On Saturday, June 16, 2012, the Oakland Freedom Summer Project will host the Uhuru House Reunion.
This event will be broadcast live on UhuruNews.com starting at 6:45pm U.S. Pacific Time (9:45pm U.S. Eastern)
This reunion will be a celebration of the 40th anniversary of the African People’s Socialist Party and the achievements of the worldwide Uhuru Movement.
The Oakland Uhuru House at 7911 MacArthur Boulevard in Oakland, California will host the event.
The reunion will recognize and appreciate the contributions of the African community, friends and supporters in rebuilding the movement for African self-determination.
All activists, participants and supporters of the Uhuru Movement are welcomed—including veterans of the Oakland Freedom Summer Project 1984, the Free Freddie Roberts campaign, Measure O and Measure H, the Uhuru Choir and youth hip-hop programs led by Biko Lumumba, the Campaign to Free Ralph Lee Jr., Uhuru Bakery Cafe, Spear Graphics and other campaigns—to come out and spend an evening of celebration, commemoration and tribute to those who have been part of this history.
The event will feature the leader of the African Socialist International and founder of the Uhuru Movement, Chairman Omali Yeshitela and other leaders of the African People’s Socialist Party who have played key roles in the history of our Party, especially in Oakland.
The Uhuru Movement has a glorious history in Oakland that dates back to the late seventies
The African People’s Socialist Party came to Oakland to struggle in the interests of the African working class following the U.S. government’s attacks on the Black Power Movement of the sixties.
Its main goal was to “keep the Black Power Movement alive.”
When the African People’s Socialist Party came to Oakland, the African working class was suffering the effects of COINTELPRO.
The Party led powerful campaigns for community control of housing, community control of the police, the right of African people to raise our own children and to have control of our education and health care system.
The Party was the only organization that exposed the brutal conditions of the African community in a city that bore the brunt of the U.S. government’s brutal imposition of drugs as a means of salting the earth to make sure the African working class would never rise up to struggle again, along with the military occupation of the black community with SWAT teams and the Drug Task Force.
Poverty, homelessness, police terror and mass imprisonment were rampant, with no organization representing the masses of African people.
For 12 years in the 1980s and early 1990s, Oakland was the national headquarters of our Party.
In a short time, we built a movement and opened the Uhuru House on MacArthur Boulevard in East Oakland as our organizing center.
It was from Oakland, California, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, that the Uhuru Movement, under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party, launched the second historical Freedom Summer.
In 1984, the Uhuru Movement led the Community Control of Housing Initiative, known as Measure O, which organized numerous volunteers who delivered more than 300,000 fliers to the doorsteps of Oakland residents, which resulted in winning 29,000 votes on the ballot.
Oakland was the center of countless Uhuru Movement campaigns, including Tent City for the homeless in downtown Oakland and the takeover of an abandoned house in East Oakland for a homeless family a generation before the rise of the Occupy Movement.
The Party in Oakland waged struggles against police murders of Africans and fought for housing, economic development and reparations.
Campaigns in solidarity with Mexican, Indigenous and Filipino peoples were also waged.
During these years, a young Tupac Shakur rehearsed at the Uhuru House.
Huey Newton made his last public presentation here, passing the torch from the Black Panther Party to the Uhuru Movement.
In addition, countless forums, campaigns, meetings, marches, demonstrations, press conferences and actions also took place here.
The Uhuru House Reunion will bring together all past, current and future supporters of the movement to transform the current conditions that African people face in Oakland.
Through the Oakland Freedom Summer Project, the Uhuru Movement aims to rebuild the same movement for Black Power in Oakland that we built during the 1980s.
Such a movement will serve to overturn the parasitic and oppressive relationship that the U.S. government has with our people, uplifting the entire African community through the renovation of the center and the building of Uhuru Jiko (Freedom Kitchen).
Uhuru Jiko will be a state of the art commercial kitchen that will enable our community to start and own food production and distribution systems, as well as a space for food and nutritional training.
Come to the Uhuru House Reunion to celebrate the past and build the future!
Admission is free. RSVP to the Uhuru House (510) 569-9620
Join the Oakland Freedom Summer Project
