The All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) recently held a live webinar on Facebook titled “Africans United With Cuba: Confronting COVID-19 and the U.S. Blockade” with the central purpose of declaring our unity, that is the unity of AAPDEP and the wider Uhuru Movement, with the revolutionary people and government of Cuba.
Our International Director of AAPDEP, Dr. Aisha Fields, sits on the National Central Committee of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).
Founded in 1972 and led by our Chairman, Omali Yeshitela, the APSP is an international organization, existing in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Caribbean with mass organizations and economic institutions around the world.
The African People’s Socialist Party is the advanced detachment of the African working class.
The APSP is organized to pursue the goal of liberation and unification of Africa and African people under the leadership of the African working class as a critical component of the struggle to overthrow imperialism and all its representations and manifestations—this includes all forms of colonialism.
The APSP is a part of the establishment of the international dictatorship of the working class.
Our theory, African Internationalism, is a theory that explains the world, as well as the place and future of Africans in it.
African Internationalism recognizes that capitalism was born as a world economy and has its origin in the assault on Africa and the global trade of African captives, as well as the ensuing European onslaught on most of the world.
Waging the war against colonial-capitalism
Our Party has assumed this tremendous task to be accomplices of history in this great battle between the past and the future—to build a future free of oppression; to build a world where a few do not live at the expense of the vast majority of the world’s people.
In accordance with this task, we salute and unite with the goals and the tremendous gains and victories of the Cuban Revolution!
We unite with Comrade Comandante Fidel Castro when he said, “I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating… because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.”
We recognize that what we are looking at in Africa and throughout the African world, when we see the extreme poverty, violence and misery that our people experience—is the reality of colonial capitalism.
It is the imposition in many instances of neocolonial rule on our people.
We are looking at the effects of the defeat of the Black Power Revolution of the 1960s.
We are looking at the effects of the murder and political overthrow of genuine African revolutionaries like Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and others who were working to unite Africa and use its tremendous resources, both human and material, for the benefit of the masses of African working people.
What we are looking at now is evidence of the fact that we still have much work to do—that we must unite the African Nation and forward the African Revolution that will, like the Cuban Revolution has already done, allow African people to harness our skills and vast resources toward the benefit of our society and of humanity as a whole.
We acknowledge and appreciate the solidarity the revolutionary Cuban government, people, and leadership have historically and presently shown to African people.
We know that the primary reason why the Cuban people may suffer today is because our common enemy, indeed, the enemy of all humanity— white power imperialism— has not yet been defeated.
The colonial capitalist world economy still sets the terms for all economic activity worldwide.
For now, the capitalists still have the capacity to enforce the illegal, immoral economic blockade as a form of warfare against the Cuban people.
However, our Chairman, Omali Yeshitela, has helped us to understand that imperialism is in deep crisis. There exists an uneasy equilibrium between the past and the future, a new world is not only necessary, but possible, and the African Revolution must play a key role in wiping colonial capitalism off of the planet!
Having said that, we want to appreciate all that we have learned today about what Cuba has been able to do to safeguard its people and show solidarity to others during this period of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Building programs by and for our African people
The Cuban example serves as incredible inspiration for AAPDEP as we work to build our own independent systems of health for African people.
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AAPDEP is inspired by the powerful, life-saving work of the Cuban Henry Reeve brigades.
We acknowledge the medical support that Comrade President Fidel Castro offered in response to Hurricane Katrina—the medical support that was absolutely needed, but quickly rejected by the U.S. government that allowed African people to drown in the rising flood waters.
AAPDEP recognizes that we have the responsibility to further develop Project Black Ankh to include our own African-led emergency medical response teams that can be deployed in African communities in the U.S., Africa and around the world when natural disasters or other emergencies impact African people.
We are excited to have a contingent of AAPDEP’s medical forces to travel with the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO) this year as part of their annual caravan to Cuba so that we can learn more about how Cuba has been able to safeguard its people during this period of COVID-19.
We hope to develop relationships that can help us to establish the training that would contribute to the development of our AAPDEP medical response teams.
We look forward to developing a deeper relationship with IFCO and its Cuban solidarity work, and again we salute the revolutionary Cuban people and government.
Viva Cuba!
Long live the African Revolution!
Venceremos!!!
