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 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).