The democratic rights that African people fought for are under attack. There is not a single democratic right that exists in the United States, and elsewhere, in which Africans did not fight to establish or they were established at the expense of African people.
Universal suffrage (i.e. voting for all people in the United States) was established through the struggle of Africans in the U.S. South. So too was freedom of speech, workers’ rights, housing rights, education, women’s rights, the struggle against police containment and mass imprisonment, and the list goes on.
The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) has organized a membership drive in defense of the democratic rights of African people. InPDUM named our 2023 convention “Deepening the Counteroffensive! Completing the Black Power Movement! This time we will win!”
We defined deepening the counteroffensive as recruiting the masses of African people back into political life. Chairman Omali Yeshitela has noted that the best defense of a revolutionary organization is its theory and the people. The work of InPDUM is guided by the theory and practice of African Internationalism and the people.
InPDUM regularly holds political education on our mass platform The Revolutionary National Democratic Program. From Occupied Azania (South Africa) to Sierra Leone (West Africa) to Lexington, KY, we take political education into the heart of the African townships.
In St. Louis, MO we hold regular community rallies. In San Diego, CA and Chicago, IL we have revived the African Working Class Film series. InPDUM New York has continued their Bread, Peace and Black Power campaign organizing, with special attention to Black Community Control of Housing.
All of which has grown the ranks of InPDUM.
From San Diego to South Africa, InPDUM used African Martyrs Day (February 21) as a springboard for our membership drive and it did not disappoint. We have welcomed a slew of new members into the fold since then.
InPDUM’s membership drive has three phases to it: (1) our postering drive; (2) drops and (3) door-to-door outreach. All of this is taking place alongside regular tabling and events being held inside the African colonies.
Africans fought for democratic rights with our blood
As declared in our African Martyrs Day Proclamation, “The history of our resistance has been written in blood and flames.” This is not hyperbole. Africans have been martyred in brutal assassinations, imprisoned for decades, poisoned, and exiled.
African schools, homes, and churches have been burned to the ground. Symbolized in the 1899 lynching of Sam Hose, in Georgia, Africans were burned alive. In 1934, Claude Neal was castrated and forced to eat his own testicles and penis by a lynch mob in front of a crowd of as many as 7,000 white people in Jackson County, FL. In 1964, the white North American public only became focused on the killing of civil rights workers in the U.S. South once white people were killed.
In June 1964, white civil rights activists Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were killed alongside the African organizers James Chaney in Philadelphia, MS. So many Africans had been murdered and dumped in the river. The bodies of two 19-year old African students Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore were found as was the body of 14-year old Herbert Oarsby and the bodies of five other Africans who have never been identified.
The democratic rights of African people are under attack! This is represented in the increased attacks on Africans by people like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who has attacked voting rights, going so far as criminalizing the distribution of water and food to people in voting lines, as well as limiting access to polling stations and increasing voter identification laws. It can also be seen in DeSantis’ attacks on African self-determined education.
The Uhuru 3 attacked for their defense of democratic rights
The attacks on African democratic rights are also embodied in the case of the Uhuru 3 (i.e. Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel). Chairman Omali Yeshitela came into political life in the 1960s, in his early 20s, amidst the blood and terror chronicled above. Chairman Omali Yeshitela organized voters throughout Florida, material support for workers in Mississippi and other parts of the U.S. South, and built the first membership-based branch of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1966. Chairman Omali has dedicated almost 60 years to the struggle for African Liberation.
In 1968, Chairman Omali organized the Junta of Militant Organizations (JOMO) and The Burning Spear newspaper. In 1972, JOMO united with the Black Rights Fighters of Ft. Myers, FL and the Gainesville Black Study Group to form the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP).
The APSP has led in the fight for reparations, Black Community Control of the Police, the defense of political prisoners, black community control of housing, education and other mass struggles.
In 1989, the APSP created the People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (PDUM) as a local mass organization in Oakland, CA. In 1991, PDUM became the National People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (NPDUM). In 2001, NPDUM became InPDUM, the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement.
In his address to the 2008 InPDUM Convention, Chairman noted: “Our motivation for founding InPDUM was clear: the struggle for the liberation of our people had to be resuscitated after its crushing military defeat of the 1960s. Chairman also noted that the role of InPDUM was to “defend the national democratic rights won by our people in the past, rights which are constantly being abrogated by the U.S. government in the name of fighting a war against drugs.”
InPDUM must defend the Uhuru 3
In April 2023, the Uhuru 3 were indicted with the bogus charges of acting as agents of Russia and subsequently arraigned in May 2023. Despite a groundbreaking motion to dismiss filed by their legal team, the colonial courts have not dropped the charges. The trial is scheduled to commence September 3, 2024 in Tampa, FL.
InPDUM knows that political trials like this are won in the streets, not the courtroom. InPDUM’s membership drive is how we will defend the Uhuru 3 and forward the cause of African Liberation.
In a revolutionarily prophetic keynote address at the 1990 Freedom Weekend in St. Petersburg, FL, Chairman Omali Yeshitela ended with these words:
“When I go to court, I’m not arguing about whether the Black Revolution is fine. I’m arguing that I have a right to be a revolutionary because they said in their constitution that it’s permitted. We’re not trying to win judges. We’re trying to win the masses. We’re not trying to win the State to agree that Revolution is good. We’re trying to present it with a contradiction that is inherent in itself.
At some juncture the system has to say that democracy is just good for white people. That’s all right. The masses need to hear that. If you clarify that, then it changes the conditions all down the line. The system must say that or continue to pretend, as they do right now, that democracy’s for everybody.
What I want them to do is deal with democracy. Don’t deal with the revolution. We’ll handle that.”
Let’s make the colonial State have to deal with the question of democracy. Be part of the InPDUM postering drive taking place. Email us for posters to print and join our outreach teams. Attend our political education. Become a card-carrying InPDUM member.
Forward the Revolutionary African National Democratic Struggle!
Build InPDUM!
Stand up for Freedom!
InPDUM.org
