Yearly Archives: 2017

No issue is a greater taboo in the bourgeois electoral arena than the demand for reparations to the African community.

A politician’s position on reparations to the black community is the litmus test they must pass to be approved by the ruling elite as legitimate contenders in a bourgeois electoral contest.

Typically in bourgeois elections when people hear the word "forum" or "debate," it's safe to assume that it will be a snooze fest.

The narrative was permanently transformed by the demand that reparations and economic development to the African community be the centerfold of city policy, along with black community control of police and an end to gentrification that pushes the African working class out of the city in the face of massive real estate speculation on the part of big money developers.

It was a brilliant strategy to have African People’s Solidarity Committee member and chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement Jesse Nevel run for mayor as a white man galvanizing other white people around reparations as the central demand.

Today, social media has become inevitable in imperial politics, with many capitalist politicians and ruling-class political parties using it as an inexpensive and immensely influential tool for colonial propaganda.

It was the mission of Akilé and Jesse’s social media team to use social media to forward the people’s candidates and to win the masses to a platform that represented the interest of the African Working Class.

The 2017 Committee to Elect Akilé (Cainion) Anai for District 6 city councilwoman and Jesse Nevel for mayor of St. Petersburg, FL was led by the African People’s Socialist Party and made up of youthful forces powered by the slogans “Unity through Reparations!” and “Radical Times; Radical Solutions!”

For six months, from early March through August 29, the joint campaign committee was a powerhouse of energy, enthusiasm and commitment waging an outstanding ground war to elect the dynamic young candidates who excited the African working class to come out and vote for their own interests for the first time ever.

Midway through the campaign to elect Akilé Anai for District 6 councilwoman and Jesse Nevel for mayor in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Campaign Committee determined to form a new organization as the umbrella for precinct organizing for the duration of the election.

 
Inspired by the campaign slogan of “Unity through Reparations,” we named this new organization, Communities United for Reparations and Economic Development. The name and its acronym, CURED, were also inspired by the broad-based organization that Chairman Omali Yeshitela built after his 2001 run for mayor of St. Petersburg, Citizens United for Shared Prosperity (CUSP).

The African People’s Socialist Party’s campaign for Akilé Anai (formerly Eritha Cainion) for District 6 city council and Jesse Nevel for mayor of St. Petersburg, FL this year was a six-month decorum-shattering, cadre-building, history-making mobilization of the masses of the people.

Between our announcements to run in March and election day on August 29, our daily work included work on the streets among the masses of the people, disruption of status-quo debates, fisticuffs, laughs, exuberant demonstrations, battles with the bourgeois media, social media wars and recruitment of amazing new Comrades in the process of breaking up the status quo and forcing the interests of the African working class onto St. Petersburg’s electoral agenda.

When New York assemblyman Charles Barron endorsed Eritha Akilé Anai (Cainion) for city councilwoman and Jesse Nevel for mayor in the 2017 St. Petersburg, FL elections, it was historic. Assemblyman Barron gave powerful advice, based upon years of successful campaigning and stopping the vicious tide of gentrification in East New York: “Door to door wins the war!”

HOUSTON—Organizers of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) were informed by the landowners of the piece of land where the AAPDEP 5th Ward Community Garden sits of their need to sell the property in April 2017.