Africans need State power!
A colonial court acquitted Rick Chow
On May 28, 2023 in Columbia, SC, a Chinese shop owner, Rick Chow, murdered 14-year-old African Cyrus Carmack-Belton by chasing him down and shooting him in the back, falsely claiming that he took four water bottles. Rick Chow lied that Cyrus pointed a gun at his son. On June 1, 2026, Rick Chow was acquitted and young Cyrus’ murder was ruled “self-defense.”
A black mother’s grief, reactions and call for justice
A video on the weekly One Africa Worldview Podcast was shown of his outraged and grieving mother calling for justice for Cyrus, and she was incensed at those who were telling her he had deserved to die. This is not the first time Rick Chow has terrorized the African community. Cyrus’ mother wants Rick Chow and his son who lied about Cyrus and murdered him to be punished.
Some Africans were defending Cyrus on the basis of not having taken the bottles. However, as African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Chairman Omali Yeshitela has said during many Black Community Sunday Rallies, the law is the opinion of the ruling class. APSP Agitation and Propaganda Director Akilé Anai said on the One Africa Worldview Podcast that even if Cyrus had broken colonial law, that would not give the State’s forces or non-State individuals the right to kill him.
Too often Africans legitimize the violence done to us, from Emmett Till to George Floyd to Mike Brown. The Uhuru Movement calls for justice for Cyrus Carmack-Belton and reparations for Cyrus’ family!
We get killed by anyone because we don’t have State power
Director Akilé said that colonizers, sellout Negro cops and Chinese shop owners can kill Africans with impunity because we don’t have our own State power. Rather than relying on the colonial courts that throw over a million Africans in prisons, which Chairman Omali Yeshitela says is used as a form of birth control, we need black people’s courts.
“Self-determination is the highest form of democracy” is the motto of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM). The Uhuru Movement has built many programs and institutions of economic self-reliance to enable the African community to feed, clothe and house ourselves. Point 17 of InPDUM’s Revolutionary National Democratic Program explains that the ASI-established International Tribunal—founded in 1982—reached a guilty verdict against the U.S. for genocide against African people and just lacks enforcement ability.
Point 30 explains that trials of Africans must be heard by juries of our peers: Africans of like communities and classes.
Africans were forced to be U.S. slaves then U.S. “citizens”
Though Africans—who are born within the domestic colony or those holding U.S. citizenship—might think of ourselves as citizens, the African domestic colony, as Efia Nwangaza stated during the Black Is Back 10th Annual Electoral Campaign School, were forcibly made U.S. citizens in 1866 and not given the choice to repatriate to the Motherland.
U.S. law based on English common law rules over Africans and other colonized people in the U.S. settler-colony on stolen Indigenous people’s land. Colonized people fighting for control over our own lives threaten the colonial mode of production, and black people’s courts, as Director Akilé said, will enable us to enforce our own verdicts.
Uhuru Movement’s response to More Value shop, template for justice
In August 1984, Arab shop owners attacked a member of the Ford family, an African family. Following this, a targeted boycott of the store was launched. Chairman Omali explained to the perpetrators that they fled oppression but have now inflicted similar oppression on the African community. The Chairman made six demands in his article in The Burning Spear including that the More Value store pay reparations to the Ford family and apologize to the black community.
As a result of Rick Chow’s murder of Cyrus, there have been general black boycotts declared on Asian businesses and lamentations that black people have no friends. But Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement focus on the real enemy: the colonial mode of production.
Chinese people are not from the colonizer community. Oppressed people in the U.S. and around the world are our natural allies in the struggle to overturn colonialism.
Too often, colonized people have ideas about each other that are informed by what we are told by our colonizers about each other. Conflicts then develop between our communities from these colonial attitudes. In some cases, some colonized people have even been used as a buffer between the colonizer and other colonized people. This then provides a cover for the colonizer, so that we end up fighting each other while our oppressor gets off without any heat directed at them.
Like Africans, other colonized people must be made to understand who our real enemy is so that we can end conflicts informed and inflamed by the colonizers and stand in solidarity with each other as we make the fight to end our colonial oppression.
We need justice rooted in African Internationalism for Cyrus Carmack-Belton!
Join InPDUM!
Uhuru!
