The Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM)—the mass organization of white people under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP)—hosted a Reparations Summer Project (RSP) on July 6-13 in St. Louis, MO. Members of USM traveled across the country from the San Francisco Bay area, Columbus, OH and St. Pete, FL to be part of this powerful community organizing intensive that included studies, outreach, events, trainings, attending the City’s town hall meeting, Reparations Investment Company (RIC) work days and the Reparations Legacy Project’s “Solidarity with the Northside! Benefit for the Black Power Blueprint” on July 9 that raised over $17,000 in reparations.
Following in Freedom Summer tradition, this Reparations Summer Project was organized in the tradition of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the anti-colonial African Liberation Movement’s “Freedom Summer” campaigns. USM salutes the leadership of APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Deputy Chair Ona Zené Yeshitela, the National Central Committee of the APSP, African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) Chairwoman Penny Hess, and USM Chair Jesse Nevel.
Study and practice
The Reparations Summer Project prepared and equipped comrades to organize true solidarity with the African working class. It was a multi-faceted training intensive designed to mobilize white people to build branches of USM in cities across the U.S. As Chairman Omali Yeshitela stated during one of the studies at the Reparations Summer Project, after the state murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO in 2014, “the uprising was stalemated because the critical question got obscured—the colonial question. We must take command of this resistance today, to take it beyond reform and into revolution.”
Reparations Summer Project attendees united with the international movement of the African working class to be free and achieve national liberation by distributing clubcards and posters in the white communities about the Reparations Legacy Project (RLP) Benefit for the Black Power Blueprint. As USM Chair Jesse Nevel emphasized, “Organization is the greatest weapon that colonized people have.” The Reparations Summer Project trained white people to recognize that the crisis of imperialism does not have to be ours, and to instead unite with the anti-colonial future by organizing in the white communities for reparations and material solidarity with African self-determination. The Reparations Summer Project included studies on African Internationalism, Hands Off Uhuru, the Colonial Mode of Production, and a Book Reading of “Overturning the Culture of Violence” with the author, Chairwoman Penny Hess.
True history of St. Louis
The Summer Project featured a presentation by APSC Chairwoman Penny Hess on “The True History of St. Louis” and a tour of the Dred and Harriet Scott “Freedom Suits” exhibit at the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis where they initially sued for their freedom in 1846. CW Penny discussed the significance of the 1857 U.S. supreme court’s “Dred Scott Decision,” the colonial World’s Fair in 1904, the East St. Louis Massacre in 1917, the African community’s Homer G Phillips Hospital being destroyed, the development of the Atom Bomb and the remaining radioactive waste, the razing of Mill Creek Valley and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. This history made clear that there are in fact two Americas. It’s an inescapable dialectic where the colonial narrative makes white people the subjects of history while making African and Indigenous people objects. Reparations Now!
NINA, InPDUM, USM demand reparations at Town Hall
Since the 1970’s, the city’s “Team 4 Plan” has been to deplete the Northside African community and let it rot. On July 8, Reparations Summer Project attendees went to a City Town Hall on the Northside where the African community, the Northside Independent Neighborhood Association (NINA) and USM members arose in one voice demanding reparations to African people. In the wake of the devastating tornado that hit the Northside, the community recognizes that for generations the mode of operation of the St. Louis government has been to push Africans out of their own community, such as with Mill Creek Valley and Kinloch. Not this time! The Uhuru Movement and Northside residents united that African people will remain and prosper. The African community is demanding genuine material solidarity with their self-determination.
At the town hall, St. Louis International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) President Westbrook pressed the mayor to say whether the city will provide compensation to the families of the seven people who died in the tornado due to the city’s failure to push the warning button. The Uhuru Movement and the African community of North St. Louis are demanding a positive public policy of economic development and reparations as opposed to the negative public policy of police containment and gentrification.
On July 9, the Reparations Legacy Project, a program of USM, held the “Solidarity with the Northside! Benefit for the Black Power Blueprint” at an event space called Work & Leisure in downtown St. Louis. The event was a great success, featuring many attendees, local poets, musicians, artists, speakers, raffle prizes and raising over $17,000 in reparations to the Northside.
Reparations Summer Project an anti-colonial victory
The Reparations Summer Project was a profound victory for the anti-colonial African Liberation Movement. USM has committed to holding annual Reparations Summer Projects, to continue to forward the struggle for principled unity with African working class leadership. Thank you to the USM comrades who organized and attended the Reparations Summer Project: Cara, Redbeard, Jeanine, Chianna, Lucas, Janice, two Dylans, Indigo, Camille, Amanda, Jesse, Brendan, Halley, KC, Brandon, Jan and more.
As white people, it is in our greatest interest to join the movement for reparations. This is how we overturn the primary contradiction of the relationship between oppressed and oppressor nations, so that all can be free from the colonial mode of production. As CW Penny teaches us, “By joining USM, white people can be part of changing the world under the APSP’s anti-colonial leadership rather than only trying to change the ideas in our heads as a struggle against racism, which the Chairman characterizes as a self-defeating waste of time.” USM resolves to build the Reparations Investment Company, double our membership and make 2025 the biggest year of reparations yet. No more genocide in our name!
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Unity Through Reparations!
Reparations Through Organization
