North America

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.—Residents are soon to fill their ballots and cast their votes for the local elections. For the past few weeks, candidates running for City Council of their respective districts and the mayoral position have been engaged in debates and forums to present their platforms to the public and state why they should be elected.

On Monday, July 17, 2017, candidates running for District City Council met at City Hall to do the same. The candidates include James Scott, Gina Driscoll, James Jackson, Robert Blackmon, Corey Givens, Maria Scruggs, Justin Bean and 20-year old Eritha “Akilé” Cainion.

The forum was sponsored by the League of Women’s Voters and was hosted by Stephanie Owens. It lasted a little over one hour.

It was apparent, early on, that the only candidate in this race with true support from the masses is Eritha “Akilé” Cainion—whose platform is appropriately titled “Radical Times, Radical Solutions.” Her supporters, referred to as the “Akilé Squad,” were about two thirds of the audience.

It was July 10, 2017, a rainy night in Florida’s fourth largest city, St. Petersburg.

The Hilton hotel was the battleground for for two political debates, one featuring the District 6 Seat and one for the Mayor. This all may sound like the backdrop to a typical evening of political banter, but this evening was anything but normal.

While Coastal Living recently ranked St. Petersburg as one of the best 20 places to live calling it a cosmopolitan city that “strikes a balance between historic, small-scale neighborhoods and big-city pleasures.”

There’s just one problem… this cosmopolitan city does not care about the black culture and they aren’t very “worldly” towards the black community. The building of Tropicana Field where the Tampa Bay Devil Rays play baseball displaced a thriving African Gas Plant District, which has confined the black community to south part of the city which has no grocery stores for low income or working class African people to go for food. But unfettered, dog eat dog capitalism wants more.

A building spree of $500,000 to $600,000 luxury condominiums are being put up to put out the black community. So sorry Coastal Living your balance of small-scaled neighborhoods and big city pleasures is full of shit and is for a white audience only.

And now the Black Community has been backed into a corner and they are coming out swinging, and full-on revolting. This movement is being led by the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement which is running candidates in the District 6 (Eritha “Akilé” Cainion) and Mayoral Race (Jesse Nevel).

The Black Community Control of Police (BCCP) working group of the Black is Back Coalition (BIBC) organized a march and rally for Black Community Control of the Police in Philadelphia, PA on Saturday, June 24th.

The mobilization was entitled “Pigs in Our Hood Aint No Good—March on Ridge Ave!”

The rally was held at the community lot on 24th St and Cecil B Moore Ave deep within the oppressed and exploited North Philadelphia section of the city.

This lot was recently liberated by the Coalition, as we took initiative to clean up the trash from the grounds and decorate the wall with the red, black and green flag.

Several other organizations and collectives joined the BIBC, including the Philadelphia REAL Justice, RBG Fridays, Philly Socialists and others, some of whom made solidarity statements during the rally and other points of the mobilization.

On Monday, July 10th the voice of the black working class shattered the stifling “decorum” set by the St. Petersburg, FL League of Women Voters and the Downtown Neighborhood Association.

This past June and July, cities around the world held ‘Pride’ parades; celebrations of resistance to the restrictive sexual norms of European culture. To their supporters, the parades were living monuments to a righteous struggle for inclusion in a predominantly heterosexual society.

For colonized workers, however, including same-gender-loving (SGL) and gender non-conforming (GNC) colonized people, this brand of inclusion into the status quo is an assault on their lives and their communities.

The primary day-in day-out struggle for colonized workers, is not for ‘inclusion’ in parasitic capitalism. For them, true liberation and self-determination means seizing State power and overturning the very system of capitalism built and sustained entirely by their oppression.

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.

The SEIU’s People’s Budget Review held a local forum on Thursday June 15th at The Sunshine Center so that the nine district 6 candidates could have an opportunity to hear out the concerns of the community. The description of the event read: “You’ll be able to engage in dialogue with candidates for the District 6 race and hear them respond to how they will be supporting the People’s agenda.”

The open forum quickly became a battle royale. Most candidates were obviously fighting in the interest of prime real estate, while others were engaged in a vested struggle against police violence and gentrification.

The city of Philadelphia unveiled a new gay pride flag featuring black and brown stripes which are to represent the struggle to include “black and brown” same-gender-loving people. The new flag was raised on June 8, 2017 at the City Hall to kick off of the city’s month-long gay pride activities.

The city of Philadelphia unveiled a new gay pride flag featuring black and brown stripes which are to represent the struggle to include “black and brown” same-gender-loving people. The new flag was raised on June 8, 2017 at the City Hall to kick off of the city’s month-long gay pride activities.

According to one source: “The 8-stripe flag is reportedly the first Pride flag flying over a U.S. city to recognize queer people of color.

“The flag was designed in conjunction with the city’s Office of LGBT affairs and is part of the larger #MoreColorsMorePride campaign. It’s also part of the city’s ongoing effort to address concerns about racism in Philly’s gayborhood and LGBTQ businesses.”

White opportunism, or nah?
This move is being championed by many gay rights supporters, white homosexuals, as well as African and other colonized same-gender-loving individuals. The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) is clear, however, that this is yet another opportunist attempt by the white ruling class to lead African same-gender-loving persons towards a counter-revolutionary agenda.

This supposed “inclusion” is nothing but the opportunism of the white ruling class rearing its white parasitic colonizer head.

LITTLE ROCK, Ark.—The state of Arkansas, in a span of eight days from April 20-27, 2017, committed State-sanctioned executions of four death row inmates by injecting them with a mixture of lethal chemicals.

Three of those inmates were colonial African subjects.

The spate of legal executions began with Arkansas frantically moving forward to kill eight people within an eleven-day period.

They were rushing the executions because their stock of midazolam, the powerful sedative used in their deadly injection “cocktail,” had a “use by” date of April 30, 2017 stamped on it.