Racism, Militarism and Materialism = AFRICOM

A year before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was murdered, he declared the United States was the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet. 

Some people today focus on the moral implications of this statement, disconnected from the groundings Dr. King also provided that helped to explain why the United States was addicted to war and violence. He correctly connected the drive for profit and capitalist exploitation—materialism—with the means to enforce individual and national plunder—militarism—and the racialization of the peoples of the Global South that historically has been used to dehumanize them and thereby justify the seizure of their lands, lives and independence.

On October 1, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) will highlight the latest expression of colonial hubris and white supremacist arrogance by organizing an International Day of Action on AFRICOM.

Officially launched on October 1, 2008, AFRICOM (the U.S. Africa Command) is just one part of the U.S. global command that covers the planet—and as of 2019, the United States has colonized outer space, too, with the U.S. Space Force.

However, very few ordinary people in the United States know about AFRICOM or the other command structures.

This lack of knowledge about what the U.S. state is up to outside its borders extends even to Congress. When four U.S. military personnel were killed in Niger last year, members of Congress were shocked to learn the extent of U.S. military involvement in Africa. Even in this election season, almost no attention has been given to U.S. foreign policies and global activities. The lack of conversation stems primarily from this fact: No real, fundamental differences exist between the two major political parties because both are firmly committed to the U.S. imperial project.

This is why BAP focused on AFRICOM as part of our work as a member organization of the Coalition Against U.S. Foreign Military Bases, which BAP helped co-found.

BAP’s Africa Team explains in the call for support for the International Day of Action on AFRICOM: “The U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign is demanding the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa and the demilitarization of the African continent. The campaign is an integral element of the Black Alliance for Peace’s general opposition to U.S. global militarization, with its offensive command structures, approximately 800 to 1,000 overseas bases, and the United States’ status as the number one arms merchant on the planet. The International Day of Action on AFRICOM (October 1, 2020) aims to raise the public’s awareness about the U.S. military’s existence in Africa, and how the presence of U.S. forces exacerbates violence and instability throughout the continent.”

BAP launched on April 4, 2017, the 50th anniversary of Dr. King's famous speech, in which he broke his silence so he could come out in opposition to the Vietnam War. With our launch, we pledged to fearlessly take up the fight to end the scourge of racism, materialism and militarism against what remains to be the greatest purveyor of violence on the planet.

Organizations are invited to endorse the International Day of Action on AFRICOM.

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP member Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture, pictured above with the bullhorn, spoke out at a rally in Philadelphia organized in support of the three Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) activists who were recently scooped up by Denver police and railroaded with draconian charges for participating in a protest after the murder of a Black man at the hands of police. Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA), interviewed PSL organizer Eugene Puryear on WPFW’s “Voices With Vision”. All three activists have been released since this interview took place.

BAP member Erica Caines participated on a panel with the Albuquerque Anti-War Coalition to discuss Operation Relentless Pursuit in Baltimore, the militarization of police and the importance of internationalism. The panel was organized to address the increasing presence of federal agents in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with the 2019 launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit and the recent launch of Operation LeGend. These operations connect the violence police and federal agents bring to neighborhoods with the violence the U.S. empire deploys around the world.

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley moderated BAP’s webinar, Full Spectrum Dominance: From AFRICOM to Indo-Pacific Command. It featured among several activists, BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong. 

Margaret also participated in a few webinars this week: She can be heard 76 minutes into the No Cold War International Peace Forum, 24 minutes into Pivot to Peace’s Standing Against Racism and War—the Only Road to Peace, and the In Defense of Julian Assange webinar.

In Black Agenda Report, Danny wrote Joe Biden and the Democrats have no plan to stop the bleeding in the United States and around the world. Meanwhile, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford wrote, “...the guardians of corporate hegemony at the New York Times seek to divert attention from the real root of the nation and world’s problems—the Dictatorship of (white) Capital—by narrowing the definition of ‘power’ to what can be achieved by climbing the corporate (or corporate party) ladder.”

Plus, Margaret provided analysis on defense spending and COVID-19 budget negotiations 75 minutes into Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour”.
 

EVENTS

September 28: The Claudia Jones School for Political Education will host a webinar, Worker Cooperatives and the Movement for Socialism.

September 30: BAP member organization AfroResistance is hosting an anti-oppression workshop, “Dominant Culture: A Virtual Anti-Oppression Workshop.” Registration is required.

October 1: BAP is organizing an International Day of Action on AFRICOM. Find out how to take action.

October 1: The African Great Lakes Action Network and Africans Rising along with BAP member organization Friends of the Congo will host a webinar, In Pursuit of Justice in the Great Lakes Region of Africa. It will be a discussion on peace and justice in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Great Lakes Region on the 10th anniversary of the United Nations Mapping Exercise Report. Panelists will discuss the measures needed from the international community to address questions of impunity, lack of accountability and justice in the Congo and the Great Lakes Region of Africa. This discussion is of particular importance in the wake of the Rwandan government's illegal rendition and jailing of Paul Rusesabagina, the hero of Hotel Rwanda and the death threats levelled against Congolese Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Denis Mukwege.

October 14: PACA's Assata Shakur Study Group will be held online at 7 p.m., EST. PACA requests non-Africans who wish to attend bring an African.

October 18-24: BAP member organization Friends of the Congo is commemorating Congo Week XIII by hosting a series of virtual events this year with special presentations from the Andree Blouin Center in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

October 22: Stand with thousands across the country for National Day of Protest to express our collective outrage, creativity and resistance in response to the crimes of this system. Uphold the tens of thousands of lives stolen by U.S. law enforcement over the past quarter century. Join a National Day of Protest event in your area. Create one if you are in an area where no one is organizing. On October 22, “WEAR BLACK, FIGHT BACK!” To endorse this call, complete this form. For more information, visit october22.org. Provide details of an action by emailing oct22national@gmail.com.   

October 22: Join "A Call for Unity of the National Black Liberation Movement in the Age of Capitalist Decline,” at 7 p.m., EST. This first in a series of national webinars will open a national dialogue on the state of the National Black Liberation Movement, how to establish national unity of all forces seeking Black Liberation, and how to rebuild a national movement that has earned the trust and support of the African American people in our 400-year historic struggle to end oppression. This webinar is sponsored by BAP, BAP member organization Black Workers for Justice, Cooperation Jackson and Community Movement Builders. More information will be available in an upcoming newsletter.

November 7-8: The Black Is Back Coalition calls on all to march, rally and convene in Washington, D.C., during the “Black People's March On White House.” Registration is required. Read their article in Black Agenda Report.

TAKE ACTION

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• BAP is raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Takisha Miller

Today Is International Day of Peace

Since 1981, September 21st has been used to focus and re-dedicate global efforts toward achieving peace. But like many days created by the United Nations and global civil society to reflect the highest values and aspirations of collective humanity, the struggle for peace has been soiled by the moral hypocrisy of global oppressors.

Those states see peace as a threat. In the United States, 83-year-old Dr. W.E.B. Dubois was branded a criminal in 1951 for being the director of the Peace Information Center. In 1967, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. asserted racism, materialism and militarism were maladies of U.S. society that, if not corrected, would result in a spiritual death for the United States. When the Black Liberation Movement embraced an anti-imperialist and anti-war position and Dr. King correctly identified the United States as the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, brutal repression took place—his life was taken and the movement was smashed. Today, peace activists and the peace movement are relegated to the fringes of political discourse, making direct repression unnecessary.

But, as Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton said, you can kill a revolutionary, but you can’t kill the revolution. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) took up the historic task to fight for peace and human rights on April 4, 2017, exactly 50 years after Dr. King broke his silence on Vietnam.

We are committed to peace. But we say without equivocation or apology that without justice, there will be no peace—and for justice, we must fight for it. What compels us to resist? We see in the United States and around the world the barbarism of war, repression and imperialism. We see the structural violence of capitalism dramatically revealed by the coronavirus pandemic. We see the oligarchy’s cavalier disregard for human life has unsealed for the public a deeper level of understanding of what it has to mean to be anti-war.

So today, we celebrate the aspiration we all have for peace by re-dedicating ourselves to this cause: Extricating the power to wage war against humanity from those rogue states lorded over by the world’s rapacious, white-supremacist colonial/capitalist minority.

We say end the war in Afghanistan and prosecute the war criminals in the Obama and Trump administrations that provided weapons of war to the fascist Saudi state to wage genocidal war in Yemen. Say no to the new cold war with China, shut down the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) and close the estimated 800 to 1,000 U.S. military bases around the world.

Peace, human cooperation, substantive equality and commitment to People(s)-Centered Human Rights are possible. These values represent the only rational basis for sustaining human life on the planet. Join us at 4 p.m., EST, September 24, for our webinar, Full Spectrum Dominance: From AFRICOM to Indo-Pacific Command, where we will discuss and strategize on how we can put a brake on the global bi-partisan war machine. 

And thanks to all who supported our effort toward raising a modest $30,000 to help us continue to wage peace. We reached the $10,000 mark, which helped us win a $10,000 matching grant from a generous person. Now please consider helping us meet our goal before the end of the month by giving today.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

Last week, BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford interviewed Sam Martinez of Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar Clark in Minneapolis. Sam shared Community Control of Police (CCOP) is the only way to stop murders at the hands of police, saying, “There’s nothing being disbanded, dismantled or defunded, unfortunately, at this time.” Check out the Black Agenda Radio interview. Plus, PACA organizer Max Rameau discussed CCOP on WPFW’s “Community Watch & Comment” starting at the 45-minute mark.

Margaret spoke to Deutsche Welle about the city of Louisville, Kentucky, settling with the family of police-murder victim, Breonna Taylor.

Netfa appeared on Press TV’s “The Debate” to talk about U.S. election fraud and the recent U.S. upheavals. Margaret was interviewed on the Macro N Cheese podcast to talk about the U.S. presidential election, climate change, protests and more.

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka questioned how Joe Biden’s foreign policy would make any difference for the world in CounterPunch. Margaret did similarly on Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour.”

Netfa appeared on Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary,” co-hosted by BAP member Jacqueline Luqman, to discuss the breakdown in talks between the Mali coup leaders and the civilian government on a peaceful transition of power, the involvement of coup leaders in previous U.S. operations in the region, and the role French and German imperialism played in laying the groundwork for conflicts in the West African country. 
         
BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network Coordinator Tunde Osazua joined Talk Nation Radio to discuss the U.S. role in militarizing Africa and BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign.

Netfa interviewed on “Voices With Vision” Aziz Fall, founding member of GRILA (Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa), who spoke about his organization and the lesser known history of anti-AFRICOM resistance outside of the United States.

Michael Sawyer, professor at Colorado College, told Margaret and Glen on Black Agenda Radio that were he alive today, Malcolm X “would be a harsh and clear critic of everything that’s happening” under the Black Lives Matter banner. Historian Gerald Horne also appeared on Black Agenda Radio to discuss his latest book, “The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century.”

On Saturday, a live memorial service took place in English and Spanish for activist and BAP supporter Kevin Zeese. BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong has been among many who have written tributes to Kevin, who Danny writes, “never wavered in his opposition to the corporate duopoly, white supremacy, and the forces of militarism.”

 

EVENTS

September 21: The Connecticut Peace & Solidarity Coalition will host a webinar, “Moving Money from the Military to Human Needs: Demanding Candidates Confront the $741 Billion U.S. Military Budget,” at 7:30 p.m., EST. Registration is required.

September 23: PACA's Assata Shakur Study Group will be held online at 7 p.m., EST. PACA requests non-Africans who wish to attend bring an African.

September 24: Mark your calendars for 4 p.m., EST, for BAP’s next webinar, “Full Spectrum Dominance: From AFRICOM to Indo-Pacific Command.” Registration is required.

September 24: ABQ Antiwar Coalition presents an 8 p.m., EST, webinar to discuss the connection between police terrorism and U.S. imperialist violence around the world, with a special focus on Operation Relentless pursuit and Operation Legend. Register here.

September 26: All-African People’s Revolutionary Party will host a webinar, Revolutionary Solutions: Mass Based Alternatives Towards Community Empowerment, at 11 a.m., EST. Register here.

September 26: Cuban doctors from the Henry Reeve Brigade will soon celebrate the medical brigade’s 15th anniversary by discussing what it’s like to work on the frontlines of a pandemic at 8 p.m. EST. Register here.

September 26: No Cold War is organizing a second international webinar for 9 p.m., EST, to discuss global trends and how to organize to stop a new cold war. Registration is required.

September 30: BAP member organization AfroResistance is hosting an anti-oppression workshop, “Dominant Culture: A Virtual Anti-Oppression Workshop.” Registration is required.

October 1: BAP is organizing an International Day of Action on AFRICOM. More information will be available in the next newsletter.

October 18-24: BAP member organization Friends of the Congo is commemorating Congo Week XIII by hosting a series of virtual events this year with special presentations from the Andree Blouin Center in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

October 22: Join us for "A Call for Unity of the National Black Liberation Movement in the Age of Capitalist Decline,” at 7 p.m., EST. This first in a series of national webinars will open a national dialogue on the state of the National Black Liberation Movement, how to establish national unity of all forces seeking Black Liberation, and how to rebuild a national movement that has earned the trust and support of the African American people in our 400-year historic struggle to end oppression. This webinar is sponsored by BAP, BAP member organization Black Workers for Justice, Cooperation Jackson and Community Movement Builders. Registration information will be available in upcoming newsletters.

November 7-8: The Black Is Back Coalition calls on all to march, rally and convene in Washington, D.C., during the “Black People's March On White House.” Registration is required. Read their article in Black Agenda Report.

 

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Staff Sgt. Michael B. Keller, U.S. Air Force

Who Really Wants Peace in Afghanistan?

Despite several hurdles, peace talks between the Taliban and the U.S.-created Afghan government began September 12 in Doha, Qatar. However, instead of expressing an interest that the longest war in U.S. history may be coming to an end, the response from the U.S. news media, congressional representatives and even some elements of the peace movement has ranged from silence to indifference.

Donald Trump made withdrawing from “endless” U.S. wars a signature promise of his 2016 presidential campaign. That might account for the paucity of media coverage and the lack of acknowledgment that a possibility existed for the United States to extricate itself from the quagmire that previously trapped the British and Soviets in Afghanistan.

It is somewhat of a minor miracle that the peace process made it this far. At every turn, the military-industrial complex, the neoliberal media, the foreign policy community and members of Congress had conspired against a peace process that would have significantly reduced the U.S. presence in the country. Lurid stories of Russian bounties paid to the Taliban for dead U.S. personnel filled the media a few months after the Trump administration brokered an agreement between the Taliban and the Afghan government to enter into a process of direct negotiation. Because of that story, Congress passed legislation to prevent Trump from completely withdrawing U.S. personnel from the country.

For the people of the world watching this shameful behavior, it provided more evidence of the corrupt nature of both U.S. parties, as well as the moral bankruptcy of the liberal global order and the depravity of the U.S. ruling class. 

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

WPFW’s “Voices With Vision” paid tribute to BAP supporter Kevin Zeese, who suddenly passed away September 6. The episode included BAP Coordinating Committee member Jaribu Hill reading BAP’s September 7 newsletter, which was dedicated to Kevin’s memory. Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo also wrote a tribute to Kevin in Black Agenda Report. 

“Voices with Vision,” co-hosted by Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on the BAP Coordinating Committee, featured an interview last week with Freedom Mazwi, a researcher at the Sam Moyo African Institute for Agrarian Studies, in Harare, Zimbabwe, about disturbing developments for Black liberation in Zimbabwe. Plus, BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley was featured on the show reading from a recent article she wrote about the natural connection between law enforcement in the United States and white supremacist organizations.

Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford asks in his piece for Black Agenda Report why Black Lives Matter chapters are withholding support for Community Control of Police, which he writes puts people on the path to both defunding and abolishing the police.

Ahjamu Umi of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party writes the Black bourgeoisie will continue to derail African/Black people with “their empty promises of inclusion.”

BAP member Jacqueline Luqman interviewed historian Gerald Horne on the settler-colonial roots of property rights with The Real News Network.

Margaret and BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong break down on The Left Lens why Kamala Harris represents a “negation of everything that the Black liberation movement and U.S. political prisoners currently fighting for freedom stand for.” Margaret also was featured on WBAI’s “La Voz Latina” to discuss lesser evilism in the 2020 election, starting 30 minutes into the show. Then she appeared with BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka on Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” to discuss 9/11, 19 years later. Their discussion starts 59 minutes into the show. You also can hear Margaret on Radio Sputnik’s “Fault Lines” talking about the protests and the 2020 election 85 minutes in.

BAP member YahNé Ndgo was featured on 6ABC Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Facebook and Instagram discussing the work she’s been doing in Philadelphia around the housing crisis, including participating in an encampment. YahNé and BAP member Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture also were featured on CBS3 Philadelphia. Additionally, YahNé was interviewed on 6ABC Philadelphia about a community healing and building event she organized. 

Meanwhile, BAP member organization Black Workers for Justice was featured on local TV station WRAL for playing a key role organizing a Labor Day rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, for a higher minimum wage and better working conditions.

Then on the foreign affairs front, Danny wrote about how Barack Obama was brought into the NBA strike to silence African/Black resistance against capitalism. And Margaret discussed how both the Democrats and Republicans support the endless U.S. wars abroad.

 

EVENTS

September 16 and 30: BAP member organization AfroResistance is hosting an anti-oppression workshop, “Dominant Culture: A Virtual Anti-Oppression Workshop.” Registration is required.

September 19-20: Labor and Community for an Independent Party is organizing a two-day online conference, “Break the Grip of the Two-Party System Program Agenda.” Registration is required.

September 23: PACA's Assata Shakur Study Group will be held at 7 p.m., EST, online. PACA requests non-Africans who wish to attend bring an African.

September 24: Mark your calendars for 4 p.m., EST, for BAP’s next webinar, “Full Spectrum Dominance: From AFRICOM to Indo-Pacific Command.” Registration is required.

November 7-8: The Black Is Back Coalition calls on all to march, rally and convene in Washington, D.C., during the “Black People's March On White House.” Registration is required. Read their article in Black Agenda Report.

 

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Tauseef Mustafa/AFP/Getty Images

¡Kevin Zeese, PRESENTÉ!

The anti-imperialist and anti-war movement suffered a great loss early Sunday morning with the sudden passing of activist Kevin Zeese.

Margaret Flowers, his life partner, captured the sentiments of many of us who knew Kevin and were shocked by his passing, when she said to know Kevin is to know how ”... amazing, kind and selfless a person Kevin was. He never asked for anything, but was always there for others. He had such great knowledge and wisdom. He was a gentle giant and his death is a huge loss for me personally and I know for many people who are a friend or who worked with him over the years.”

It was that kind of solidarity and commitment to people that compelled Kevin, along with Margaret and all of the activists who became known worldwide as the Embassy Protection Collective, to hold the Venezuelan embassy in Washington, D.C., for 37 days to prevent it from being taken over by the unelected, right-wing forces who aligned with Juan Guaido. It was an amazing and heroic act of internationalist solidarity that will go down in the annals of the people’s history.

Another country Kevin was especially concerned about that now finds itself in the crosshairs of U.S. criminal aggression is Nicaragua. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) shares those concerns and pledges to the memory of Kevin to raise the visibility inside the United States of the heroic struggle of the Nicaraguan people to preserve the integrity of their project.

Central to Kevin’s concerns was respecting the will and sovereignty of peoples around the world. That is why he adamantly opposed U.S. and European sanctions. Kevin recognized sanctions were acts of war, and that they usually target the civilian population with inevitable death, suffering and destruction. We at BAP will go even further and say sanction regimes are acts of state terrorism when they are applied unilaterally by rogue states, such as the United States.

So, while our hearts are heavy, we know Kevin would tell us not to mourn too long and get back to fulfilling our duty to organize and fight at the center of the U.S. empire. That is how Kevin will be present—as our inspiration, both as we struggle and once the people win! 

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

Last week's episode of WPFW’s “Voices With Vision,” hosted by Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on the BAP Coordinating Committee, featured familiar voices. BAP member Jacqueline Luqman exposed how the new March on Washington obscured the problems that have continued to be ignored since the first march held in 1963. The show featured music by Dahk Matter (aka PACA's Ahmed Malik Braxton) and BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley explaining why "Democrats are officially Republicans.”

BAP member Mark Fancher questions the value of marches and protests after police murder Black people in his latest piece for Black Agenda Report.

The U.S. crisis of legitimacy has been on display as millions have lost their jobs and homes amid an economic crisis exacerbated by the lockdowns. BAP member Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture was featured in a Philadelphia Inquirer article on Pennsylvania’s statewide eviction moratorium coming to an end.

Press TV’s “The Debate” interviewed Netfa about ongoing racial tensions in the United States. Meanwhile, Press TV interviewed Margaret on Trump’s latest move to ban anti-racism training. Plus, Margaret spoke to Radio Sputnik's “Political Misfits” and “The Critical Hour”, as well as Al Mayadeen (only available in Arabic), about the uprising in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and the 2020 election. BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka also discussed Kenosha on Al Mayadeen (only available in Arabic).

Ajamu wrote in Black Agenda Report that the U.S. human rights record—domestically and internationally—is filled with hypocrisy, deceit and denigration.

BAP’s August 23 webinar, “How the International War Against Black People Is Being Waged Locally and Unifying Our Fight Against It,” is now available on YouTube and Facebook. 

A video that explains BAP’s mission can be viewed on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. This video wouldn’t have been possible without BAP member Jelani Fraser, who scripted and produced the video, and BAP Coordinating Committee member Jaribu Hill, who lent her voice as narrator.

 

EVENTS

September 9: PACA's Assata Shakur Study Group will be held at 7 p.m., EST, online. Non-Africans who wish to attend are asked to bring an African.

September 19-20: Labor and Community for an Independent Party is organizing a two-day online conference, “Break the Grip of the Two-Party System Program Agenda.” Registration is required.

September 24: Mark your calendars for 4 p.m., EST, for BAP’s next webinar, “Full Spectrum Dominance: From AFRICOM to the Indo-Pacific Command.” Registration information will be available in an upcoming newsletter.

November 7-8: The Black Is Back Coalition calls on all to march, rally and convene in Washington, D.C., during the “Black People's March On White House.” Registration is required.

 

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Ending Poverty, Hunger and War = Racial Justice?

The Black Lives Matter slogan and the demand for “racial justice” echo as the defining characteristic of the ongoing resistance from Portland to Kenosha. But the drama of the moment obscures the limitation of these demands. What we mean is those demands can be easily manipulated by the same forces the resisters in the streets believe they are in opposition to.

Private corporations such as Uber and Amazon and professional sports teams have contributed money and lined up behind the demand that “Black Lives Matter.” But as these private companies, the media and right-wing neoliberal politicians in the Democratic Party all line up in favor of racial justice, isn’t it wise for someone to inquire what exactly they are backing? This question is especially important in the midst of the pandemic, in which the non-white working-class populations are suffering and dying in disproportionate numbers, with hundreds of African/Black people dying every week.

Extrajudicial murders of Black people at the hands of U.S. police number fewer than 300 per year, on average. The opposition to murders at the hands of police is understandable, given African/Black people make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but represent an average of 25 percent to 30 percent of lethal encounters with the police. These numbers don’t even account for the numbers of African/Black people shot and beaten by the police.

However, other disproportionalities are not being contextualized as racial justice issues. Astronomical rates of Black unemployment, Black people in lines for food assistance, Black people representing the most vulnerable so-called “essential” workers, Black people lacking health insurance, Black people impoverished and Black people unnecessarily dying during a pandemic are expressions of capitalist state violence. But they have been exempted from the category of racialized oppression.

This contradiction might explain why Amazon founder Jeff Bezos can make sure workers trying to organize themselves are fired, but then turn around and claim “Black Lives Matter.”

Black human-rights fighter Ella Baker famously said to Black people and to other oppressed people, “You and I cannot be free in America or anywhere else where there is capitalism and imperialism.” If the current demand for racial justice was identified with the position Ella Baker articulated, would the corporations, the media, liberal foundations, and right-wing Democrats like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris still support it?

The answer is obvious. That is why even the leading personalities of the Black Lives Matter movement have not publicly embraced Ella Baker’s position.

And that is why we have and must continue to develop a Black Alliance for Peace (BAP). Members of this alliance are clear there can be no justice, no peace or human rights as long as this rapacious, inhumane colonial/capitalist system is allowed to reproduce poverty, war and the structures of white supremacy.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP continues to act on our renewed commitment to our political prisoners during this 41st Black August by posting solidarity videos from our members on our Instagram account. Black Agenda Radio re-broadcast political prisoners advocacy organization Jericho Movement co-chair Jihad Abdulmumit’s talk given August 15 at the Black Is Back Coalition’s national conference. The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC) “is committed to the militant organizing of prisoners that takes its leadership and focus from those on the inside.” Black Agenda Radio dove into it. Plus, Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, spread the word about Black August on RT Spanish; on a panel discussion held after the screening of “Let the Fire Burn,” a film about the MOVE bombing; featured BAP member, Black Is Back Coalition Steering Committee member and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford’s August 15 Black Is Back Coalition talk on WPFW’s “Voices with Vision”; and spoke on a webinar hosted by Africans Rising, “Black August: Standing in Global Solidarity” to connect the global struggle of Africans to the struggle of our political prisoners in the United States. During Black August, BAP collaborated with the Abolitionist Law Center, which made this video.

PACA organizer Olúfémi O. Táíwò published an article in In These Times, "Want to Abolish the Police? The First Step Is Putting Them Under Democratic Control: Abolition is part of a broader struggle for democracy." The work of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression on Community Control of Police (CCOP) was featured in this article.

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka discussed the Democrats, Trump, Black Lives Matter and identity politics as it relates to Kamala Harris on Law and Disorder Radio. BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley discussed on the Left Lens with BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong Harris’ nomination. Then Margaret analyzed Trump’s agenda to end all wars 89 minutes into Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour.” She also discussed the 2020 elections on the “Wider View” podcast.

Netfa provided context on the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Watch him on here and here. Margaret discussed Kenosha and the significance of the March on Washington on RT’s “Watching the Hawks.”

BAP member Luci Murphy was featured in Billboard magazine for her work with the People's Music Network for Songs of Freedom and Struggle, where she serves on the steering committee.

BAP member Erica Caines explained on an ANTICONQUISTA livestream the relevance of Huey P. Newton’s book, “To Die for the People,” for today’s struggle. Hood Communist editors, one of whom is Erica, discussed in this video why they created the blog and the revolutionary potential of Africans in the United States. 

 

EVENTS

August 31: BAP’s August 23 webinar, “How the International War Against Black People is Being Waged Locally,” featured a well-received video explaining BAP’s mission. It will premiere at 7 p.m., EST, on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. 

September 4: The Bethesda African Cemetery Coalition will host a demonstration demanding Montgomery County return land to the African/Black community. It will take place 12 p.m., EST, at 5204 River Road in Bethesda, Maryland. Learn more.

September 9: PACA's Assata Shakur Study Group will be held at 7 p.m, EST, online.

September 19-20: Labor and Community for An Independent Party is organizing a two-day online conference, “Break the Grip of the Two-Party System Program Agenda.” Registration is required.

November 7-8: The Black Is Back Coalition calls on all to march, rally and convene in Washington, D.C., during the “Black People's March On White House.” Registration is required.

 

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Stephanie Keith / Getty Images

The DNC and the Politics of Betrayal

The political and moral bankruptcy of the Democratic Party was on full display last week. First it was the convention of the Democratic Party, where the progressive wing of the party was pushed to the margins while the victorious, neoliberal right wing engaged in a surreal spectacle that came off oblivious to the economic, social and political crisis the country has been experiencing. The second thing that happened was the emergency reconvening of the U.S. House of Representatives to “save the post office.”

On the night Kamala Harris accepted the nomination as vice president, the Democratic Party devoted itself to demonstrating it was more militantly aggressive in its commitment to military threats, in the use of force and in reclaiming the U.S. global dominance that Trump supposedly has squandered. Neocons from the Republican Party also spoke to assure the country Joe Biden would commit to a stronger NATO, to completing the military pivot to Asia, and to standing up to the demon of the moment—Vladimir Putin.

The inspiring stories of democratic renewal and of happy days being just around the corner once Joe is in office seemed strangely disconnected from the fact that Congress had gone on vacation, leaving millions in economic limbo because the federal enhanced unemployment benefit had expired. Yet the House was called back by Nancy Pelosi not to pass a bill to end the confusion around extended unemployment and to protect against evictions, but to save the postal service so nothing would get in the way of electing the political class.

The racism, militarism, and materialism that Dr. King warned would be the diseases that would kill the body politic of the United States have created a zombie democracy.

War, the political betrayal of the working class, and an inane political posturing in the face of an intractable crisis are the politics of a society beyond salvation.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP continues to act on our renewed commitment to our political prisoners during this 41st Black August by posting solidarity videos from our members on our Instagram account. BAP member, Black Is Back Coalition Steering Committee member and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford’s talk during the Black Is Back Coalition national conference has been transcribed and published in Black Agenda Report. Plus, the official U.S. position that it holds no political prisoners is part of “the lie and the founding mythology of U.S. ‘democracy,’” Princeton University doctoral candidate, activist and minister Nyle Fort said during a Black Agenda Radio interview. Then Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on the BAP Coordinating Committee, interviewed Naji Mujahi, an attorney for the political-prisoner advocacy group The Jericho Movement, on WPFW’s “Voices with Vision.” 

Ahmed Malik Braxton, a PACA organizer, spoke on Pan-African Revolutionary Socialist Party’s “Africa Must Unite” podcast about how PACA is attempting to intervene into the struggle of our people in Washington, D.C.

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley writes, “Kamala Harris was chosen precisely because she complements Biden’s determination to do nothing on behalf of the people.” Margaret also discussed Harris’ vice-presidential nomination on Sputnik Radio’s “The Critical Hour” (58 minutes into the show), Press TV, Lauren Steiner’s show, and the Hampton Institute’s “A Different Lens” podcast.

In the fourth episode of the Left Lens, co-hosts BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong and Margaret discuss some of the reasons people of conscience should oppose the U.S. cold war against China.

During Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour,” BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka gave his general thoughts on the Democratic National Convention starting at 2 minutes into the Thursday show. Then Netfa appeared at 43 minutes into the show to discuss the U.S. relationship with Sudan while Sept. 11 victims and their families protest Congress’ impending move to take Sudan off the list of “state sponsors of terrorism.” 

EVENTS

August 26: “Free Them All: Film Screening & Panel Discussion”, will be hosted by BAP, PACA, Stop Police Terror Project, Current Movements, the Institute for Policy Studies and Eaton Workshop. The film, “Let The Fire Burn,” about the MOVE bombing will be virtually screened at 6 p.m, EST. A panel discussion featuring recently released political prisoner Debbie Africa, son of former political prisoners Mike Africa Jr., son of a political prisoner Russell Shoatz III and the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement-DC’s Jonathan Stith will take place 7:30-8:30 p.m., EST.

August 27: Netfa will speak on an Africans Rising online panel, “Black August: Standing in Global Solidarity” at 10 a.m., EST, to discuss the history and contemporary importance of Black August. Registration is required.

August 28: BAP member Dr. Karanja Keita Carroll will virtually deliver a keynote address at 5 p.m., EST, that will touch on BAP’s Black August work. Registration is required.

August 29: Cooperation Jackson is organizing an art exhibit to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina at 1 p.m. at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, 1128 W. Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

August 29: BAP member organization We Charge Colonialism will host a debate at 7 p.m., EST, on the internal colonization of Africans in the United States. Tune in on Facebook or YouTube to watch the debate between BAP member Dr. Jared Ball and Dr. Charles Pinderhughes.

August 30: Register for an online rally, “We Can’t Breathe! Keep it in the Streets – Against Racism, Evictions and War!” This is hosted by the United National Antiwar Coalition, BAP, Sanctions Kill, International Action Center, Coalition to March on the DNC, Peoples Power Assemblies NYC, and FIRE (Fight for Im/migrants and Refugees Everywhere).

September 19-20: Labor and Community for an Independent Party is organizing a two-day online conference, “Break the Grip of the Two-Party System Program Agenda.” Registration is required.

November 7-8: The Black Is Back Coalition calls on all to march, rally and convene in Washington, D.C., during the “Black People's March On White House.” Registration is required.

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters

Trump or Biden: Any Difference for the Global South?

Congress decided to go on vacation while millions of U.S. workers are in economic limbo and while the United States continues to engage in criminal activity, such as when it seized four Iranian oil tankers that were on their way to Venezuela last week.

Yet the focus of the corporate press was on one story: Joe Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate.

Amid this clear contradiction, we are not going to waste any space on the merits of Biden’s decision except to raise one question: For the people of the global South suffering because of U.S. sanctions, subversions, war and threats of war, will it matter who is sitting in the White House in January?

For the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), both parties represent the interests of rapacious capital that have decided that force, coercion, lawlessness and war are the tools that must be deployed in order to hold on to he advantages they enjoy in the international order. For us, it doesn’t matter who sits in the White House in January because the criminality of the U.S. state will continue.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris—representing the neoliberal, transnational wing of capital—already have their marching orders. 

The Obama-Biden administration oversaw U.S.-supported and/or -initiated coups in Brazil, Egypt, Honduras and Ukraine; intensified regime-change efforts in Iraq, Iran and Syria; attempted coups in Venezuela; the destruction of Libya; expanded drone warfare across northern Africa and western Asia; and a 1,900 percent increase in military activities in Africa through the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). If history is a guide, nothing will be different if Biden and Harris are in the White House.

Regardless of who is in office, the wars, inhumane sanctions, death and destruction in what Frantz Fanon referred to as the “zones of non-being”—those spaces occupied by the non-European peoples of the world—will continue.

But what we also continue is the resistance. BAP will not collaborate with either of the parties. As an alliance, we maintain our independence. Individual members can do as they like. We say “No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War on African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad” and liberate all the laboring and oppressed of the world.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP has continued to lift up our political prisoners during the 41st Black August by posting solidarity videos from our members on our Instagram account. Meanwhile, BAP member, Black Is Back Steering Committee member and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford discussed during the Black Is Back Coalition’s national conference held this weekend why it is so important to defend our political prisoners. Plus, Glen and BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley interviewed Jihad Abdulmumit, chairperson of the Jericho Movement, which advocates for political prisoners.

The Burning Spear newspaper of the African People’s Socialist Party writes the bourgeoisie is attempting to ride the wave of success of the recent Black Lives Matter-associated mobilizations to prop up and solve the problems of the bourgeoisie, not the people. Meanwhile, Glen raised serious questions about the call to defund the police. He believes it can be used against the self-determination demands that the Black Liberation Movement has raised with the call for Community Control of the Police. Then BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka was quoted in a Final Call article that dove into a recent Amnesty International report that found 125 incidents of police misconduct took place during the U.S. uprisings after the murder of George Floyd.

BAP member Kyndelle Johnson discussed BAP’s upcoming August 23 webinar on radiojustice.org’s “Music to Resist By,” co-hosted by BAP member Bilal Mafundi Ali.

Margaret spoke 26 minutes into an online panel discussion, “Filipinx Solidarity with the Black Liberation Movement”. Then a discussion of BAP’s campaign work took place 69 minutes into the video.

BAP member Erica Caines wrote in Hood Communist that “Harris should be criticized for attempting to wipe her history clean, using ‘Black Girl Magic’ as a cloak and shield against any real accountability for the harm she’s caused. She’s attempting to rewrite her monstrous history in real-time and far too many are allowing it.” Then Margaret gave three interviews on the Biden-Harris ticket: One for Radio Sputnik’s “Loud and Clear”; another that starts at 72 minutes into Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour”; and yet another starting at 61 minutes into Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary,” which is co-hosted by BAP member Jacquie Luqman.

Ajamu also spoke to Jacquie on “By Any Means Necessary” (starting at 53:21 minutes) on the resignation of the Lebanese government amid widespread protests following the recent explosion, how the Israel lobby works to undermine longstanding links of solidarity between Black and Palestinian nationalist movements and isolate other anti-imperialist movements, and how individualism and celebrity culture are used to promote policies of white supremacy at home and abroad.

Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, discussed on Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” how more than 14 percent of U.S. commandos deployed overseas in 2019 were sent to Africa, the largest percentage of any region in the world except for the greater Middle East.

Margaret spoke with Chinese reporter Zhou Li about the Trump administration attempting to take over Chinese social-media giant Tik Tok amid the greater U.S. escalation against China. Meanwhile, BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong wrote in Black Agenda Report that the recent escalations provide NBA players with an opportunity to break with the dominance of U.S. exceptionalism and corporate discipline in U.S. sports culture.

  EVENTS

August 23: At 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST, BAP will hold the first in our Educational Webinar Series. The topic is “How the International War Against Black People Is Being Waged Locally - & How We Unify Against It”. We will be focusing on organizing in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area, but participants from anywhere are welcome. Registration is required.

August 29: Cooperation Jackson is organizing an art exhibit to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina at 1 p.m. at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, 1128 W. Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

  TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Buzzkenya

Where is Resistance to Structural Violence of Capitalism?

The reality in the United States has come to this: 160,000 dead in four months, thousands hospitalized, and many thousands sick or afraid to be sick because they have no sick days and no health insurance. Every week for 20 weeks, over 1 million people filed new claims for unemployment benefits. Real unemployment rates are around 32 percent. In some Black and Brown urban communities, youth unemployment is running between 60 percent and 80 percent. Yet, Congress and the White House are playing games with the extended, enhanced unemployment benefits. "Free market” capitalism has been exposed as a fraud: Instead of delivering the "good life," capitalism generates misery and systematic human-rights abuses. This has created a deep crisis of legitimacy.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the capitalist rulers made concessions to workers to ease the consequences of capitalist failure. Despite that, liberal historical revisionists claim the programs of the “New Deal” represented the enlightened leadership of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the racist, upper-class patrician who sat in the White House. What is striking today is instead of the people storming the citadels of power demanding their economic needs be met, Republicans and Democrats have been allowed to play—with impunity—the most obscene and cynical game with people’s lives. That is because unlike the 1930s—when the organized people forced concessions from the rulers—progressive and radical forces today lack the institutional capacity and ideological clarity to challenge the U.S. state and win. Even our most progressive expressions of political opposition represented in the so-called Black Lives Matter movement seem unable to pivot to a general opposition to the system, despite it killing more African/Black life than police violence has.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has taken on the task of building the organizational structure the African/Black working class needs to organize a new radical movement in the United States that combines the power of colonized peoples, the exploited working class, the oppressed and the marginalized into a force that will rid the planet of war, hunger and exploitation.

PRESS AND MEDIA

This week, BAP member and Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford wrote about the mistake today’s activists are making in not giving enough weight to the plight of our political prisoners in his piece about Black August.

BAP’s recent newsletter on Black August was re-printed in Black Agenda Report.

Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, interviewed former political prisoner Jihad Abdulmumit, chairperson of the National Jericho Movement, as part of the Black August coverage on WPFW’s “Voices with Vision.”

The recent concern that Trump’s deployment of federal agents in cities like Portland marks the start of fascism in the United States is unfounded. Black and Brown communities have long dealt with disappearances at the hands of police like the NYPD’s “Jump Out Boys.”

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley discussed the latest U.S. move to hijack Chinese social-media giant Tik Tok on CGTN here and here. Margaret also spoke about the U.S. demonization of China on a CodePink webinar. 

Margaret and BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka discussed on Radio Sputnik’s “The Critical Hour” how the rapid shift to absentee voting during the coronavirus pandemic has emerged as a central issue in the 2020 U.S. elections. The conversation starts at 59:35 minutes into the show.

Margaret’s talk from the July 25 “No to the New Cold War in China” webinar that Ajamu and Margaret participated in has been printed in the Global Times.

BAP Supporter Network Co-Coordinator Danny Haiphong wrote on how the silence of the U.S. left lays the foundation for a new cold war with China.

Netfa wrote about how the U.S. is using a Russian presence in Libya to further U.S. interests on the continent and globally. Black Star News re-printed his article. Netfa spoke about this issue on Radio Sputnik’s “Political Misfits” and this interview was cited in a Sputnik article. He also discussed the longstanding political issues behind the Zimbabwean government's decision to compensate white former landowners, why the move is generating outrage among many Zimbabweans as the country's economy continues to struggle under the burden of U.S. sanctions, and attempts to link the protests in Zimbabwe with the struggle against U.S. police. The interview with BAP member Jacqueline Luqman and co-host Sean Blackmon of Radio Sputnik's "By Any Means Necessary" starts at 37:57 minutes.
 

EVENTS

• August 15-16: The Black Is Back Coalition, of which BAP is a member organization, is holding its annual conference online with the theme, “Fight for Black Power: Free All Political Prisoners.” Register today.

• August 15: Cooperation Jackson is hosting a People’s Assembly on the housing crisis and on combating police terrorism at 1 p.m. at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, 1128 W. Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

• August 23: At 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST, BAP will hold the first in our Educational Webinar Series. The topic is “How the International War Against Black People Is Being Waged Locally - & How We Unify Against It”. We will be focusing on organizing in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area, but participants from anywhere are welcome.

• August 29: Cooperation Jackson is organizing an art exhibit to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina at 1 p.m. at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, 1128 W. Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Nnamdi, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Black August and Black Liberation: “Study, Fast, Train, Fight.”

Each August since 1979, the surviving sectors of the Black Liberation Movement, our supporters, and the new entrants into the ranks of resistors to the ongoing oppression against the African/Black masses and colonized peoples of this territory now called the United States and its settler state, have paid homage to our fallen freedom fighters and those incarcerated for decades in the cages of this country.

The struggle for African/Black freedom in the United States began with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to this territory in 1619. The tradition of resistance to the settler state is different from the tradition celebrated by the elites of this country in response to the death of U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). Our positionality first, as an enslaved people and after the formal period of slavery as a nationally oppressed people had forged for us a different interpretation of U.S. history and our relationship to this state. 

For the Black Liberation Movement, reconciliation with the settler state toward a “more perfect union” was not only an impossibility because white-supremacist settler power has been crystalized into the state. It also would have been an unprincipled betrayal of our ancestors, who had resisted the assaults on our collective dignity and struggled to destroy the oppressive system—and had no plans to integrate with it.
 
That struggle intensified in the 1960s and ‘70s, resulting in a vicious counter attack from U.S. state authorities that involved murder, incarcerations, organizational disruption, and an ideological and cultural program to create an “American” out of the rebellious Africans who had earned global prestige for rising up in over 350 cities and creating a revolutionary movement.
 
Black August was created to not only honor and commemorate those who fought for our human rights, national liberation and self-determination, such as Jonathan and George Jackson, W.L. Nolan, and William Christmas. It is meant to pay homage to all of our revolutionary ancestors and those still ensnared by the state.  
 
A central element of Black August is to call attention to our freedom fighters still held captive as political prisoners and Prisoners of War. Some have moved into their fifth decade shackled as the longest serving political prisoners on the face of the Earth.
 
This past weekend, Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) members unanimously decided to commit to raising awareness about our imprisoned fighters.
 
The theme of Black August is to “study, fast, train, fight.” That is what the members of BAP intend to do this month and every month until we rid the Earth of the malignant threat to all of humanity represented by the Pan-European, White-supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

Because we celebrate August as Black August, we highlight this Hood Communist article by BAP member Erica Caines on Black revolutionary and prison abolitionist George Jackson.

The “No to the New Cold War in China” webinar that BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka and BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley participated in on July 25 has been viewed more than 70 million times in China and around the world. Ajamu’s talk was transcribed and published in the Global Times, Black Agenda Report and Monthly Review. Margaret’s talk was given Chinese subtitles. Our participation, featured on CGTN Europe, demonstrates how important it is to have African voices articulating the Black radical internationalist tradition. 

Ajamu also discussed Joe Biden’s vice-presidential choices on Radio Sputnik’s “Loud & Clear.”

We were dismayed to hear Zimbabwe’s current government has agreed to pay $3.5 billion to white farmers who were dispossessed of land during a decolonization process.

U.S. funding for Togo’s army continues, as this article suggests. When we say “U.S. Out of Africa,” we are clear it is also a call to confront the neocolonial leaders on the continent. That is why BAP's U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN), the organizational arm of our U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM effort, has been building a base among organizations on the African continent itself.

Margaret recently had discussed this effort on the Canadian Voices of Women for Peace webinar. Margaret also appeared on The Convo Couch to discuss U.S. imperialism, the current Black Lives Matter movement and Russiagate.

The global economic depression sparked by the pandemic lockdowns is “a singular event in the history of world capitalism,” said Duboisian scholar Anthony Monteiro to Black Agenda Radio. “It might be the crisis that so disabled the world capitalist system that it will never be the same.”

Johanna Fernandez, host of WBAI’s “It's a New Day,” interviewed Margaret about the Portland arrests starting at 34 minutes. Margaret also discussed John Lewis’ legacy on Deutsche Welle.

We are not falling for the ruling-class agenda meant to de-politicize the resistance using the liberal petit bourgeois Black misleadership class, as Margaret Kimberley stated this week in Black Agenda Report.

Last week, WPFW’s “Voices With Vision,” co-hosted by Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, continued to feature a collage of BAP voices (Saladin Muhammad of BAP member organization Black Workers for Justice and BAP members Kwame Wilburg, Alicia Skeeter and Bilal Mafundi Ali) and National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression voices. The show also included an interview about Community Control in general (schools, land, etc.), as well as the eviction apocalypse soon to be faced by many.

Netfa was also featured in an interview by TeleSUR that was then picked up by CounterPunch, Caribbean News Global, Rebeliòn, Portal Alba, ALAI, Globalizacion, Orinoco Tribune and The Canada Files.
 

EVENTS

• August 15-16: The Black Is Back Coalition, of which BAP is a member organization, is holding its annual conference online with the theme, “Fight for Black Power: Free All Political Prisoners.” Register today.

• August 15: Cooperation Jackson is hosting a People’s Assembly on the housing crisis and on combating police terrorism at 1 p.m. at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, 1128 W. Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

• August 23: At 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST, BAP will hold the first in our Educational Webinar Series. The topic is “How the International War Against Black People Is Being Waged Locally - & How We Unify Against It”. We will be focusing on organizing in Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia and the San Francisco Bay Area, but participants from anywhere are welcome. Save the date and look out for more information in future newsletters.

• August 29: Cooperation Jackson is organizing an art exhibit to commemorate the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina at 1 p.m. at the Ida B. Wells Plaza, 1128 W. Capitol Street, Jackson, Mississippi.

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo Credit: Ruth-Marion Baruch available at UC Santa Cruz Archives

China, Militarism and Bipartisan Games

Trump militarized Portland last week and then threatened to send federal police and military forces to Chicago and other Democrat Party-led cities. Then Democrats squealed in opposition. But it’s phony. Both political parties are playing a cynical game designed to keep the public's attention on the drama of Trump while they work together to advance the agenda of the ruling class.

The public has been told the two parties can’t seem to agree on vital issues facing the working class, such as extending unemployment protection and a moratorium on rent and mortgage evictions. But there didn’t seem to be much problem for the parties in the U.S. House of Representatives when they decided a pathetic proposal to reduce the Department of Defense budget by 10 percent was too dangerous. In fact, 139 Democrats joined Republicans in voting down that amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) before approving another obscene military budget of $740 billion.

Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC), the Black mouthpiece for the right-wing neoliberal corporate wing of the Democratic Party, took the lead on advising Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) that her proposal for a federal “paycheck guarantee,” while efficient in that it would cover workers’ salaries for three months, was much too expensive. The cost? For six months of coverage, it was estimated at $654 billion.

The priorities are clear. Money is available for the military-industrial complex, but lifesaving support for workers is just too expensive.

And yet the games continue. Trump shut down the Chinese consulate in Houston as both parties are in fierce competition to demonstrate their toughness on China. Neither party can explain to the people why China is such a threat today. Just a few months ago, Russia was the main threat.

That is why the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) takes the unequivocal and unambiguous position that we will never allow the U.S. state and its ideological henchmen to push us into opposition against any external enemy. We say, “no to a new cold war with China,” no to militarism, no to domestic repression, and no to the continued neglect of millions of workers and poor people in the United States.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley and BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka appeared on “No to the New Cold War with China,” a webinar that was well attended and featured talks by many prominent people. Margaret explained why the U.S. left must oppose a new cold war with China, while Ajamu discussed how radical Black internationalists relate to China.

Dedan Waciuri, who represents BAP member organization Black Workers for Justice on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, recently made the connection between U.S. foreign interventions and U.S. domestic repression of colonized people.

BAP member Asantewaa Mawusi Nkrumah-Ture recently spoke on a webinar featuring members of social movements from Venezuela and the United States. She expressed BAP's support for Venezuela's people as they face deadly U.S. sanctions and the threat of regime change.

Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, discussed a number of issues with BAP member Jacquie Luqman, who co-hosts Sputnik Radio’s “By Any Means Necessary” with Sean Blackmon. They talked about Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly voting against a proposal to cut military spending by 10 percent. They also discussed how the 2011 NDAA signed into law by President Barack Obama paved the way for indefinite detention, and BAP’s recent statement condemning Trump's deployment of federal agents to cities like Portland.

Netfa also broke down with his co-host, Craig Hall, on WPFW’s “Voices with Vision” a history of the Trump administration’s fascist militarized deployment against recent uprisings in U.S. cities. This included a creative historical analysis of U.S. policing, which featured voices from BAP and the National Alliance Against Racist & Political Repression.

Ajamu dug into the deployment of federal agents 30 minutes into Sputnik Radio’s “The Critical Hour”, while Margaret can be heard discussing her book, “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents,” about 99 minutes into the interview.

PACA organizer Max Rameau was cited in a Nation article that discussed Community Control of Police (CCOP).

Then TeleSUR interviewed Netfa, during which he said, “Our struggle, seen from the context of the black left, is for power.” Check out the interview in Spanish and English.

Plus, we must be vigilant of how the U.S. government is attempting to force journalists to turn over their footage to out protesters.
 

EVENTS

August 23: At 1 p.m. PST/4 p.m. EST, BAP will hold the first in our Educational Webinar Series. The topic is “How the International War Against Black People Is Being Waged Locally - & How We Unify Against It”. We will be focusing on organizing in Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area, but participants are welcome from anywhere. Save the date and look out for more information in future newsletters.

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latina women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latin womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latina girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Beth Nakamura | AP

Portland: A Harbinger of Things to Come?

Masked men in unrecognizable police uniforms jump out of unmarked vans and grab an activist who has been involved in demonstrations against a repressive state. That person is disappeared. Is this Pinochet’s Chile, apartheid South Africa or a scene from a John Clancy novel? 

No, this is happening in Portland, Oregon, a major U.S. city. The culprits apparently are agents of the federal government who have essentially invaded the streets of that city over the objections of the mayor and the governor. The goal? To “restore order” because, according to U.S. Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf, state and local authorities had refused to do it themselves.

We are not surprised. When we launched the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), we were quite clear the trajectory of U.S. economic and political decline suggested the ruling classes would inevitably use violence and repression, as well as assault traditional liberal rights, to maintain control.    

What we also have related in our years of work is the tactics being deployed in Portland are not new. They have been perfected by U.S. forces and repressive states trained for decades by U.S. police, military and intelligence agencies. Now, because the ruling classes increasingly see liberal democracy and the rule of law as an impediment to their minority capitalist rule, the repressive practices normally reserved for the natives of the global South and for Black and Brown communities in the metropole are being used against insurgent white dissidents in Portland—and soon coming to a community near you.

That is why we say blowback is the inevitable consequence when social forces in the United States are silent or have the luxury of not being aware of the criminality of the U.S. state abroad.

No compromise with evil and no retreat from the enemies of collective humanity are the watchwords and slogan of BAP’s campaign work. We expect many more Portlands, but we also expect fierce opposition from the people. That is why we are organizing and building alternative power.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP Coordinating Committee member Vanessa Beck and BAP member Erica Caines—both of the BAP Baltimore chapter—spoke July 16 to the National Network for Justice about how the Trump administration's program, Operation Relentless Pursuit, is further militarizing several U.S. cities, including Baltimore. They also discussed how this program is connected to the broader U.S. agenda to repress colonized communities in the United States and around the world.

In his latest article for Black Agenda Report, BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network Coordinator Tunde Osazua asks, “If AFRICOM’s mission is to fight terrorism, then why have terror attacks increased five-fold since the U.S. began its military occupation of the continent?”

A presentation BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka gave to the online Electoral School of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, held June 12-14, has been transcribed. Read “Building Power to Win Is the Revolutionary Approach to ‘Bourgeois Electoralism.’”

Ajamu also was interviewed by WPFW’s “Voices With Vision” radio program co-host Craig Hall about the play-turned-movie, “Hamilton,” and how it is intrinsically connected to the U.S. state’s attempts to stifle revolutionary fervor amid its crisis of legitimacy. The interview starts at 44 minutes and 53 seconds into the hour. Then Ajamu discussed “Hamilton,” as well as anti-Trump groups like the Lincoln Project and Biden’s real chances for the presidency with Sputnik Radio’s “Political Misfits”.

Black Agenda Report Executive Editor and BAP member Glen Ford writes, “...the movement must create a political crisis for the ruling oligarchy by agitating to actually end their rule.”

Watch BAP Coordinating Committee member and Black Agenda Report Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley discuss with writer Danny Haiphong the developments related to the debate about free speech that has surfaced amid the mass uprising against white-supremacist policing in the United States. Margaret also appeared on the Freedom podcast to discuss the latest resurgence in demands for statues to be taken down and the connection to white supremacy.

In an interview with Black Agenda Radio, professor Clarence Taylor railed against the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus for protecting police, not people.

Writer Ann Garrison spoke with an expert on how the United States has helped to maintain a neo-colonial relationship with Africa through agricultural technology.

EVENTS

• July 20: Join BAP member organization Ujima People's Progress Party in an online study at 8:30 p.m. as it kicks off a critical review and discussion on Malcolm X’s pivotal speech, "The Ballot or The Bullet". The plan of action he launched in 1964 is relevant today for the African/Black community and for all working-class communities that have supported the capitalist Democratic Party, but have reaped no material value for such support. Register here.

• July 20: Ujima People’s Progress Party will continue distributing food, supporting community sustainability with window-box garden creations and giving away books for African/Black children through the #LiberationThroughReading program. For information, call 443.826.9654 or send a message to the organization’s Facebook page.

• July 21: The recent U.S. uprisings against police violence have shaken the halls of power. Ajamu and other speakers join U.S Senate candidate Lisa Savage (G-Maine), who signed the BAP 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge, to discuss how to win real structural progress toward freedom and justice. Register here.

• July 25: Register for “International Meeting: No to the New Cold War,” featuring Ajamu, historian Vijay Prashad and other prominent speakers, who will discuss the U.S. drive toward a war with China.

TAKE ACTION

• The Black Latina Girls and Women Fund was created by BAP member organization AfroResistance, a Black Latinx women-led organization in the service of Black Latinx women in the Americas. This fund offers financial support by giving money directly to Black Latinx womxn, girls and femmes who are experiencing severe financial need across the region, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether in Brazil, Colombia, United States or Panama, Black Latinx girls, women, and femmes are organizing in their local communities in the fight against several forms of state violence. You can donate here and people are encouraged to use the hashtag #BlackLatinaGWFund.

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

• We are raising $30,000 to help expand our membership support capacity and revamp our website. Donate and share our GoFundMe campaign with your networks today.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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



Photo credit: Dave Killen / AP

"Hamilton" and the Crisis of Legitimacy

U.S. rulers are in complete disarray as the legitimation crisis of the system and the state deepens every day another person is killed by the police and the number of COVID-19 deaths is reported.

The U.S. national identity—always fragile because of the United States’ origin as a slavocracy built on genocide and extreme individualism—is rapidly disintegrating as the public’s anger has turned to the symbols of white supremacy. The Confederacy and its heroes were the first and—for many—the most obvious targets. But as people tore down those statues, it began to dawn on some that not much difference existed between the leaders of the Confederacy and the slave-owning “founding fathers.”

Here, the Disney Corporation came to the rescue. Disney, one of six major companies that controls over 90 percent of news and entertainment content in the United States, released the movie version of the play, “Hamilton,” on July 3, taking advantage of the July 4 holiday weekend. 

The play itself had broken records for attendance and profits on Broadway in portraying “founding father” Alexander Hamilton as an abolitionist. Puerto Rican artist Lin-Manuel Miranda, who wrote the play, dressed up African/Black actors as slave traders and appropriated hip hop in yet another attempt to whitewash the history of degradation and dehumanization that is at the center of the U.S. national project. Black writer and critic Ishmael Reed was correct in his brutal dismemberment of Miranda’s insulting piece of historical revisionism. Of course, liberals and particularly warmongers such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John Bolton loved it.

It is clear the objective in rolling out the movie at this critical moment is to turn the tide of the U.S. public’s growing rejection of the United States’ white-supremacist origin story.

But people are seeing through the smoke and mirrors because the reality they are living through is too harsh to keep them disillusioned. That is why thousands took to the streets. It’s why the monuments are coming down and the crisis is deepening.

BAP is contributing to help people see through the nonsense with our weekly newsletter. By presenting alternative news and analysis, we are in our small way laying the foundation for a new movement that understands the fundamental difference between the people’s history and the lies peddled by the U.S. settler state.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

Netfa Freeman, who represents BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA), interviewed BAP Advisory Committee member Mireille Fanon-Nendès France. A human rights lawyer and former member of the U.N. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, she appeared on Netfa’s WPFW radio show, “Voices with Vision,” to discuss the United Nations addressing U.S. police repression and its relationship to anti-Black policies internationally.

CodePink Radio interviewed Netfa on radio networks WBAI and WPFW about the demand for defunding the police and community control over police. The interview can be heard here and seen here. 

BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley examined the call to defund the police.

PACA organizer Olufemi Taiwo was featured on an online panel hosted by Dissident Magazine as part of its summer series, “Dismantle Racial Capitalism.”

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka urged the public to stay vigilant against U.S. “attempts to control the narrative” of the Black Lives Matter movement during an online event organized by the Workers’ Party (Ireland). He also discussed the issue in his latest Black Agenda Report article.

U.S. Out of Africa Network Coordinator Tunde Osazua broke down how the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) enforces the U.S. colonial project.

EVENTS

• July 16: The Embassy Protection Collective in the United States and the Committee for International Solidarity in Venezuela have organized a meeting, “Strengthening US Venezuela Social Movement Solidarity.”

• July 18-19: The International Committee for Peace, Justice and Dignity is hosting a two-day concert for Cuba to celebrate the revolutionary country’s achievements amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Register here.

• July 20: BAP member organization Ujima People’s Progress Party will continue distributing food, supporting community sustainability with window-box garden creations and giving away books for African/Black children through the #LiberationThroughReading program. For information, call 443.826.9654 or send a message to the organization’s Facebook page.

• July 25: Register for the “International Meeting: No to the New Cold War,” featuring Ajamu and other prominent speakers, who will discuss the U.S. drive toward a war with China.

TAKE ACTION  

• Ask your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• Sign up to join BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network to receive the bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin in your inbox.

• Make sure you keep up with us throughout the week by subscribing to our YouTube channel, liking us on Facebook, and following us on Instagram and Twitter.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo Credit: GDA via AP

Black Lives Don’t Matter Because No Lives Matter for Imperialism

As COVID-19 cases increase in the United States, causing continued illness and death, the U.S. administration has moved to increase deadly sanctions against Venezuela, crippling that government’s ability to protect the lives of its people.

The difference between how Venezuela and the United States handled the virus is stark. In the United States, capital reigns, which means getting the economy going again. And if that means more workers sick and dying, so be it. 

The incessant drive for profits, which in turn disregards the lives of workers and the poor, is at the center of the calculations that went into forcing workers back to work and imposing additional sanctions on the people of Venezuela. It is behind the cynicism of corporations, public officials, religious figures, and even the police and military forces, all of whom feign “Black lives matter.” 

The poor, the working class and the non-white people of the global South see the lies. We only want to be free of U.S. and European domination.

And while Trump is the convenient fall guy for the policies of the U.S. ruling class, a growing awareness is developing among the people that the problems they face can’t be reduced to Trump because they were living precarious lives before his ascension.

The people—especially young people—are in no mood for the old solutions of voting for the lesser of two evils when they can see the evil is the whole rotten system.

BAP is making the connections between the police violence, U.S. military budget, the U.S. Department of Defense 1033 program, Israeli training of the police, and the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). We are providing an organized expression for the realization that if there is going to be peace, social justice, democracy and human rights, power must be taken into the hands of the people.

The people of Venezuela understand what that struggle entails and are prepared to pay the ultimate price for freedom. We have no choice but to join them and strike at the oppressor from the belly of the beast.
 

PRESS AND MEDIA

Organizer Sara Flounders discussed whether COVID-19 was more virulent in Western capitalist countries including the United States in her piece.

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka spoke to an audience at the University of Tehran, providing a social and historical analysis of the role of race and white supremacy in U.S. domestic and foreign policies.

How did three weeks of protests get de-fanged? Organizer Martin Schoots-McAlpine discussed in his piece how a movement that began with the burning of a police station has been transformed into one requesting minor amendments to municipal budgets.

U.S. Out of Africa Network Coordinator Tunde Osazua broke down AFRICOM’s relationship to the African people in this interview.
 
BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley wrote in her latest column that powerful forces see a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan as a threat to long term U.S. interests in Central and West Asia. Undermining a peace agreement and denying Trump a foreign policy win is a win-win for the neoliberal right.

The mainstream corporate press continues to avoid discussing the role of the United States in Syria unless it is to mobilize the public to support the latest effort to undermine the Assad government. Even among the alternative press, new moves to censor political content are making it difficult to cover Syria.
 
Without any opposition from Congress, the Trump administration is moving to engage in high-seas piracy by blocking fuel shipments from Iran to Venezuela.

BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action's Max Rameau discussed the difference between Community Control of Police and the call to “defund the police” on WPFW's “Monday Morning QB” June 29 radio show. The interview starts at 27:43 minutes into the hour.
 

EVENTS

• July 9: BAP-Baltimore members will be speaking on a national webinar regarding Operation Relentless Pursuit. Register here.

• July 9: Watch the “Black Health Matters” roundtable in English and Spanish.

TAKE ACTION

• Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Bill Hackwell

Why We Say the U.S. Is Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity

The U.S. continues to enjoy impunity for crimes against humanity, not only for its conduct outside its borders, but against people in the United States.

That is how Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) National Organizer Ajamu Baraka recently characterized U.S. government policies in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and systematic police violence. He said the decision to re-open the economy after thousands of African/Black people recently died satisfies the definitions of genocide and crimes against humanity.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…”

With the increasing death toll, over 80 million U.S. workers without adequate healthcare, and unemployment benefits and moratoriums on housing evictions coming to an end at the end of July, we can only expect hunger, homelessness and death among Black and Brown workers and the poor to be at catastrophic levels.

It is important to note what the Trump administration has done is in line with how capitalism operates. That is why BAP says that there can be no justice without ending an economic and social system that, by its very nature, does not ensure human rights for the people of the world.

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka discussed the role of the electoral process in advancing progressive demands and building a movement.

Recent reports show the U.S. military spied on George Floyd-inspired protests in 15 cities using planes, helicopters and drones. But Baltimore has long been under aerial surveillance, according to BAP Coordinating Committee member Vanessa Beck.

Writer Danny Haiphong discusses in a Black Agenda Report piece that the movement to abolish the police must prioritize revolutionary politics. In it, he cites Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action on the BAP Coordinating Committee, and Max Rameau, a PACA organizer. Journalist Paul Jay recently interviewed Netfa and Max on his theanalysis.news podcast regarding Community Control of Police. Netfa also discussed the issue with Jimmy Durchslag on WMUD radio.

BAP says the oppressed and colonized must be clear peace cannot come into being without justice. Professor Nelson Maldonado-Torres writes, “Peace has to take the back seat until a new world is created.”

TAKE ACTION

Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge. BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

The Human Rights Crisis for African/Black People Deepens

Moves have been made on behalf of the human rights of African/Black people over the past week.

You may recall the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) issued a statement on May 29, calling on the United Nations to address U.S. human-rights violations against African/Black people. Groups and individuals around the world had requested the United Nations Human Rights Council address the matter.

Then the 54-country African Group of the United Nations, led by Burkina Faso, submitted a resolution to the council calling for an urgent debate and an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate what it characterized as “systemic racism” against people of African descent in the United States and other parts of the world.

Establishing such a commission would have been historic. But the United States responded in its typical heavy-handed manner to bully African states to withdraw support for the request. Even though the United States had withdrawn its membership from the council upon Trump’s inauguration, it still lobbied European members of the council to reject the proposal. And its efforts paid off. The proposal did not garner enough council votes to establish an independent commission. But the council did order the Office of the High Commission on Human Rights to launch an investigation and issue a report to the council.

We are left with two lessons. First, in the global ideological struggle, the issue of human rights remains salient. This is especially the case when the critical lens is turned on the United States, which has incorporated a narrow and opportunistic version of “human rights” into its arsenal of imperialist tools to confuse the public. Secondly, while a U.N. inquiry would have been a significant development, the state-centric processes of this and other international bodies in which power politics rule demonstrates the importance of the People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) framework.

Developed by BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, PCHRs does not rely on state actions to address human-rights concerns. Instead, it relies on the organized people, in struggle, as not only the genesis of human-rights principles, but as the only guarantors of those rights.

BAP takes the position that if the U.N. is unable to establish a commission of inquiry, the people in the United States should consider taking up that work. But the objective would not be only to produce a report of human-rights abuses because we understand no report will induce U.S. authorities to voluntarily dismantle the structures of systemic racism.

The PCHRs position asserts human rights can only flourish when the people take state power and restructure the society through an ethical framework that centers the needs of the people and the values of cooperation, equality, participatory democracy, social justice, and collective self-determination of communities and peoples.

The PCHRs framework asserts community self-determination as a collective human right along with the human right to community self-defense against all forces—state or non-state.

That is why we say “No Compromise, No Retreat” until we create the conditions to realize People(s) Centered Human Rights for all.
 

PRESS AND MEDIA

If you missed our June 16 “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM” event—attended by about 500 people from the Americas and Africa—you can catch the recording on Facebook.

BAP member Bilal Mafundi Ali explained to Prensa Obrera that the recent U.S. uprisings are the U.S. state’s “greatest nightmare.” BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka spoke with Fars News Agency about the uprisings being a “turning point” toward liberation.

Starting at 11:08 minutes into last week’s WPFW “Voices with Vision” radio show, Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on the BAP Coordinating Committee, interviewed BAP member Mark Fancher, who discussed the recent qualitative leap made in the Black liberation movement. Netfa also appeared on Press TV to discuss what must be done to prevent the neoliberal state from co-opting the movement against structural violence.

Ajamu joined Black for Palestine founder Kristian Davis Bailey on the Electronic Intifada Podcast to discuss the status of Black-Palestinian solidarity amid the U.S. uprisings. The interview starts at 24:12 minutes. Bailey wrote on how Palestinians can support the Black liberation struggle. 

Max Rameau, a PACA organizer, discussed Community Control of Police (CCOP) as a revolutionary, power-building alternative to the imperial state’s domestic security apparatus. Max and Netfa discussed their Black Agenda Report article about CCOP at 10:57 minutes into the “This is Hell” podcast. Then our friends at Popular Resistance cited Max and Netfa in the LA Progressive. Plus, Netfa discussed CCOP on KPFA’s “Flashpoints” radio show and at 12:51 minutes into the "WBAI News with Paul DeRienzo."

TAKE ACTION

• Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Tsong-Taatarii/Star Tribune

Rise Up To Shut Down AFRICOM

June 16 is known as Soweto Day not only because the South African apartheid regime viciously attacked a youth demonstration in 1976. The youth played a critical role leading up to that day and on the days afterward, signifying a turn in the struggle of the African masses against the U.S.-supported white-colonial minority in South Africa.

In the midst of largely youth-led uprisings against the U.S. settler-colonial state, the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) has determined June 16 to be the most appropriate day to hold an online symposium, “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM”, to highlight BAP’s campaign against the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM).

Making the link between the interlocking domestic repression and U.S. foreign interventions—and building opposition to it—represents the crux of our mission. We are not confused by the cynical and patronizing cry of “Black Lives Matter” uttered by the same forces that have supported the militarization of U.S. police forces, the expansion of the U.S. military budget and the military re-colonization of Africa through AFRICOM.

We are clear: It is a moral and political contradiction to advocate for a kinder and gentler police force in the belly of the empire while it is unleashing murderous violence around the world against Africans and other colonized people.

We will continue making the connections and organizing despite the confusion being spread by opportunists aligned with white power and the U.S. state.

”Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM”, is a multimedia event including activist panelists based in Africa:

• Margaret Kimberley, Black Alliance for Peace and United National Antiwar Coalition (United States)

• Affiong L Affiong, Moyo Wa Taifa Pan Afrikan Women's Solidarity Network (Nigeria)

• Martin Bunziga Azaboyi, Coordinator, Telema Youth Movement (Democratic Republic of Congo)

• Aziz Fall, Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA) (Egypt/Senegal)

• Elias Amare, from the only African country with no AFRICOM (Eritrea)

English/French interpretation will be provided. Registration is required.

PRESS AND MEDIA

Mark P. Fancher is an attorney, writer, and a member of the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party as well as the Black Alliance for Peace’s Africa Team. He wrote about how this moment of U.S. uprisings presents an opportunity to understand U.S. imperialism operates a “global killing machine.”
 
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report senior columnist and member of BAP’s Coordinating Committee, wrote about neoliberal politicians taking advantage of the uprisings, only to sow confusion.
 
Max Rameau, an organizer with Pan-African Community Action (PACA), and Netfa Freeman, who represents PACA on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, explained why “Defund the Police” is not the revolutionary move forward.

EVENTS

• June 16: Join BAP for an online symposium, “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM,” being held as part of our ongoing U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign. This multimedia event will include activist panelists based in Africa. The organizational arm of the campaign, the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN), calls on Africans throughout the continent and the diaspora, as well as anti-imperialists everywhere, to register. Please use this hashtag on social media: #RiseUpToShutDownAFRICOM

• June 19: BAP’s Baltimore chapter will host “Operation Relentless Pursuit Virtual Teach In,” 5 p.m.-8 p.m., EST, on Sunday, June 19. Look out for more information on confirmed speakers and Zoom info.

  TAKE ACTION

• Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
 
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé
 
P.S. Freedom isn’t free. Consider giving today.

No Turning Back from Radicalization in the Streets

The people are on the move, demanding accountability and justice—and the authorities are scared to death. They are desperate to make sure the resistance in the streets of the United States does not turn into a general rejection of the neoliberal order, like what happened in France with the Yellow Vests movement. So, from attempting to put tools of the state like the Rev. Al Sharpton in charge to passing meaningless legislation like the anti-lynching law, they are trying to keep the focus on cosmetic changes. They hope we forget about how the mis-leaders helped corporations loot trillions of dollars in “stimulus” out of public coffers during the COVID-19 lockdowns and how the profit-driven U.S. system won’t keep you alive if you aren’t generating profits.

But BAP members have been at the forefront of shifting the narrative back to the issue of the systemic violence that characterizes the lives of the African/Black working class and nationally-oppressed and colonized workers in the United States. We also remind everyone through our public statements and our press work that the cry for justice in the United States and the demand that the U.S. state cease its foreign subversions, warmongering, and murderous sanctions against the Black and Brown world are inextricably linked.  

In this newsletter, we share how international media outlets have framed the U.S. uprisings. It is a story of solidarity and common struggle that barely penetrates the corporate press.

During the last two months of state-enacted lockdowns, the rulers have made clear they do not value the lives of workers—particularly African/Black workers. But the people are starting to feel their own power. The radical awareness is out in the streets. There is no turning back.

 

PRESS AND MEDIA

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka hit out with a piece explaining some of his recent social-media comments on the uprisings. He discussed further on RT America’s “The World According to Jesse” and TeleSUR. Ajamu was quoted extensively in an article that took a look at the uprisings from the African revolutionary perspective.

Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on the BAP Coordinating Committee, gave interviews on the uprisings to Press TV, IRINN, Sputnik Radio’s “The Critical Hour” and “By Any Means Necessary”, the Institute for Public Accuracy, and RT America's “Watching The Hawks.”

BAP Coordinating Committee member YahNé Ndgo appeared on Press TV on June 2 and again on June 3 to discuss the uprisings.

Our friends at Popular Resistance write about protecting the uprisings from the ruling class.

We think it’s important you also check out uprisings coverage in Greece, South Africa, the United Kingdom, Trinidad and Tobago, and the so-called Middle East.

EVENTS

• June 12-14: The Black Is Back Coalition’s online electoral school, “The Ballot or the Bullet: Putting Black Self-Determination on the Ballot,” will focus on the challenges to building Black independent power in the era of the structural violence of COVID-19 lockdowns.  

• June 16: Join BAP for a webinar, “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM,” being held as part of our ongoing U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign. This will be a multimedia event that will include panelists from the heart of Africa. The organizational arm of the campaign, the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN), calls on Africans throughout the continent and the diaspora, as well as anti-imperialists everywhere, to mark June 16, Soweto Day, with actions in the spirit of the African youth who rose up against the white supremacist South African government on June 16, 1976. We call for all to “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM.” Registration is required: https://bit.ly/BAP0616 Please use this hashtag on social media: #RiseUpToShutDownAFRICOM

• June 19: BAP’s Baltimore chapter will host an “Operation Relentless Pursuit Virtual Teach In”, 5 p.m.-8 p.m., EST, on Sunday, June 19. Look out for more information on confirmed speakers and Zoom info.

TAKE ACTION 

• Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

From George Floyd Back to the Structural Violence of Capitalism

Third degree murder for 3/5 for a devalued life
Knee in throat air gone, gasping dying under the color of law!
George Floyd had no chance! The gang of state sponsored assassins had already signed his death warrant!
They think we should be grateful for watered down justice that has not and will never be color blind!
Cry out! Resist! Don’t make excuses or apologies for race-based killings!
Don’t attack those who dare to put their lives on the line to declare: George Floyd’s life mattered. Black Lives Matter—a just demand!

—Jaribu Hill, Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights and Black Alliance for Peace Coordinating Committee

Across the country—in city after city—the people have erupted in righteous indignation to George Floyd’s recorded lynching. His extrajudicial murder set off a rebellion that had been primed by the highly publicized white-vigilante murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the botched, “no-knock” police raid that killed Breonna Taylor in her bed.

The call in all of these cases is for something called justice, which the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) sees as an impossibility. We say this because the U.S. state’s repressive DNA is rooted in the non-recognition of Indigenous people’s humanity and the exploitation of kidnapped and enslaved Africans. These two interconnected experiences produced the racialized policing that is an integral part of the U.S. state. 

BAP was born in 2017 out of the recognition that the ongoing and deepening economic, social and political crisis of capitalism—sharpened by the 2008-09 economic collapse—would inevitably require the state to rely on the use of violence and force, both domestically and abroad. 

That prediction was correct. However, BAP also identified structural violence as an inherent characteristic of advanced capitalism. The COVID-19 pandemic, more than anything in decades, has revealed the endemic violence of neoliberal capitalism, whereby the state’s inadequate response to a virus has killed hundreds of African/Black people on a daily basis.

However, that systemic violence has been marginalized by the acute attention placed on the highly individualized case of George Floyd and the issue of police violence. But police violence is only a mechanism used to fulfill capitalism’s main mandate to contain and control the working class—in particular the Black and Brown colonized working-class communities—and to protect private property. 

For BAP, the narrow definition of “justice” as the prosecution and conviction of police involved in the Floyd murder is a conservative and even diversionary position. It takes attention away from the ongoing structural contradictions of the colonial/capitalist system that will continue to produce the deadly consequences of structural violence after 40 million newly unemployed people joined the ranks of the over 30 million people who lack any kind of basic health protection; high African/Black infant and maternal mortality rates; upper-respiratory illnesses caused by environmental pollution in African/Black communities; and hypertension, cardiovascular diseases and diabetes generated by the stresses of white-supremacist, capitalist oppression.

So, we say: Justice for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland; for our political prisoners; for the super-exploited Black and Brown working class; for oppressed Indigenous nations; and for the millions subjected to U.S. warmongering, sanctions and criminality. We say this to shift the focus from the individualization of this week’s rebellion back to the objective structures of white supremacist, global colonial/capitalist domination. 

To do otherwise plays right into the hands of the reformist liberal ideologues who want to engage us in pie-in-the-sky reformism that perpetuates the myth that justice will be served by merely tweaking the current system. We have seen the first iteration of such a call in the bourgeois New York Times calling for police reform.

BAP will not fall for that ideological trick bag. We say “No Compromise, No Retreat: Defeat the War Against African/Black People in the U.S. and Abroad.” 

PRESS AND MEDIA

The People(s)-Centered Human Rights (PCHRs) framework informs BAP’s approach to human rights. Read this primer. PCHRs centers the people’s struggle for radical change to determine how human rights are defined and won. The United States has cynically used the United Nations’ mission of protecting human rights to justify targeting states that defy U.S. global hegemony. Therefore, we thought it useful on Friday to issue a statement demanding consistency from the United Nations, calling for the body to intervene to protect the fundamental human rights of African/Black people in the United States against Trump’s threat to shoot protesters.

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka discussed the George Floyd murder on KPFA’s “Hard Knock Radio.” Then BAP Coordinating Committee member Margaret Kimberley appeared on RT, Press TV and The Katie Halper Show. Netfa Freeman, who represents Pan-African Community Action (PACA) on BAP’s Coordinating Committee, also discussed the Floyd murder on Press TV.

We applaud Black Agenda Report Executive Editor and BAP member Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report Senior Columnist and Margaret Kimberley and BAP members as well as Black Agenda Report Contributing Editor and BAP supporter Danny Haiphong for receiving the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism. Last year, Ajamu Baraka received this award.

Earlier last week, BAP produced a statement for African Liberation Day in English and Spanish that was widely circulated in Cuba and the United States.

Queshia Bradley of BAP member organization PACA and BAP member Erica Caines addressed an African Liberation Day webinar hosted by the All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and the Maryland Council of Elders. Hear Queshia 33 minutes into the webinar and Erica at the 83-minute mark.

EVENTS

• June 5: BAP member organization AfroResistance continues its webinar series on Afro descendant women and COVID-19. The next webinar, “Moving to a Feminist Economy in the Americas Region: A Global Perspective of Health as a Human Right," will be held at 1 p.m., EST, on June 5. Panelists are Dominique Day of the United States, representing the Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent; Ms. Yuefen LI of China, the U.N. Independent Expert on Debt and Human Rights; and Sofia Garzon from Colombia. Janvieve Williams of AfroResistance from Panama will moderate. Register here.

• June 16: Join BAP for a webinar, “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM,” being held as part of our ongoing U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign. This will be a multimedia event that will include panelists from the heart of Africa. The organizational arm of the campaign, the U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN), calls on Africans throughout the continent and the diaspora, as well as anti-imperialists everywhere, to mark June 16, Soweto Day, with actions in the spirit of the African youth who rose up against the white supremacist South African government on June 16, 1976. We call for all to “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM.” Registration is required: https://bit.ly/BAP0616 Please use this hashtag on social media: #RiseUpToShutDownAFRICOM

TAKE ACTION

• Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge.

• BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!
Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

Photo credit: Matthew Hatcher / Getty Images

On African Liberation Day 2020, We Re-Dedicate Ourselves to Ending White World Supremacy

Under the threat of U.S. military action, Iranian tankers sailed to deliver fuel to Venezuela, which has the largest proven oil reserves in the world. The United States and its European vassal states have conspired to destroy Venezuela with sanctions and a growing naval blockade, preventing it from selling its oil around the world.

Meanwhile, in the suburbs of Paris, Saint Denis, Aubervilliers, Aulnay-Sous Bois, Clichy Sous Bois, the French police beat and terrorize working-class Africans and Arabs who have migrated from French neo-colonial territories. In the United States, colonial police are just as brutal as those in the Fanonian “zones of non being,” where colonized African, Latinx and Indigenous peoples live as the permanent “others.”

Despite pandemics, global climate change and nuclear war, nothing has moved Western capitalist societies to recognize colonized people’s common humanity.

Instead, it has become quite clear, public opinion in the United States has hardened toward China, which has economically eclipsed the United States. The U.S. capitalist class, along with growing numbers of the white public, are prepared to blow up the world before it surrenders its power.

This makes the United States and Europe existential threats to 90 percent of global humanity unless their power is curtailed or, better still, seized. 

But that will not be easy. 

The core of the colonial/capitalist project is violence backed by the state and embedded in all social institutions and practices of capitalist societies. 

The freedom of Africa and African peoples requires the structures of domination be identified and opposed. 

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) is one of those structures. Read BAP’s African Liberation Day statement.

This is the message the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) brings on African Liberation Day (May 25). This day reminds all Africans and all still fighting to free themselves from the barbaric rule of Western capital that a free, united African nation—with a liberated and united Africa at its core—would be a force for progress in the world.

PRESS AND MEDIA

Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor and BAP member, calls for the indictment of the capitalist class for systematically violating African/Black people’s right to life, the ultimate human right.

Historian Gerald Horne notes the bubonic plague “set the stage for the erosion of feudalism in 14th century Europe,” leading to the rise of capitalism. He suggests COVID-19 is further setting the stage for the breakdown of capitalism.

Tunde Osazua, a member of the BAP’S Africa Team and the coordinator of BAP's U.S. Out of Africa Network, breaks down why U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), in seeking accountability, only legitimized the U.S. military occupation of Africa. Watch it on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook.

To tackle China’s growing influence in Africa, the United States permanently stationed military units to assert its will on African politics. 

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka writes the “elevation of anti-blackness as a kind of universal problem eliminates the basis for solidarity among the colonized” and puts some Africans in the United States on the side of U.S. imperialism.

A U.S.-led bloc of countries persists in using force to maintain and extend their global dominance, writes historian Vijay Prashad and Moroccan revolutionary and former political prisoner Abdallah El Harif.

Obama’s fans like to think of the first Black President as scholarly and above the fray of dirty politics, but he appears to have conspired with the FBI to set up the incoming Trump administration. BAP Coordinating Committee member and Black Agenda Report Senior Columnist Margaret Kimberley breaks it down.

BAP Research Team member Paul McLennan wrote about his evolution from a petty-bourgeois upbringing to being a revolutionary in the U.S. South.

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs hosted an exclusive interview with Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza.

Venezuela’s opposition has long accused the Bolivarian government of corruption and mismanagement. Anya Parampil of the Grayzone reports, “with Citgo on the verge of liquidation, Guaidó’s officials are too incompetent—or too devious—to save it.”

The U.S. Peace Council released a statement that Iran’s decision to dispatch five oil tankers carrying much-needed fuel for the struggling Venezuelan people has created a “decisive test of the Trump administration’s willingness to continue its violations of international law and the UN Charter by taking military action against Iranian tankers.”

Trump withdrew from the Treaty on Open Skies, further escalating tensions between Russia and the U.S./EU/NATO axis. 

EVENTS

Webinars have taken place or will take place in lieu of annual marches and in-person events.

• 6 p.m., May 25: The December 12th Movement will host a webinar, “COVID-19, Sanctions, and the Human Right to Health Care,” featuring officials representing Namibia, Zimbabwe and the African Union.

• May 24: The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party and the Maryland Council of Elders hosted a webinar dedicated to African Liberation Day, featuring speakers from BAP and Pan-African Community Action (PACA), a BAP member organization.

• June 16: BAP will host a webinar, “Rise Up to Shut Down AFRICOM,” on Soweto Day. This is part of our ongoing U.S. Out of Africa: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign. Read our press release. We will roll out more information on this event in the coming weeks.

   TAKE ACTION

• Have you signed our petition to demand 2020 U.S. candidates take a position against war, militarism and repression? Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge. Check out BAP’s campaign and take action.

• BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network has begun releasing a bi-weekly AFRICOM Watch Bulletin. Sign up to join the network.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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

No Justice, No Peace! Time to Confront the U.S. Rogue State

Let us give you a rundown of the current global state of affairs:

• The Trump Administration recently undermined a United Nations proposal for a global ceasefire to confront the ravages of COVID-19 and threatened the International Criminal Court if it investigates Israel’s crimes against humanity. 

• Meanwhile, Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive nominee, has declared he will confront the Cubans, criticized the Trump administration for not being tougher on China and has committed to keeping Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. 

• The Obama administration committed $1 trillion to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The Trump administration then pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. 

• Obama ordered the destruction of Libya that ended with the rape and murder of Muammar Gaddafi, greenlighted the Saudi war on Yemen, launched illegal “regime change” efforts in Syria, and labeled the Bolivarian revolutionary process in Venezuela and the Maduro government as extraordinary threats to U.S. national security. 

• Trump followed by putting U.S. boots on the ground to deny Syrians access to their oil, continued to support the immoral Saudi war on Yemen and murdered Iranian general Qasem Soleimani. He then brazenly stole Venezuela’s money out of U.S. banks, prevented Venezuelan oil company Citgo from sending its profits to Venezuela, and imposed draconian sanctions to punish the Venezuelan people for supporting their revolutionary process and national independence. 

This kind of bipartisan criminality took an even more bizarre turn last week when members from both parties demanded Israel be protected when the International Criminal Court announced it was considering investigating Israel for war crimes against Palestinians. 

For the people of the world, it is quite clear the United States is the primary threat to global peace. It is also clear to us it doesn’t matter who physically sits in the white people’s house because the commitment to protecting and advancing the objective interests of the capitalist ruling class will continue unless the organized masses meet them with an effective countervailing power.

The predatory relationship between the U.S. and the rest of humanity is best captured in Trump’s “America First” policy. This is not in any way a departure from post-World War II U.S. policies, just a cruder statement of fact absent the liberal subterfuge. 

Polls each year have shown the international public sees the United States as the greatest threat to peace. The U.S. sanctions regime continuing to target more than 30 countries—even in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic—reinforces that perception.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) supports the only solution: Seizing the U.S. capitalist oligarchy’s destructive power for the good of humanity. But that will not happen through appeals to their morality because they are driven by profits. It is a parasitic system that needs, as Malcolm X said, some blood to suck.

PRESS AND MEDIA

Tunde Osazua, coordinator of BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN), and Netfa Freeman, Co Coordinator of BAP’s Africa Team, take on U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and, by extension, the entire Congress for their support of the expansion of U.S. military force in Africa and military actions that have caused African deaths and political destabilization. Netfa was interviewed 30 minutes into Sputnik Radio's “The Critical Hour with Dr. Wilmer Leon” about this article.

Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report Senior Editor and BAP Coordinating Committee member, condemns the liberal left for its silence on a U.S. mercenary plot interrupted in Venezuela. 

BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka explains how cross-class white solidarity allowed Trump to build bipartisan consensus to support completing the Obama administration’s aggressive “Pivot to Asia” program.

Tunde was interviewed about BAP’s position on U.S. domestic repression of African/Black people, AFRICOM and U.S.-China tensions related to Africa 32 minutes into the “Class Wars” radio program, which was broadcast on WVKR 91.3 FM (Poughkeepsie, New York), WIOF 104.1 FM (Woodstock, New York) and the Progressive Radio Network. 

Kristian Davis Bailey, one of the founders of “Black for Palestine,” wrote about the Black perspective on Israel and Palestine for the 72nd anniversary of the Nakba, the 1948 military removal of 750,000 Palestinians off their land.

Historian and author Eric Zuesse argues the international community will only be able to address U.S. crimes in Iraq when U.S. officials are held accountable.

  EVENTS

• May 23: The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) and the Maryland Council of Elders will hold a webinar to commemorate the upcoming African Liberation Day. BAP member organization Pan-African Community Action (PACA) has been invited to speak.

• May 25: The All-African People’s Revolutionary Party (A-APRP) and the All-African Women’s Revolutionary Union (A-AWRU) are hosting a webinar on African Liberation Day. The theme is "Imperialist Sanctions on Zimbabwe, Cuba and Venezuela are Acts of War: Africans Everywhere Must Fight!"

• June 12-14: The Black Is Back Coalition’s online electoral school, “The Ballot or the Bullet: Putting Black Self-Determination on the Ballot,” will focus on the COVID-19 impact.

TAKE ACTION

• Have you signed our petition to demand 2020 U.S. candidates take a position against war, militarism and repression? Take your anti-war activism further by asking your local, state and federal candidates to sign BAP’s 2020 Candidate Accountability Pledge. If you are a candidate, distinguish yourself from the other corporate warmongering candidates by signing the pledge. Check out BAP’s campaign and take action.

• BAP member Efia Nwangaza, founder of the Greenville, South Carolina-based Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination and its community radio station, WMXP, are facing their most serious challenge. The station has always depended on contributions from listeners and supporters. During this economic crisis, fundraising has dried up, putting the station in danger of shutting down. We call on everyone reading this newsletter to take a minute to give whatever you can to save an institution that has been around for over a decade. Sister Efia has been in this movement for over 50 years, so we must show her our love and appreciation. She needs at least $2,500 by Friday. Scroll to the bottom of her website to donate.

No Compromise, No Retreat!

Struggle to win,
Ajamu, Brandon, Dedan, Jaribu, Margaret, Netfa, Paul, Vanessa, YahNé

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



Photo credit: Associated Press