The following is an excerpt from Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s speech at the rally at Lafayette Park on November 5, 2022, as part of the 14th annual Black is Back Coalition March on the White House. This March on the White House centered around U.S. government and colonial powers’ attacks on African and Indigenous people around the world, including the FBI pre-dawn raid of several offices and homes of the African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement on July 29, 2022.
Solidarity with the Filipino struggle against colonialism
I really wanted to express appreciation for the fact that the comrades from the Filipino movement [Anakbayan] were here with us. Many people don’t know that much about that struggle.
And we’ve had a situation where there’s a white left, white peace movement, white anti war movement, but they never speak to these kinds of contradictions unless the government has said that this is a contradiction, or unless it’s something that they are facing with themselves.
The Philippines? You are talking about colonialism.
You are talking about the fact that the United States Government picked a war with Spain in 1898 where Spain had been the colonizer, where Spain had control of the Philippines. It picked a war, the United States with Spain, in order to steal the Philippines.
You know the name of the Philippines, you know where that comes from? That’s from King Philip, Prince Philip of Spain.
It’s not their name, not anymore than being a “negro” is our name, or being a Jamaican. This kind of thing that they’ve done to us, they create this false national consciousness.
So they stole this territory, stole the people. And then they made war against the people forever, and they are still making war against the people. It is they who have imposed Ferdinand Marcos and his family now, his heirs, as the leadership of the Philippines.
African resistance in Haiti is existential threat to the colonial system
And of course, we have to recognize what is happening with our Haiti. Most people do not have a good understanding of this question of Haiti, and the role that it has played in fighting against the colonial system.
In fact, the biggest crisis, the first major crisis, that the whole colonial capitalist system faced was Africans (black people) making revolution in Haiti. Africans in Haiti fought the major colonial powers of the world and beat them, beat Spain, beat France, beat England back, and then made a revolution and declared that any slave on the planet Earth: “if you get to Haiti, you’re free.”
This is what happened with Haiti, the first liberated republic of black people in the Americas, and it has paid a price ever since then. They have done things to create economic quarantine.
Look at what’s happened with Cuba. Haiti was where they began this process of starving the people and making them bow down.
Africans fought and won liberation in Haiti. Then all of the white powers of the world got together to force Africans in Haiti to pay reparations to France, who had enslaved us. We had to pay France for taking France’s property, which was we, the African people ourselves. This is what we’ve been up against.
We cannot easily deal with that until we understand that we’re looking at colonialism. The whole colonial capitalist system got its origins in the attack on Africa, and the forced dispersal of African people all around the globe. But they made a mistake, in the sense that what they did was when they attacked Africa, and forced us throughout the globe, they forced the African revolution to various places around the Earth.
So they are fighting the African revolution right now. That’s what they’re looking at. That’s one of the things they’re most concerned about in terms of the Uhuru Movement. We say “One Africa! One Nation!” And in fact, even as we were having our mobilization today in Washington D.C., members of African Socialist International, were marching on the US Embassy in Johannesburg. We have demonstrations at the US Embassy in Europe, in Paris, France and in London. So, this is the kind of movement that we’re talking about.
Kanye and Kyrie controversy: distraction from the colonial question
The truth is that Kanye West did not put Jews in ovens. And the basketball player didn’t put Jews in ovens. It was white people who put Jews in ovens. It was white people, not Palestinians, who put Jews in ovens.
But they use a stupid Kanye West, and yes, he’s not smart. They will use a Kanye West, they will target Kanye West and make him the poster child of what they like to refer to as anti-semitism.
That’s important to them, because of the illegitimate white nationalist settler state that they know as Israel is supposed to be solving the problem of the Holocaust that happened to the Jews.
But if they wanted to solve the problem of the Holocaust, they wouldn’t attack Palestine, they would attack Germany. If they really wanted to find a national homeland for the Jews, they should go to Berlin or Frankfurt, not to Palestine and steal those people’s land.
What is going on?
It is the colonial question altogether because what they have done is constructed this idea that the worst crime in humanity, the worst crime that has ever happened to human beings, is what happened to Jews. And the reality is they need that.
They need that thing they call the Holocaust, because that’s the thing that stands between an understanding that the worst crime that has been happening is colonialism, the attack on Africa, the attack on the Americas, the attack on millions upon millions of people.
The fact is that the whole ecosystem of the Atlantic Ocean has been changed because of the transfer of Africans from Africa, throughout the Atlantic, and the numbers of black people who have been thrown overboard, jumped overboard, and ships followed by sharks across the Atlantic.
So as long as they can disguise that, they can keep you from having the friends and allies you need to struggle against colonialism. Because you can’t say that
America and Europe have their foundation on the enslavement of African people, when the worst crime is what white people committed against white people, not what the white world has committed against Africa and the rest of us.
They want Kanye West out there. They do. They want Kyrie Irving out there. Because all of the people, black people everywhere, are trying to come up with explanations of what the hell has happened to us as black people.
And what they’ve done is allow all kinds of false narratives and unscientific explanations to permeate our community.
But when the science rears its head to offer a real explanation of what has happened, what you get is attacked at five o’clock in the morning and you get explosions, attacks and the threat of indictment by the United States government. They don’t want the signs to be out there.
They want to have this diversion of a Kanye West and the basketball player out there.
You notice they didn’t make a big issue of Kanye West saying “white lives matter?” Ain’t no corporations taking away sponsorship from Kanye West because he says “white lives matter.” No corporations taking away sponsorship from Kanye West based on all the stupid stuff he said about black people. But you can’t go there. Because when you raised this question of the Holocaust and Jews, then you raise the question that challenges this narrative that the worst crime in humanity has happened against Jewish people.
The fact is Leopold, Leopold from Belgium, killed at least 12 million African people in Congo alone. And that’s not counting all the other murder and genocide that’s been committed against African people.
So I just want to say that I think it’s important, I’m saying it because you can’t get away from it. When you go to social media, when you turn on the TV, you’re hearing about how Kanye West is being broke, they’re breaking him down and stealing all the resources from him. The basketball player can’t play basketball, can’t dribble, or anything like that because of this false narrative.
Nobody faces a crime for what they say and do to black people. That’s what we’re here for: to say there must be consequences to the attack on African people.
They can attack my house at five o’clock in the morning and it’s all right. But Kanye West can’t have a stupid opinion. He can have a stupid opinion about black people though. He’ll lose no contracts because of that.
Black is Back!
Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!
