This is the Call to African people and our allies around the world for the January 9, 2016, African People’s Socialist Party international Plenary.
The annual Plenary is our Party conference that takes place between our Congresses to sum up our work and establish the tasks for the period leading up to the next Plenary or Congress.
The trip by our Party to Russia in September 2015 is one of the latest milestones highlighting the reemergence of the African Liberation Movement on the world scene, this time through the work of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).
Our Party represented Africa and the African working class and poor peasantry to the world community, at the international conference on self-determination in Moscow attended by an assortment of peoples struggling to win independence, for the first time since the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties.
Our Revolution was targeted by a counterinsurgent attack by the U.S. government. That attack destroyed any evidence of a revolutionary movement motivated by our people’s own selfish interest in total liberation from all colonialism worldwide.
Lumumba was brutally tortured and murdered in the Congo, during this period. Nkrumah was overthrown in Ghana. Guevara was wounded, captured and assassinated in Bolivia and Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Fred Hampton, Lawrence Mann and a host of Africans were gunned down in the counterrevolutionary terror inside the U.S.
Thousands of Africans within the U.S. were rounded up, through the use of designer laws, into prison concentration camps that are bursting at the seams with our people even today.
Special police organizations and laws contributed to silencing the legitimate aspirations of our people, deploying scores of thousands of colonial occupation military forces into the African community that result in daily, sometimes public, murders and massive imprisonment of African people.
We in the African People’s Socialist Party have been consistent in working to solve the problems of the revolution since our 1972 founding.
We have been clear that the road to freedom and socialism could only be traveled by revolution under the leadership of the African working class. There is no way to reform the U.S. colonialist capitalist social system to make it work for African people.
It is this clarity that was responsible for our September 2015 trip to Moscow to represent Africa and African people everywhere.
It is this clarity that was the foundation of my Political Report to our Sixth Congress in 2013, titled, “An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African Revolution Versus Parasitic Capitalism.”
Our Party was in place with an understanding of the strategic significance of the rebellion and the rapid growth of consciousness within the African community on the U.S front of the African revolution, when the masses of young African workers rose up in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014.
We were also prepared for the intensity of the African petty bourgeois and neocolonialist intervention in the wake of the people’s uprising.
This is why our challenge to opportunist slogans like “fight against racism,” “black lives matter,” and “hands up, don’t shoot,” is gaining traction among an increasingly mobilized African population desperate for real analysis and real answers.
This has not been an easy battle.
Even today there are those who would have us chasing ghosts in an imaginary struggle against racism.
Even today there are those who argue that there is no harm in empty slogans that take us nowhere.
This is, however, one of the things that distinguishes our Party: we are an organization set on changing the world, set on self-government under the leadership of the African working class and set on actually taking that power and governing, ourselves!
We must win maximum clarity among the masses of our brutalized and oppressed colonized people for this to occur.
Our approach to every question is measurably different than those who only moan and complain about the issues or attempt to position themselves as power brokers serving their own interests as intermediaries between the white rulers and our oppressed people.
The development of the African People’s Socialist Party, throughout the African world where the African nation has been forcibly dispersed, is critical to seizing the power of self-government.
We are creating an army of steeled cadres capable of taking the struggle to its victorious conclusion, in order to take power and govern. We must have the vehicle, the Party that is the instrument in the hands of the people to make it happen.
The kind of Party that we are building requires the leadership of forces for whom there is no sacrifice too great and no pain that cannot be endured for the liberation of our people.
Self-government, dual power, raising resources are key
The Party that we are building requires that our leaders and our members fight to self-govern and create dual power through raising resources in a consistent and meaningful way.
As I wrote in the Political Report to the Sixth Congress:
"Ona Zene Yeshitela leads the Office of Economic Development and Finance that has the responsibility for the economic work of the Party while developing and promoting economic development for the entire colonially dispersed African nation.
“We recognize this is a bold proposition, but no bolder than a program for the total liberation and unification of Africa and Africans the world over. This is the role enthusiastically embraced by Our Party. We have always prided ourselves on our ideological commitment to economic self-reliance, reflected in the history of our practice.
“We have also recognized that our practical work for national economic self-reliance—work done since the inception of our movement and Party—is a concrete manifestation of our ideology. It represents a measurable example of our political struggle against foreign and alien colonial domination. It is one of the things that show that the Party’s commitment to national liberation is not simply an abstract concept. It is demonstrably real in every way . . .
“We are redeveloping our economic work as a new political front. Unlike the recent past where our economic work was designed to fund political activity, our economic work . . . is now strategically geared toward the conquest of political power. It will be more defined as part of the struggle for dual and contending power clearly with a dying imperialism.
“This time, in the era of the Final Offensive, we intend to win the struggle for power and raise the African working class up to its proper place as the ruling class of a socialist, liberated and united Africa and African people . . .
“For us, political power in our hands means the Party must take on all the responsibility for self-rule even while we are engaging an imperialist colonialism for all power to the people and black power to the African community.”
Imperialist crisis abounds throughout the world
This is a really important time in history. The whole white nationalist imperialist world is on shaky ground. There is fracturing everywhere.
The so-called European Union is severely strained with the growing economic crisis. There is a shrinking pie to be divided by imperialism around the world. This is causing different states in Europe to seek their own solutions sometimes at the expense of the whole.
People in Scotland and sections of Spain think they would be better off separating from England and greater Spain and becoming part of the European Union on their own.
There is a population crisis in Europe along with a growing number of right wing parties there. Even as Europe manifests greater antipathy towards immigrants, there is an obvious need for immigrant workers because white people in Europe are not reproducing themselves efficiently enough. Workers from the Middle East are imported in high numbers resulting in Europe being referred to as “Eurabia.”
Immigrants from the Middle East, fleeing U.S. and Europe-sponsored war, terror and occupation, bring with them their culture and religion and have become a growing influence in Europe.
This fact is antagonizing many white people who up to now have been able to celebrate their whiteness as a sign of superiority over other peoples.
In addition, the foreign policy of the whole white world—a policy that justifies and advances parasitic aggression over everyone else—is creating greater antagonism not only outside of Europe but inside of the Eurozone itself because of the growing number of immigrants.
Europe and America are dependent on their ability to suck the blood of the peoples of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, forcing millions to risk their lives to journey to Europe in order to survive and pursue their stolen resources. Most come to Europe filled with antagonisms spawned by the imperialist plunder and occupation of their own lands.
These antagonisms extend across generations as was most recently seen in France where so-called French citizens from North and West Africa, participated in the January shootings at the Charlie Hebdo magazine office and at a Jewish grocery store in Paris. This is just one manifestation of the crisis.
Similar crises abound in the U.S. and in places like the U.S. where the immigrant question is obscured by terms like “American citizens” – meaning white people—and African Americans—meaning black people—or Mexican Americans—meaning some of the Indigenous people, whose lands have been stolen and who have been stolen from their land.
The African community resistance that began last year on August 9, when the people rose up in Ferguson, MO after the police murdered 18-year-old Michael Brown, a young unarmed African, was one manifestation of the growing imperialist crisis.
Crisis abounds throughout the whole white world and is growing deeper and deeper every day. The problem is that the white ruling class has unleashed its entire capacity in an attempt to control the narrative of this phenomenon while trying to destroy and kill everything that challenges its hegemony in the world.
Oppressed peoples, in most cases, do not completely understand that their resistance in various places in the world is actually a strike against North American and European colonial domination.
The Party is the only force that recognizes the kind of contest in which we are engaged. The Party, therefore, is the force that has the greater responsibility to lead out of this situation.
Party members’ responsibility to lead
This is what contributes to the tremendous responsibility we have as a Party, and more importantly as the leadership of the Party.
We, as Party leaders, refuse to accept foreign domination.
The Mau Mau killed a lot of Africans because they understood that white people’s ability to dominate Kenya was dependent on the relationship between white people and the sellouts!
Our Party is intolerant of any foreign domination. Our Party understands what Ho Chi Minh meant when he said that “There is nothing more precious than freedom and independence.”
This is part of our DNA. We are serious about our intent to be self-governing and to rule ourselves, from the leadership to the rank and file.
Our Party’s visit to Moscow must be seen in the context of the growing shift in the balance of power in the world. This power shift is clearly moving from the previously unquestionable hegemony of “western” imperialism under U.S. leadership, exemplifying the “uneasy equilibrium” between the oppressor and the oppressed.
The shift in the balance of power in the world can be seen in the inability of the U.S. to control the situation in Afghanistan, the intensifying resistance in Palestine, the rise of Iran, U.S. troops on the ground in Syria and China’s incessant push throughout Asia and within areas seen as U.S. and/or European spheres of political and economic control until recently, such as Africa.
The expanding thrust of Russia to counter U.S. political and economic encirclement and to advance its own national interests is another factor representing the shifting balance of world power.
Locked in a deadly embrace with imperialism
Our presence in Moscow in September is a factor in the struggle of African and oppressed people to control the shifting balance of world power. We see this era as being one where the past of imperialist world domination and the future of a revolutionary socialist free world are locked in a deadly embrace.
Africa is now on the agenda. We helped to put it there. Of course, we are simply the vehicle through which the masses of African people will realize their future under the leadership of the African working class.
The young African workers of Ferguson and everywhere throughout the U.S. and the world are the primary forces fighting this battle for the future.
Even as we prepare for our Plenary designed in part to prepare for our Seventh Congress, masses of African workers and students are engaging the neocolonialist ANC regime in fierce struggle and winning victories that will eventually—especially with the participation of Our Party—begin to demand total liberation of Occupied Azania (South Africa) under the leadership of the African workers.
Power to the African workers and land to the African people and poor peasants will become the battle cry. We will see the move to destroy the artificial borders that allow African workers from Zimbabwe and other places to be declared illegal aliens while the ruthless, unrepentant whites and the capitalist corporations can live there without fear of being dispossessed.
We oppose all neocolonialism, not only in Africa, but also within such European centers as the U.S. and elsewhere. Neocolonialism must be exposed and crushed throughout the Americas and Caribbean as well.
This is part of the work that our Plenary will discuss.
We will also examine our progress in carrying out the mandates of the Sixth Congress.
We will discuss our recruitment as it is clear that we are experiencing an exciting upsurge in new forces.
We will also discuss the targets for mass and wave recruitment defined by our Sixth Congress Political Report. This includes women, prisoners, students, workers and young Africans who are not in school.
We have seen amazing development in strategic, anti-colonial work to build dual and contending power. We will discuss the impact and responsibilities of our economic institutions and Black Star Industries which are growing and expanding rapidly.
We will discuss Uhuru Radio, our online station, and the significance of the acquisition of the license for the Black Power 96 FM station by the African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF).
We will tackle our needs for improvements to The Burning Spear newspaper even as we celebrate the fact that the oldest black power paper in the world has appeared monthly without a gap for the past three years.
We will also talk about the political basis for our white solidarity front and its responsibilities for the campaign for mass white support for reparations to African people.
We will examine the fact that the future of Our Party and of the African nation relies on our work in growing the African Socialist International (ASI), the worldwide organization of the advanced detachment of the African working class. Party leaders are organizing the ASI on the ground in Azania preparing for my tour there early next year.
Our Party is consolidating our organizations in Sierra Leone, West Africa and in South Africa even as we have organizers in Ghana and Senegal. This work forms the basis for the expansion of the African Socialist International continent wide.
We will report on our work in the Caribbean as well as in Sweden and England, not to mention the Party forces and sympathizers who must be brought into the fold in France, Germany, Norway, Belgium and Luxemburg.
We are deepening our relationships with international allies like Union del Barrio of the Mexican national liberation movement and the Irish resistance, especially the Irish Republican Socialist Party.
We cannot overstate the importance of Our Party’s relationship with the Anti-Globalization of Russia, the host of the September 2015 international conference that the Party addressed in Moscow.
We are building a relationship with Italians who are intent on galvanizing a revolutionary movement in Italy. Puerto Rico and Hawaii are other places in the world that have suddenly made us aware of their presence in the struggle against imperialism.
These are just some of the things our Plenary will be dealing with. It is a far cry from the spontaneity that has marked much of what passes as movement today.
Our presence as a political force in the world is a harsh repudiation of the opportunist proclamation, spoken and unspoken that “the movement is everything and the revolution is nothing.”
We say that all struggle must answer the question, “To what end?”
Our Plenary is just one of the ways that we answer that question! Forward to the African revolution and the liberation and unification of Africa and African people under the leadership of the African working class.
