This past Human Rights Day illuminated what Gaza has relegated to the dustbin of history: the oxymoron of “Western values and human rights.” Western civilization stands as a living negation of human rights, a truth illustrated by the ongoing atrocities in Palestine and the brutal legacies of Western intervention in Haiti, Congo, and Sudan. The era of Western human rights is over. The relevant frame, if human rights are to have any liberatory potential, is a People(s)-Centered Human Rights approach, and this is the narrative we must advance.
U.S. and Western human rights rhetoric functions as a tool of coercion, providing ideological cover for sanctions, occupations, regime-change efforts, and the destabilization of sovereign states from Africa to West Asia to preserve a global order of inequality. This hypocrisy is systematic. In our Americas, the principle of popular will is the cornerstone of sovereignty and self-determination and a foundational concept for the Zone of Peace we strive to uphold. Yet, this principle faces relentless assault by a modern imperial playbook resurrecting the interventionist logic of the over 200-year-old Monroe Doctrine. The recent electoral processes in Latin America, from Honduras to Venezuela, expose a deliberate pattern of U.S. interference. Simultaneously, within the United States, the ideological move to revoke birthright citizenship constitutes a profound assault, dehumanizing immigrant communities through the same logic that denies personhood abroad. This is vividly seen in the current political and rhetorical attacks on Somali immigrant communities, who face targeted discrimination and threats to their fundamental rights. These assaults, emerging alongside record-breaking U.S. airstrikes in Somalia, reveal the desperation of a declining empire that relies on repression at home and militarism abroad as its global legitimacy collapses.
These are not separate crises but parallel processes. The machinery that subverts sovereignty abroad reinforces a racialized, exclusive order at home. Therefore, our imperative is to champion a People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework, as embodied in initiatives like the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights. This framework recognizes that genuine peace and rights are achieved solely through bottom-up, popular struggle against interlocking systems of colonialism, imperialism, and white supremacy. Defending popular will, from resisting foreign coups to stopping domestic dehumanization, is one integrated fight. Our collective power must confront this pendulum of repression, forging a liberated future through organized, transnational solidarity.
BAP’s work is sustained by the people, not corporations, not the state, not institutions invested in the status quo. If you value independent anti-imperialist organizing rooted in the Black Radical Peace Tradition and People(s)-Centered Human Rights, please donate today and consider becoming a monthly sustainer. No compromise. No retreat.
This year, BAP has increased its capacity to respond to the acceleration into an openly fascist regime and struggle against the forces of global tyranny. Despite the onslaught of state backlash against this moment of growing political activity, BAP stands firm in our resistance to empire and our mission to redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace radical Black movement. BAP has continued to organize and mobilize locally and internationally to build a movement that will defeat this empire.
Read these summations from our national teams to understand the work we do:
October 2025 | International Month of Action To Shut Down AFRICOM 2025 Summation: 21st Century Neocolonialism: Capitalism, Compradors, and The Ongoing Scramble for Africa
During October 2025, Black Alliance For Peace (BAP) members across the U.S., in addition to the endorsement of 23 organizations, engaged in the 5th annual Month of Action to Shut Down AFRICOM coordinated by BAP’s Africa Team. From teach-ins that dissected the architecture of the U.S., carving the world into military command, to banner drops that brought the struggle from the Congo to our blocks, this collective energy is a testament to BAP’s growing capacity.
The central focus for this year’s Month of Action to Shut Down AFRICOM was “21st Century Neocolonialism: Capitalism, Compradors, and the Ongoing Scramble for Africa”, illuminating a unified global playbook. AFRICOM is the manager of the modern-day scramble for Africa, intensifying the "war on terror" to mask its true aim: militarizing the continent, extracting resources, and subverting African sovereignty under a "security-development" discourse. This strategy effectively recasts geopolitical competition and resource acquisition as counterterrorism efforts, thereby legitimizing increased U.S. military presence and operations.
Nov. 15 – 23, 2025 | Venezuela Week of Action Summation: Defend Venezuela’s Sovereignty
Black Alliance For Peace joined with 33+ organizations, calling on all antiwar, peace and justice, union, and solidarity activists to take local actions, large and small, for a week of action in defense of Venezuela's sovereignty during the week of November 15 – 23. The week of action was part of a broader international call for a week of coordinated actions by a network of anti-imperialist and anti-war organizations. During the week, BAP and organizations region-wide will engage in a day of coordinated actions and events designed to elevate this issue in the public consciousness worldwide and encourage mass organization to struggle against the US aggression against Venezuela, the Caribbean, and Our Americas at large. For BAP, this is a call was principally one to connect our struggles, and centering how the attacks on Venezuela are part of the same imperialist machinery that fuels the genocide in Palestine, the occupation of Haiti by foreign forces, and the expansion of AFRICOM across the African continent.
City-wide Alliances Respond to the Call
For the 5th International Month of Action, BAP NYC/NJ held a series of political education programming. The beginning of the month saw simultaneous watch parties for the kick-off webinar at the People's Church in Harlem, Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, and Rutgers U in Newark. Members of BAP NYC/NJ facilitated a conversation with attendees from the respective communities.
BAP NYC/NJ also hosted two Teach Ins in Harlem and Newark about the theme of this year's Month of Action. Finally, on Nov 1st, members held a rally in Newark during the GOTV (Get Out to Vote) event. We handed out literature about the true purpose of AFRICOM while agitating and educating people who were mobilizing for the local elections.
For the Week of Action to Defend Venezuelan Sovereignty, BAP South-Miami cluster mobilized a protest with member organization Diaspora Pa’lante against the pro-Trump Puerto Rican governor Jenniffer González Colón’s visit to Florida International University at the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom in Miami, FL on November 12th. Our message was clear: end U.S. colonial domination and militarization of Puerto Rico; U.S. out of Haiti, Venezuela, U.S. out of the entire region. The Caribbean deserves a REAL Zone of Peace.
BAP South-Miami Cluster also attended a screening called “Heroes of Massacre River” on November 20th at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex of the farmer-led Haitian canal movement, which opened an important political conversation on sovereign resource control, from Haiti’s right to build and manage its own canal/water against hydro warfare from the DR state, to Venezuela’s struggle against U.S. sanctions over its natural resources and economic warfare from western powers.
In response to the Day of Action to Defend Venezuela's Sovereignty on November 19, BAP Mid-Atlantic joined forces with over 30 organizations in the region, including the All-African Peoples Revolutionary Party, Pan-African Community Action, and Diaspora Pa'lante Collective. In a mobilization at the Marine Barracks in Washington, D.C., members and partner organizations held a speak-out and rally while canvassing the area, highlighting the connections between this local militarized entity and the U.S. war on Venezuela, amplifying the interlocking systems of oppression in the DMV and across Our Americas.
BAP SoCal held an emergency teach-in titled Defend Venezuela’s Sovereignty as part of the recent Week of Action to Defend Venezuela’s Sovereignty. During the teach-in, we traced the history of US intervention in Venezuela and the Caribbean, examined SOUTHCOM's military buildup in the region, and discussed concrete strategies for the Zone of Peace campaign. BAP SoCal also had representatives from allied organizations share solidarity statements connecting struggles across the Global South. It was a powerful evening of interactive discussions, breakout strategy sessions, and social space for continued relationship building.
On Thursday, December 4, 2025, BAP-Baltimore participated in an internal grounding where members read and discussed “People(s)-Centered Human Rights and the Black Radical Tradition”, an essay written by Ajamu Baraka, republished to Black Agenda Report in February 2024. We discussed the shortcomings of how human rights do not apply to all, and how we are misinformed as to whose rights are temporary, permanent, or nonexistent.
Every Sunday | Strategy Sundays began in November in Washington, D.C. as weekly in-person gatherings of regional organizations to establish and nurture a united anti-imperialist front over time. The sessions are undergirded by an understanding that to build, strengthen, and maintain an anti-imperialist coalition in the region requires the collective process to unfold in praxis, addressing political clarity, collective strategy development, and implementation of actions. The weekly gatherings will continue indefinitely as the collective grows, struggles, strengthens, and, under its updated name - Resists U.S. Militarization. Masks required | Bol Bookstore, 716 Monroe Street NE, Studio 11, Washington D.C., 20017
December 20, 2025 | BAP-Baltimore and the All African People's Revolutionary Party will be holding the final town hall of the year titled The Fallacy of Human Rights | Payne Memorial AME Church | 1714 Madison Ave, Baltimore, MD.
January 7, 2026 | Pan-African Community Action (PACA)’s next Assata Shakur Study Group session “#Justice for ZO: Building Campaigns for Community Control!”| Time: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. | Location: In-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington D.C. Link to register coming soon!.
January 21, 2026 | This session of Pan-African Community Action (PACA)’s Assata Shakur Study Group will be “The Radical MLK” | Time: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. ET. | Location: In-person at Black Workers & Wellness Center, 2500 Martin Luther King, Jr., Ave., SE, Washington D.C. Link to register coming soon!