Presented by African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) President Yejide Orunmila at the Black is Back webinar themed: FBI Attacks Against Black Liberation, on February 18, 2023.
African people have been fighting for our freedom since Africa was first attacked by Europe. This has always pitted our struggle for self-determination against the colonial mode of production. We are talking about a mode of production that raped, pillaged, enslaved, and colonized people and lands using both ends of the rifle, machetes, and any other weapons of mass destruction they could think of.
The colonizer constantly develops strategies to infiltrate and destroy our efforts to free ourselves from their grip. Why? Because without us, they wouldn’t survive. During his 2023 State of the Union address, U.S. president Joseph Biden highlighted how much his administration has accomplished for the people of this country. He capped it off by saying that the United States is the only country that has faced adversity and come back stronger than it did before. He alluded to the United States being a great beacon of freedom.
The U.S. is still the greatest purveyor of violence
Of course, this is the narrative of the colonizer. What do the colonized say? Martin Luther King Jr. said the United States was the greatest purveyor of violence. That was in 1967, and they killed him. Martin Luther King touted nonviolence in the face of violence, and the United States killed him.
In 2023 we started the year with the murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the colonial police. It doesn’t matter that the police were black. It matters that they are agents of the colonizer, carrying out colonial law. Unlike their white counterparts, who can kill and get off, they went directly to jail.
In my lifetime, there has been constant war managed by U.S. imperialism. I was a child, but I remember Oliver North and what the U.S. government called the Iran-Contra Affair. They called it a “scandal,” attempting to minimize the gigantic scope of what occurred.
The Iran-Contra Affair was a serious network of U.S. agents and government officials that attempted to undermine the Nicaraguan fight for self-determination by developing an opposition (The Contra) and supplying them with guns and money in exchange for cocaine that was sold in the United States as a fundraiser in support of the U.S. campaign against the Sandinistas.
This influx of cocaine in the U.S. led to the crack epidemic in African communities within the U.S. This scandal had horrific consequences for millions of people worldwide. It’s like defining Christopher Columbus “discovering” America as a little white lie. The colonizer trivializes its impact on the people they devastate.
The Chairman says they are not devils and that we must be dialectical, but this is diabolical. Right?
Colonialism opposes African self-determination
The United States, the place where they say you can “bring your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore,” was just a call for desperate Europeans who sought a better life for themselves and did so on the backs of Africans.
To get that better life, they had to stand at the feet of every hanged negro, rape every black woman, call every black man a rapist, burn a cross at every home, bomb every church, and drop bombs on thriving African communities.
The poor wretched colonizers came from desperate, starving, filthy, and violent places to a land that was carved out of the blood of native people. They enthusiastically became settlers establishing their little house on the prairie as long as they were willing to defend it by fighting and killing native peoples who had used that prairie for centuries.
No, Joe. The United States is not the beacon of freedom you say it is, and it is, as the Chairman says, a prison of colonized nations.
FBI is an agency of the colonial U.S. government
So, when the FBI created this indictment against the Uhuru Movement, they attacked the ongoing struggle for African self-determination. The African Freedom Struggle. A movement that had set a goal to extricate ourselves from the binds of colonial domination.
Like Harriet, Nat, Marcus, Malcolm, Nkrumah, Sankara, the Panthers, Bishop, and many other African people that had fought for freedom, the Party has set a course and is organizing our way out. The Party and the Chairman are the Vanguard.
What freedom are we talking about? We are talking about the freedom that overturns the current social world order. The freedom that destroys the colonizer, and by doing so, eliminates the designation of the colonized. The freedom that frees people and lands up to determine our own future without the ever- looming threat of violence that comes from the colonizer nations.
The colonizer nations have historically waged massive campaigns to infiltrate, subvert, kill, and destroy our struggle to protect their parasitism. Without this parasitic relationship with the colonized, they would shatter when faced with adversity. Their success is dependent on our oppression.
Freedom means overturning the social system
The Uhuru Movement believes African people should be free. We have rejected the status quo. We have rejected the centuries- long war against our very existence and have the audacity to tell the world that we want our freedom, not only by cowering in the night but by organizing a response to the colonizer in every community that we can—building organizations and institutions that have become the beacon of light to the African working class.
We are doing it out in the open. In every community we can, we create Burkina Faso (lands of upright men and women). What we create now in times of serious crisis and oppression is just the baseline of what we can achieve. Imagine having access to all of our resources and land, the incredible things we could accomplish for ourselves. To know that when we free Africa, we free the world.
Obviously, this challenges the colonizer, so they constantly develop strategies to undermine our efforts. When they created this indictment and attributed our freedom struggle to the Russians, not to the U.S. colonial violence and prison of nations they’ve created, they are opening up another campaign of untruths.
“Dangerous negros” reborn through the struggle for African Liberation
Well, they’ve made a mistake, haven’t they? The Uhuru Movement is prepared to put the colonial State on trial if they ever try to pursue their delusionary indictments.
We are dialecticians, political scientists, and oppressed people with eyes, ears, and brains that can figure things out. All we have to do is look back at our history. In every nook and cranny, around every corner, the presence of the colonizer is there. Foot on the neck, squeezing the life out of us. They have targeted movements like the UNIA, The Panthers, Sojourners for Truth and Justice, or individuals like Claudia Jones and Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, MLK Jr., and Assata – these were the “dangerous negros.”
The Uhuru Movement are the “dangerous negros” now. Pushing back on every front. Moving ahead to accomplish our mission and create steeled cadre forces to bring Africa its liberation.
Join the Black is Back Coalition (BIBC) as an individual or organization today: BlackIsBackCoalition.org
Support and get involved in the Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! campaign. Put the colonial state on trial: HandsOffUhuru.org
