Our MC for today was Comrade Will Locket who convened our seventeenth day that proved to be not only empowering but a moving experience for the cadre intensive participants.
Secretary General Gaida Kambon opened up our assembly with a welcome and salute to our Comrade Ka from Eygpt who despite contradiction by imperial powers to make it difficult to travel in these colonial borders was able to participate in our intensive training.
Then SG Gaida provided us with the space to reflect on our experience of the powerful InPDUM Sunday Mass Meeting in which the Chairman gave a rousing presentation on the question the Israeli’s barbarous attacks on the Palestinian people in the occupied territory and also the geo-politics of the Ukraine-Russian conflict.
Participants united that this was important study because it gave the meeting attendees clarity around these questions that are in the news now and shows that African Internationalism has the ability to explain international affairs but also African's connections with these conflicts.
It was fitting that Secretary General of the Africa Socialist International, Luwezi Kinshasa, gave a presentation on the History of the African Socialist International.
SG Luwezi using historical materialism laid out the historical basis for the ASI Unlike common belief that colonialism and the subsequent attacks on Africa started after Christopher Columbus' genocidal voyage to the Americas, he explains that one of the first attacks on Africa was by Portuguese in 1415 who occupied Cueta, a city in North African which is now a Spanish colonial city.
SG Luwezi explained the historical necessity for the ASI which culminated in playing the video of the Chairman speaking to the PAC of Azania 2002 Congress.
The speech was electric and as the participants of the PAC Congress resoundingly united with the presentation by the Chairman every participant in the cadre intensive felt the magnetism of the presentation.
At its conclusion cadre intensive participants fired up by the video went through several rounds of call and response chants that made us feel like we were also participating the PAC Congress in occupied Azania.
After the reconvening of our intensive training's afternoon session, SG Luwezi lead presentation explaining the conditions of African people in Europe.
The most striking and offensive report in the presentation was his explanation of the French Colonial pact.
This is a pact that France has with fourteen of its former colonies that keeps the same colonial relationships in tact and as SG Luwezi explained those who protested this pact have been overthrown and removed from power.
This is so insidious because it the blatant example of the rape of Africa under the guise of neo-colonial rule.
This study then was deepened by powerful and emotional presentations of Comrades Makda who lives in Sweden and Comrade Antoinetta who lives in Norway.
Comrade Makda explained the horrors of “immigrants” in Sweden and others who attempt to traverse through Europe.
Then Comrade Antoinetta gave a heartfelt report of the conditions of Africans in Norway. She explained the debilitating problem of Africans in Norway who do not identify themselves as African.
Then described horrible exploitation of African women who are involved in prostitution. Then explained how in Norway the kidnapping of African children from their parent in the name of preventing abuse but these African children are given to white families whom profit from adopting these children.
Chairman then rallied us to see that these conditions should be the basis for our need for ASI and to organize where we are from.
That the African working class that has been beaten down and disposed are the sons and daughter that will destroy parasitic capitalism.
Ending with the proclamation that the African revolution at its full strength will tear down this global system and will be a process that the world has never seen before.
We then began our workshop entitled “What is AAPDEP?.” Led by Director Aisha Fields, she stated the political basis for AADPEP as a tool of the party to gain dual and contending power with imperialism.
She explained the many projects of AAPDEP and was even able to articulate the contradictions of organizing AAPDEP.
At the end of the presentation she announced that the next phase of the work of AAPDEP was to create economic infrastructure for the organization in the form an AAPDEP consignment shop that will be opening in Huntsville, AL next year.
This exciting advance will bring resources to AAPDEP, resources to the community and will also give AAPDEP its first international office.
Our last workshop allowed participants time for each cadre intensive units the ability to work on their presentations of organizing scenarios that each unit was assigned at the beginning of the intensive.
This presentation will be a culmination of the weeks of work each unit has done to help participants acquire practical training that we will all be tasked to do at the conclusion of the intensive.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela explains, “African Internationalism is a theory that requires action—the unity of theory and practice.”
Izwe Lethu I Africa!!!
Uhuru!
