“This is an institution founded in blood, the blood of black people!”
These words, spoken by Chairman Omali Yeshitela of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), echoed through downtown St. Petersburg, Florida on Friday morning, June 12, 2020.
The Chairman made this presentation at the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM) press conference in front of Bank of America, demanding reparations to the African (black) community.
Bank of America’s self-claimed allyship with the African community is nothing but a façade. It is “a false display of empty sympathy,” said Jesse Nevel, National Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM), who organized the press conference as part of the “Make Wall Street Pay Reparations” campaign.
The campaign has organized a series of demonstrations in front of Chase Bank locations in Boston and New York and a national call-in campaign to Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Amazon and Apple.
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement is the mass organization of white people formed and led by the African People’s Socialist Party, organizing in the white community for reparations.
A group of USM members and supporters stood beside Chairman Omali Yeshitela, holding banners exclaiming, “Bank of America, Pay Reparations NOW to the Black Power Blueprint.”
Two St. Petersburg police cars showed up, followed by four bourgeois news stations.
The press conference was a direct response to Bank of America’s recent announcement of a one billion dollar commitment of support over the next four years “to help communities address economic and racial inequality accelerated by a global pandemic,” according to their website.
The speakers declared that the bank’s parasitic relationship to African people cannot be fixed by a “measly one billion dollars… .00004 percent of the companies net worth of 2.38 trillion dollars,” as Nevel put it.
Bank of America has been profiting for centuries off of African oppression
Founded in 1904, the bank accepted enslaved Africans as collateral on loans given to plantation owners.
During the 1960s, at the height of the African liberation struggle in South Africa, Bank of America was the largest and wealthiest privately owned bank with financial ties to the white colonial ruling class.
The banks’ role in colonial displacement and conquest continues today in the U.S. in the form of mass incarceration, gentrification and redlining—with Africans being denied housing loans that white people are being granted.
Banks are basically “funding white people to invade the black community as part of the gentrification process,” said the Chairman at the press conference. “Bank of America participates with major corporations in determining which communities will even survive.”
The murder of George Floyd, explained the Chairman, “has told the world exactly who America is and what America stands for. It shows who the police are. It has exposed the rotten nature of a capitalist economy based on bloodsucking slavery and genocide.”
Bank of America and other banks profit off of murders like that of George Floyd as underwriters for bonds issued by city governments whenever they have to pay settlements in cases related to police violence and murder of African people.
Reparations looks like the Black Power Blueprint
The Chairman ended the press conference by declaring: “Reparations looks like giving to the Black Power Blueprint, which contributes to the development of economic power in the African community.”
As local traffic stopped and cheered, the Chairman concluded: “Reparations means repairing the damage, negating the power and influence of banks like this by creating our own power.”
Join the “Make Wall Street Pay Reparations” campaign at uhurusolidarity.org/wallstreet
Become a member of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement at uhurusolidarity.org/join
Donate to the Black Power Blueprint at blackpowerblueprint.org
Make Wall Street Pay Reparations!
Uhuru!
