ST. PETERSBURG, FL—The people are the real makers of history. This is something that Chairman Omali preaches to us daily.
This means that we must make every effort to provide the means for the people to fully participate in the struggle to end our national oppression and exploitation.
One way the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement has chosen to do this is through our Sunday Mass Meetings, held every week here in St. Petersburg and every other place in the world where we are organized well enough to do it.
On June 15 InPDUM held a video showing at the Uhuru House at 1245 18th Avenue South in this city. The video, called “Negroes with guns,” was a documentary of the struggles against white and klan violence in Monroe, North Carolina in the 1950s.
It showed how Robert Williams, the leader of the local NAACP branch until they fired him for organizing our people to resist white terror, had the courage and steadfastness to meet the challenges of the time by arming our people to defend themselves against white violence.
Other Sunday Mass meetings have featured healthcare experts from the community who educated our people about an assortment of issues that included everything from the influence of the pharmaceutical industry on the healthcare system to prevention and detection of HIV/AIDS.
We are using the Sunday Mass Meetings to build our movement and to give the people the forum to begin exercising self-rule. Why go to a colonial government to deal with issues that we can handle ourselves when we are organized and united?
This is the question the Sunday Mass Meeting has been created to answer.
Right now our meetings are small, but with hard work by InPDUM members and leaders we can build the meetings to the point that they can become a center of government, a power of our own that is independent of all local colonial authority.
The InPDUM Sunday Mass Meeting has a long history throughout the different areas where we do work. This means African people can attend meetings in Sierra Leone, West Africa; Toronto, Canada; throughout the U.S. and Europe and everywhere else we build in the world.
The InPDUM Mass Meetings is the signal that our movement is rising from the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties ready to take on the tasks presented to us at this moment in history when white power is experiencing terminal crisis.
