In the early morning hours of Friday, July 29, 2022, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), aided by local police, raided the offices and homes of members of the Uhuru Movement in St. Petersburg, Florida and St. Louis, Missouri, seizing our computers, hard drives, phones, office equipment and files.
They temporarily detained APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela, APSP Deputy Chair Ona Zené Yeshitela, APSP AgitProp Director Akilé Anai, APSC Chairwoman Penny, and APSC members Kitty, Jesse and Amanda.
The African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement have been organizing for black power for over 50 years. For decades, the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg has served the city’s historically black south side with self-reliance programs including a licensed community kitchen, an affordable events venue, free holiday activities for families, free HIV testing, health fairs, outdoor marketplaces for local vendors and, for the past five years, a noncommercial radio station providing local community access to the airwaves and to free professional training.
In St. Louis, the Uhuru House is home to the “Black Power Blueprint,” launched following the police killing of Mike Brown in 2014 to transform the city’s devastated black community on the northside with programs including a community garden, outdoor event venue, workforce housing for the formerly incarcerated, a neighborhood basketball court, a bakery cafe, a women’s health center and a doula training program.
Colonial capitalism is in a deepening economic and political crisis and so is striking out against the rising movement for African liberation and its vanguard leadership, the African People’s Socialist Party. The Uhuru Movement is not retreating, we’re building!
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