At the unassuming historic site at 1805 Madison Ave, West Baltimore, MD, Africans gathered on the sunny yet breezy Friday, June 5 evening, at the former home of Civil Rights Congressman Parren Mitchell, to celebrate black culture, resistance and African self-determination.
Hosted, organized and conceptualized by Comrade Brian Sessions, Economic Development Coordinator for the Northern Region of the African People’s Socialist Party-USA (APSP), the Art & Activism is gearing up to be a flagship black Baltimore renaissance event that uses academic and cultural means to educate, organize and mobilize African people “around the colonial condition of Black communities and the collective pursuit of self-determination.”
“What we’re doing is to train our mind to decolonize in such a way that it’s not about individualism,” said Comrade Brian in his opening remark. “From the moment we’re born in this Western society, it’s a rat race, and it’s individualized. How do we decolonize our minds to not compete with the next person? How do we figure out collectivism? And that’s what we’re trying to figure out with young people—teaching them self-determination in education, healthcare, protection and finance. Your basic needs to just survive and live.”
Located as we were in the heart of black Baltimore, Comrade Brian noted the economic neglect and oppression black people were experiencing from the city’s negligence.
Comrade Brian continued, “Just look around where we are. When it comes to our basic needs, the government owns those. They deprive us of those,which is why there’s a food desert, but there are a plethora of Chinese spots, chicken joints, liquor stores and convenience stores in every corner.
“There are no banks in 21217, but there are check-cashing spots. No hospitals, but you got an open-air drug market where there were 27 people who were involved in a mass overdose. And there’s one police station, but they’re busy protecting the commerce and property, not the people. And as much as we like to take pride in the public school system, we don’t own that system. We don’t own our source of education.
“So what we’re doing with Raising Fred [ youth program], is teaching self-determination in the five areas: education, nutrition, protection, healthcare and finance. That is the purpose of Art & Activism. To bring people into the work that is being done, to make them aware of what’s going on and to learn the history about it and have fun.”
Toward this end, each Art & Activism event hosts an academic presenter, a musical performer and a multidisciplinary artist. At the surprisingly spacious backyard of this red-bricked town home, musical artist and History PhD student at Morgan State University, Anthony Smooth (SMDBL) covered reggae deep cuts like “Can’t Get Me Down” by Warrior King and his original song called “Pain.” Meanwhile, Khalil McFarlane’s painting, criticizing the state of public education in Baltimore, hung as a silent reminder of the need for African self-determination.
Attendees heard from Canadian writer and researcher Andrea Conte about the history of counterinsurgency in Baltimore through the traitorous acts of Warren Hart, a former Black Panther Party member in the Baltimore branch who was exposed to be an FBI informant. Conte used archival material like Black Panther and local newspaper clips, his interview with Baltimore Panther Eddie Conway’s prosecutor, as well as newsreels and footage of Hart talking about his role with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, to expose and uncover the disruptive effect of COINTELPRO among Baltimore’s Panthers.
The colonial media did little to cover the role that Hart played in disrupting the work of the Panthers. That Hart was essentially “on loan” from the FBI to help the Canadian Police set up their own counterintelligence program was lost to State censorship and colonial media negligence.
It is through historical hindsight and the work of anti-colonial journalism that we now know the far-reaching tentacles of U.S. and Atlanticist counterintelligence against the African Liberation Movement. The many coups, forced removal and murder of African leaders including, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Samora Machel, Thomas Sankara and Amilcar Cabral, to name a few, are one and the same with the COINTELPRO with which the Black Revolution of the 1960s was inhibited.
This kind of international counterinsurgency that African revolutionaries and other freedom fighters were subjected to is not a bygone era forgotten in the annals of history. Since copies of The Burning Spear newspaper and Burning Spear Publications were strewn across the tables, attendees were able to learn about an example of active resistance to counterintelligence through the work of the APSP.
At the Friday, March 8 Art & Activism event, The Spear’s Managing Editor Solyana Bekele was the academic presenter who talked about the dual and contending economic projects of the Black Power Blueprint and the Party’s strategy against State attacks like raids, fear tactics and attacks on anti-colonial freedom of speech that the Party was a target of in the 21st century. Those who attended the wintry March session of Art & Activism came back excited about The Spear, asking about where they could get copies in Baltimore and about the work of the Party in St. Louis—noting, as some did, that Baltimore needs its version of the Black Power Blueprint as well.
True to its purpose, Art & Activism brought together Africans in West Baltimore and educated them on the work that needs to be done in the realm of self-determination and how the Party’s strategy is one that is worthy of emulation for liberation in our lifetime.
For more info about Art & Activism and Raising Fred, email: contact@5saveslives.org
