On April 18, 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice issued indictments against Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), along with Penny Hess, Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) and Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM).
The indictment of Chairman Omali Yeshitela
Chairman Omali was indicted with Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel on the ridiculous, racist charge of conspiring as agents of Russia to covertly sow discord in the U.S., spread Russian propaganda and interfere in U.S. elections.
The federal indictments were issued nearly a year after the FBI launched coordinated raids on the APSP and the Uhuru Movement on July 29, 2022, a full-on colonial assault that was purportedly prompted by an investigation into collusion with Russia.
The colonial State has falsely accused the APSP and the Uhuru Movement and its leaders of colluding with Russia, and fabricated a case against them to justify clamping down on them and subjecting them to State surveillance and repression.
This is part of a counterinsurgency to stop the rise of the African Liberation Movement that the Party is at the forefront of, under the revolutionary leadership of Chairman Omali. It is the same counterinsurgency that the colonial government waged to defeat the African Revolution of the Sixties.
As the Chairman of the APSP and the leader of the Uhuru Movement, Chairman Omali is the primary target of the colonial government’s attack on the Party. The government has targeted him for neutralization just as it targeted previous African leaders like Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.
It is because Chairman Omali is the leader of the African Revolution, and the APSP is the vanguard for the global anti-imperialist revolution, that the colonial government has targeted him.
The U.S. government knows this. It knows that Chairman Omali isn’t working covertly for Russia, acting as an agent of Russia or otherwise involved in a Russian scheme to influence elections in a country where Africans were disenfranchised and barred from any participation in bourgeois democracy until the Civil Rights era.
The colonial State has slandered Chairman Omali and spread misinformation about him in the bourgeois media to discredit him and the Uhuru Movement, but he is a veteran of the African liberation struggle whose political involvement goes back to the tumultuous Civil Rights and Black Power eras.
He has spent most of his life opposing colonialism, imperialism and capitalism, speaking out against the oppression, exploitation, immiseration, imprisonment and brutalization of Africans in the U.S., charging America with genocide, demanding reparations and advocating for Black Power, self-determination and socialism.
He has even developed a theory and worldview to explain how the world came to be controlled by the colonizer, and what we must do to free the planet from the parasitic colonial mode of production. This is the theory of African Internationalism.
He has publicly opposed every U.S. imperialist war, whether direct or proxy, from Vietnam, Nicaragua, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Venezuela, etc. He even organized massive anti-war demonstrations and built anti-war coalitions.
He is widely known as a leader and tireless fighter for the liberation and unification of Africa under socialism and the liberation of Africans everywhere from colonialism and neocolonialism, just as he is known for standing with other colonized and oppressed peoples throughout the world.
Throughout his long life, Chairman Omali has been motivated by nothing but his undying love for African people and his opposition to colonialism which has robbed us of our freedom and independence, and he has worked for Africa and Africans, no matter where we’ve been dispersed.
The only agent he has been is an agent of change in the fight against colonialism, and he only propagates African Internationalism which tells the truth about the origin of this putrid and parasitic social system.
Chairman Omali isn’t anyone’s pawn! He is his own person, a revolutionary giant and leader respected by colonized and oppressed peoples throughout the world. He put in the blood, sweat and tears necessary to bring forth the future for Africa as defined by Africans, not anybody else.
Part of the U.S. government’s aims is to use this attack on the Chairman and the Uhuru Movement for their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, to derail and disrupt the Uhuru Movement under the guise of combating “Russian collusion” and “countering Russia’s meddling and interference in U.S. elections.”
The charge that Chairman Omali is colluding with Russia to interfere in U.S. elections is not only bogus, it also bespeaks the rank hypocrisy of an empire that regularly meddles in the affairs of countries in Africa, Asia and the so-called Americas where it interferes in and influences elections, overthrows governments through coups and assassinates duly elected heads of state.
Colonialism, dying and desperate
The indictment of Chairman Omali signals the colonial State’s determination to prosecute him in a political show trial and railroad him into the prison system to neutralize him as the leader of the Uhuru Movement and curtail his growing influence in the African world.
The fabricated case against Chairman Omali, the FBI raids on the APSP, the economic sanctions imposed on the Uhuru Movement by Regions Bank at the behest of the colonial State and the indictment of Chairman Omali are all the result of the colonial government’s desperation to maintain a dying colonial system.
These types of attacks on black leaders and movements are not new, and cannot be explained away by drumming up hysteria around Russia. The counterinsurgency programs of COINTELPRO, Operation CHAOS to IRON FIST help to explain what we’re seeing with the indictment of the Chairman.
This attack on Chairman Omali, the APSP and the Uhuru Movement by the colonial government is an attack on Africa, the dispersed African Nation and the global protracted struggle of Africans for real liberation and true self-determination.
The reactionary and rapacious forces of imperialism and colonial capitalism are hell bent on ruling and robbing African people and raping Africa and keeping us at the bottom of a world that rests on a pedestal of our enslavement, oppression and exploitation.
No compromise, no surrender
As the colonial State seeks to eliminate Chairman Omali through imprisonment, the Uhuru Movement calls on Africans and all people who believe in freedom, independence, self-determination and socialism, to stand with and support him in the fight against State repression and neutralization by the counterinsurgency.
We must support Chairman Omali and expose the true nature and objective of this indictment. We must put the State on trial!
Hands Off Chairman Omali Yeshitela!
Drop the Charges Against the Uhuru 3!
Join and support the fightback at HandsOffUhuru.org