Black is Back! March & Rally: November 13th.

Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations

ON JULY 31, 2010 the Steering Committee for the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations voted unanimously to hold a rally and a march on the White House on November 13th of this year.

The Steering Committee meeting, attended by representatives from Florida, D.C., North Carolina, Maryland, New Jersey and Nassau, The Bahamas, voted to do the mobilization in November to mark the anniversary of the historic rally and march on the White House called by the coalition in November of last year.

More than 250 people came out for the rally and participated in the march on the White House called by the Coalition that had only been founded six weeks prior to the mobilization.

This year the anniversary mobilization will focus primarily on the impact of the Obama regime on Africa and African people worldwide, especially here in the U.S.

This is because the wars against African people, especially in the U.S., go largely unrecognized except by African people ourselves. Also, even when recognized by us, these wars are often misidentified as self-inflicted misadventures due to bad governance, crime or some other pathology for which imperialist white power has no responsibility.

Through Obama the U.S. is moving forward with AFRICOM, the deployment of a continental-wide capacity for a comprehensive U.S. military intervention throughout Africa. AFRICOM is also a means of ensuring the survival of neocolonialism in Africa.

The U.S. is currently involved in various military projects in Africa, including Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo and many others.

These projects protect U.S. interests and the regimes that support those interests, usually accompanied by brutal oppression of African people within the colonially defined territories that are improperly and cunningly defined as nations, countries and states in Africa.

It is the Obama regime that gave former U.S. President William Jefferson Clinton the go-ahead to further exploit the misery of post-earthquake Haiti, bringing in millions of dollars for Clinton’s foundation even though it was Clinton who played a critical role in the attack on democracy and economic self-determination of that heroic population.

Under Obama’s regime African people within the U.S. are still suffering the consequences of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. Joblessness and police terror stalk African communities with equal intensity. New designer laws that target young African people, especially men, are growing the U.S. prison population as one means of economic stimulus for the white oppressor nation population and as counterrevolutionary preemption against the oppressed nation African population.

The Black is Back Coalition from its very inception in September of 2009 defined itself as an organization supporting African self-determination and anti-imperialist resistance, and for this reason APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela characterized the coalition as the most significant black mass formation since the 1960s.

Our Party has been struggling to raise up the struggle for self-determination for our people since the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties.

Now, for the first time since the sixties there exists in the form of the coalition an organization representing various divergent political and philosophical tendencies within the Black Liberation Movement, actively united in a democratic organization designed to combat imperialism throughout the world and within the barrios and domestic colonies in the U.S.

For some black militant activists the election of Barack Hussein Obama meant they could finally reveal themselves as U.S. patriots of white nationalists in black skin.

Not only did they use his candidacy and election to jump on the bandwagon of the ruling Democratic Party, they also condemned any other activists that dared to criticize Obama and/or take an independent path of resistance to U.S. imperialism that now had Obama as its main spokesperson.

Many others were simply confused by Obama’s election and required uncompromising leadership to point out the fact that Obama’s election was not an adequate response to the growing impoverishment, mass incarceration and outright police murder of our people.
Nor did it repair the damage done to our people on the Gulf Coast subsequent to the destruction left in the wake of government policies and Hurricane Katrina.

The Black is Back Coalition provided an organizational base for the various African individuals and organizations that wanted to fight back. It made it possible for them to break out of the isolation many were facing in their lonely criticisms of the imperialist Obama phenomenon.

The November 7, 2009 Black is Back rally and march in Washington, held by an organization of organizations and people who had never previously worked together, was a great success.

Not only was it an energizing event for the organizers and the more than 250 people who rallied and marched to the White House, the hundreds of people who watched the march from the sidelines demonstrated a stunned exuberant support for the actions as well. Someone had finally declared, “The emperor has no clothes”!

This Black is Back action marked a turning point. It gave permission to others to question the Obama mystique as well. Soon thereafter even the Congressional Black Caucus made a feeble criticism of Obama policies.

Other black celebrity activists were also emboldened to question the direction of the Obama presidency.

A constant refrain heard from participants who helped to build the coalition and the November 7th, 2009 D.C. rally and march was a guarantee that the Black is Back Coalition would not be just a one-event organization. Their fears would prove to be unfounded by the coalition actions since then.

Two months after the Washington, D.C. actions the Black is Back Coalition held its consolidation conference in St. Petersburg, Florida in January 2010.

Leaders were elected, an organizational structure adopted, and various resolutions passed to support and demonstrate long-term objectives of the organization.

This excerpt from the political report adopted at the January conference provides a succinct self-description:

“We are approaching the consolidation of our coalition conscious of the historical basis for our unity, but also aware that there are some political and ideological differences among us.

“Some of us are self-declared revolutionaries, while others do not harbor a criticism of imperialism or the U.S. that would lead to revolutionary conclusions. Moreover, there may be differences among us concerning the nature and objective of revolution even when we agree that revolution must be on the agenda.

“For some of us religion has been a major incentive to become organized as a part of the resistance against war and injustice. We are black nationalists, Pan Africanists, communists, social democrats, African Internationalists and just plain fed up black folks who recognize that united action among our people is a must.

“It is this diverse character that gives our coalition its strength. For, such diversity is representative of the character of our community and offers us the opportunity to build a real, genuine, social movement such as those that existed in the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s.”

The January 23, 2010 Black is Back Consolidation Conference happened less than two weeks following the devastating earthquake in Haiti that led to the death and displacement of millions of African people and an open U.S. military re-occupation of Haiti under the guise of aid.

This contributed to the conference resolution to send organizers to Miami, current home to thousands of oppressed Haitian immigrants who have been forced from Haiti by poverty and other U.S.-imperialist inspired disasters. The task of the organizers was to build for a Black is Back Haiti solidarity mobilization in Miami in February.

The objective of the Miami mobilization was to expose the role of U.S. and other imperialist policies in the impoverishment of Haiti and to demand reparations from France and the U.S. for their history of brutal exploitation. The Miami mobilization, that drew more than a hundred people and raised the morale of the Haitian population, also criticized the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy that allows counterrevolutionary Cuban immigrants to remain it the U.S. if their feet touched shore while Africans from Haiti were imprisoned and deported under all circumstances.

The Black is Back demands also included the return of the U.S.-deposed former President Aristide, a restoration of democracy and withdrawal of all outside military forces, including those of the U.S. and United Nations.

In March the coalition had representation at national anti-war mobilizations in Washington, D.C. and San Francisco. In both cases the Black is Back Coalition made presentations that were well received by the attendees and provided evidence that Africans in the U.S. are determined to participate in defining peace as resulting from the end of imperialist exploitation and oppression, including that of African people here within the U.S.

The Black is Back Coalition initiated a well-attended forum on June 15 in Harlem, New York in support of Lynne Stewart, a lawyer persecuted and imprisoned for her history of defending clients the U.S. government disapproved of.

Since that forum Stewart, the 70-year-old breast cancer patient, has had her unjust 28 month sentenced enhanced to 10 years at the behest of Obama’s Justice Department.

The June 15 forum also called for support for the cases of Mumia Abu Jamal and Diop Olugbala, a political defendant of these times, who is facing prison for daring to challenge the Philadelphia government’s response to the imperialist economic crisis that shifted the crisis onto the backs of Africans and other oppressed workers.

On July 10 Alex Morley of Black Food Internet magazine in Nassau, brought a solidarity statement from the Coalition to the Fifth Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party in Washington, DC.

On July 23 Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report brought an audience of 700 participants at a peace conference in Albany, New York, to its feet with an electrifying call to break the “Obama spell” as a “must-do task for renewal of the movement for social justice and peace.”

The Black is Back Coalition has worked to bring the resistance to the masses of our people for popular participation. It has breached the artificial ideological and political barriers that prevented united struggle against a recognized imperialist enemy.

Now, the coalition is going one step further and calling on African people and all our allies to rally and march in opposition to the too-long-ignored oppression of African people in the U.S. and worldwide.

The African People’s Socialist Party is in full support of this call and will make every effort to mobilize our base for the DC rally and march.

Indeed, this is the test for us all: we are obligated to confront imperialism with all our might at this critical time in history. Not only must we stand up for a peace that results from social justice, we must join the world’s peoples in the resistance that will usher forth that social justice that can only come about with the total defeat of imperialism.

Forward to Washington, DC!♦bf