The African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) St. Louis Local Party Unit Membership and Recruitment led a historic outreach at the Service and Social Impact Exposé at the University of Missouri at St. Louis (UMSL) on April 1, 2026. This initiates an active campaign to win students and youth into revolutionary action. This was the first time that the Local Party Unit (LPU) recruited on any college campus in St. Louis. The LPU also recently engaged in recruitment work in Glasgow Village in St. Louis County.
The LPU also pulled together forces from the International Peoples’ Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) who did a stellar job with this outreach. Although this was the first time that the LPU did outreach on the campus, it was made clear that the impact of the work that the Party does in the area is known. Atem Richardson, a vendor with Promotion Missouri noted that he was aware of the APSP.
We had a general conversation with Richardson, and it was mentioned that people in the African community often state that we needed an alternative to the Democrats and Republicans. Richardson said we have got the African Peoples’ Socialist Party!
“What the Uhuru Movement is doing is actively engaged in educating individuals who lack awareness of their history, aiming to empower them with knowledge to foster greater understanding and social change. It’s an organization to bring black people together for social justice, and I think that’s something everyone should be part of,” said Amaya Jackson, a business administration major at UMSL.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela speaks of the importance of recruitment work of youth and students in his political report to the International Plenary: “Our organizing work targeting African young people and students is being led by InPDUM President Lukede [Maku] who also chairs the Youth and Student Working Group for the Black is Back Coalition (BIBC). . . This should be our formal re-initiation for group recruitment of students. We must assist InPDUM President Lukede in developing the BiBC Youth and Student Working Group as part of a Plan of Action that anticipates consolidating the Youth and Student wing of our Party.”
Students and youth have played an important role in the anti-colonial movement among African people and many African revolutionaries who committed class suicide—abandoning the interests of their petty bourgeois class to join revolutionary working class struggle—such as Amilcar Cabral and Josina Machel.
The students at UMSL showed serious appreciation and unity with the Party. Nursing major Paul West noted that the outreach was great and he enjoyed stimulating “conversation about workers rights and working people’s material conditions as well as fostering a sense of community amongst the African-American community particularly the youth.”
The LPU is planning more work on the college campuses such as Saint Louis University (SLU), a university that has ties to slavery. We are looking to do classroom work and more with the assistants of a professor of African-American Studies. This is just the beginning, and we anticipate growing our capacity in a stellar way as we work to build the youth and student wing of the Party.
