We rescued reparations, because from our perspective reparations is a function of the revolution.
This whole notion that somehow you’re going to get reparations in some new cars, in some new clothes and be alright is messed up.
That’s even one of the other contradictions with this ADOS thing.
There is no future, there is no happiness under capitalism and reparations isn’t going to make it for you.
If white people are having a spike in the death rates and they got access to all the goddamn inherited wealth—they’ve inherited all of your wealth already and they’re dying early—and they’re catching hell, how the hell do you think you’re going to do it better than that?
Why would you want to do better than that if “doing better” means that you gotta kill Iranians, blockade Venezuela, you got to do all this to everybody else? Why would you want to do that?
That’s why this ADOS thing is dangerous too, because it plays us against each other and against other African people.
You’re hungry enough to say “f—k my brother, f—k my sister” that’s what a dope addict–you know how dope addicts will steal a TV from their moms?
That’s what this s—t is trying to do and it’s disrupting our community, disrupting the unity of African people around the world. That’s what that is for.
I want us to understand some things about who we are and what our task is at this moment.
The reparations demand grasped by the masses
The whole question of reparations; the Chinese revolution was a peasant-based revolution.
It defied all the Marxist assumptions about how the revolution had to be centered in the working class as such and Chairman Mao organized the peasants.
The vast majority of the contradictions were concentrated in the countryside, so he organized the peasants. “Land to the Peasants” was a really important slogan.
“Land to the Peasants” became a really important slogan for the Russian revolution too, because it [Russia] was a semi-feudal country and peasantry was a critical component.
That’s why they said the Russians would never be able to have a socialist revolution, in part. “Land to the Peasants” became a critical component.
As the revolution heated up, the struggle got hotter and hotter.
What began to happen was the peasants in Russia start taking the goddamn land.
They start taking the land–the same thing that happened in China.
The people start taking the s—t, then that escalates the revolutionary process that allows for these socialists and communists to come to power in Russia and China.
When the masses of our people understand that reparations is your s—t.
F—k the Congress, f—k the court, all of this, it’s yours. What’s over there on the other side—that’s your s—t they got in the refrigerator.
Those are your streets, your children’s future that they have over there. When the masses begin to get that then the masses will become self-activating.
The 9mm becomes legitimate when you’re snatching something from someone in the alley, depending on who you’re snatching it from.
The colonized masses that have become active in the whole process of the revolutionary project and of course what facilitates that is the presence and the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party: the Advanced Detachment.
The Party must clearly ascend to leadership
We define revolution for this period, which is why I just went through this stuff that I’m going through.
We defined the white people issue.
We moved away from the superstitions and all of this stuff that’s really informed and misinformed what we do around the white people question…[to] make white people this really mysterious entity that’s not even human.
They’ve [white people] done stuff that we would place outside of the category of what human beings do, but white people are human and to the point that we give them this other-world kind of characterization—”the white man is the devil, the white man is mutation” and s—t like that—we mystify this guy and we can’t know how to fight him.
The Vietnamese knew how to fight him and they kicked his ass.
They said the white man is powerful from a distance, because he’s got all these powerful bombs, but he’s slow and he’s clumsy.
This is what the Vietnamese said and the average weight of the Vietnamese when they fought was 97 pounds.
They said in order to defeat the white man you have to [get in close and] grab him by the belt.
The point that I’m making here is that we defined the whole question of white people, white power mystery that’s been given to white people.
They ain’t no mystery to us no more and we are collecting reparations as this debate is going on.
We organized the African People’s Solidarity Committee and extended the African Revolution into the white world.
That’s real.
There’s no way you can erase that; you can’t take that back.
We extended the African Revolution into the white world and we built cadre of white people who would do that.
Ideological and political clarity is key
We’ve defined the features of African identity and the character of a united African Internationalist revolutionary movement.
We’ve done that.
Garvey is the closest thing to have ever made that happen.
Garvey came under such slander from the same forces that we have to contend with.
We are the forces who have defined that and I’m saying this, because this space is getting clearer and clearer and what has to happen is that science and clarity are a real requirement for this moment.
Ideological and political clarity is really a requirement for this moment.
The deepening crisis of imperialism, more people are coming into the Party, or trying to make it into the Party.
It’s precisely now that greater clarity is required.
We have challenged this whole thing of single-issue organizations and small-circle activism.
You know what I mean by that?
Organizations that find themselves just organizing around a single issue like somehow this issue, this thing…no, no, no, no, no.
We are saying that it’s alright for people to unite and organize around a single-issue, but that ain’t revolution.
We are revolutionaries and we might deal with that issue [single issue], but within a revolutionary context like reparations, like any kind of question.
And small-circle activism where you’re not even trying to build a revolutionary movement, everybody’s just small-circle-ism; [forget] that!
We’re trying to build a revolution
We want to be every place.
Ever-present, all, everywhere, that’s what it takes to build a revolution.
We are moving beyond and are forcing the organization to move beyond this “the movement is everything, but the revolution is nothing” mindset.
People make themselves significant, because they’re in the movement.
They do this, they do that, but “to what end?” is what we always say.
If it doesn’t lead to revolutionary transformation, then what the f—k is it? You understand?
They can get involved, they’re active, sometimes they do dashing stuff, but “the movement is everything and the revolution is nothing.”
We’re building revolution; that’s the fundamental thing that we are stepping forward as the leadership of the African Revolution.
We build the ASI (African Socialist International) as the primary responsibility, that’s the meaning of the slogan “Organize! Organize! Organize!”
People say “organize what?”
Organize the African world!
We can’t be free without that.
The white world became organized as a part of the process of putting us into colonial slavery.
We have to be organized everywhere as a part of the process to break us out of colonial slavery and to move towards liberation.
The Party has positioned ourselves for the task
We [The APSP] built more than 50 institutions; they exist now and they’re growing.
We utilize nearly all forms of struggle—there’s not a form of struggle that we have not used.
We use electoral, protest, ideological, we fight against race-nationalism, we fight against the concept of racism in dealing with this colonial question.
We have stood the test of time; the African People’s Socialist Party.
We have achieved the political maturity and the experience that validates our position as the Advanced Detachment of our nation and class in the struggle against imperialism.
It’s important for us to understand that and how we move today should presuppose that reality and any space that we go to should reflect that reality.
We don’t go into any space as some kind of Johnny come-lately, newcomers, as long as you’re black it’s alright kind of thing.
We go there as representatives of the African Revolution, period.
Wherever it exists on the planet Earth, we are that and more and more Africans around the world are recognizing that.
We certainly saw that since Oxford and there’s other stuff that’s been happening that continues to validate that.
I just want us to understand that.
I think we have to be extremely clear about who we are.
