Colonialism, the colonial mode of production, destroys everything: human beings, trees, wildlife, the water we drink and the air we breathe.
Every day we can see growing evidence of colonial-capitalism’s destruction of the planet through the climate catastrophe it has caused.
We see flooding all over the planet. We see droughts, huge storms and wildfires. We see and feel how hot the planet has become, how hot it is still becoming.
How many days over the last few months in your own community have you heard statements on the news about record heat waves? This is just the beginning.
Although natural disasters are obviously not new, colonial climate change increases their frequency and intensity–making it harder for those affected to cope with the impacts.
Often, Africans and other colonized people are in the process of rebuilding from one disaster when we’re struck again by yet another.
Colonialism wreaks havoc on the environment
Throughout our motherland, Africa, colonial climate change is disrupting rainfall patterns which affects our ability to grow food and have access to sufficient amounts of water. Rising temperatures are causing a decrease in fish in large lakes.
The U.S. National Intelligence Council wrote in its Global Trends 2040 report that “the physical effects of climate change are likely to intensify during the next two decades, especially in the 2030s. More extreme storms, droughts, and floods; melting glaciers and ice caps; and rising sea levels will accompany rising temperatures.”
Scientists warn that Africa will be the continent hardest hit by climate change, despite the fact that Africa and African people have played almost no role in creating this contradiction.
As African Internationalists, we know that Africa and African people must organize ourselves to defeat the colonial mode of production that is responsible for creating this crisis in the first place.
Colonialism is not only responsible for the climate catastrophe, but no matter how you look at it, it is responsible for the various disease or health related emergencies that are constantly impacting African and other people around the world.
Colonial white power is responsible for cholera and ebola. It is responsible for malaria–killing an African child every minute. It is responsible for the coronavirus pandemic and for the spread of monkeypox.
Project Black Ankh
The African People’s Socialist Party, All African People’s Development & Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) and the overall Uhuru Movement are not simply content with summing up this contradiction and waiting for the next disaster to occur. We are right now building our own independent capacity to respond to the growing needs of our people as we face this situation head on.
AAPDEP’s Project Black Ankh (PBA), the African Nation’s emergency response and disaster preparedness program, is our solution.
The ankh, an ancient African symbol for life, represents what our Movement and this process embody, which is life for the African world.
One of Project Black Ankh’s slogans, “red cross, get lost!” is a recognition of the fact that African people must save ourselves and that parasitic charities and NGOs like the red cross do nothing to help us even when they get billions of dollars from the devastation that we experience.
Project Black Ankh was initiated by AAPDEP in 2014 as a response to the ebola epidemic in West Africa and has been activated at various times over the last eight years to address emergencies in African communities in the U.S.
One of PBA’s most important initiatives in this period has been the development of our International COVID-19 Telehealth Program which has given African people around the world access to free appointments with AAPDEP medical personnel, African doctors and nurses who are dedicated to ensuring the health and safety of our people everywhere.
A way forward
Inspired by the incredible example of the revolutionary Cuban people and government, we are now developing plans to create our very own Project Black Ankh Community Response Teams, the first one being developed right now in St. Louis, Missouri, under the leadership of FoFeet Alkebulan, an RN with more than 40 years experience in the field.
Our Project Black Ankh community response teams will be made up of Africans who work in their local communities and who can also be mobilized to participate in regional or international emergency response operations.
AAPDEP intends to build PBA Community Response Teams trained to mobilize and prepare their local community to respond to natural disasters like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and heat waves, in African communities all around the world.
Team members will be trained in First Aid and CPR. They will be trained to know how to make tourniquets, pack wounds and take other actions to stop bleeding. They will be trained in basic survival skills, natural disaster preparation and will have other training that will allow them to prepare and mobilize our community when there are natural disasters and weather-related or other emergencies that impact our people.
Now is the time to launch a worldwide campaign to recruit African people with the mission to build and implement Project Black Ankh. If you want to help build a Project Black Ankh Community Response Team in your community, have interests or skills in disaster preparedness and emergency response, or if you are a medical professional who wants to be a part of this process to protect our people, I invite you to join us by going to developmentforafrica.org and joining AAPDEP today!
Project Black Ankh is the only legitimate rescue for African people because it is part of the process of building for African self-determination.
Only an organized African Nation can protect and defend itself. Only through being organized under the leadership of the Advanced Detachment of the African working class, the African People’s Socialist Party, can we ensure that our building is not opportunist in nature, but that it projects us into the future of a liberated and united Africa.
