Yearly Archives: 2017

This past June and July, cities around the world held ‘Pride’ parades; celebrations of resistance to the restrictive sexual norms of European culture. To their supporters, the parades were living monuments to a righteous struggle for inclusion in a predominantly heterosexual society.

For colonized workers, however, including same-gender-loving (SGL) and gender non-conforming (GNC) colonized people, this brand of inclusion into the status quo is an assault on their lives and their communities.

The primary day-in day-out struggle for colonized workers, is not for ‘inclusion’ in parasitic capitalism. For them, true liberation and self-determination means seizing State power and overturning the very system of capitalism built and sustained entirely by their oppression.

A fire broke out in the Grenfell Tower, a 24-storey building located in West London on the early morning of Tuesday June 14, 2017 at about 1am.

The fire spread extremely quickly, engulfing the entire building in a matter of 15 minutes and condemning its inhabitants to a certain death.

The infamous building, demonized by both the government and the media, was mainly inhabited by poor and working class people from colonized places in Africa, Syria, the Caribbean, South Asia and elsewhere, along with poor white workers.

We united with all the demands from victims of this colonial mayhem, such as to be rehoused in the same borough.

We united to charge the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management organization KCMO, a subcontractor company that managed the Grenfell Tower on behalf of the Kensington and Chelsea local council–for murders!

This month, Colombia celebrates its 207th year of ‘independence’ from Spanish rule on July 20.

However, two months ago (on May 10 and 16, respectively), the colonial crisis in so-called Colombia deepened further when African and Indigenous people in the looted states of Choco and Buenaventura along the Pacific coast went on strike against the State.

They are protesting the colonial conditions forcibly imposed on them for hundreds of years.

This strike has spread to other parts of the country, including Medellín, Cali and Bogotá, where hundreds of thousands of workers and teachers have started strikes of their own in the same vein.

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIB) is holding our Annual Conference at Chicago State University on August 12 and 13, 2017. The theme of the conference is “The Ballot and the Bullet: Elections, War and peace in the era of Donald Trump.”

The theme of our Conference contains within it the critical matters of this period that must be addressed to move our struggle for black liberation forward.

The SEIU’s People’s Budget Review held a local forum on Thursday June 15th at The Sunshine Center so that the nine district 6 candidates could have an opportunity to hear out the concerns of the community. The description of the event read: “You’ll be able to engage in dialogue with candidates for the District 6 race and hear them respond to how they will be supporting the People’s agenda.”

The open forum quickly became a battle royale. Most candidates were obviously fighting in the interest of prime real estate, while others were engaged in a vested struggle against police violence and gentrification.

The city of Philadelphia unveiled a new gay pride flag featuring black and brown stripes which are to represent the struggle to include “black and brown” same-gender-loving people. The new flag was raised on June 8, 2017 at the City Hall to kick off of the city’s month-long gay pride activities.

The city of Philadelphia unveiled a new gay pride flag featuring black and brown stripes which are to represent the struggle to include “black and brown” same-gender-loving people. The new flag was raised on June 8, 2017 at the City Hall to kick off of the city’s month-long gay pride activities.

According to one source: “The 8-stripe flag is reportedly the first Pride flag flying over a U.S. city to recognize queer people of color.

“The flag was designed in conjunction with the city’s Office of LGBT affairs and is part of the larger #MoreColorsMorePride campaign. It’s also part of the city’s ongoing effort to address concerns about racism in Philly’s gayborhood and LGBTQ businesses.”

White opportunism, or nah?
This move is being championed by many gay rights supporters, white homosexuals, as well as African and other colonized same-gender-loving individuals. The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) is clear, however, that this is yet another opportunist attempt by the white ruling class to lead African same-gender-loving persons towards a counter-revolutionary agenda.

This supposed “inclusion” is nothing but the opportunism of the white ruling class rearing its white parasitic colonizer head.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—The state of Arkansas, in a span of eight days from April 20-27, 2017, committed State-sanctioned executions of four death row inmates by injecting them with a mixture of lethal chemicals.

Three of those inmates were colonial African subjects.

The spate of legal executions began with Arkansas frantically moving forward to kill eight people within an eleven-day period.

They were rushing the executions because their stock of midazolam, the powerful sedative used in their deadly injection “cocktail,” had a “use by” date of April 30, 2017 stamped on it.

According to the World Heath Organization, there is an estimated 125 million girls and women throughout the world who have been subjected to a practice called female genital mutilation (FGM), a majority of whom lives in Africa and the Middle East.

FGM is the removing or altering of the external genitalia of girls and young women, which is a centuries-old practice that predates modern religion.

Supporters of this practice provide various reasons for maintaining it, often citing cultural traditions. Opponents of FGM provide a long list of medical and moral reasons why it should end.

Whatever the medical or cultural reasons given for or against FGM, the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is clear that, at its core, female genital mutilation further limits the freedom of African women and girls who are already suffering under colonial domination.

Therefore, we unite with the African People’s Socialist Party’s position to end the mutilation of women that reads:

“African women also find themselves locked into backward social practices that have assumed the weight of culture. Genital mutilation is one of the most obvious of such practices.

“While there is a debate on whether this practice was introduced into Africa by Arabs or other external forces, the fact remains that genital mutilation is a brutal method used in attempt to guarantee male inheritance rights by limiting the sexual freedom of women.”