APSC Chairwoman Penny Hess’s presentation from the Black is Back Coalition’s Conference on Sunday, November 5, 2023.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela has said, the resistance of the colonized is weakening and destroying the vicious colonial mode of production. This is why Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the African People’s Socialist Party are under attack: Not because of dissent, but because they are waging the anti-colonial struggle for the total liberation of Africa and African people and have done so for the last fifty years.
As the Chairman says, revolution is a strategic project. It is not something that just happens. The Party has always had not only the political theory of African internationalism, which lets everybody see the world through the eyes of the African working class, but also an organization with discipline and a strategy that has guided it.
Part of the strategy has been to win as much support as possible for the right of African people to fight for liberation and to break the isolation imposed on the African Revolution by the colonial state. The Party has identified the colonial mode of production that shows that all white people are part of the colonizer nation. All white people sit on this pedestal of the oppression and colonial domination of African people inside the borders of the United States and around the world. So therefore, the African People’s Socialist Party put white people under the leadership of the African Revolution, which is the correct relationship.
For years the Chairman has taken on the opportunism of the white left: the ability of the colonizer to impose upon their will upon colonized African people, a stand that extends white power within the existing system.
It is the opportunism of white people and the white left that enables us to witness the terror by the State, or by individual white people against African people, Indigenous people and the peoples around the world–and just walk right by it, or walk over the bodies of the Africans who are under direct colonial terror every single day right here inside the United States, to protest something the U.S. government is doing in some other part of the world.
Protest against the colonial conditions faced by oppressed peoples around the world begins with solidarity with the African Liberation Movement right here! Often white people and the white left don’t respond to the everyday colonial conditions; but sometimes white people are forced to respond to the powerful resistance of colonized people, as we saw after the police murder of George Floyd or Mike Brown, or as we see right now in the resistance of the colonized Palestinian people.
But the fact is that colonialism and colonial terror takes place every single day. The resistance doesn’t always manifest in the form of massive uprisings, but the resistance is always there in the form of the African People’s Socialist Party which is fighting for power and self-government, and the return of their stolen resources.
The Party created a white organization that is a revolutionary anti-colonial solidarity movement that is there for the long term. APSC is there organizing in the white community every day because colonialism happens every single day, and because reparations are due every single day.
Our work is to go into the white community under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party to build a long-term project of white people to be there until victory is won. Until Africa is free and liberated, and African people have their stolen resources back.
We have been in existence for 47 years and APSC is not going anywhere. It is in 140 cities in the form of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement–white people who stand in solidarity with the anti-colonial struggle of African people. They cannot destroy it. In fact, this attack on the Party has built the solidarity movement. It allowed white people to identify that if the State attacks the African People’s Socialist Party, this must be the leadership of the African Revolution.
We have to fight for anti-colonial free speech, for the right of African and oppressed peoples to win their liberation and freedom, and the right of white people to stand in solidarity with that.
This is the brilliant strategy to send the voice of the African Revolution into the white colonizer population, armed with the understanding of the colonial mode of production and the responsibility of white people to be part of the future by joining the African Revolution under the leadership of the vanguard party.
We are deeply grateful for this because it lets us see how we can jump off this pedestal, end this parasitic relationship, make our self-criticism to African people and other oppressed people, and be part of the worldwide revolutionary movement unleashing the stolen resources that belong to African people.
The indictment against the Uhuru Movement includes in its “overt acts” the absurd lie that the Russians suddenly told the African People’s Socialist Party and Chairman Omali Yeshitela to create a genocide petition and host a reparations tour. But the reality is that under the leadership of the Party, APSC organized our first March Against Genocide in 1979 and we have been doing that for many years. We’ve had tours for reparations since at least 1984.
From the white community, we will not let the State lift a finger against the Chairman. We understand that if the Chairman goes to prison, if the Chairman’s voice is silenced, that is the end of free speech as anybody knows it inside the United States right now.
We have to fight for anti-colonial free speech, for the right of African and oppressed peoples to win their liberation and freedom, and the right of white people to stand in solidarity with that.
I am fighting to defend Chairman Omali Yeshitela, and I am fighting for my right to build and stand in principled solidarity with African Liberation, the African People’s Socialist Party, and the Chairman. To fight for reparations and actively work for the return of the stolen resources into the hands of the African working class and the African People’s Socialist Party.
Victory to African People! Unity through reparations! Free, Free Palestine! Victory to the Indigenous people and all colonized peoples around the world, and unity with the anti-colonial free speech movement! Uhuru!
