North America

Today, social media has become inevitable in imperial politics, with many capitalist politicians and ruling-class political parties using it as an inexpensive and immensely influential tool for colonial propaganda.

It was the mission of Akilé and Jesse’s social media team to use social media to forward the people’s candidates and to win the masses to a platform that represented the interest of the African Working Class.

Midway through the campaign to elect Akilé Anai for District 6 councilwoman and Jesse Nevel for mayor in St. Petersburg, Florida, the Campaign Committee determined to form a new organization as the umbrella for precinct organizing for the duration of the election.

 
Inspired by the campaign slogan of “Unity through Reparations,” we named this new organization, Communities United for Reparations and Economic Development. The name and its acronym, CURED, were also inspired by the broad-based organization that Chairman Omali Yeshitela built after his 2001 run for mayor of St. Petersburg, Citizens United for Shared Prosperity (CUSP).

The 2017 Committee to Elect Akilé (Cainion) Anai for District 6 city councilwoman and Jesse Nevel for mayor of St. Petersburg, FL was led by the African People’s Socialist Party and made up of youthful forces powered by the slogans “Unity through Reparations!” and “Radical Times; Radical Solutions!”

For six months, from early March through August 29, the joint campaign committee was a powerhouse of energy, enthusiasm and commitment waging an outstanding ground war to elect the dynamic young candidates who excited the African working class to come out and vote for their own interests for the first time ever.

When New York assemblyman Charles Barron endorsed Eritha Akilé Anai (Cainion) for city councilwoman and Jesse Nevel for mayor in the 2017 St. Petersburg, FL elections, it was historic. Assemblyman Barron gave powerful advice, based upon years of successful campaigning and stopping the vicious tide of gentrification in East New York: “Door to door wins the war!”

The African People’s Socialist Party’s campaign for Akilé Anai (formerly Eritha Cainion) for District 6 city council and Jesse Nevel for mayor of St. Petersburg, FL this year was a six-month decorum-shattering, cadre-building, history-making mobilization of the masses of the people.

Between our announcements to run in March and election day on August 29, our daily work included work on the streets among the masses of the people, disruption of status-quo debates, fisticuffs, laughs, exuberant demonstrations, battles with the bourgeois media, social media wars and recruitment of amazing new Comrades in the process of breaking up the status quo and forcing the interests of the African working class onto St. Petersburg’s electoral agenda.

HOUSTON—Organizers of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP) were informed by the landowners of the piece of land where the AAPDEP 5th Ward Community Garden sits of their need to sell the property in April 2017.

Three weeks after Hurricane Maria’s September 16, 2017 devastating landing on the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico, causing the destruction of its fragile colonialist infrastructure, the people are still dying, there is no electrical grid, and food, water and medicine are trickling down to the people at a snail’s pace.

St. Petersburg, Florida—A plane crashed less than a block away from the Uhuru House on Wednesday, October 18, 2017 at 3:45pm. A total of 5 people were injured and 3 cars totaled. Amongst the three injured was an African woman and her grandson.

Do a google image search for “pimp” and your results will turn up hundreds of pictures of black men, two pictures of Playboy’s Hugh Hefner, and a few of white men dressed in the pimp costume synonymous with what black men wore in 1970’s blaxploitation films.

The pimp, in capitalist society, is often glamorized and held in high esteem for his ability to control women.

Rappers like Snoop Dog, Pimp C, 50 Cent and Ice T (a former pimp), have claimed to reinvent the term to mean someone who dresses luxuriously, hustles and gets money (without selling the sex of women).

This reinvention, however, has not reached the back alleys and dark rooms where, to be a pimp still means to abuse, coerce and steal from women who have sex for money.

Similarly, if you did a google search for “whore” or its slang “hoe,” the results are a lot less black and more white, lots and lots of white women...and garden tools.

At first your response could be “good, black women are not seen as whores,” but seconds later you realize that is not the case as you recall the historical perception of African women as oversexed harlots and white power’s practice of forcibly using our bodies for sexual gratification and the production of workers.