In March 2006, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) launched Uhuru Radio, an internet radio station dubbed “The Online Voice of the African Revolution”. The fledgling broadcasting project is “dedicated to giving voice to the struggles of the African working class from around the world in an effort to unite and inform the struggles of African people and forward the International African Revolution,” as its Mission Statement reads.
It is no small tool in this mission to unite African people worldwide. As an Internet radio station, it has the capability to reach African people anywhere where there is an Internet signal.
With this knowledge, organizers of Uhuru Radio are working to spread the ability to broadcast Uhuru Radio from every front of the African Revolution.
On his recent organizing tour in southern and western Africa, APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela told comrades that he met with that Uhuru Radio belongs to the African Revolution and should be utilized by African revolutionaries everywhere as their own. This was enthusiastically received and news bureaus, as well as broadcast facilities, are rapidly being organized in Sierra Leone, South Africa and elsewhere.
Currently Uhuru Radio, headquartered at the APSP’s International Headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida, broadcasts live every Sunday from 9:00am until 6:00pm EST with a mix of news, public affairs and cultural programs. The broadcast schedule will be expanded until the station is live 24 hours a day. Anyone with a broadband Internet connection and a computer can tune in and listen to the station. Listeners are encouraged to call in and participate in live discussions over the telephone or to send in their comments and questions via email.
Still in its infancy, the station has already featured some very dynamic interviews with such people as Africanist Movement leader Chernoh Bah, Benjamin Prado of the Mexican liberation organization Union del Barrio, and U.S.-based African reparations activist Dorothy Lewis.
Each week, the program “Omali Yeshitela Speaks” presents a recording of the Chairman, including his most up-to-date analysis of world events, historical speeches teaching the ideology of African Internationalism and frank discussions with other freedom fighters from around the world. Other popular programs include a health show, a reggae music show and a hip-hop show.
In addition to adding studios around the world, Uhuru Radio intends to simulcast over shortwave and all other means available to it, to get the truth out and arm African people ideologically to fight for freedom.
As stated in its Points of Unity, “Uhuru Radio recognizes that there is a war of ideas between the ruling class media and the media of the conscious African workers and other oppressed and colonized peoples of the world. Therefore we cannot rely on mainstream media, which is imperialist media, for truthful representation, analysis or leadership. Instead we, the oppressed African masses, must build and control our own media that consciously represents the interests of the poor and oppressed African working class.”
Uhuru Radio is an important weapon in our arsenal as we fight this ideological war against our oppressors. More than many other forms of media, this Internet radio has the ability to spread the International African Revolution’s influence to places where many other forms of propaganda may not reach.
It also has the ability to allow our struggles on the ground anywhere where we broadcast from to inform our struggles everywhere else in the world. We must take on the task of growing Uhuru Radio on every front of the International African Revolution.
We must wield this ideological weapon to strike out against imperialism and organize our people to fight as one African people under the leadership of the African working class. The International African Revolution has found its voice on the Internet airwaves! Let us use it to break the colonial borders that divide our people and liberate our Africa!
Uhuru!
One Africa! One Nation!
Touch One, Touch All!