Contributors

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIB) is holding our Annual Conference at Chicago State University on August 12 and 13, 2017. The theme of the conference is “The Ballot and the Bullet: Elections, War and peace in the era of Donald Trump.”

The theme of our Conference contains within it the critical matters of this period that must be addressed to move our struggle for black liberation forward.

According to the World Heath Organization, there is an estimated 125 million girls and women throughout the world who have been subjected to a practice called female genital mutilation (FGM), a majority of whom lives in Africa and the Middle East.

FGM is the removing or altering of the external genitalia of girls and young women, which is a centuries-old practice that predates modern religion.

Supporters of this practice provide various reasons for maintaining it, often citing cultural traditions. Opponents of FGM provide a long list of medical and moral reasons why it should end.

Whatever the medical or cultural reasons given for or against FGM, the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is clear that, at its core, female genital mutilation further limits the freedom of African women and girls who are already suffering under colonial domination.

Therefore, we unite with the African People’s Socialist Party’s position to end the mutilation of women that reads:

“African women also find themselves locked into backward social practices that have assumed the weight of culture. Genital mutilation is one of the most obvious of such practices.

“While there is a debate on whether this practice was introduced into Africa by Arabs or other external forces, the fact remains that genital mutilation is a brutal method used in attempt to guarantee male inheritance rights by limiting the sexual freedom of women.”

Emmanuel Jean-Michel Frédéric Macron became the new and youngest French president since 1848 on May 7, 2017.

He won the second round contest with 66.1 percent of votes against Marine Le Pen, who got 33.9 percent. What is the meaning of Macron’s victory?

According to the French interior ministry, “4.07 million voted blank or null, 10.6 voted for Le Pen, 12.1 million of voters abstained and 20.1 million voted for Macron.”1

It is clear that the numb

LONDON––The press announced the death of 84-year-old Etienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba on Wednesday, February 1st, 2017. The main leader of the opposition to the regime of Kabila in the Congo was dead, in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, where he was treated for pulmonary embolism. 

Today, Tshisekedi’s UDPS (Union for Democracy and Social Progress) created in 1982, is the largest national organization in the Congo today and enjoys huge support and prestige amongst the poorest and most dynamic sectors of the African working class, as well as support from the African petty bourgeoisie throughout Congo.

The Panafrican Congress of Azania’s (PAC) demonstration against the pass law was repressed by the white settler colonial rulers 57 years ago on March 21, 1960.

Sixty-nine people were murdered during this demonstration and 181 were wounded, in Sharpevill, a township in southern Gauteng province. Africans were also killed in similar protests in Langa and Cape Town.

Adama Barrow, a property businessman, won the presidential elections held on the 1st December 2016, in Gambia, West Africa. Barrow secured 43.34 percent against Yaya Jammeh, who obtained 39.6 percent and Mama Kandeh received 17.1 percent. The voter turnout was of 58.76 percent.

That is 222,708 marbles for Adama Barrow, 208 487 marbles for Yaya Jammeh and 89,768 marbles for Mama Kandeh.

We have always said that nothing leaves Africa peacefully. In the last 600 years, there has been no genuine trade or cooperation between Africa and the rest of the world, particularly with Europe.

There is a human life cost for every extraction of our labor and natural resources by parasitic capitalist companies in Africa and throughout African communities around the world, which is not recognized in the price of merchandise in the capitalist market.

Michelle Obama gave a star spangled performance for U.S. imperialism in her final white house interview with Oprah Winfrey. It had everything: black vernacular, martyrdom, symbolism and Oprah, of course.

The interview provided one last chance for black women who are not politicized to idolize the wife of the outgoing commander in thief and the matriarch of the black petty bourgeoisie.

LONDON––The Jewish settler’s leaders are involved in a criminal attempt to legalize their occupation of settlements on land stolen from Jordan, Syria and Palestine in Israel’s 1967 colonial war.

On November 6, 2016, the Israeli settler colonial government approved what the New York Times characterized as “a contentious bill that would allow for the retroactive legalization of Jewish settlement outposts built on privately-owned Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. The measure breaks a longstanding taboo, and in the view of many experts, it defies international law.”