Malik) and Asantewaa attended the “No Arena in Chinatown” rally and march on June 10 in Philadelphia. Approximately 3,500 people of various ages, genders and ethnic backgrounds protested professional basketball team the Philadelphia 76ers’ proposed arena in the city’s Chinatown as a racist act of gentrification.

PRESS AND MEDIA

Julie Varughese, co-coordinator of BAP’s Solidarity Network wrote two articles that may be of interest to the movement. A two-year-old argument about "anti-Blackness" in Cuba, which African/Black solidarity activists in the United States say has no basis in reality, has reared its head. BAP members Kimberly Miller and Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture are quoted in this piece. Plus, the “Uhuru 3,” three of the four U.S.-based defendants—who are members of the African People's Socialist Party—spoke out for the first time since U.S. government indictments dropped last month that accuse them of trying to work with Russia to sow social discord in the United States. Julie reported on their press conference.

An organizer with the BAP Haiti/Americas Team, living between Lima, Peru, and the United States, Clau O'Brien Moscoso’s Black Agenda Report article, “Approval of US Troops to Train Peruvian Armed Forces Proves U.S. Behind Coup” was also republished in Orinoco Tribune.

On the June 6 episode of “Voices With Vision,” the radio program produced and hosted by BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman, along with Craig Hall and Latrice Vincent on WPFW (89.3 FM in Washington, D.C.), they interview the executive director of BAP member organization Community Movement Builders, Kamau Franklin, to get the latest on the struggle to stop Cop City in Atlanta, a take that’s “not for the politically faint of heart.” The episode also features two presentations from a lunch and book discussion, co-sponsored by BAP, “Unveiling Truth and Inspiring Change – Survivors Uncensored.” Delphine Yandamutso of the Rwanda Accountability Initiative and co-author of a book, Survivors Uncensored: 100 + Testimonies of Resilience and Humanity, and Salome Ayuak of BAP’s Africa Team spoke.

Starting with political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal’s latest commentary, “Red Horizons," the June 13 episode of WPFW’s “Voices With Vision” radio program interviewed Devin Walker (aka Uncle Devin) of The Uncle Devin Show. The discussion exposed the corruption of the government of Washington, D.C., which has implications for Mayor Muriel Bowser’s supposed Racial Equity Plans, involving the misuse of hundreds of millions of dollars in DC Public School contracts. The second half of this episode replays a timeless 2017 speech by the late Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report that illuminates the warmongering geopolitics of the United States.

Peter James Hudson, a member of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team, as well as Jemima Pierre, a co-coordinator of that team, each testified at the Haiti Hearing for the International Peoples Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism. Their remarks begin on the timestamps 18:46 minutes and 1:22:05 hours, respectively.

The June 1, 2023 episode of “The RemiX Morning Show” on Black Power Media invited Netfa to recap and evaluate Pan-African Community Action’s special collaborative Assata Shakur Study Group session on “Internationalism, Malcolm X, African Liberation Day.” They also discussed the need for collective political education. Netfa comes into the show at the 1:05:30 mark.

Netfa and BAP Coordinating Committee Chairperson Ajamu Baraka tag team in an interview on “The Critical Hour” to discuss FBI attacks on the Black liberation movement, why Cuba must defeat the blockade without waiting for it to be lifted, and African nations coming together to push back against imperialism in the new Cold War. This interview starts at 57:30 into the two hours.

Ajamu’s testimony at the recent International People's Tribunal on U.S. Imperialism on Cuba—viewable in this video and read as text in Black Agenda Report—lays out how the United States qualifies as the true rogue state by waging war against the Cuban people for more than 60 years, designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism to justify sanctions and military threats, and causing great suffering in the island nation.

Margaret Kimberley, BAP Coordinating Committee member and Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, conducts an in depth interview with Dr. Cornel West about his 2024 presidential campaign, his platform, and decision to be a candidate for the Green Party nomination.

BAP Solidarity Network member Sarina Larson was interviewed live on Pacifica Radio station KPFK’s “The Lawyers Guild” radio program on June 7 to discuss Cop City and the First Amendment. She starts 30 minutes into the show.

EVENTS

June 15: The Party for Socialism & Liberation (PSL) is hosting, “20 Years: Iraq, U.S. Empire and America's (Mis)Education System,” at Philadelphia Liberation Center at 6 p.m. ET. This event is a reflection on the two decades since the United States invaded Iraq. It will be moderated by Saskia Kercy of BAP-Philly. More information here.

June 15: Hear from a panel of four BAP members who went on the 2023 May Day Brigade to Cuba. “May Day Reflections on Cuba: Advancing the Zone of Peace” will be a multimedia report reflecting on the seminars and forums they attended, connections they made with the Cuban people, their experience participating in May Day celebrations, and bonds developed with people from other countries who also came to Cuba. Also hear about how solidarity with Cuba fits into BAP's campaign for Our Americas to be recognized and respected as a Zone of Peace. Attend 7:30 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Register here.

June 17: Join U.S. Hands Off Cuba Committee for “Report Back From U.S. Delegations to Cuba: May Day, Trade Union & Solidarity Conferences” at the Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance in Los Angeles, California, and online, from 2 p.m. - 4 p.m. PT (5 p.m. - 7 p.m. ET). Join this event to educate and mobilize people to Washington, D.C., to get the U.S. government off Cuba’s back once and for all! BAP-Atlanta member Damion Scott will be among the speakers. Here is the link to participate in this hybrid event.

June 23-25: BAP member organization Community Movement Builders will be hosting the “National Black Radical Organizing Conference” with the theme, “Unity in our Lifetime: Connecting the National Black Struggle for Self-Determination with Pan-Africanism.” Registration fee: $25. Register here. 

June 25: Join protests demanding U.S. President Joe Biden take Cuba off the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism.” A rally will be held at the White House coinciding with local protests across the United States. The organizers say, “Let’s make our voices loud and clear: ‘Cuba is not a ‘terrorist’ state! End U.S. terrorism against Cuba!’ Endorse the action. Organizers request supporters on social media use the hashtag, #OffTheList.

June 28: The topic of BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA)’s next Assata Shakur Study Group is “Visions for Community Control of the Police” from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. Participate in-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington, D.C. or for online, register here.

July 1: Is a virtual party and hangout for the release of the second edition of the book, “The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power; Media, Race, Economics” by Jared A. Ball. Jared is a BAP member; professor of both communication and Africana studies at Morgan State University; host of the podcast, “iMiXWHATiLiKE!”; and co-founder of Black Power Media. Bring your comments, questions, criticism, and maybe win a free signed copy! Join at 7 p.m. ET here.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,

Ajamu, Austin, Dedan, Erica, Jacqueline, Jaribu, Jemima, Julie, Margaret, Matt, Netfa, Nnamdi, Noah, Paul, Rafiki, Tunde and Yasmin

Coordinating Committee


P.S. Freedom isn’t free.Consider giving today.

Banner photo: A billboard in Cuba that says in Spanish "70% of Cubans were born under the blockade" (Courtesy celag.org)

Black Alliance for Peace Made History On April 4th, Our Sixth Anniversary

Black Alliance for Peace Made History On April 4th, Our Sixth Anniversary

BAP celebrated our sixth anniversary April 4 in the form that has defined our organization from its inception: We re-dedicated our movement-building work to the struggle for peace and authentic decolonization, as well as to the defeat of the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination. That is why BAP launched a historic people(s)-centered campaign to make our region—the Americas—a “Zone of Peace.” This comes in response to a call made in 2014 by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Havana, Cuba, that the Americas (Nuestra América) transition into a region free from external militarism, war and imperialist subversion. The objective of the campaign is to build mass-based support for this state-centered call.  

Launch events took place in Havana, Cuba; Port-au-Prince, Haiti; and Washington D.C., USA. 

BAP is committed to building popular support for the Zone of Peace demand along with a number of our key allies, such as SOLI of Puerto Rico; United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC); Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (ATC) (Nicaragua); the U.S. Peace Council; MOLEGHAF (Haiti); Observatoria de Derechos Humanos de los Pueblos (Mexico); the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations; the Organisation for Caribbean Empowerment; Alliance for Global Justice; and the Task Force on the Americas.

The Final Deathblow to Imperialism Will Only Come Under The Leadership of The Organized Colonized Masses

The Final Deathblow to Imperialism Will Only Come Under The Leadership of The Organized Colonized Masses

The Final Deathblow to Imperialism Will Only Come Under The Leadership of  The Organized Colonized Masses

Efforts to marginalize, disregard, and erase the presence of radical Black-, Brown-, and Indigenous-led anti-imperialist organizations, as well as our political positions, is proving to be endemic to the politics of too many who consider themselves radical anti-imperialist and anti-war activists. For this reason, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) reiterates that the peoples who bear the brunt of the brutal and lethal practices of U.S. imperialism are at the forefront of the struggle to dismantle the global system of white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism.

The colonized within the U.S. settler state see more clearly than the privileged the holistic nature of the system as well as the interdependencies between our domestic repression and U.S. wars abroad. Some forces that claim to be anti-war have an unsophisticated understanding of peace.

We understand that 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 unjust war. A condition for real peace is the defeat of global systems of oppression that include colonialism, imperialism, patriarchy and white supremacy. Anyone with genuine concern for the well-being of humanity and the planet should be deeply concerned that some supposed “leftist” forces consider it easier to find common cause with right wing libertarian forces than with the Black radical movement, as BAP Coordinating Committee member Jacqueline Luqman writes in this Black Agenda Report piece.

And as Chair of the BAP Coordinating Committee, Ajamu Baraka points out: 

“The white left in the U.S. is deeply delusional. Elements of the left actually believe a radical movement leading to revolutionary change will be led by white activists with Black & colonized people as backdrops. #AntiWarSoWhite”

We cannot afford any confusion, complicity, silence, or outright collaboration with some “liberal/left” forces on armed intervention into Haiti, the reactionary role of NATO, the intensification of state repression in the United States, the plight of the working class being subjected to an induced recession, and austerity. For BAP, all of these contradictions reaffirm why it is absolutely necessary for colonized people to be organized or face an inescapable subjugation and eventual annihilation. The comfortable will dismiss this as hyperbole.

We—the colonized, the exploited, the oppressed—are in the midst of a war. It is clear that the colonial-capitalist rulers will continue to deceive, mislead and co-opt to maintain their dominance. Our responsibility in opposition is to keep the focus on the imperialists and not be confused by the machinations of their supporters. That task and responsibility will continue to inform our work in 2023.

On 2022 Human Rights Day, We Must Recommit to the Black Radical Human Rights and Peace Traditions

On 2022 Human Rights Day, We Must Recommit to the Black Radical Human Rights and Peace Traditions

December 10 is Human Rights Day. On this day, U.S.-led Western states that are responsible for a majority of the most horrific crimes against humanity will cynically exploit the human rights idea, partially to deflect from their sordid records, but also to enlist the liberal human-rights framework into their arsenal of ideological weapons.

This Human Rights Day must be different. As tens of thousands of people are dying in Ukraine during an avoidable war to the ongoing wars in Yemen and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as the slaughter of Palestinians in occupied Palestine, and the hundreds of thousands who died unnecessarily from COVID-19 in the United States, it must be stated—without any equivocations—that if human rights are to have any value, they must be liberated and reconstructed to serve the oppressed.

That has been the work of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) since its inception in 2017. Embracing the Black radical human-rights and peace traditions, the tagline of this formation has been: “A People(s)-Centered Human Rights Project Opposing War, Repression and Imperialism.”

We love peace!

It is only within the context of social peace that the possibility of human freedom, as well as individual and collective development and progress, can take place. But powerful forces correctly understand peace is a threat. It is a threat because those whose existence depends on the use of extreme forms of state and institutional violence understand the inexplicable link between peace and social justice.

But without justice, there can be no peace!

That is why the Black Alliance for Peace correctly stated, “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.”

There can be no ambiguity here. We do not fight for the ideas in people’s heads—we fight the structures of oppression.

And human rights?

BAP operates within the framework of the Black radical human-rights tradition that is being popularized as the People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework (PCHRs). What constitutes that framework?

PCHRs are “those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle,” according to BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka.

This people(s)-centered framework proceeds from the assumption that the genesis of the assaults on human dignity at the core of human-rights violations is located in the ongoing structural relationships of colonial-capitalist oppression. Therefore, the PCHRs framework does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political project in the service of Africans, as well as the colonized working classes, peasants, and socially oppressed. It names the enemies of freedom: The Western white-supremacist, colonial-capitalist patriarchy.

Below, you will see examples of the ongoing work BAP member organizations, regional formations, local chapters and individual members are engaged in to build popular, independently organized power. Help us to sustain this work by donating today. But, even more importantly, become a monthly sustainer. No amount is too small.

We are recommitting to the victory the people must achieve and we hope you join us.

The ‘Collective West’ Declares War on the World

The ‘Collective West’ Declares War on the World

The Biden administration released its long-awaited National Security Strategy document on October 12. As expected, the document reflected a reaffirmation of themes that have informed U.S. foreign policy since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath, the United States became the preeminent global power. 

The commitment to the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance,” the foundation of U.S. foreign policy since the 1990s, is still in place. The strategic focus on U.S. competition with the major powers of Russia and China that characterized the strategic shift under Obama and even more explicitly under Trump was restated. And the continued marginalization of international law in favor of something called the “rules-based international order,” in which the United States establishes the rules and enforces the order, was also reaffirmed.

As leader of the “collective West”—those Western-oriented and Western colonial-capitalist nations that hold hegemonic global power—the Biden administration reaffirmed that U.S. and Western European states (representing 10 percent of the global population) would continue to wage hegemonic war against the rest of collective humanity.

But BAP is part of the resistance.   

The Biden administration’s plan to once again use the United Nations as cover to invade Haiti to smash the Haitian people’s movement for authentic democracy and national self-determination against a U.S. and European-imposed puppet government, represents another imperialist assault and front for struggle that BAP has been forced to take up.

BAP forcefully called on Russia and/or China to veto the Biden administration’s United Nations Security Council resolution to authorize a military intervention in Haiti. BAP considers that resolution an authorization for invasion that will result in the deaths of scores of Haitians. We will consider this action, no matter its phony legitimacy, as a crime against humanity and a war crime.

From Ukraine to Biden’s Summit: End of U.S. Global Domination?

From Ukraine to Biden’s Summit: End of U.S. Global Domination?

The U.S. plan to draw Russia into a proxy war in the Ukraine has turned out to be a monumental debacle, exposing the United States’ cynical plans as well as the limits of U.S. imperial power.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has consistently analyzed the conflict as manufactured, one that could have been avoided with a real commitment to peace in that part of the world.

But the Biden administration decided war was the method. It needed to suppress Germany and disconnect the Russian economy from the Western European economy.

In May, we called for states to boycott the Summit of the Americas, an event through which the United States has attempted to maintain hegemony through manipulation. The people of our region declared opposition to it, saying one cannot be a partner and a hegemon at the same time. As long as the United States sees our region as its backyard—or its front yard—we will struggle against it.

All of these are indications we are witnessing the development of a new world, in which the possibility of equality, peace, development and stability can be achieved. But it’s quite clear it can only be achieved with collective humanity putting a break on the U.S./EU/NATO axis of domination. 

We are proud that BAP has become an integral force in dismantling the U.S. empire. In this issue of our newsletter, you will see some of the political work BAP has been involved in, both in the media and on the ground.

We hope to continue with your support to bring about peace and justice in this world.

RECENT WORK

BAP issued a statement on African Liberation Day. We pulled off a webinar in May to introduce our SOUTHCOM campaign. Then we did another webinar in June about the connection between health and People(s)-Centered Human Rights. Meanwhile, the Ukraine resources page has been updated. Check out the latest AFRICOM Watch Bulletin, featuring an interview with BAP member organization All-African People’s Revolutionary Party member Ahjamu Umi. Plus, keep up with what’s happening in Afghanistan with the Afghanistan News Update. 

BAP at Five Years: Advancing the Struggle for Self-Determination and People(s)-Centered Human Rights

BAP at Five Years: Advancing the Struggle for Self-Determination and People(s)-Centered Human Rights

BAP at 5 Years: Advancing the Struggle for Self-Determination and People(s)-Centered Human Rights

“We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together. And you can’t get rid of one without getting rid of the other.” (Martin Luther King —Chaos or Community [1967])

“The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical Black movement.” (BAP mission statement)

“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.” (Black Radical Peace Tradition, a BAP Principle of Unity)

“People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) are those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle.” (BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka)

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The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of Black Liberation Movement

The Annual Resurrection of a Fake Dr. King and Re-entombment of Black Liberation Movement

It is January, and in the U.S. this means it is time for the annual ritual of revisiting the white-washed, de-radicalized, pro- “American” M.L. King fairytale as part of the official celebration of King’s birthday.

In the official story, Dr. King was not the creation of the movement that was fighting for the democratic and human rights of Black people. No, it was Dr. King who created the movement, according to the colonial white elite and the neocolonial Black misleadership. In this story, the objectives of the movement were not for radical social transformation and Black self-determination but the redemption of the U.S. settler-colonial nation/state and the quiet integration of Black people into the state. In other words, to complete the establishment of a “more perfect nation,” as Obama would put it.

But King did not just show up to save Black people. Dr. King was a product of the post-war Black movement. And as such, the King that the movement produced reflected the changing, and sometimes contradictory development of that movement. As a product of the movement, Dr. King’s experiences as the leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) evolved. He began to raise criticisms of capitalism, eventually opposed imperialist war and embraced a program of class struggle represented by the Poor People's campaign.

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Democrats “Build Back Better” BS and Resistance

Democrats “Build Back Better” BS and Resistance

Nothing captures the contradictory essence of the democrat party’s Pro-ruling class politics and fraudulent nature of its’ “Build Back Better” legislation than the cavalier manner in which an overwhelming majority of democrats voted for $780 billion to go towards military spending. They then turned around and engaged in mind boggling haggling over spending the peoples’ resources, on the people, because of its cost!

Ajamu Baraka, BAP’s National Organizer, argued that legislation meant for economic recovery which included spending on infrastructure and "social infrastructure" was split into two pieces. Both are now stuck in the House of Representatives suggesting that a package of comprehensive social spending was more a public relations stunt than representative of a serious effort to address some of the human right needs of the population. By increasing military spending and cutting out resources and programs necessary for the people, Biden and democrats demonstrate that what they really want to push is neoliberalism with a smile.

Duopoly Votes for *More War* Even After Afghanistan Debacle

Duopoly Votes for *More War* Even After Afghanistan Debacle

In the midst of the confusion and controversy around the defeat of the United States in Afghanistan, one thing has become clear: The rulers lost control of the narrative favoring endless war. The people suddenly became re-focused on the supposed “good war.” By doing so, they realized the real winners are the defense companies and military contractors. And who are the losers? The Afghan people, the soldiers who were killed and wounded, and the U.S. public whose national treasury was looted to the tune of over $2 trillion.

Yet, on September 1, the U.S. House of Representatives—in a bipartisan vote that ignored the sentiments of the people and that had Democrats defying U.S. President Joe Biden—once again awarded the Pentagon with an increase to its already bloated budget of $24 billion of the public’s money.

Afghanistan No 'Graveyard' for U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination

Afghanistan No 'Graveyard' for U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination

Some have asserted the U.S. empire has reached its historic endpoint because of its defeat in Afghanistan. However, that call is as premature as political scientist Francis Fukuyama’s proclamation that history had "ended" in 1989 when Western liberalism won because the former Soviet Union was coming apart.

Afghanistan might have been the so-called “graveyard of empires” and of certain states at other points in history. But the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan had occurred years earlier, a fact verified by revelations found in the “Afghanistan Papers.” That defeat had no appreciative impact on U.S. foreign-policy makers, who continued their destructive path in places like Yemen, Libya and Syria. Only a handful of the U.S. population was still interested in continuing a war in Afghanistan up until the last week or so. But the rulers did not inform the U.S. public, so the masses did not know the war had been lost.

Glen Ford Will Always Be With Us

Glen Ford Will Always Be With Us

Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford was buried August 7 in Lumpkin, Georgia. That land in the Southern Black Belt, located within the settler-colonial space known as the United States of America, produced for him—like so many before him—a clear sense of the intersection of class, white supremacy and the National Question.

In the African tradition, our ancestors may leave the physical world, but they never leave us. That is why we evoke them. When we do so and allow their presence to infuse our consciousness and vision, they become a material force through us.

Missing Links on Cuba, Haiti and Colombia

Missing Links on Cuba, Haiti and Colombia

Nothing quite demonstrates the arrogance and white supremacy of the U.S. empire like its relationship to Africans and other colonized people.

On Thursday, the Biden administration slapped new sanctions on Cuban government officials. We ask those who have raised racism in Cuba as a nuance worthy of interrogation: Why not question the white supremacy inherent in U.S. policies that disproportionately impact African/Black peoples throughout the region?

The Cuban people have spoken and they have said, yes, they have internal contradictions, like any country born within the context of colonial conquest and genocide. But they also have said what would make the most difference to Cubans in Cuba is an end to the cruel medieval-style blockade that has prevented vital food, medicine and other items needed to help the Cuban people.

We say when a people are at war with an oppressor, it is our obligation inside the United States to stand with them against the empire without engaging in the ego-inflating exercise of raising their internal contradictions at those critical moments. Either you support national liberation and self-determination or you don’t.