On Why the World Needs Black Leadership

Three Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) members participated in the First International Conference Against U.S./NATO Military Bases, a historic gathering that has elevated the global anti-war movement. BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka introduced attendees to Dr. Aleida Guevara, Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara’s daughter, who is an accomplished medical activist. Attendees praised the AFRICOM plenary chaired by BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley, which was elevated with the expert participation of BAP Coordinating Committee member Paul Pumphrey. Anne Atambo, president of WILPF Kenya, and Chris Matlhako of South African Peace Initiative also presented.

The importance of BAP was on full display. We have emerged as a critical leadership force in the global anti-war movement. What we have heard and experienced over our 18-month existence re-affirms the importance of being an autonomous Black organization based in the United States.

You can read BAP’s statement on the conference here. You can also see videos and the global coalition’s joint communiqué here.

While some of us were talking war and peace in Dublin, BAP member Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture represented Saturday at the No White Supremacists in Philly rally. More than 1,000 anti-fascist demonstrators turned out, scaring off the few white supremacists who showed up and enjoyed police protection (as usual). Here are more photos from the event.

This week, we heard something that almost sounded like good news. Almost. The U.S. government announced it is pulling 10 percent of its military out of Africa... to focus on threatening China and Russia. This move demonstrates why our U.S. Out of Africa! campaign to shut down U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has been and remains part of a global campaign to shut down all U.S. and NATO military bases. Please sign our petition and share it online. (We need 19 more signatures to reach the 1,500-signature mark!) If you want to be able to print out and circulate the petition in your communities, universities and elsewhere, click here.

As you can see, BAP has been able to accomplish more than million-dollar operations because we have something they don’t—a historical imperative that is rooted in being the oppressed, being the ones in the cross hairs of state violence and repression. Only you can help us raise $1,500 to support five of our activists to attend the Southern Human Rights Organizers’ Conference (SHROC) next month in Atlanta. Please give what you can.

Attend these events:

1. BAP Coordinating Committee member Jaribu Hill has been organizing the Southern Human Rights Organizers’ Conference (SHROC) for 22 years. Join her and activists from the Global South Dec. 7-9 in Atlanta.

2. Celebrate BAP's second anniversary on April 4 in Washington, D.C., as we demonstrate against the transnational ruling class desecrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday by holding a huge party to honor NATO's 70th anniversary on that day.

No compromise.

No retreat.

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa and YahNé
Coordinating Committee
Black Alliance for Peace

P.S. Help us organize our people against the U.S. empire by contributing today.

Photo credit: Ellen Davidson, top; Joe Piette, botto

A Different Kind of Women's March

BAP members Ajamu Baraka, Charo Mina-Rojas, Jose Monzon, and YahNé Ndgo joined about 1,500 of some of the most dedicated people in the country to march Sunday with Cindy Sheehan in the Women’s March on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) continues to stress war is a class issue—but it is also a race and gender issue, with people of color, women, and LGBTQIA2S and non-binary people disproportionately suffering. It is unfortunate forces associated with the “resistance,” who allow themselves to be called forth whenever the Democratic Party beckons, have failed to understand the importance of opposing the permanent war agenda of the duopoly. Opposing this agenda is also why we will be out in force to support the next mobilization in Washington, D.C., called by the Black Is Back Coalition on November 3 as well as the Peace Congress being organized for the week afterward. This really is shaping up to be an Anti-war Autumn.

As part of our #AntiwarAutumn efforts and our contribution to the work of the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases, we launched a campaign on the 10th anniversary of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM demands the end of war and militarism on the continent of our ancestors. Please sign our petition to the Congressional Black Caucus and U.S. House of Representatives Armed Services Committee (we're almost at 1,000 signatures!).

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka also spoke with Lee Camp of “Redacted Tonight” about the importance of re-invigorating Black internationalist forces to build an anti-war, anti-imperialist movement inside the imperial core. And BAP member Netfa Freeman wrote about the connection between the attack on Black communities in the United States and the U.S. occupation of Africa in Black Star News.

Please also attend these events:

1. BAP Coordinating Committee members Jaribu Hill and Ajamu Baraka will join esteemed revolutionaries as jurists at the International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes on Puerto Rico, being held October 27 in New York City.

2. Join BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action for this popular-education program, “From Anacostia to AFRICOM: How Capitalism Creates Killer Cops.”

3. Join Ajamu Baraka and representatives from the Black Is Back Coalition and the United National Antiwar Coalition for a panel discussion to “End the Wars at Home and Abroad” October 31 in New York City.

4. African peoples are asked to participate in the Black Is Back Coalition’s November 3 March on the White House in Washington, D.C.

5. Now that Trump’s military parade is canceled due to mass pressure, BAP is helping organize Peace Congress: End All U.S. Wars at Home and Abroad, being held November 10 in Washington, D.C. BAP Coordinating Committee member Netfa Freeman will speak.

6. Join BAP Coordinating Committee members Margaret Kimberley and Ajamu Baraka at the First International Conference Against U.S./NATO Military Bases, being held November 16-18 in Dublin, Ireland.

7. BAP Coordinating Committee member Jaribu Hill has been organizing the Southern Human Rights Organizers’ Conference (SHROC) for 22 years. Join her and activists from the Global South Dec. 7-9 in Atlanta. Register by October 31 for the early-bird price. Book the group hotel rate by November 13.

No compromise.

No retreat.

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa and YahNé
Coordinating Committee
Black Alliance for Peace

P.S. Help us organize our people against the U.S. empire by contributing today.

BAP Is on the Move

Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) members spent a day and a half last weekend re-considering our programmatic work and re-organizing our leadership structure, so we can build our capacity for liberation. We left Atlanta energized about our soon-to-be launched U.S. Out of Africa! campaign, as well as related campaigns on demilitarizing the world, and closing U.S. and NATO military bases.

Fortunately, Africans around the world are organizing themselves, too. Hundreds of delegates who met in Ghana for a Pan-Africanist conference held discussions to advance the struggle against capitalism and imperialism.

This week marked a historic visit to the United States by Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who spoke at Riverside Church in New York City after addressing the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on the inhumane U.S. blockade against the Caribbean island. Then Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro Moros made a surprise appearance. Watch the video of the whole event documented by our friends at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The U.S. state has been openly involved in criminal aggression against the Venezuelan state, with almost no opposition from 'progressive forces' in the United States and Europe. It is yet another example of the class-collaborationist character of so much of the Western and U.S. left—and why it is political suicide for radical Black forces not to be independently organized.

Maduro said in his address to the UNSC: "I bring the truth of a country that has not surrendered, a historic people that resisted colonial empires in centuries past, I bring the voice of a people who have the honor of being the birthplace of the Liberator Simón Bolívar … Our nation is a country that is harassed and attacked. Yesterday, in this very spot, the President of the United States of America spoke once again against the noble people of Venezuela."

Even Bolivian President Evo Morales looked Trump directly in the eye and recalled that the United States had orchestrated a coup in Iran back in the 1950s to stop that country’s quest for self-determination.

In a further repudiation of the United States, North Korea and South Korea jointly declared the end of the war on Korea and announced their joint bid to host the 2032 Olympics. They also pledged to create rail and road links between the North and the South within the next year, stop military drills aimed at each other along the military demarcation line that divides the North and the South by November 1, among other moves that express cross-border solidarity. China and Russia called for U.S. sanctions on North Korea to be eased as well. All of this points to the diminishing position of the United States in an increasingly multilateral world.

China even came out with a new party line: It is trying to save the world from the United States, which at this point can only boast of its military prowess while its people go hungry and homeless at alarming rates.

The World Peace Council that BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka attended released a final declaration on its 5-day meeting in the Dominican Republic. This document is unlike the final declaration released by the Trilateral Peace Conference, which was held during the same week.

Please also attend these events:

1. BAP has endorsed an October 7 rally in New York City to commemorate the 17th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan: From Afghanistan to Yemen, End the Wars: NY Tour

2. BAP Coordinating Committee members Jaribu Hill and Ajamu Baraka will join esteemed revolutionaries as jurists at the International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes on Puerto Rico, being held October 27 in New York City.

3. Participate in a national conference call October 18 on militarism featuring Ajamu Baraka and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, who is organizing the Women’s March on the Pentagon during #AntiwarAutumn.

4. Now that Trump’s military parade is canceled due to mass pressure, BAP is helping organize Peace Congress: End All U.S. Wars at Home and Abroad, being held November 10 in Washington, D.C.

5. Join BAP Coordinating Committee members Margaret Kimberley and Ajamu Baraka at the First International Conference Against U.S./NATO Military Bases, being held November 16-18 in Dublin, Ireland.

No compromise.

No retreat.

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa and YahNé
Coordinating Committee
Black Alliance for Peace

P.S. Help us organize our people against the U.S. empire by contributing today.


 

The Bipartisan Rip-off

Since we at the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) are preparing for this weekend’s membership meeting, we’ll keep this update brief.

The bipartisan rip-off of the public continues. While we are being entertained by the antics of Trump, the Senate with almost no opposition passed another record defense bill.

"The funding total—approved by a 93-7 vote—amounts to an increase of more than 3 percent for military spending in fiscal 2019.”

Last week, BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka attended the Trilateral Peace Conference (US, Canada, Mexico), which was held in conjunction with the Hemispheric Peace Conference of the World Peace Council and its affiliates. Conference attendees issued a final declaration on their path forward.

Please also try to attend these events:

1. Tonight in Atlanta: BAP is hosting another AFRICOM panel, this time in Atlanta on September 20 at Morehouse College.

2. BAP endorsed the Days of Action Against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and related film screenings.

3. BAP has also endorsed the International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes on Puerto Rico, being held October 27 in New York City. This tribunal needs endorsements, donations and publicity.

No compromise.

No retreat.

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Ana, Jaribu, Kali, Lamont, Lukata, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa and Yolande
Coordinating Committee
Black Alliance for Peace

P.S. Help us organize against the U.S. empire by contributing today toward our first membership meeting!

Photo credit: AP/Dario Lopez-Mills

BAP Demands "U.S. Out of Africa!"

Ruling-class newspapers like The New York Times may try to spin the U.S. invasion of Africa as only expanding under Trump.

Yet it was Barack Obama who dramatically increased AFRICOM operations. The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) launched a few months before he took office. Most African states had expressed significant opposition to AFRICOM until the United States and NATO attacked and destroyed the Libyan state in 2011. That war forced other African countries to confront the possibility of an invasion ruining their countries, too. Today, 53 out of 54 African countries keep military-to-military relationships with the United States. But let's be clear: AFRICOM wasn’t established to fight so-called “terrorism”, but to continue the neo-colonial process of extracting Africa's resources and keeping out potential infrastructure-development partners like China.

This is why the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) is launching the U.S. Out of Africa! campaign on AFRICOM’s 10th anniversary, coming up on October 1. To find out how you can get involved in defeating the war on Africa, sign up for U.S, Out of Africa! updates.

Although the U.S. ruling class tries to co-opt September 11 as only the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., it is also remembered as the anniversary of another massacre. BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka discussed the impact of the 1973 U.S.-aided military coup of Chile that tortured, disappeared and executed tens of thousands of Chilean leftists. What is happening now with the United States having met with counter-revolutionary plotters for a year in its attempt to intervene in Venezuela looks eerily similar.

It is because of U.S. crimes against humanity that the United States faces prosecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for torturing detainees in Afghanistan. It also defended settler-colonial ally Israel’s abuse of Gazans. Of course, the short-sighted bully that it is, the United States has only inflamed matters by threatening sanctions on ICC judges and prosecutors.

A documentary exposing Israel’s attack on the Black Lives Matter movement for its support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign proves Black internationalism is a threat to the global structure of oppression.

We recommend you read a review of a book for which Ajamu wrote a foreward called “The Einstein File: The FBI’s Secret War Against the World’s Most Famous Scientist”.

Russia says the United States dropped white phosphorus on Syria. This is interesting because that means the United States is using chemical weapons. Are we surprised? Perhaps this will mark the start of WWIII. We hope not.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) marked its 70th anniversary this week. BAP supports the right of the people of the DPRK to determine their national direction.

Please also try to attend these events:

1. BAP is hosting another AFRICOM panel, this time in Atlanta on September 20 at Morehouse College. BAP member organizations Pan-African Community Action and Friends of the Congo have endorsed this event, along with Morehouse's African American Studies Department.

2. BAP endorsed the Days of Action Against the U.S. Blockade of Cuba and related film screenings.

3. Come out Saturday for the annual Brooklyn-Wide March Against Gentrification, Racism and Police Violence taking place in New York City. BAP has endorsed this march. Please RSVP and participate!

4. BAP has also endorsed the International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes on Puerto Rico, being held October 27 in New York City. This tribunal needs endorsements, donations and publicity.

No compromise.

No retreat.

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Ana, Jaribu, Kali, Lamont, Lukata, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa and Yolande
Coordinating Committee
Black Alliance for Peace

P.S. Help us organize against the U.S. empire by contributing today toward our first membership meeting!

Freedom Fighters, Help BAP Stay Independent

We were touched by the response we got from the public when we asked you a few days ago to support us so we could keep our independent voice. We want to thank all who gave a little or a lot, but we are not there yet. We still have four days to reach our goal of $10,000—and we are far from it. Give today, freedom fighters. Dig deep because we too are digging deep to build this alliance as a structure for liberation and transformation.

The national prison strike continues into its final week, but prisoners are not just raising their voices for people who are locked up after being convicted. They’re bringing attention to migrants and refugees in detention centers as well as folks with disabilities, who make up a large portion of the prison population.

The Women’s March on the Pentagon, scheduled for October 20-21, is part of Anti-war Autumn, a campaign designed so electoral candidates cannot avoid the questions of imperialism and war. BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka said, “We’ve got to put the so-called ‘New Wave’ Democrats on notice that we’re not going to allow them to get elected without clearly stating where they stand on U.S. militarism.” Listen to the interview.

The U.S. empire as well as its allies in the European Union and NATO have been increasing the volume of its propaganda against emerging powers like China. Comedian and activist Lee Camp explains how to create a U.S.-backed coup, and much of it involves tricking the population with lies. The Forum on Africa-China Cooperation concluded this week with an agreement to increase dialogue and strengthen ties to continue economic development in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative. Already, more than 3,000 miles of motorways and railways have been built in African countries.


EVENTS

We understand many of you are fretting over the state’s collaboration with communications and technology corporations. These forces are coming for BAP, and it might happen sooner than we think. The only way we will win is with the support of the masses. We’re organizing our first membership meeting for September 21-22 in Atlanta to consolidate our forces. Only you can help us raise $10,000 to make this meeting happen and beat back the U.S. empire.

If you are of African descent and would like to attend this first mass membership meeting, become a member. You will then receive information about how to register for first membership meeting.

Please also try to attend these other events:

1. BAP endorsed the annual Brooklyn-Wide March Against Gentrification, Racism and Police Violence that is taking place September 15 in New York City. Please RSVP, get your organizations to endorse this march and participate!

2. BAP has also endorsed the International Tribunal on U.S. Colonial Crimes on Puerto Rico, being held October 27 in New York City. This tribunal needs endorsements, donations and publicity.

No compromise.

No retreat.

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Ana, Jaribu, Kali, Lamont, Lukata, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa and Yolande
Coordinating Committee
Black Alliance for Peace

P.S. Help us organize against the U.S. empire by contributing today toward our first membership meeting!

Photo credit: itsgoingdown.org