Understanding our mission
Today, social media has become inevitable in imperial politics, with many capitalist politicians and ruling-class political parties using it as an inexpensive and immensely influential tool for colonial propaganda.
It was the mission of Akilé and Jesse’s social media team to use social media to forward the people’s candidates and to win the masses to a platform that represented the interest of the African Working Class.
Building a team
Akilé and Jesse’s social media team was a cadre task force that overturned many contradictions and struggles.
I (Gazi Kodzo) was the Social Media Director, and as part of that role I led multiple online campaign teams, and kept teams on track by following the overall strategic plan. Chiwoniso Luzolo was the Intake Coordinator. She was responsible for analyzing the data and analytics behind the various campaigns.
Kyle Wyss was the content creator. H the best ways to introduce internet users to our campaign online through videos, photos and posts. Iniko Kitemoma was the Online Fundraising Specialist. He was over developing online strategies for making the case that the campaign needed funding.
Creating a social movement that attracted international attention
Our status quo competitor candidates had a plethora of technological resources and funding, but through mass sharing, click-worthy titles, fulfilling content and strategic release times, Akilé and Jesse’s online videos gained popularity.
Even though our big money competitors had millions of dollars at their fingertips, the people were at our door! Our online presence doubled, sometimes even tripled our competitors’ in our weekly reports. We attracted national and international bourgeoise media. Our social media team won Akilé and Jesse an article in Ebony Magazine, a shout out on The Breakfast Club, an interview on Press TV and more.
Never forgot our home base
The social media team was elated to achieve intentional support, but for our candidates to win, the African community of St. Petersburg, FL had to be our focus. We wrote five to ten articles a week in local black-owned newspapers. We realized that free editorials that were personal stories that saluted our candidates were more effective than expensive ads.
Likes became an organization, followers became Comrades
Winning views, likes, followers and shares can be very euphoric, but we are materialist and understand it doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t show up in the form of membership or donations. Our online campaigns went beyond going viral; we built an organization.
We took our online reach to the streets and organized a march of hundreds of people. Our candidates and Uhuru Movement leaders poured African Internationalist political education into the crowd. When we made a call for membership, almost everyone signed up and joined different parts of the Uhuru Movement.
Not only did we grow our organizations through this campaign, we also built a new organization: Communities United through Reparations and Economic Development (CURED).
The People united will never be defeated, not even by big money!
Smash imperialism’s social media machine!
Build Mass Organization!
