WASHINGTON, DC — African revolutionaries from throughout the United States, Canada and South America have adopted a revolutionary national democratic program aimed at forwarding the uncompromising liberation and unification of Africa and African people under the leadership of the African Socialist International (ASI), a single party of African workers and peasants from around the world.
Speaking at a two-day regional conference held on May 23-24 at the Carlos Rosario Charter School in Washington, DC to build the North America region of the African Socialist International, Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the ASI, said the revolutionary national democratic program responds to the reality that all African people constitute one people and one nation who cannot achieve genuine freedom without the total liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
“The revolutionary national democratic program is a program that distinguishes the interests of the vast majority of African people within the United States of North America from the interests of the U.S. North American ruling class and state and from the interests of reactionaries and opportunists within the African nation itself,” he said, while adding that the United States and its citizens constitute an oppressor nation state that holds a substantial sector of the African population as part of a colonially oppressed nation.
“As colonized people inside the United States since the time of enslavement, African people long for total liberation and the ability to join humanity as a free nation equal among other free peoples of the world,” Chairman Omali Yeshitela told the gathering of African revolutionaries present at the conference.
He added that the program shows that capitalism, which is born of the enslavement, colonization and division of Africa and African people, must be defeated and replaced with a just social system in which social production of the means of existence is accompanied by social ownership of the means of production.
“The laboring producers must collectively own and control the means of production, controlling the power necessary to guarantee social progress and protect and advance the interests of the workers and toiling masses,” he says, adding that the program calls on the exploited African workers and peasants to end the colonially imposed divisions between African people inside the United States and North America.
The 50-point revolutionary document, unanimously endorsed at the conference, calls for among other things, the rejection of United States President Barack Obama as a representative of the aspirations of African workers and toiling masses within the United States, the exemption of Africans in North America from paying taxes to the United States and Canada, the institution of a plebiscite that will allow Africans in North America to determine their will on questions around reparations, a program for free access to educational opportunities, and an end to the discriminatory, humiliating and expensive immigration laws and procedures that limit or prohibit the entry of Africans into the United States.
It also called on the international community to support and recognize the legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Reparations for Africa and African People (WTRAAP), established to put imperial white power on trial for the offenses committed against African people.
The program also demanded the immediate removal of all western intelligence agencies and military forces deployed in Africa and called for the immediate release of all conscious African political prisoners and an internationally supervised investigation of every police killing of an African person within the last ten years.
Conference part of worldwide mobilization campaign to build ASI
Speaking at the conference, ASI Director of Organization, Chernoh Alpha M. Bah said that the North America regional conference is the third in a series of regional conferences scheduled to occur this year as part of an international mobilization campaign to unite and galvanize the efforts of African revolutionaries and progressives into the African Socialist International.
“It is our hope that by the end of 2009, we will be able to have the African Socialist International consolidated throughout the African world as part of a process to build a single international movement of African workers and peasants to fight for the speedy liberation and unification of Africa and African people,” he said.
The ASI North America conference is a follow-up to the first two regional conferences of the African Socialist International that have been held in Africa within a six-month period.
In October 2008, representatives of African revolutionary movements from across West Africa and beyond met in Freetown, Sierra Leone for the first of this series of regional conferences of the ASI. The three-day conference, attracting more than 500 participants, was reported as the most significant gathering of African revolutionaries since the 1930s.
It brought together representatives from the labor and trade union movement, students union, youth organizations, civil society movement and progressive academics to discuss the tactics and strategy of African international as the guiding theory and ideology of the African working class in its struggle to become the new ruling class.
The conference passed a 23-point resolution calling for action against multinational corporations in Africa, the removal of western military forces, reparations and the right of return for Africans dispersed around the world.
Luwezi Kinshasa, Secretary General of the African Socialist International observed that the “ASI West Africa conference has reintroduced the working class into actual political life in the region.”
East Africa ASI conference shook political terrain in region
The international mobilization campaign to build the African Socialist International reached a climax with the convening of the East Africa regional conference in early April this year.
The meeting held in Nairobi, Kenya has been the single most important event in that region since the British defeat of the Mau Mau in the 1950s. The conference attracted participants from throughout Kenya and East Africa and for two days they examined various questions relating to African unity and liberation and also reaffirmed the need to build the African Socialist International to provide leadership for the struggle of African people around the world.
At the ASI North America conference, Chairman Omali Yeshitela underlined that the revolutionary national democratic program of the North America front of the African revolution is influenced by the ASI regional conferences held in West and East Africa respectively.
He says the process is the response of the African working class to the growing crisis of imperialism particularly the collapse of the U.S. capitalist economy.
The ASI North America conference occurred in parallel to the European regional conference which occurred simultaneously in Manchester, England to build the ASI European region.
Both conferences were held as part of the 2009 African Liberation Day events to mobilize African people towards the trajectory of revolutionary struggle.
Other ASI regional conferences are scheduled to occur later this year in Central and South America.
In July this year, African revolutionaries will again be meeting in Harare, Zimbabwe for the Southern Africa regional conference to build the ASI.
“We can confidently say that by the end of this year, we will have the ASI in any place where African people are located in the world,” the ASI leadership stated.
