On Tuesday, April 10, 2012 and the next several days following, InPDUM branches in Philly, Cincinnati, Washington, DC and other parts of the U.S. and Europe will wage a blitz of Marches for Black Community Self-Defense.
The purpose of these marches is to build INPDUM-led African community self-defense committees to take responsibility for defending our communities from the ongoing invasion and occupation of our neighborhoods by terroristic police forces and white vigilantes who seek to kill our youth in the name of “development” or a “war on crime, gangs or drugs.”
Tuesday, April 10 is the day on which a grand jury will decide whether or not Zimmerman will be prosecuted by the State.
InPDUM is not confused about our responsibility to build revolutionary organization to defend our communities, regardless of whether Zimmerman is prosecuted, lives or dies.
InPDUM aims to deepen the struggle around Trayvon
More and more we are seeing evidence that the masses want to take this further than Trayvon’s murder.
This is evident in the response InPDUM organizers are getting on the flier we are distributing in the different areas where we work.
This was evident in the powerful and well attended march for justice for Trayvon held in St. Petersburg, FL, headquarters of the Uhuru Movement.
People are expressing appreciation for the fact that we don’t isolate Trayvon from the long history of colonial violence Africans are suffering from.
Further, it is clear that the motivation for mass motion around Trayvon is not to bring Trayvon back to life from the grave, but to ensure that there will be no more Trayvon's.
The African petty bourgeois, or black middle class, does not have the ability to address the question of preventing future colonial violence outside of pleading to the colonial government to lock up past perpetrators of such violence.
This is illogical. For one, the same State who they are asking to lock up the "killer" is the one doing the killing. In addition, simply asking for the arrest or even execution of those who have already done the killing will not ensure any type of security for the African community.
Zimmerman arose from a general white population whose anti-African consciousness is informed by their material interests.
The perceived material interests of white folk is the ongoing colonial oppression and exploitation of African people, a system that white people in general rely on in order to enjoy life, liberty and the "American dream."
The State functions as the apparatus to protect this system. Therefore, we can never conclude that white folks or the State will be capable of granting Africans justice.
InPDUM must expose this contradiction
We must expose the inability of the State, the white left and the African petty bourgeois to solve the problems for the masses of African people.
In doing so, we must represent the solution, which is revolutionary national democratic power, or Black Power.
Most immediately and strategically, we must represent Black Power as the solution to the question of colonial violence by calling for our own organizational capacity for self-defense (as opposed to defense by the police who kill us).
Therein lies the basis of our call for the March for Black Community Self-Defense, which all InPDUM locals are expected to hold in their respective areas no later than a week following the April 10 grand jury decision on whether or not Zimmerman will be prosecuted.
The basic objectives of the self-defense committee are laid out at the end of the War Report published on UhuruNews. Study it: http://uhurunews.com/story?resource_name=war-report-justice-for-trayvon-means-black-power-to-the-african-community
The goals and objectives of the marches will include the following:
1. Recruit InPDUM membership and consolidate contacts to the African Resistance Now (ARN) radio show and town hall meeting on black community self-defense. These town hall meetings should not be hard to build given the timeliness of the issue. In some cases they can serve as ARN, in others they will have to be a separate process.
2. Inform the public about the upcoming African Liberation Day convention being held on May 26 in Washington, DC.
3. Unite various African organizations, social clubs etc. under the leadership of InPDUM, particularly around the question of community self-defense against colonial violence.
4. Build organized resistance in the form of the committee for African community control of police and self-defense.
5. Expose neocolonial opportunism. For example, Al Sharpton's attempt to limit the Black Power struggle to being simply a struggle for federal intervention. In Philly, the Negro mayor Michael Nutter said that Trayvon was "assassinated.” Meanwhile, this mayor and his running dogs endorse the murder of African youth on a regular basis.
6. Call on Occupy and white leftists to unite under the leadership of the African community against colonial violence against the African community. We have to respond to the white left analysis talking about racism and violence in the abstract. We support revolutionary violence used to liberate and end oppression. We condemn colonial violence used to enslave and oppress. We want Black Power, not anti-racism. The African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) must take this into the IAC meeting, Occupy GA and other white left discussions. We should struggle to speak at the IAC meeting on Tuesday and the mobilizations that will occur on April 10 with the aim of winning these forces to our position.
7. Raise up the cases of "past Trayvons" and have family members of Africans murdered by the State speak. In this way, we will expose the fact that it is the system that killed Trayvon, a system of which Zimmerman’s gun was an extension. We must build a movement to disarm this system completely and totally. We need a revolution. This is an important fact. This is why we raise up the slogan "U.S. Government has killed 1000 Trayvons — March for Black Community Self-Defense!"
8. Raise up various forms of African resistance, in the form of the Black August Rebellions, Lovelle Mixon, Hydra Lacy, flash mobs, etc. as a potent weapon in the struggle for African community self-defense, should it function under revolutionary leadership.
We are calling on all freedom loving Africans to join the struggle to take power in our own hands!
