For the last 20 years of its existence the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) has fought tooth and nail for black power to the African working class – to expose the greedy politicians, black and white, as representatives of white power and exploiters of African people.
More than that InPDUM has fought to push the U.S. government completely out of the lives of African people – declaring that the U.S. government, from House of Representatives to the local City Hall, is an organization formed by the white ruling class to ensure that black people will always be slaves.
I, Diop Olugbala, am the President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, a revolutionary mass organization that follows the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party. I led the organization to challenge Barack Obama, America’s first black president on his failure to address the ongoing attacks the U.S. makes against African people in this country today.
In doing so myself and InPDUM posed a serious threat to U.S. imperialism’s strategy to pull the masses of African people from revolutionary struggle and into the embrace of the Democratic Party.
It is no coincidence that I am now facing felony charges in a court presided over by a black judge for aggravated assault on a black police officer who works for a black mayor.
My case began on March 19, 2009, when police attacked me and Shabaka Mnombatha, and other members and supporters of InPDUM, during the City Council meeting where neocolonial Mayor Michael Nutter introduced the highly controversial 2010 city budget.
During this process, InPDUM members were protesting mayor Nutter's current budget that spends more than $1 billion a year for police and prisons. InPDUM is advocating for appropriation of these funds used to wage war against the African community to instead go toward reparations and economic development in the African community.
My case has been a microcosm of the worldwide struggle InPDUM is involved in to expose neocolonialism as the force that stands between African people and our independence.
There have been four different judges in this case. The first two judges were both white, the first of which, Theresa Carr Deni, was forced to drop the felony charges during the City Hall 2 preliminary hearing only due to the militant demonstrations and onslaught of phone calls she received from InPDUM members and supporters around the world demanding my freedom.
The State then recruited the second white judge, a white man named Frank Palombo, to preside over the hearing that the DA requested to re-impose the felony charges that Carr Deni failed to uphold for white power. Palombo too failed as he recused himself from the case to avoid the political heat that InPDUM had brought to the court system.
Just as the revolution forced the white man to withdraw from direct colonial occupation of our land and our communities around the world during the 1960s, so did the white man retreat from the courtroom of Diop’s trial.
And similar to white power’s strategy to disguise itself in our communities following the Black Power Revolution of the 1960s, the State used the strategy of neocolonialism, or white power in black face, to disguise the legal lynching it is attempting to carry out against me in my trial.
In Palumbo’s place was sent Renee Cardwell Hughes and Roxanne Covington, two African women.
Politically, the State expects Hughes and Covington to serve as a defense for white power. Appointing African judges to a case in which an African revolutionary is on trial for his acts of resistance in the name of the freedom of his people is a tactical smokescreen used by the State to obscure the real issue which is the anti-African nature of the U.S. court and political system itself.
Through this strategy any accusations of “racism” made by the people are neutralized. Through this tactic imperialism also aims to justify its own existence and its legal process which, in reality has never brought forth justice for African people.
This strategy is no different from white power’s selection of the African mayor Michael Nutter who is responsible for the war budget we were exposing in the process of my arrest at City Council. Nor is it different from the usage of African police who attacked me.
Most importantly, this strategy is no different from the strategy white power is now carrying out through its selection of the first African president of the U.S. Barack Hussein Obama. While Obama is an African, the program he represents is that of white power.
The deployment of tens of thousands of U.S. troops into Afghanistan, a land and a people who have no issues with African people, is the program of white power.
The more than $28 trillion of bailout money given to the ruling elite of the auto industry and Wall Street is the program of white power.
The justification of the police murder of young Africans such as Sean Bell is the program of white power.
And through Obama, the interests of white power are imposed on African people as our own interests.
The reality is that it is in our interest to deepen the crisis of imperialism that made it necessary for it to resort to the strategy of neocolonialism in the first place. Indeed, it is in our interest to join the world’s oppressed peoples in their resistance against U.S. imperialism.
InPDUM’s effort to bring revolution back to the black agenda is what makes InPDUM such a threat to U.S. imperialism and neocolonialism. This is why the State wants me behind bars and off the streets. And this is why we must wage fierce and relentless struggle to defeat the State and the lame charges they have me up against.
However, whether I am locked up or not, we will win! InPDUM will continue its work to rebuild and complete the Black Power Revolution of the 1960s. Key to this work is to build InPDUM itself. This is a call to the masses of African people to join us in the struggle to expose neocolonialism and forward the Revolutionary National Democratic Program of InPDUM.
On February 19-20 in Houston, TX, InPDUM will be holding our National Convention with the theme of “What About the Black Community: The Politicians Got Theirs But We Still Need Black Power!”
Through the convention we seek to discuss the relationship that the politicians in our communities who claim to be our leaders and representatives have to the oppressive and impoverished conditions we suffer.
More importantly we seek to bring the masses of the people from various areas of the country into this discussion – and send the people back out into the world as organizers and advocates of the Revolutionary National Democratic Program, the program with which we can determine our enemies from our friends.
Free Diop!
Smash Neocolonialism!
Forward to the National Convention of InPDUM!
What You Can Do:
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Attend Diop’s trial on Tuesday, August 24. 8am at the Philadelphia Criminal Justice Center, Room 804.
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Call Judge Roxanne Covington at 215-683-7142,or email her at: tdaccrimssupport@courts.phila.gov.Tell her to “Free Diop (aka Wali Rahman) and put the pigs on trial!”
- Attend the 2011 InPDUM National Convention. Look for updates on www.indpum.org.
For more information or to join the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement call 215-459-7551 or visit www.inpdum.org
