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Monthly Archives: January 2014

POLITICS IS IN COMMAND OF ECONOMICS, REVOLUTION IS IN COMMAND OF PRODUCTION

27 Monday Jan 2014

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We often reference to putting “politics-in-command” and contrast this policy with those we find revisionist. But what exactly does this mean and how does it relate to the revolutionary science? Here we hope to shed some light on this critical issue.

Originally found in Peking Review No. 30 published in July of 1969 the following is an analysis of the respective policy and how it was applied to the development of socialism in the People’s Republic of China. The online copy, posted by Signal Fire, can be found here.

Putting “politics-in-command” is key to the correct application of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in opposition to right or ‘left’ deviations; the difference between revolutionary science and revisionism. The historicity of this principle is intimately connected with the socialist experience of China; the Party struggle against revisionism and subsequent developments following the end of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

The following is the original work of Ko Cheng published by thePeking Review. All views therein are solely those of the original author/publisher and may not necessarily reflect those held by Anti-imperialism.com

by Ko Cheng

HOW to handle the relationship between politics and economics and between revolution and production after the seizure of political power by the proletariat is an important question of whether or not to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat, really take the socialist road and undertake genuine socialist economic construction.

Our great leader Chairman Mao’s teachings that politics is the commander, the soul in everything, that “political work is the life-blood of all economic work,” and the great principle he advanced of “grasping revolution, promoting production” have, theoretically and in practice, correctly solved this question and creatively developed Marxism-Leninism. These teachings of Chairman Mao’s are our basic guiding thought in successfully carrying out socialist revolution and socialist construction.

On the question of the relationship between politics and economics, there has always been a fierce struggle between Marxism and revisionism.

From the end of 1920 to the beginning of 1921, when the Soviet Union was at the crucial juncture of preparing for the transition to economic restoration, Lenin carried on a great debate with Trotsky, Bukharin and other anti-Party groups on the question of the trade union, centring round the relationship between politics and economics. During the debate, Lenin held that one should, first of all, take a political approach and that the trade union should be a school of communism, a transmission belt by means of which the Party maintained ties with the masses so as to strengthen the leadership of the Party and consolidate the dictatorship of the proletariat. Opposing Lenin’s viewpoint, Trotsky held that the “economic” approach should be adopted; he demanded that the trade unions be “governmentalized” to become organs in charge of production.

This was an attempt by Trotsky to undermine the dictatorship of the proletariat and put an end to the leading role of the Party in economic construction. In this debate, Bukharin adopted double-dealing tactics and did his best to shield Trotsky. He blabbed that one should overcome the “one-sidedness” of the political approach and combine the two sides in the controversy, declaring that the political approach and the “economic” approach were equally important and that both could be taken.
Lenin shattered the fallacies of Trotsky and Bukharin during the debate. Defining the interrelation between politics and economics, Lenin pointed out: “Politics is a concentrated expression of economics.” In other words, the basic class interests and the interrelation between classes find concentrated expression in politics. No class which has lost political power can retain its dominance in the economic field. Lenin said: “The most essential, the ‘decisive* interests of classes can be satisfied only by radical political changes in general. In particular the fundamental economic interests of the proletariat can be satisfied only by a political revolution that will replace the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie by the dictatorship of the proletariat” The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most concentrated expression of socialist economy, and is the basic guarantee for establishing, consolidating and developing socialist economy.

Proceeding from this basic viewpoint that politics is a concentrated expression of economics, Lenin put forward in clear-cut terms the brilliant concept of putting politics first. He said: “Politics cannot but have precedence over economics. To argue differently means forgetting the ABC of Marxism.” Lenin also pointed out that Bukharin’s fallacy of placing economics on a par with politics amounted to a “substitution of eclecticism for the dialectical interplay of politics and economics.” Refuting the fallacies of Trotsky and Bukharin — their opposition to putting politics first under the pretext of showing “concern for production”. Lenin said: “Without a correct political approach to the matter the given class will be unable to stay on top, and, consequently, will be incapable of solving its production problem either.” By openly using the “economic” approach to oppose the political approach, Trotsky clearly revealed his opportunist features. Bukharin’s eclecticism, on the other hand, was opportunism in a different guise. He used the so-called “all-round viewpoint” to give equal importance to both politics and economics. Such seemingly impartial but double-dealing tricks were even more deceitful. In fact, both Trotsky and Bukharin wanted politics. What they wanted, however, was bourgeois politics, not proletarian politics, and their attempt was to divert economic construction to the capitalist road.

Chairman Mao has summed up the historical experience, both positive and negative, of the dictatorship of the proletariat and formulated the great theory of continuing the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat. For the first time, he has clearly pointed out that, after great victory has been won in the socialist transformation of the ownership of the means of production, there are still classes and class struggle, the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie and between the socialist road and the capitalist road, that there is the danger of capitalist restoration, and that the proletariat must continue the revolution. If we depart from the dictatorship of the proletariat and not continue the revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, then socialist production cannot develop and genuine socialist construction cannot be carried out.

The result can only be capitalist restoration. In the great practice of leading China’s socialist revolution and socialist construction and in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution initiated and lea” by himself, Chairman Mao has incisively criticized the counter-revolutionary revisionist line of the renegade, hidden traitor and scab Liu Shao-chi for the restoration of capitalism and shattered the bourgeois headquarters headed by Liu Shao-chi. This has provided the basic guarantee that China’s economic construction will continue to advance in giant strides along the socialist road.

Proceeding from the actual conditions of China’s socialist revolution and socialist construction, Chairman Mao has creatively solved the question of what is genuine socialist economic construction and how to carry it out. Chairman Mao has set forth the brilliant concept that, in socialist economic construction, it is imperative to give prominence to proletarian politics and to put politics in command of economics, and formulated the general line of “going all out, aiming high and achieving greater, faster, better and more economical results in building socialism,’* the great strategic principles of “maintaining independence and keeping the initiative in our own hands and relying on our own efforts” and “be prepared against war, be prepared against natural disasters, and do everything for the people” as well as a series of other proletarian economic policies.

During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Chairman Mao has enunciated the great principle of “grasping revolution, promoting production.” As Vice-Chairman Lin Piao pointed out in his political report to the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the principle of “grasping revolution, promoting production” “correctly explains the relationship between revolution and production, between consciousness and matter, between the superstructure and the economic base and between the relations of production and the productive forces.

This means that we must use revolution to command production, promote it and lead it forward. Chairman Mao’s brilliant thinking that politics is in command of economics and revolution is in command of production is the beacon lighting up the road forward for us in consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, preventing capitalist restoration and building socialism. It is, moreover, a sharp weapon in the criticism of modern revisionism.

Since its usurpation of the leadership of the Soviet Party and state, the Soviet revisionist renegade clique has thoroughly betrayed Lenin’s teachings and taken over the mantle of Trotsky, frantically advocating such reactionary fallacies as “economics is more important than politics,”‘ “production comes first,” and so on and so forth. The renegades of this clique exaggerate the decisive importance of the productive forces and science and technique to the exclusion of all other factors, and utter the nonsense that the “policy”‘ and “line” of building communism is to “establish a material and technical foundation.” Do they really want to develop socialist “production”? No, absolutely not. Their sole purpose of spreading these counter-revolutionary fallacies is to oppose proletarian politics, disintegrate the economic foundation of socialism and restore the capitalist economy which plunders foreign countries and exploits the people at home, thereby making this economy the base of Soviet revisionist social-imperialism in stepping up the all-round restoration of capitalism.

Going against the trend of history, the Soviet revisionist renegade clique has already brought extremely serious adverse effects to the Soviet economy: Industrial and agricultural production is beset with difficulties, commodities are extremely short in supply, black markets are rampant, prices are soaring, and the broad masses of the exploited labouring people are becoming more and more impoverished.

Like the Soviet revisionists, Liu Shao-chi also advocated such reactionary fallacies as “production comes first,” “technique comes first,” and so on. In so doing, he wanted the proletariat and the revolutionary people to forget proletarian politics and “only grasp the production of grain, cotton and edible oil, and make no distinction between our enemies, our friends and ourselves.” In fact, Liu Shao-chi and company never put production and technique first. They gave first place to bourgeois politics; their sinister scheme was to lead China’s socialist construction astray on to the road of capitalist restoration. Under the signboard of “production comes first” and “technique comes first,” they did their utmost to keep a firm grip on the superstructure and usurped the leadership in many central and local units. Before the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, some enterprises were only nominally under socialist ownership while actually leadership in these enterprises was usurped by a handful of renegades, enemy agents and capitalist-roaders, or were still under the control of the capitalists who had owned them. Socialist production in these enterprises was sabotaged. If we had not launched a revolution in the superstructure, seized back that part of power usurped by the bourgeoisie and smashed Liu Shao-chi’s revisionist line, the socialist economic base would have been destroyed and socialist ownership would have gradually changed in essence.

In order to put politics in command of economics and revolution in command of production, we must correctly handle the relationship between consciousness and matter. Creatively setting forth the great concept of from matter to consciousness and then back to matter, Chairman Mao has pointed out: “It is man’s social being that determines his thinking. Once the correct ideas characteristic of the advanced class are grasped by the masses, these ideas turn into a material force which changes society and changes the world.”

According to Chairman Mao’s teaching, we should not only go in for material construction, but, more important still, we should promote the revolutionization of man’s thinking and use revolutionization to lead mechanization. In regard to methods, our socialist economic construction and development of production is entirely different from imperialism and modern revisionism. We rely neither on coercion nor on material incentives, but on giving prominence to proletarian politics and putting Mao Tsetung Thought in command. Mao Tsetung Thought is a spiritual atom bomb of infinite power. Once Mao Tsetung Thought is grasped’ by the broad masses, it becomes an inexhaustible source of revolutionary vigour and creativeness. The deep-going and sustained mass campaign of studying and applying Mao Tsetung Thought in a living way is a great spiritual force promoting the development of our socialist undertakings in every field with gi-eater, faster, better and more economical results.

Throwing the communist revolutionary spirit advocated by Lenin to the wind, Khrushchov, Brezhnev and the other renegades have extensively pushed the so-called “new economic system” in the Soviet Union, using “material incentives’ and “the principle of profits” as its core, turning the relationship between men into the capitalist relationship of money transactions.

This is a reactionary measure taken by them in restoring capitalism. Pursuing the same sinister purpose, Liu Shao-chi also frantically advocated “putting profits in command” and “material incentives” in China’s socialist economic construction in a vain attempt to use “money” and counter-revolutionary bourgeois egoism to corrupt the broad masses of workers, poor and lower-middle peasants and revolutionary cadres, and make them forget class struggle and the dictatorship of the proletariat. The working class and the poor and lower-middle peasants of our country have emphatically criticized these reactionary viewpoints.

Giving prominence to proletarian politics or using “material incentives” is a struggle between the two classes — the proletariat and the bourgeoisie — and between the two roads — the socialist road and the capitalist road. Only by never forgetting to give prominence to proletarian politics can we mobilize the initiative of the broad masses of the revolutionary people, can we have the correct political orientation in every aspect of economic work, expose and smash the activities of a handful of counter-revolutionaries or capitalist elements which sabotage socialist production, guarantee the socialist nature of our economic construction, and promote the rapid development of the socialist productive forces.

If we do not correctly handle the relationship between politics and economics, then our economic construction will go astray, and there will be the danger that whatever victories we have achieved with regard to state power and in the economic field will be lost. We must use Mao Tsetung Thought as our weapon to carry on a sustained criticism of such reactionary fallacies as “material incentives” and “putting profits in command,” and eliminate the pernicious effects of Liu Shao-chi’s counter-revolutionary revisionist line.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China is a great political revolution. In the course of this great revolution, the bourgeois headquarters headed by Liu Shao-chi has been shattered, the proletariat has seized back that portion of power usurped by the bourgeoisie, and all-round dictatorship of the proletariat is exercised in every sphere of the superstructure. The socialist economic base has thus been consolidated and strengthened. As stated in the Decision of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party Concerning the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (the 16-Point Decision): “The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is a powerful motive force for the development of the social productive forces in our country.” In his political report to the Party’s Ninth National Congress, Vice-Chairman Lin Piao has announced to the whole world that a thriving situation prevails in our country’s industrial and agricultural production and in science and technology, and that China is now a socialist country with neither internal nor external debts.

These are splendid achievements by the people throughout the country in vigorously grasping revolution and energetically promoting production. They are also great victories for Chairman Mao’s principle of “grasping revolution, promoting production.” U.S. imperialism, Soviet revisionism and all reaction are extremely panic-stricken by this great revolution in our country. They vilify that China’s industrial and agricultural production has been “destroyed,” and slander that its economic construction is “collapsing.” But facts have dealt them a harsh blow. What has been “destroyed” in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution are the old ideas of the bourgeoisie, and what has “collapsed” is the renegade clique of Liu Shao-chi, the running dog of the U.S. imperialists, Soviet revisionists and the Kuomintang reactionaries, together with its line of restoring capitalism.

The dictatorship of the proletariat of our country has become more consolidated and more powerful than ever. Our country’s socialist production is flourishing and is getting better and better. It is certain that the great victories in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution will help bring about a new leap forward in our socialist economic construction!

Support Parole 4 Political Prisoner Jalil Muntaqim

27 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by newafrikan77 in Uncategorized

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Once again, we are preparing for Jalil’s upcomingparole hearing in June. Since the PBA, the FOP, and the Correctional Officers union are able to collect thousands of signatures against parole, we must work to gain as many signatures and letters of support for Jalil as possible. In addition to the online petition, there is a hard copy that can be downloaded here. Since many members of our community do not have regular access to the internet, it is important to use the hard copy and return it to us.

You can also download and print out the parole campaign brochureexplaining Jalil’s case as a way of educating people about the political nature of the case and the parole board’s constant denials despite national and international support for Jalil’s release on parole.

Sign the online petition to Tina M. Stanford,
Chairwoman of the NYS Board of Parole,
for Jalil’s Release on Parole in 2014!

Click on the image below to read about
the Case of the New York Three!


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SIGN THE JERICHO COINTELPRO PETITION!  http://www.change.org/petitions/tina-m-stanford-free-jalil?share_id=idvdyWJuMx&utm_campaign=twitter_link_action_box&utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=share_petition

Kuwasi Balagoon at 60 By Kazembe Balagun

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by newafrikan77 in Uncategorized

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Kuwasi at 60

By Kazembe Balagun
December 24, 2006

On December 16, 2006 over 75 people gathered at LAVA in West Philadelphia. The crowd was a mix of Black liberation movement veterans (young and old), anarchist punks and white queer activists from ACT UP. They came together to pay homage to the late Kuwasi Balagoon, who would have turned 60 years old this year. Balagoon is not an immediately recognizable name in the pantheon of revolutionaries, yet he has developed into an underground hero 20 years after his death. This is due in large part to the maze of contradictions that constructed Balagoon’s life.

As a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, he was the quintessential outlaw, escaping prison twice and leading units in the expropriation of banks, including the infamous Nyack armored car heist in 1983 (an incident that served as a basis for the film Dead Presidents). Balagoon was also a humanist, who enjoyed painting, writing poetry and baking for his fellow inmates. However, it was Kuwasi’s identification as a queer anarchist that has sparked renewed interest in his life. “He was an anarchist in a black nationalist movement, he was queer in a straight dominated movement, he was a guerrilla fighter after it was “chic,” and he never backed down from his ideals, his beliefs, the struggle or him self. And he demanded to be seen not as a revolutionary icon, but as a person, beautiful and flawed,” said Walidah Imarisha, poet and one of the presenters at the Balagoon memorial.

Early Life

Kuwasi Balagoon was born Donald Weems in Lakeland, Maryland on December 23, 1946. He was the youngest of three children and his parents were both employees of the federal government. Kuwasi was influenced early on by a deep maternal instinct, primarily through his grandmother (“Mama Shine”) and Miss Reed, his elementary school teacher for whom he described having a fleeting crush. Kuwasi was a self-described “wild child” who had once jumped out of the second story window of his house in imitation of Superman. For the most part, Kuwasi had a comfortable childhood, where he played high school football (he missed the March on Washington for practice) and wanted to become a veterinarian.

Two major events lead to Kuwasi’s political awakening. The first was the rebellion in nearby Cambridge, Maryland. In 1963, the local Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (under the leadership of Gloria Richardson) led a series of sit-ins aimed at desegregating public facilities. The sit-ins brought national attention to Cambridge, a town that prided itself on being able to maintain “racial peace.” Nevertheless that peace was exploded when two young students were arrested for staging a pray-in. Their indefinite incarceration angered the Black community. For two days, white businesses were fire-bombed. On the Maryland Governor’s request, the National Guard entered and occupied Cambridge’s Black community for a year, leading to more rebellions. The event shook Kuwasi’s consciousness, even as he was debating the tactics espoused by Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, “The rebellion that took place in Cambridge, Maryland showed a far better action for Black people to take even then.”

The other event was more personal in nature. Kuwasi’s eldest sister, Mary, began to date Jimmy. Kuwasi describes Jimmy as a cool guitar player and was like a big brother to me.” The two ran the streets together, sneaking drinks and enjoying life. As a truck driver for a local department store, Jimmy also played the role of Robin Hood, often expropriating merchandise from the store. “The Christmas I was thirteen was a super Christmas for a materialistic youth…Good God he liberated, we couldn’t get everything under the tree.” Kuwasi’s friendship with Jimmy only ended with Jimmy’s arrest for raping a white woman. A typical charge leveled against Black men in the south, the case was flimsy but within fifteen minutes an all white jury convicted him. Jimmy would spend seven years in the state penitentiary before he escaped. Jimmy’s exportation and prison escapes would serve as a template for Kuwasi’s life.

Military

After high school, Kuwasi worked a series of odd jobs before enlisting into the military. Stationed at an Army base in Germany, Kuwasi and other Black soldiers were subjected to racist treatment by their white commanding officers. This included having to pick up cigarette butts in the rain and being written up for minor charges. To combat racism on the base, Kuwasi and his comrades formed a collective dubbed “De Legislators”. Pre-figuring the rebellion of GIs during the Vietnam War, De Legislators vowed to meet racist repression with resistance:

“Every time white G.I.s ganged a Black G.I. we moved to more than even the score. One at a time we would catch up with them and beat and stomp them so bad that helicopters would have to be used to take them to better hospitals in the area…. Afterward we would have critiques, just like in the end of war games; get our alibis together; and keep the whole thing under our hats.”

 

With the De Legislators as an example, Latino and Asian soldiers also began to rebel. This ushered in a new respect for soldiers of color and struck fear into the heart of the brass.

During his stint in the military, Kuwasi had the opportunity to travel to Spain and London. The burgeoning Third World consciousness that emanated from the anti-colonial struggles and the Bandung conferences gripped the African and Asian communities in the metropole. In London, Kuwasi met Black power activists and vowed to shear his “conk”, or straightened, hair. “Relaxing, partying, learning and teaching about what was happening with Black people all over the world, was a natural tonic,” Kuwasi wrote.

Becoming a Panther

Kuwasi would return to Lakeland and serve as a clerk for the US government. On his weekends, he ventured to Harlem. At the time, Harlem served as the crossroads of revolutionary political activism.

For a disillusioned veteran like Kuwasi, New York looked like a promise land. He soon moved to Harlem to get closer to the struggle and found a job as a tenant organizer alongside the legendary Black Nationalist Jesse Gray. Gray led a major rent strike to protest the dilapidated living conditions faced by Harlem residents. Indeed, as Kuwasi would later note, many of the health problems faced by Harlem residents (particularly children) were in direct result of poor housing conditions, including lead paint as well as the vermin infestations that led to rat bites. Seeing the power of direct action, Kuwasi would organize tenants to confront their landlords at their homes. In a few instances, he and tenants armed themselves with machetes. Needless to say, the tenants rarely lost a battle.

Kuwasi’s ascent as an organizer coincided with the formation of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense (BPP). Founded in Oakland, CA by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, the BPP formed as a response to police brutality. Trained in Marx, Lenin, Fanon and guerilla tactics, the BPP combined both a political program (The 10-point platform) alongside direct action including armed patrols. In this sense, the BPP synthesized the multiple political tendencies within the Black community, from cultural nationalist to communist. After Seale and his armed comrades walked into the California Capitol to protest the Mulford Act, which would have made it illegal to carry weapons (a bill many felt was in response to the BPP’s armed patrols of the Black community) the BPP shot into national prominence. Soon afterwards, BPP chapters spread like wildfire across the country.

In New York, the BPP came as a previous incarnation, the Black Panther Party for Political Power fell apart, primarily due to interference by law enforcement. The BPP served as a catalyst for a new generation of Blacks, many of whom moved to New York from the South and the Caribbean. This is an important point missed by many, because while many scholars and activist focus on the West coast-East Coast divide in the BPP, in was not only a matter of personality but geography. Whereas Oakland faces Asia and Mexico, producing a mestizo radical politic, New York faces the Caribbean and Africa. As such, many of the transplants who come to New York carry with them what Winston James called a “majority consciousness.” This could be seen in the activism of Marcus Garvey down to the Harlem Renaissance. Indeed, while many of the West coast Panthers were going by Huey, Bobby, Eldridge and Kathleen, the New York Panthers were changing their names to reflect this majority consciousness: Assata, Afeni, Zayd, Sundiata, and Lumumba. It was in this period that the young Weems became Kuwasi Balagoon, a name derived from the Yoruba people: Kuwasi meaning “Born on Sunday” and Balagoon meaning “warrior.”

The NYC BPP was a big fish operating in a bigger pond. They worked alongside groups like CORE to place Black history inside Public Schools, most notably during the 1969 school strike when communities of color began to exercise control of the schools (Afeni Shakur, Tupac’s mother served as a kindergarten teacher during the strike.) Safiya Bukari and Assata Shakur helped lead the Feeding Programs as well as Liberation Schools. The NYC BPP also worked alongside the revolutionary Puerto Rican group, the Young Lords, demanding fair housing and an end to police brutality and community control of health care institutions, including Lincoln Hospital.

As the Panthers slowly made inroads in the community, they were soon derailed by state repression. In 1969, 21 Panther leaders were arrested on conspiracy charges including a plot to blow up the Botanical Gardens, subways, and police precincts. The 21 Panthers (Kuwasi included) were held on $100,000 bond a piece or $2.1 million(in 1969 terms that was unbelievable.)

Known as the “Panther 21” trial, the case was part and parcel of attempts by the federal government to suppress the Black Panther Party. The BPP national leadership was such as Huey Newton and Bobby Seale were in jail; Panther spokesman Eldridge Cleaver was in exile in Algeria, while Bobby Hutton, Mark Clark and Fred Hampton would be slain by the police.

The charges against the Black Panther Party by the District Attorney Robert Morgantheau were to serve two goals: one, to neutralize their leadership and two, to provoke fear of the BPP into the hearts and minds of potential supporters. However, the subsequent Panther trial had the opposite effect; many white liberals came to the Panthers aid, as it was clear that their civil rights were violated.

The Panthers under trial were separated throughout prisons in the city. Rather than surrender, the Panthers began to organize against the horrific conditions in the jails. Kuwasi and other comrades in the Queens House of Detention soon staged a rebellion that resulted in five guards being taken hostage. In Manhattan a similar rebellion took place at the infamous Central processing prison known as “The Tombs.” The demands put forth by the prisoners were better food, the right to worship (particularly for Muslim prisoners), and speedier processing for trials.

It is interesting to note how the Queens prison rebellion served as a catalyst for Kuwasi’s later anarchist leanings. During the rebellion his primary concern was a consensus process for all inmates in decision-making including access to food being brought to the outside. Fearing that the weight of the Panther leadership was too influential on the general consensus of other prisoners, Kuwasi and his comrades skipped out of general meetings in order for prisoners to “determine what was true and what was bullshit.” The Panthers also promised to go with the majority.

In the end the guards were released. Kuwasi had mixed feelings about letting the hostages go feeling that the prisoners could have “fought to the death and taken as many pigs with us as possible.” Despite the beatings that the prisoners took after the prison was retaken over, nothing could stop the euphoria felt that power to the people was not a slogan, but a reality. Indeed, the prisoners, many of whom were locked up on petty charges and told throughout their lives that they could not accomplish anything were able to hold the state at bay. As Kuwasi noted “We are going to have our freedom and we’ll tear down the jails with bars and the jails without bars and America will be unusable for the pigs and fit for the people. All Power to the People!”

The Black Liberation Army

After deliberating for 30 minutes, the Panther 21 were found not guilty on all charges. Still, it was a Pyrrhic victory. Police repression coupled with internal fissures within the BPP left many members stranded ideologically. A split occurred within the national leadership. Newton’s release from prison marked the beginning of a moderate approach for the Panthers. Focusing on “survival programs,” Newton sought to curb the image of the BPP as violent. Cleaver, now head of the International Panther Branch in Algiers, was in favor of urban guerilla warfare. Meeting with leaders of Third World liberation struggles, Cleaver was convinced that the time was right for armed struggle. The split would spill over the states as Newton and Cleaver argued on a local morning show. Words turned into violence when two of the BPP’s best cadre, Robert “Spider” Webb and Samuel Napier, were killed. The New York Chapter of the BPP began to go underground and form the Black Liberation Army (BLA).

The BLA was conceptually part and parcel of the development of the BPP. Point six of the BPP rules states “No other party member can join any army forces except the BLACK LIBERATION ARMY.” Additionally, within the party structure below the Central Committee was an anonymous committee of Field Marshals, some of whom included Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter (killed by members of the nationalist US organization), Donald Cox (exiled in Algeria along with Cleaver), and Elmer “Geronimo Ji-Jaga” Pratt, a former Green Beret. Within the primarily white anti-war movement, members of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed the Weather Underground faction, which bombed several institutions throughout the United States.

For the NYC BPP, the formation of the BLA units was in response to particular crises facing the urban Black community: police brutality and drugs. As the revolutionary fervor and activity of Black people increased, there was a growing drug epidemic. In addition, police killed several people, including 10-year old Clifford Glover. The BLA lead campaigns against drug dealers and their suppliers while sabotaging the ability of the police to wage war on the Black community. Expropriating banks, damaging patrol cars and attacking station houses was seen as an offensive measure against years of brutality.

Kuwasi was in the mix from the start. Convicted of sniping a police station, he and another comrade escaped from the Brooklyn House of Detention. Between 1971-1975, Kuwasi would lead a number of actions to “liberate” funds for the movement. “Kuwasi loved hitting those armored cars,” Said one former BLA member. Though he was arrested twice, he was able to escape both times, including in 1978. Kuwasi was also thought to have been part of the unit that liberated Assata Shakur from a New Jersey jail.

Brinks Robbery and Prison

The fevered pitch of 1960s radicalism ended during the 1970s. The combination of repression, burnout and political disorientation led to a collapse of movements. While some moved towards non-profit work, others dug in their heels and became participants in the growing New Communist Movement. The BLA suffered major defeats after arrests and killings of leaders such as Twymon Myers. By 1975, the BLA’s fighting capacity was decimated.

During this period Kuwasi lived underground, taking assumed names. While he could have stayed underground, he re-emerged for the Brinks job in 1981. Members of the BLA and the Weather Underground formed the Revolutionary Armed Task Force. “It was an attempted expropriation. That means taking money from those who amassed wealth by exploiting the people and using that money to finance the resistance. Every revolution has had to use expropriation as a method of finance. You’re just not going to get donations from the Ford or Rockefeller Foundations. This particular expropriation was under the leadership of the Black Liberation Army with white revolutionaries participating in alliance with them. The BLA communiqué after the action said that the funds had been intended to build the army, and for nationalist programs, especially for youth in the Black community,” said David Gilbert, a member of the RATF and political prisoner.

While the plan called for disarming guards and taking the cash from the armored truck, the result was three officers dead and five members of RATF arrested: Kuwasi, Gilbert, Sekou Odinga, Judy Clark and Kathy Boudin. Marilyn Buck and Mutulu Shakur were also arrested for their involved in the Brinks job as well as the liberation of Shakur. Kuwasi, who was wanted by New Jersey police for escaping prison, eluded capture only to be arrested later.

During the trial, all of the RATF comrades took the stance that they were prisoners of war and did not recognize the jurisdiction of the court. Kuwasi was particularly articulate. In his opening trial statement, he linked his actions with the 400 year history of Black people being brutalized in this country. This served to turn the tables and place the entire system of US oppression on trial:

“The US doesn’t intend to make fundamental changes, it intends to bully New Afrikans forever and maintain this colonial relationship based on coercion, or worse, a “final solution” This means that some New Afrikan soldiers like myself must make our stand clear and encourage New Afrikan people to prepare to defend themselves from genocide by the American nazis—study our mistakes; build a political program based on land and independence… and be ready to fight and organize our people to resist on every level. My duty as a revolutionary in this matter is to tell the truth, disrespect this court and make it clear that the greatest consequence would be failing to step forward.”

 

For the audacity to act as Prisoners of War and not be shamed as criminals, the judge gave Kuwasi 75 years to life in prison. Kuwasi wrote in a letter, “As to the seventy five years in prison, I am not really worried, not only because I am in the habit of not completing sentences or waiting on parole or any of that nonsense but also because the State simply isn’t going to last seventy five or even fifty years.”

As Anarchist

The 1980s represented an ebb in the overall revolutionary movement. As conservatives continued their assault on the poor, many on the left were bewildered by the new circumstances. In prison, Kuwasi was politically principled, maintaining a revolutionary position, but worried about the future of the movement. Indeed, many of the left press denounced the RATF as “adventurists “, sometimes just as hard as the mainstream press did.

Looking for answers, Kuwasi began a study of anarchism. He was not the only Black Panther to do so; Frankie Zitts and Ashanti Alston also began to read anarchist literature and apply the theories of Wilhelm Reich, Emma Goldman and others to the Black liberation struggle. This was an outgrowth of the organizing work put forward by anarchists in the prison system, particularly groups like Anarchist Black Cross.

For Kuwasi, anarchy served as a framework for his direct action ethos and a means to understanding the shortcomings of the Black Panther Party. For Kuwasi, anarchism meant building the fighting capacity and leadership of the masses through struggle.

In looking back on his Panther days, Kuwasi saw shortcomings in the model of centralized leadership, particularly in its relationship to the rank and file. While Kuwasi embraced anarchism, he did so as a constant nationalist. Looking squarely at the reality of American racism, he still maintained the correct position that Black people were oppressed as a nation and had a right to self-determination. This was in direct refutation of anarchists engaged in a pure class analysis such as the late Freddy Perlman, the target of Kuwasi’s critique “The Continuing Appeal of Anti-Imperialism.”

It would be a failure to simply read Kuwasi’s embrace of anarchism in purely political terms. Anarchism was a theoretical framework for Kuwasi’s unabiding individualism. Within the context of movements, individualism is often seen as a vice and indeed Kuwasi did commit serious errors because of his refusal to abide by collective decision making. Nevertheless, individualism also means choice. The Russian nihilist Nechayev once wrote “The revolutionary is a doomed man”. In Kuwasi’s sense the term “doom” refers to choice; either die a quiet death obeying the dictates of an oppressive system or give up one’s life to fight for freedom. This is not a romantic notion. The state as a whole operates on a “play or pay” model where those who follow the rules receive small rewards and those who rebel are crushed, silenced and forgotten about.

What makes Kuwasi a revolutionary hero is that, like George Jackson, Ella Baker and other Black revolutionaries, he put the struggle for freedom ahead of any personal gain:

“That sentence 75 years after the Brinks robbery was to effect others to frighten others into giving up their lives altogether without fighting for real control of their lives. But if I worked thirty years at the post office and went bowling on Thursdays or doing anything but opposing the U.S. I’d be worse off, it would be like making a rope so my children and myself could be tied up.” 

As Queer

One of the silences that engulfed Kuwasi’s life was his bisexuality. The official eulogies offered by the New Afrikan People’s Organization and others omitted his sexuality or that he died of AIDS-related complications. These erasures are a reflection of the on-going internal struggle against homophobia and patriarchy within the larger society in general and the movement in particular.

The Black liberation movement has had a complex relationship with the question of sexuality. Black people’s sexuality has always been defined from the outside. In the media, Black men and women are portrayed as sexual deviants. As such, protecting the image of Black people as firmly masculine and feminine was a project of much of the Black liberation movement.

Adding fuel to the fire is the in-roads by conservatives, particularly the Christian Right in creating a wedge between Black, feminist and queer movements. The Christian right’s moves have manifested in a number of ways, from accusing queers of benefiting from the Black blood spilled in the civil rights movement to the myth of the “Down-Low” brother infecting Black women with AIDS.

Of course homophobia is a cover for a larger push for forcing “traditional” family structures including condemnation of single family households. Since the Moynihan report of the 1970s that linked Black oppression to the “pathologies of single mothers”, money has flooded people of color communities from “Faith Based” initiatives encouraging abstinence instead of safe sex and forcing single mothers to marry the fathers of their children in order to receive benefits.

Unfortunately some of the Black liberation movement has been taken in by these arguments, although the work of the Combahee River Collective, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, Marlon Riggs, and Dorothy Roberts among others have fashioned space for queer/feminist thought within a larger Black liberation framework. Still, Kuwasi’s life as a queer man presents the Black liberation struggle with the fundamental question of what kind of society are we fighting for. Many feel that there should be unity at all costs and therefore there should be a pragmatic focus on jobs, healthcare and housing. I agree these are key demands and needs in our community; however it’s important not to forget the goal of revolution is not only to lay hands and seize state power but also to smash the state. This means fundamentally smashing the social relationships that reproduce oppression, including homophobia, sexism and patriarchy. This is what we can gather from Kuwasi’s sexuality.

Meaning of Kuwasi for Today

The word meaning comes from moaning. To find meaning is also to find moaning. Often times we get our most contemplative and find meaning in times of distress (i.e.-breaking up with a partner, losing a job) rather than in times of comfort. In the past two years, the activist movement has experienced the moaning of Katrina, a global war perpetuated by the US, and a greater disciplining of the working class, both through unemployment and prison. This is rocky ground in which to grow a social movement and the challenges of being a revolutionary are greater.

However in this moaning, people are finding meaning and truly challenging what the system is all about. There is a growing discontent with the ways things are. In a large sense, the Empire has lost some of its clothes. However, we radicals have not responded in kind. There’s a tendency to put comfort before our activism. There is the mad dash to apply for graduate school or the demand that one has to have a $30,000 salary to be a grassroots organizer.

Kuwasi’s legacy of being a queer Black anarchist freedom fighter, with armed desire, is that the revolutionary is always in discomfort with the status quo. As such, he/she is the disturber of peace, awakening the consciousness of the masses and putting fear into the rulers.images

A Soldier’s Story The Making of a Revolutionary New Afrikan Freedom Fighter- Kuwasi Balagoon

26 Sunday Jan 2014

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TRIBUTE TO KUWASI BALAGOON
Welcome and Freedom Fighter Libation
New Afrikan Youth: Sing “Righteous Soldiers”
Video— October 20, 1986 Interview of Kuwasi
Comments
Chokwe Lumumba, Chairman, New Afrikan People’s Organization
Judy Holmes, Resistance Law Office
Julio Rosado, Movement for National Liberation, Puerto Rico
Poetry
of the BLA
—
Readings from Soul of the BLA rj
Nkechi Taifa, Provisional Government, Republic of New Afrika
Prison. Notes £
DgvJd Gilbert, Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner £
Mutulu Shakur, New Afrikan Prisoner of War r
.,.–•'” Cultural Presentation C
“Love In Need of Love,” by Marc Carrie and Kokayi Patterson ”
Eulogy g
“The Making of a Revolutionary New Afrikan Soldier: r~
The Man, The Soldier, The Humanist” *—.
Ahmed Obafemi, New Afrikan People’s Organization I
* L
Commemoration from Auburn Prisoners
Remarks from Diane Weems Ligon, Kuwasi’s Sister \n of the New Afrikan Flag to Family
New Afrikan People’s Organization Anthem
“Come Together Black People”
Honor Guards in Absentia
Sekou Odinga Assata Shakur Mutulu Shakur
Nehanda Abiodun David Gilbert Judy Clark
Abdul Majid Bashir Hameed Silvia Baraldini
Marilyn Buck Chui Ferguson
[>.;« rrihnr/> wac nrpaniy^d hv the New Afrikan People’s Organization with the help of many comrades and friend.

Statement to New Afrikan Freedom Fighters Day, 1983
Revolutionary Greetings Brothers and Sisters:
On the 3rd Anniversary of New Afrikan Freedom Fighters Day i’d like to extend my feelings of
comradeship and optimism.
That the Government of the United States or any government has the right to control the lives of
New\ Afrikan People is absurd and has no basis in principled reason or justice or common decency.
Only New Afrikan people should govern New Afrikan people, in the manner that we collectively as a
people deem correct.
This being so and that on top of forcing us to live as a colonialized people, the government of the
United States has been and is practicing genocide against us, it is our right, duty and natural inclination
to defend ourselves and provide for the safety and well being of our people. As Marcus Garvev stated,
We cannot leave the fate of our people to chance.
The necessity of building a peoples army to carry out armed struggle and a mass movement to build
the infrastructure for the superceding society must be explained to the masses of our people. We must
organize this, our army and our total revolution along principled lines that will deliver us as a people to
land ample enough to support our population in order to obtain our self-determination. It is either
liberation and self-determination for us as a people or more colonial degradation and genocide. These
are the choices.
If we choose to live, we must carry on a revolutionary struggle to completion, guard against
corruption and liberalism in our ranks and be consistent in building not only the means of cutting
ourselves free of America but of securing our survival and self-determination by building the
superceding society to provide for the needs of our people. As a better organized, more politicized and
security conscious approach must be developed in building our army, a more grassroots basic approach
must be developed to deal not only with the political mobilization of the masses but the needs
surrounding our day to day survival. We must build a revolutionary political platform and a universal
network of survival programs, along with the army.
Imperialism must expand or die and even as the pigs escalate their military and political offensive,
they have lost their grip increasingly throughout this world, despite their wolf tickets because the
peoples of Cuba, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Libya, Angola, Tanzania, Vietnam, Cambodia, Nicaragua,
Grenada and other lands have put their heads and hearts together, to devise no nonsense methods to
drive the Americans out.
If we do the same, we will obtain the same results. In fact we will obtain greater results because our
liberation would mean a greater decline to imperialism than any of the previous people’s victors; and
reaction would be weakened to a corresponding extent.
There is no way for us as a people or any of us individually to correspond our conditions to those we
desire, we have NEVER known freedom—however we will know freedom. We will win.
Love, Power & Peace by Piece
Kuwasi Balagoo

Your honor poem :

your honor
since i’ve been convicted of murder
and have taken the time to digest
just what that means
after noting what it means to my family
and how it affects people who read the newspapers
and all
i see now, that i’ve made an awful mistake!
and didn’t approach this matter of a trial
in a respectful, deliberate or thoughtful manner
didn’t take advantage of the best legal advice
and based my actions on irrelevant matters
which i can see now in a much more sober mind
had nothing to do with this case
i must have been legally insane thinking about:
the twenty five murders of children in Atlanta since Wayne Williams capture
the recent murder of a man in boston by police
the two recent murders of two in Chicago by police
the shooting of the five year old little boy in suburban fialif
the lynchings in Alabama
the mob murder of a transit worker in Brooklyn
the murders of fourteen women in Boston
feeling that this is evidence of something
and that there must be a lesson in all this—i though murder was legal.
Kuwasi Balagoon
— Kuwasi Balagoon

“Anarchy Can’t Fight Alone”

By Kuwasi Balagoon

Of all ideologies, anarchy is the one that addresses liberty and equalitarian relations in a realistic and ultimate fashion. It is consistent with each individual having an opportunity to live a complete and total 1ife, With anarchy, the society as a whole not only maintains itself at an equal expense to all, but progresses in a creative process unhindered by any class, caste or party. This is because the goals of anarchy don’t include replacing one ruling class with another, neither in the guise of a fairer boss or as a party. This is key because this is what separates anarchist revolutionaries from Maoist, socialist and nationalist revolutionaries who from the onset do not embrace complete revolution. They cannot envision a truly free and equalitarian society and must to some extent embrace the socialization process that makes exploitation and oppression possible and prevalent in the first place.

When I first became a revolutionary and accepted the doctrine of nationalism as a response to genocide practiced by the United States government, I knew as I do now that the only way to end the evil practices of the US was to crush the government and the ruling class that shielded itself through that government was through protracted guerrilla warfare.

Armed with that knowledge, I set out the initial organizing of the Black Panther Party until the state’s escalation of the war against the Black people that was begun with the invasion of Africa to capture slaves made it clear to me that to survive and contribute I would have to go underground and literally fight.

Once captured for armed robbery, I had the opportunity to see the weakness of the movement and put the state’s offensive in perspective. First, the state rounded up all the organizers pointed out to it by agents who had infiltrated the party as soon as it had begun organizing in N.Y. It charged these people with conspiracy and demanded bails so high that the party turned away from its purposes of liberation of the black colony to fund raising. At that point, leadership was imported rather than developed locally and the situation deteriorated quickly and sharply. Those who were bailed out were those chosen by the leadership, regardless of the wishes of the rank and file or fellow prisoners of war, or regardless of the relatively low bail of at least one proven comrade.

Under their leadership, “political consequences” (attacks) against occupation forces ceased altogether. Only a Fraction of the money collected for the Purpose of bail went towards bail. The leaders began to live high off the hog while the rank and file sold papers, were filtered out leaving behind so many robots who wouldn’t challenge policy until those in jail publicly denounced the leadership.

How could a few jerks divert so much purpose and energy for so long? How could they neutralize the courage and intellect of the cadre? The answers to these questions are that the cadre accepted their leadership and accepted their command regardless of what their intellect had or had not made clear to them. The true democratic process which they were willing to die for, for the sake of their children, they would not claim for themselves.

These are the same reasons that the people’s Republic of China supported UNITA and the reactionary South African government in Angola; that the war continued in Southeast Asia after the Americans had done the bird; why the Soviet Union, the product of the first Socialist revolution is not providing the argument that it should and could through being a model

This is not to say that the people of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Zimbabwe or Cuba aren’t better off Because of the struggles they endured. It is to say that the only way to make a dictatorship of the proletariat Is to elevate everyone to being proletariat and deflate all the advantages of power that translate into the wills of a few dictating to the majority the possibility must be prevented of any individual or group of individuals being able to enforce their wills over any other individual’s private life Or to extract social consequences for behavior preferences or ideas.

Only an anarchist revolution has on its agenda to deal with these goals. This Would seem to galvanize the working class, déclassé intellectuals, colonized third world nations and some members of the petty bourgeois and alright bourgeoise. But this is not the case.

That China, North Korea, Vietnam, and Mozambique would build round a Marxist ideology to drive out invaders and rebuild feudal economies in the midst of western imperialisms designs and efforts to reinvade and recolonize is a point that can be argued in the light of the international situation it is one thing that they don’t back the will of the people as much as they chose allies in the East- West wars fought on the ground of the non-white  colonies. It is another thing that Anarchy ceases to inflame or take the lead in combating fascism and imperialism here in North America with the history of the Wobblies, the western federation of minors and other groups who have made their mark on history. It is a denial of our historic task, the betrayal of Anarchists who died resisting tyranny in the past, malingering in the face of horrible conditions. It is the theft of an option to the next generation and forfeiture of our own lives through faint hearts.

We permit people of other ideologies to define Anarchy rather than bring our views to the masses and provide models to show the contrary. We permit corporations to not only lay off workers and to threaten the balance of workers while cutting their salaries, but to poison the air and water to boot. We permit the police, Klan and Nazis to terrorize whatever sector of the population they wish without repaying them back in any kind. In short, by not engaging in mass organizing and delivering war to the oppressors we become Anarchists in name only.

Because Marxists and nationalists ain’t doing this to a large extent doesn’t make it any less a shame. Our inactivity creates a void that this police state with its reactionary press and definite goals are filling. The parts of people’s lives supposedly touched by mass organizing and revolutionary inspiration that sheds a light that encourages them to unveil a new day, instead are being manipulated by conditions of which apathy is no less a part than poisonous uncontested reactionary propaganda. To those who believe in a centralized party with a program for the masses this might mean whatever their subjective analysis permits. But to us who truly believe in the masses and believe that they should have their lives in their hands and know that freedom is a habit, this can only mean that we have far to go.

In the aftermath of the Overtown rebellion, the Cubam community conceded as lost souls by Castro came out clearly in support of the Black colony. And predictably the Ku Klux Klan, through an Honorary FBI agent Bill Wilkenson, made no bones about supporting the rights of businesses and the business of imperialism. Third World colonies throughout the United States face genocide and it is time for anarchists to join the oppressed combat against the oppressors. We must support in words and actions, self-determination, and self-defense for third world peoples.

It is beside the point whether Black, Puerto Rican, Native American and Chicano- Mexicano people endorse nationalism as a vehicle for self-determination or agree with anarchism as being the only road to self-determination. As revolutionaries we must support the will of the masses. It is not only racism but compliance with the enemy to stand outside of the social arena and permit America to continue to practice genocide against the third world captive colonies because although they resist, they don’t agree with us. If we truly know that Anarchy is the best way of life for all people, we must promote it, defend it and know that the people who are as smart as we are will accept it. To expect people-to accept this, while they are being wiped out as a nation without allies ready to put out on the line what they already have on the line is crazy.

Where we live and work, we must Not only escalate discussion and study Groups, we must also organize on the ground level. The landlords must be contested through rent strikes and rather than develop strategies to pay the rent, we should develop strategies to take the buildings. We must not only recognize the squatters movement for what it is, but support and embrace it. Set up communes in abandoned buildings, sell scrap cars and aluminum cans. Turn vacant lots into gardens. When our children grow out of clothes, we should have places where we can take them, clearly marked anarchist clothing exchanges and have no bones about looking for clothing there first. And of course we should relearn how to preserve food; we must learn construction and ways to take back our lives, help each other move and stay in shape.

Let’s keep the American and Canadian flags flying at half mast… I refuse to believe that Direct Action has been captured.

detail_76_balagoon2

A TRIBUTE TO GEORGE PADMORE, A GREAT PAN-AFRICANIST

26 Sunday Jan 2014

Posted by newafrikan77 in Uncategorized

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I

n May 2013 there were two commemorations, one in Paris, the other in Addis Ababa. In Paris on 10 May 2013 in the presence of the French President, François Hollande, the commemoration of the abolition of slavery was observed and in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia on 25 May 2013 the fiftieth anniversary of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) was celebrated, which has been the African Union since 11 July 2001.•1  These commemorations are a reminder of two key moments in the history of Africa.

The first evokes the end of the slave trade and slavery in 1848, which constituted the framework for a process of dispossession and depopulation as well as the underdevelopment of Africa, as has been brilliantly shown by two Caribbean historians, Eric Williams and Walter Rodney. For centuries, the African continent lost many of its most able-bodied individuals, its societies were disrupted and its States dismantled. Consequently, it lost considerable ground in relation to Europe and America which benefited from the profits of the slave trade to create the basis of their own development. Colonial intrusion and domination then aggravated this process by putting an end to the relative freedom of the populations and by emphasising their dependence on the West.•2

The creation of the OAU in 1963 represents the pinnacle of the reverse process, i.e. the re-appropriation of their history by Africans at the same time as they affirmed their faith in a common future.

The life and work of George Padmore, a great activist in the Pan- Africanism movement, remind us of these struggles for independence and the unification of the continent which stimulated this process of release and rehabilitation.

 

PROLOGUE

The prolegomena of Pan-Africanism are to be found in the second half of the 18th century, when an enormous wave of challenges to political and social regimes developed in the Western world, following the dissemination of the Enlightenment philosophies and the promotion of the principle of human rights, associated with the prevailing romanticism, the emergence of national mythologies and the technological knowledge of the Industrial Revolution.

As an ideology and as a policy of liberation of the African Blacks from the chains of slavery, colonial exploitation and racism, Pan- Africanism is comparable to the national movements of the 19th century which sought to give concrete form to the liberal aspirations of the peoples of Latin America and Central and Eastern Europe through the dismantling of the geopolitical spaces harking back to the time of the absolute monarchies operating by divine right. Such was the purpose of Pan-Slavism, on the basis of which the Congress of Prague in 1848 aimed to bring together into a Yugoslav federation all the Slavs who were at that time scattered among a number of States. Simon Bolivar had a similar goal when he planned to bring together the territories released from Spanish rule into a big South American confederation called Colombia.•3

In the wake of these Pan-Slav and Pan-American movements, there followed Pan-Germanism, Zionism, Pan-Islamism, Pan-Arabism, Pan- Africanism, etc. This trend towards accumulating national aspirations, crystallised in huge continental groups, is particularly characteristic of the period 1890-1914, which saw the apogee of European expansion and the sharing out of the world among the great powers of the time.•4

Although Pan-Africanism forms part of a vast global trend, its origins were specifically American. In fact, it was on the American continent that the Africans wrenched from their native lands by the slave trade endured the yoke of slavery in the cotton and sugar cane plantations of North America, the Caribbean and tropical South America. Initiated in the 18th  century, criticism of this exploitative system, supported by many slave uprisings, resulted in the abolition of the slave trade in the mid-19th century, followed by the abolition of slavery itself.•5

But there was a wide gap between legal abolition and the daily reality of the lives of these Africans of the diaspora who continued to live through the hell of inequality and racial discrimination. Although they were no longer slaves, they were still not citizens: independent, democratic and liberal America was above all an America for Whites, where Blacks had no rights, in either the North or the South of this new continent, although it was a crossroads where all races encountered each other. Even in the West Indies, reduced to the rank of colonies, the situation was no better: colonial exploitation was based on the unequal system of the society that practiced slavery. For the oppressed Africans whose claims were rejected by America, there were only two solutions: to return to the country of their ancestors or to engage in revolutionary struggle to change American societies.•6

Some chose to wage the struggle in America itself to change the living conditions there while others opted to return to Africa to rediscover the land of their ancestors and to lead a life of freedom and progress beyond the control of the Whites. The choice of the latter group signified a link between the Africans of the diaspora and the Africans of the continent; it postulated the globalisation of the struggle and contained the seeds of Pan-Africanism.

Those who chose not to emigrate but to remain in America set about improving their lot or changing the living conditions of their compatriots; one of these was Booker T. Washington (1856-1945), the founder and director of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, an educational, technical and vocational training institution whose success gave its illustrious director considerable notoriety both inside and outside the United States. In his bestseller of 1899 entitled Up from Slavery, he recounted his own experience and showed Blacks the example to follow. Another famous intellectual Dr William B. Du Bois (1868-1963), became involved in civic and social action using the press and an associated movement: his journal The Crisis and his movement, The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People (NAACP), for a long time constituted global benchmarks of the struggle of African-Americans for the recognition of their human rights.

The advocates of the return to Africa left mainly from North America and the Caribbean. In this way, freed Blacks returned to West Africa to settle in the colonies for freed slaves, Sierra Leone and Liberia. There they formed new societies whose modern elites made the first contributions to a consideration of how to achieve the renaissance of the black race and of Africa. Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), one of the most famous among their number, who lived in Liberia and in Sierra Leone and travelled a great deal in West Africa, laid the foundations of Pan-Africanism in a famous work entitled Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race.•7

By turns a teacher, journalist and diplomat, Blyden conducted a number of missions on behalf of the American Colonisation Society to the United States to promote black emigration to Liberia. Combining evangelism and a call to emigration, missionaries like Bishop Henry McNeal Turner urged many Blacks to go to Liberia. But it was above all Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) who won the most success when he became, from 1914 to the end of the 1920s, the most eloquent advocate for the cause of the Blacks and their emigration from the Americas to Africa: he had set up the Universal Negro Improvement and Conservation Association (UNIA), had engaged in a programme of the creation of technical teaching institutions and established a merchant fleet (the Black Star Line) in order to achieve the constitution of a “central nation for the black race.” This appealing programme attracted considerable support and there were many applicants for the voyage.

It is worth noting also that at the end of the 18th century groups of freed slaves from Brazil and Cuba had begun to settle in the coastal regions of the Gulf of Guinea (Gold Coast, Togo, Benin and Nigeria). This movement which became more pronounced when slavery was abolished in Brazil (1880) poured into these areas men with a variety of technical skills and who represented pockets of modernity in traditional African societies which nevertheless adopted them.

Lastly, let us note that the supporters and opponents of emigration came together over time in common activities in America and Africa which brought into contact Africans from Africa and Africans of the diaspora. This led to the confirmation at the educational and professional level of the technical and cultural Pan-Africanism of Booker T. Washington whose Tuskegee Institute accepted African students and sent several agricultural and technology advisory missions to Africa. He organised periodic exchange meetings and in 1912 hosted the International Conference on Blacks during which he emphasised the importance of technical and resource exchanges between African and American Blacks. Delegates from the principal African regions took part, including the eminent intellectual from the Gold Coast, Casely Hayford, author of Ethiopia Unbound (1911). For his part, William B. Du Bois, although he believed that he had a role to play in America among his own people, continued to engage in the issues of the African continent by means of the Congresses in which he was an assiduous participant, as well as in the problems of the black American migrants to Africa for whom he had no hesitation in declaring that, all things considered, emigration was preferable to “the humiliation of having to beg to be acknowledged and treated with justice in the United States.”•8

This makes it easy to understand the leading role played by the Africans of the diaspora, and especially the Caribbean elites, in the birth and development of Pan-Africanism. Within this black intelligentsia, which was very active from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th  century, we should note the names of the African-Americans Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), Booker Tallaferro Washington (1856-1915), William Burghardt Du Bois (1868- 1963) and a plethora of Caribbeans, including notably the Trinidadian Henry Sylvester Williams (1869-1911), the Jamaican Marcus Aurelius Garvey (1887-1940), the Trinidadian Cyril Lionel James (1901-1989) and above all yet another native of Trinidad, George Padmore (1902- 1959).

 

A REBELLIOUS STUDENT AND A COMMUNIST ACTIVIST

Born on 28 July 1902 at Tacarigua (Trinidad), Malcolm Ivan Meredith Nurse was educated at primary and secondary levels on his native island. He went to the United States in 1924, with the intention of studying medicine, but gravitated towards law and the social sciences. He attended successively Fisk University (Tennessee), Columbia University, New York University (Law School) and Howard University (Washington DC). It was during his university studies in the United States that he joined the Communist Party in 1927 and adopted the name of George Padmore so that his activist work would not expose his family to repression at a time when Communists were demonised.•9

But Padmore quite quickly abandoned his university studies in favour of his Communist activism which fitted in well with his anti- racist and anti-colonialist stance. He became one of the organisers of the American Communist Party and distinguished himself particularly by his activity in mobilising black American workers as well as through his activities as a journalist and pamphleteer.

Having thus got himself noticed by the leaders of the Communist Party, he was summoned in March 1929 to take part in his personal capacity in the Party’s Sixth National Convention being held in New York. Towards the end of the same year, he was sent on a mission to the Comintern in Moscow to report on the establishment of the International Workers Union.•10

The report led to his appointment as the Head of the Negro Bureau of the Red International of Labour Unions. He settled in Moscow where he was also elected as a member of the local Soviet (similar to Western city councils). He took advantage of this to make an active contribution to the Moscow Daily News, an English-language paper published in the city.

As a leading figure in international Communism, Padmore used his energetic activism and his journalistic eloquence to fulfil his mission, i.e. the mobilisation of the Blacks of the colonies and the United States to promote the colonial revolution and the struggles against racism and racial discrimination. Having taken part in the United States in the struggle of the black workers in the framework of the American Negro Labor Congress, it was this second section of his programme which constituted his priority action between 1930 and 1933.

From Vienna, where he lived for a time after Moscow, Padmore organised in Hamburg in July 1930 the first International Black Workers Conference, in which Blacks from various parts of the world participated. The resolutions of this conference demanded the abolition of racial barriers in the Labour Unions, the development of leadership among black workers and launched the slogan: “equal pay for equal work” which would become very popular in African trade unionism after the Second World War. To ensure the practical consequences of these resolutions, he launched in Vienna the publication of “The Negro Worker,” the organ of the struggle of the International Black Workers Committee.

In 1931, he left Vienna to live in Hamburg and continued his activity of mobilising the masses and harassing employers, through the periodical press and the publication of a pamphlet entitled The Life and Struggles of Negro Toilers. In this work he analysed the situation of the black soldiers and workers of the Americas and Africa. In particular Padmore highlighted the tragedy of the Congo-Océan, a railway connecting Brazzaville to Pointe-Noire, during the construction of which thousands of Africans died and of which Albert Londres said that the price of every railway sleeper was one dead man. He dwelt on the revolt of 1928 in this colony, attributing its cause to the bad treatment meted out to the workers.•11

At the end of 1931, Padmore replaced James Ford, an African- American trade union leader, at the head of the International Trade Union Committee of Negro Workers (ITUCNW) and of the journal The Negro Worker. Padmore intended to make the journal an organ of mass education designed to raise awareness among the population of the importance of trade unions and collective action against capitalist exploitation.

Although George Padmore’s political career experienced a meteoric rise from 1929 to 1933, the years that followed constituted a decisive turning point in his political and ideological career. In fact he lost the trust of his Soviet friends and left Moscow, not to return to the United States, but to go to Western Europe where he established the new framework for his activity.•12

It was the combination of circumstances prevailing in 1933 in Europe that caused the crisis in the relationship between George Padmore and the Soviet Union. With the arrival of Hitler and the Nazis to power in Germany, the European extreme right made its presence felt with great fanfare and provoked in Europe the unleashing of an intensification of the anti-Fascist struggle at both state and civic levels. Anti-Fascist fronts were formed everywhere and the criminal activities of Hitler and his henchmen against the Jews, Communists and Freemasons led the Soviet strategists to bring about a rapprochement with the “bourgeois democracies” of the West. Henceforth these “imperialist” powers had to be handled in such a way as to ensure the survival of the Soviet State, the vanguard of the global proletariat.

Joseph Stalin, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and President of the Council of the People’s Commissars, ordered all the Communist Parties, members of the Third International, to form anti-Fascist fronts and alliances everywhere and to prioritise the struggle against Nazism over other struggles (class struggles and anticolonial struggles). The facts seem to have proved him right, since in the year 1933 ultra-nationalist Nazi groups completely destroyed the offices of the Negro Worker in Hamburg. Padmore himself was expelled from Germany to Great Britain by the new German government. It was then that the Comintern decided in April 1933 to suspend the activities of the ITUCNW and its press organ.

Deeply disappointed by the Comintern’s policy of compromise which sacrificed the struggle of the colonised peoples, Padmore abruptly broke his ties with the ITUCNW at the end of the summer of 1933. Charged with explaining his conduct to the International Control Commission, the disciplinary body of the Comintern, he refused to appear and was excluded from the Communist Movement on 23 February 1934. An important phase in his political journey had just come to an end.•13

 

ANTI–COLONIALIST AND PAN-AFRICANIST ACTIVIST

After attempting to settle in France, where he had old friends like Garang Kouyaté who were members of the Comintern, Padmore finally ended up in London where in 1934 he found conditions conducive to genuine anticolonial and Pan-African activism.

Having resumed his activities as a journalist, he renewed contact with William B. Du Bois and his journal Crisis and met Caribbeans already settled in London, including his childhood friend Cyril Lionel James (Trinidad) and Ras Makonnen (Guyana), Africans like Jomo Kenyatta (Kenya) and the trade unionist Wallace Johnson (Sierra Leone). Among the group of friends Padmore had in London, we should note the discreet but nonetheless dominating influence of Ras Makonnen. Born George Thomas Nathaniel Griffith, this native of Guyana was a wealthy man, the owner of considerable assets in Manchester: several restaurants, cafes and other leisure establishments frequented by a clientele of workers and students as well as the future African and West Indian leaders of the post-Second World War period. He also had a bookshop, the Economist, and a publishing house, called the Pan-African Publishing Company, which published the monthly journal Pan-Africa. Consequently, it is easy to understand why Manchester hosted the Fifth Pan-African Congress in 1945.•14

In conjunction with members of the Labour Party, Padmore engaged in activity in the pacifist movement “No More War” and contributed to the weekly publication, The New Leader. He also made contact with students from the British colonies of South Asia as well with the great activists of the Indian National Congress like Krishna Menon and K. D. Kumria. The latter founded Swaraj House, a meeting place for Indian patriots also used by the Africans. It was in this Indian house that Padmore met Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, leader of the Indian National Congress and future Prime Minister.•15

Consequently, from 1934 until the Second World War, Padmore was in contact with the various intellectual and political circles of the African and Asian diasporas in London, as well as with a number of British progressive groups. He had thereby put himself at the heart of a network of writers, journalists and activists, who had committed themselves to defend in speech and in writing the cause of the liberation of the colonies, particularly that of Pan-Africanism and African independence.

These intellectuals published small periodicals intended for the colonies or articles in the mass circulation press like the New Leader of the Labour Party. They wrote open letters and published books with the support of certain publishers. This was how in 1935 Padmore and his friends created “The International African Friends of Ethiopia,” an association intended to respond to the Italian Fascist invasion in Ethiopia. In 1937, they changed it into the International African Service Bureau (IASB) which in 1938 launched a press organ, The International African Opinion, tasked with promoting Pan-Africanism. In the meantime, Padmore published How Britain Rules Africa (1936), a book which condemned British colonialism, and Africa and World Peace (1937), another book in which he exposed the misdeeds of colonialism and dismantled the myth of the civilising mission of Westerners.

On the eve of the Second World War, George Padmore was enjoying considerable notoriety, gained from the middle of the 1930s, when, almost every week, he wrote for the papers of the black peoples of the entire world, such as the Jamaican publication Public Opinion and Ashanti Pioneer from the Gold Coast, the American papers like the Chicago Defender and Crisis. To this list we can add another activity mentioned on the back cover of his book, Africa and World Peace, which describes Padmore as the representative in Europe of the Pittsburgh Courier, Gold Coast Spectator, Africa Morning Post, Panama Tribune, and Independent Belize. This is no doubt the reason why Cyril James recommended Francis Nkrumah to George Padmore, who took charge of him in 1945 from the first moment of his stay in London.

During the period 1938-1945, Padmore had not abandoned his commitment to the struggle for the liberation of the black world. He continued to engage in the information and mobilisation of intellectuals and students. Among them, two students were destined to play major roles in history, the Trinidadian Eric Williams, a student at Oxford, who became an eminent historian and head of state and Francis Nkrumah from the Gold Coast, the African who came from the United States to study law at London University and who later became Kwame Nkrumah, the first President of Ghana and the uncontested champion of Pan-Africanism in the 1960s.

During the war, Padmore continued to write and influence the members of the black intelligentsia who gravitated towards him. He constantly sent press articles to various papers. From 1938 to 1945, there were about thirty articles denouncing Fascism and colonial exploitation, the British colonial policy and Anglo-American imperialist collusion; also criticising the compromise of socialists and Labour Party supporters with the Conservatives’ colonial policy; and lastly extolling the battles of the colonised peoples of the West Indies and Africa.

A permanent presence in journalistic activity but also a permanent presence in militant activism: in 1944, the International African Service Bureau (IASB) was transformed into the Pan-African Federation, with Padmore as General Secretary. Assisted by this structure and the collaboration of Kwame Nkrumah and Ras Makonnen, in October 1945, he organised the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester. It was the first time that Padmore’s name appeared as a key figure in the annals of these Pan-African meetings which had first been held at the beginning of the 20th century.

In fact, the first Pan-African initiatives were taken by the Trinidadian Henry Sylvester Williams (1869-1911), a London barrister who in 1897 founded the African Association, a forum whose purpose was to reflect on the problems shared by the Africans and Blacks of the diaspora. In cooperation with a number of black leaders from several countries in the African diaspora, in 1900 Sylvester Williams organised in London the First Conference of the African Association which launched the first manifesto of Pan-Africanism with the motto: “the Union of all Africans.” Thirty delegates attended this meeting, including a majority of Anglophone Caribbeans, some Africans and some African-Americans including the celebrated William B. Du Bois.

Subsequently, the African Association Conference which became the Pan-African Congress met five times, in 1919, 1921, 1923, 1927 and 1945, with increasingly specific objectives and increasingly large- scale African participation. Meeting in Paris from 19 to 21 February 1919, the First Pan-African Congress, chaired by William B. Du Bois (1869-1963), was attended by fifty-seven participants from fifteen countries. Notable among the delegates was Deputy Blaise Diagne from Senegal. The Congress took advantage of the concomitant meeting of the Versailles Peace Conference to register among its demands not only the problems of freedom and equality for Blacks, but also and above all the problem of African participation in the management of affairs in the African colonies.•16

With diverse fortunes concerning the number of participants, the following congresses forcefully reaffirmed the issues of the abolition of racial discrimination and white domination in the United States and in Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as the accession to self- government of colonial Blacks, particularly in West Africa and the Caribbean. These were the major objectives of the Second Pan-African Congress (London, Paris and Brussels, 28 and 29 April 1921), of the Third Congress (London, 7 and 8 November 1923 and Lisbon, 12 December 1923) and of the Fourth Congress (New York, 21 to 24 August 1927).•17

Consequently, when Padmore took charge of organising the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester (15 to 19 October 1945), in addition to the lessons learned from the preceding meetings, he had the benefit of the depth of his own organisational experience as a mass agitator in the international communist movement and an agitator of ideas among the progressive anticolonial intelligentsia. Two of his friends who knew him well have eloquently testified to Padmore’s qualities as a political and association activist. The Trinidadian Cyril Lionel James, his childhood friend, spoke of him in the following terms: “George adopted the Communist doctrine completely and became very expert in it. People who knew him then agree he was a great militant, active, devoted and fearless.” The Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah appeared to express the same view when he wrote: “George Padmore had many sterling qualities. He was a worthy patriot, a powerful orator, a great freedom fighter.” Emphasizing his qualities as an orator, he said: “As an orator, he was impeccable and unflustered. No degree of heckling could drive him off his point which he always held tenaciously and with consummate courage.”•18

The quasi-“revolutionary” context of the post-war period, characterised in Europe by the thrust of the popular forces that emerged from the resistance to Nazi oppression and in the colonies through the aspirations to freedom and racial equality linked to the return of the former combatants, was conducive to an ideologically more structured Pan-Africanism which was politically orientated towards action. In addition, the participation in this Congress of Kwame Nkrumah and of a set of African policy frameworks provided it with a field of implementation.

In fact, the Manchester Congress was attended by over two hundred delegates including a large proportion of Africans mainly from the British colonies and many Caribbeans; representatives of the British associations, delegates from student and youth movements including the West Africa Students Union (WASU) and the West African Youth League; activists from the American civil rights movements and the African and Asian nationalist movements. In addition to Du Bois, Padmore and Nkrumah, let us note the presence at this Congress of well-known personalities such as Amy Jacques Garvey (widow of Marcus Garvey), Jomo Kenyatta, (future President of Kenya), Hastings Banda (first President of Malawi), Obafemi Awolowo and Jaja Wachusker (prestigious leaders of Nigeria). We may also mention the Indians Surat Allee, N. Gangulee and the Sri Lankan Subasinghe.•19

In the context of the immediate post-war period, the Congress took up the resolutions of the preceding congresses, giving them a more radical ideological and political connotation: racial discrimination was denounced as a criminal offence, colonialism regarded as an obstacle to development and the liberation of Africa and its unification were declared priority goals. The radicalism of the Manchester Congress was expressed in the form of two complementary declarations which would henceforth constitute the charter of Pan-Africanism:

— The declaration addressed to the colonial powers states a number of requirements relating to the abolition of colonialism in Africa and of all the systems of domination in the world, the abolition of racial laws and discriminatory regulations, the establishment of democratic freedoms and universal suffrage, the abolition of forced labour and the establishment of wage equality and finally the establishment of a universal education and health system.

— The declaration addressed to the peoples of Africa asserts that the conquest of political independence is the prerequisite to full emancipation and calls on intellectuals and other population groups to unite to win their country’s liberation.

Compared with the earlier Congresses, the Manchester Congress established Pan-Africanism as the depository of the African continent’s political consciousness and of its peoples, the ideological reference body for actions related to the liberation and development of these peoples. In Padmore’s view, this Congress was “an historic conference” which had rejected capitalism and Communism and identified “Pan-African socialism” as the solution to Africa’s problems.•20

It was in the same spirit that shortly after the war, between 1945 and 1949, Padmore became firmly committed to the anticolonial struggle and promoted the immediate liberation of the colonised African countries. He did so by continuing to denounce British colonialism in his writing and by implementing the programme resulting from the Manchester Pan-African Congress.

A number of major publications illustrate the way he refocused his activity towards Africa. In 1946, he published How Russia Transformed her Colonial Empire. A Challenge for the Imperial Powers, in which he compared the policy of racial equality and recognition of the cultural rights of the non-Russian nationalities used by the Soviets with the policy of racial discrimination and cultural contempt practised by the British and French colonialists. We must be grateful to Padmore, who broke away from the Comintern in 1934, for having recognised the merits of the Soviet policy of regional balance in the former Tsarist empire where the peoples characterised as non-native had formerly had a status inferior to that of the Russians. The publication in 1949 of Africa: Britain’s Third Empire continued to reveal similar criticisms of the problems of British Africa and to fuel the programme of denouncing colonialism.

In 1946, in the wake of the Manchester Congress attended by a number of Asian patriots, Padmore, Du Bois and Jomo Kenyatta joined the Indian Krishna Menon in a demonstration protesting against the use of colonial troops in Indochina and Burma. This united action on the part of the Africans and the Asians, allied against colonialism, was postulated by Pan-Africanism, as can be seen from the title of the programme published in 1947 by Padmore: History of the Pan-African Congress. Colonial and Coloured Unity: a Programme of Action. In substance, the Congress resolutions demanded the independence of the colonies, universal equality in South Africa, the creation of a federation and its own government in the British West Indies, the banning of discrimination on the basis of race or colour in Great Britain and throughout the world. As the Secretary of the Pan-African Federation, Padmore thought of creating a Pan-African press agency. But in that year of 1947, his friend and ally Nkrumah returned to his country of the Gold Coast to implement the Congress programme.

 

PADMORE IN AFRICA: PAN-AFRICANISM IN ACTION

At the instigation of Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah returned to the Gold Coast to direct the national liberation movement. In 1947 he became first of all the Secretary General of the United Gold Coast Convention (UGCC) of which the elderly professor Danquah was the President. Disagreeing with the political stance of this group, in 1949 he founded the Convention People’s Party (CPP) which adopted the slogan “self-government now.” He organised mass action by boycotting imported goods and engaging in civil disobedience and thereby dealt a severe blow to the colonial administration. Arrested and imprisoned in 1950 with some of his comrades, Kwame Nkrumah was released and elected to lead the independent government of the Gold Coast following the victory of the CPP in the parliamentary elections of 1951.•21

In 1953 Padmore and Nkrumah organised at Kumassi in the Gold Coast the Sixth Pan-African Conference, now known as the All African Peoples Conference (AAPC); Padmore became its Secretary General. In the same year was published The Gold Coast Revolution: The struggle of an African People from Slavery to Freedom, a book in which Padmore recounted the struggle led by Kwame Nkrumah to bring colonialism to an end. He praised the benefits of non-violence and saw this charismatic leader as the incarnation of the Pan-African dream. As a result, he advised his friend, the writer Richard Wright, to visit the Gold Coast to find out about the achievements of an independent country. Consequently, the American novelist travelled to Accra and recorded his impressions in a book entitled Black Power published in 1954, which nonetheless contained an element of bitterness, when he wrote: “They were black, I was black, they called me White.”•22

Henceforth, Padmore’s full attention was focused on the Gold Coast where Nkrumah was conducting what Padmore regarded as an exemplary and exceptional experiment. In fact, the situation evolved rapidly because the dynamic unleashed in 1951 was pulling the country along in an irreversible process: in the parliamentary elections of 1956, the CPP won three-quarters of the seats and Nkrumah immediately asked Great Britain to grant his country its independence. This demand was accepted without demur by the realistic British government. On 6 March 1957, the Gold Coast became the independent State of Ghana and one stage of the national liberation process was complete. George Padmore, invited to the independence celebrations, was chosen by Kwame Nkrumah to be appointed as African Affairs Adviser.

But in the meantime, Padmore who had seen that the independence was about to come of this pioneer country in the liberation of Africa, published Pan-Africanism or Communism in 1956, a book simultaneously doctrinal and historical, in which he recounted the battles waged by the black peoples, settled his accounts with both the imperialists and the Communists and pointed the way forward to the Africans and their brothers of the diaspora: neither capitalism or Communism, but Pan-Africanism as a framework and a humanist socialism as the content.•23 Independent Ghana, led by Kwame Nkrumah and George Padmore, committed itself to achieving the old Pan-African dream of their forerunners, Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832-1912), Henry Sylvester Williams (1868-1911) and William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868- 1963). First through Pan-African conferences intended to enable Africans to speak with a single voice and make themselves heard, and second through agreements and institutional unions of African States, intended to act as beacons on the path to the unification of the continent.

In April 1958, Padmore organised in Accra the Conference of the Heads of State and Government of the independent African States. In

December 1958, the Seventh All-African Peoples Conference (AAPC) was held in Accra, chaired by Tom Mboya of Kenya; it was a decisive moment in the development of the hitherto unknown young Congolese Patrice Emery Lumumba. It was attended by over three hundred delegates from twenty-eight countries in Africa. And under the mobilising banner of “Independence and Unity” it incorporated into its resolutions the broad outline of the decisions of the Fifth Pan- African Congress of Manchester.•24

As the Secretary General of the All-African Peoples’ Conference, and the éminence grise of the head of the first postcolonial sub- Saharan African independent State, living in Ghana on African soil, Padmore died before his time in September 1959 after having been part of history and seen the partial triumph of the persistent and constant struggles he waged throughout his life.•25  To Kwame Nkrumah he left the responsibility of carrying out the liberation and unification of Africa as well as the construction of Ghana as the Lead State of Pan-Africanism. Unfortunately Nkrumah had to carry out this triple task alone because both internally and externally he lacked a mentor and a collaborator of the calibre, determination, experience and scale of George Padmore.

 

PAN-AFRICANISM AFTER PADMORE

After the death of George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah continued to passionately promote the Pan-African policy on the basis of the two principal axes determined when he came to power: the union of the independent African States and the conference of the African peoples: the first axis was supposed to lead to the construction of the “United States of Africa” and the second axis to the mobilisation of the peoples to bring about the total liberation of the continent.

In addition to his personal prestige as Head of State of the first postcolonial sub-Saharan independent African country, it must be acknowledged that an ideological environment exceptionally conducive to the anticolonial struggle enabled Nkrumah to successfully conduct his Pan-African policy. In fact, the historical context was marked by a combination of a number of decisive factors: first, the global reverberations of the Bandung Conference (1955) which sounded “the wake-up call for the colonised peoples” of Africa and Asia with the independence of India in 1947, the advent of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the independence of Indonesia in

1950 and the victory of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu in 1954; this was followed by the unexpected successes of the “Nasserian revolution” (1952-1956) which, in a situation of Cold War between East and West, showed up the weakness of the British and French former colonial powers; last but not least, the long Algerian war of liberation (1954-1962) which exhausted the French colonial power. The decolonisation of the African continent consequently was as swift as it was astonishing.

Already the governments of Pierre Mendès France and Edgar Faure had abolished the French protectorates in Tunisia (1955) and Morocco (1956), thereby opening the way to the liberation of the peoples of these countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, in 1958, Sékou Touré, the leader of Guinea, rejected the Franco-African Community proposed by General de Gaulle, took independence and assisted Nkrumah’s Ghana in its quest for the total liberation of Africa and the unification of the continent. The Ghana-Guinea Union, formed on 1 May 1959, was joined by Mali on 24 December 1960, after its independence, and the break-up of the fragile Mali Federation which freed the country of the progressive Modibo Keita and sounded the death knell of the Franco-African Community in 1960. With the Ghana-Guinea-Mali Union, Kwame Nkrumah thus enjoyed the support of Sékou Touré and Modibo Keita, two viscerally anti-colonialist Francophone heads of state and committed supporters of the ideals of Pan-Africanism.•26

On the one hand, the strength of the nationalist aspirations in Africa and on the other hand the political realism of the colonial powers, contributed throughout the 1960s to the dismantling of the British, Belgian and French colonial empires in West and Central Africa: from the eight independent States which had met in April 1958 in Accra (Ghana) the number rose to twenty-six States in 1960 and thirty-three in 1964. Clearly, the end of the Algerian war of independence in 1962 acted as a decisive spur to the movement for the liberation of the African continent as a whole, serving as an example to the burgeoning nationalist movements and facilitating dialogue between the new African States to promote a better African unification policy.•27

If the acceleration of the independence process was one side of the diptych composing Padmore’s Pan-African vision, the division of the independent States between the progressives of the Casablanca group and the conservatives of the Monrovia group proved an obstacle to advancing towards the goal of African unification, the second side of the diptych. But the virtues of modern diplomacy and traditional wisdom prevailed and the African States managed to transcend this division: on 25 May 1963, thirty Heads of State and Government signed in Addis Ababa the Charter creating the Organisation of African Unity (OAU).

Faithful to the spirit and ethos of Pan-Africanism, the Charter emphasises in its preamble the right to independence, the desire for union and mutual assistance between fraternal African States and the concern to preserve the sovereignty of each State. The final resolution of this constituent conference of 25 May 1963 tasked the OAU with the mission of decolonisation intended to liberate Africa from all traces of colonialism and, to this end, a Liberation Committee was to be formed and equipped with a special Fund; 25 May was declared African Liberation Day. Lastly, a special resolution was devoted to the abolition of apartheid in South Africa and of racial discrimination throughout the world including the United States of America.

Thus, having come together from North to South and from West to East, independent Africa decided to implement the principles and ideas of the pioneers of Pan-Africanism — Blyden, Du Bois, Garvey and Padmore — incorporated into this OAU basic programme.

In the event, from 1963 to 1980, the OAU provided support in many forms to the liberation movements of the countries which had not yet been freed from colonialism (the Portuguese colonies, British central Africa, the Comoros Islands and Seychelles). In 1980, with the exception of the cases of South Africa and Namibia, the situation was broadly positive.•28

The unification of the continent, the second section of Pan- Africanism, however, still remained to be achieved. The newly independent States were more concerned with consolidating their national unity and strengthening the new structures established for this purpose. Between the achievement of immediate and total African unification, of which Kwame Nkrumah was for a long time the impassioned advocate, and the consolidation of newly acquired sovereignty, a path of compromise was adopted: the concept of regional integration, understood as the establishment of mechanisms of cooperation and coordination of the States in the same geographical region, enjoyed great success. It enabled a reconciliation between the support for national sovereignty and the need for a union of African States by giving such a union the form of a process.•29

After the first decade of African independence had been devoted to the national liberation movements, the OAU got down to promoting the policy of regional integration during the 1970s, when the economic crisis which affected the African economies from the middle of the decade revealed the necessity to present a united front to withstand the situation.

This led to the birth of the economic communities of West Africa (UDEAO, CEAO then ECOWAS), Central Africa (UDEAC, the future CEMAC, Great Lakes, then ECCAS), of Southern and East Africa (SADCC and PTA), etc.•30  Following the example of the OAU, they established economic, technical and cultural co-operation mechanisms. These regional unions served as intermediaries for the action of the OAU and the UN by enabling African States from the same region or subregion to speak with one voice and present a shared point of view concerning the problems they faced and those facing the world. Surely that was the objective that Kwame Nkrumah and Padmore tasked the meeting of African Heads of State and Government with achieving when they began to bring them together following the independence of Ghana in 1957?

 

EPILOGUE

Relocated to Africa in the second half of the 20th century and linked to one of the major poles of the triangular trade which was at the root of its conception, Pan-Africanism succeeded in asserting itself as the dominant ideology of decolonisation and of continental reconstruction. It was at that time that Padmore left the stage of history, carried off no doubt by the force of his passion for the liberation and redemption of his people.

What has become of the memory of Padmore after Padmore? What have Africa and the Americas retained of him? And Europe, where he spent the bulk of his time?

He died on 23 September 1959 at University College Hospital in London (where he had been evacuated for medical reasons) and was also cremated in London; his ashes were transferred to Ghana at the request of Kwame Nkrumah and interred on 4 October 1959 at Christianborg Castle in Accra, following an imposing national funeral which his friend Cyril James describes in the following terms: “When he died in 1959, eight countries sent delegations to his funeral in London. But it was in Ghana that his ashes were interred and everyone says that in this country, famous for its political demonstrations, never had there been such a turnout as that caused by the death of Padmore. Peasants from far-flung regions who, one might think, had never even heard his name, managed to find their way to Accra to pay a final tribute to the West Indian who spent his life in their service.”•31

Kwame Nkrumah himself could not speak highly enough of his friend George Padmore, whose work was so considerable in his eyes. In a speech broadcast on the occasion of his death, he declared: “One day, the whole of Africa will surely be free and united and when the tale is told, the significance of Padmore’s work will be revealed”•32

The Ghanaian leader is now known and recognised in Africa and throughout the world as the father and champion of Pan-Africanism, to the extent of being declared in a BBC analysis as the “African of the Second Millennium.”•33 However, many men and women, particularly among the young, do not know who George Padmore was. Is it because his life was so short? Or is it because of his rank as a “minor figure” and “a behind-the-scenes adviser”? And yet he wrote and published a great deal and was an activist throughout his life.

He began through journalism when he was very young when, after leaving secondary school at the beginning of the 1920s, he was employed by the Guardian, a paper in Port-of-Spain, the capital of his country. He was already well-versed in political issues because he came from a family of educated people who had been influenced by the Pan-Africanist ideas of Henry Sylvester Williams, who organised political meetings in Trinidad in 1901. Unable to agree with the point of view of his Chief Editor, he left the newspaper and went to the United States.

During his stay in the United States from 1924 to 1929, he asserted his political commitment and abandoned his law studies to devote himself to the activities of the American Communist Party, notably the publication of its magazine The Negro Champion published in Harlem in 1928 and which later became The Liberator. A member of the Comintern from 1929, he distinguished himself once more through journalistic activity with regular contributions to the Moscow English- language press and in particular by founding in 1931 The Negro Worker, the paper of the International Black Workers Committee which he headed.

Do we need to recall here everything he wrote in the British press, the American press and the press of the African and Caribbean colonies to defend the cause of the Blacks from his residence in London? Padmore was an informed and trenchant journalist, but also a passionate and incisive lecturer as we have shown in the preceding pages. As a political journalist, he was at the same time a prolific writer who was fully cognisant of the problems of the colonised peoples, whether they were economic, social, political or cultural. His bibliography encompasses not only critiques of colonialism and racism but also the construction of new postcolonial and post-racial societies to create racial equality, cultural rehabilitation, social justice and economic progress.

Ghana paid tribute to Padmore and tried to perpetuate his memory for as long as Kwame Nkrumah remained in power: at the Du Bois Centre for Pan-African Culture in Accra, he appears in the gallery of the “great names of Pan-Africanism” alongside Du Bois, Garvey and Nkrumah as one of the illustrious pioneers of the rebirth of the African continent and of the rehabilitation of its descendants throughout the world. Let us also note that a research institute, the George Padmore Research Library, housed in his former home, keeps his name alive in the urban environment of Accra.•34

But it seems that there is nothing comparable in the rest of Africa, except in Kenya where in a residential suburb of Nairobi, there is one road bearing his name: George Padmore Road. Similarly in England, the country where he lived the longest, it was only in 1969, ten years after his death, that one of his Caribbean compatriots and a native of Trinidad, John La Rose (1927-2006) founded the George Padmore Supplementary School. The same John La Rose also brought honour to the illustrious Pan-Africanist by giving his name to an educational, scientific and cultural institution in North London in 1991, the George Padmore Institute (GPI).•35

There are a few other isolated acts of this kind. But Africa should make a global and tangible tribute to the visionary and the combatant who gave his entire life and energy to the foundations of Africa as it is today.

With the exception of the examples of Ghana and the Caribbean community of London, African recognition remains hesitant and episodic with respect to one of the intellectual creators of the Africa of the future. And yet, throughout Africa, people should remember those who have had an impact on history, like Padmore, whose life was a testament to his passionate loyalty to his roots and to his permanent fight for the rehabilitation of his people. The African Union which took over from the OAU should, through a solemn and wide- ranging initiative, “give something back” to the diasporas and revive the memory of a man who deserves, like another Frantz Fanon, to have a place in the Pantheon of our founding fathers.

 

Christophe Wondji

Notes

 

•1 The Conference of African Heads of State and Government, sitting as the supreme decision-making body, created  on 25  May 1963  at Addis Ababa (Ethiopia) the Organisation  of African  Unity (OUA). The latter  was transformed  into the African Union (AU) by the Treaty of 11 July 2000  signed by the African Heads of State attending the conference at Lomé (Togo).

•2 Williams, Eric, Capitalism and Slavery, 1944,  and Walker, Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, 1972.

•3 For these issues of general history, see the “Peuples et Civilisations” collection  (PUF), especially  volume  XV, Félix Ponteil, L’éveil des nationalités et le mouvement libéral (1815-1848), published in 1960. Regarding Simon Bolívar, see Letter from Jamaica (16 September 1815) where he explains his programme of Pan-American unification.

•4  Clearly, the period 1890-1914 was conducive to the formation of movements to bring back together scattered, divided and/or exploited peoples: Pan-Germanism, Zionism, Pan-Islamism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Africanism. Note the astonishing chronological coincidence between the creation in 1897 of the African Association of Sylvester Williams (see below) and the holding in Basle in 1897  of the Congress convened by Theodore Herzl (1860- 1904) who created the World Zionist Organisation.

•5  Many slave uprisings accompanied the slave trade and slavery, demonstrating the iniquity and archaic nature of the slave system. Among them, two explosive revolts led to the creation of the following States: the Republic of Palmarès (in Brazil) lasted from the mid-17th   century to the mid-18th century; the Republic of Haiti (in the French colony of St Domingue) created at the end of the 18th  and beginning of the 19th  centuries, still exists. See  Philippe  Ouedraogo,  le  Pan-Africanisme:  histoire,  mythes  et  projets  politiques,  March  2010 in http://thomassankara.net/spip.php?article888.

•6 On the issue of the return of American  Blacks to Africa, see volume VII (chap. 29) of the General History of Africa  published  by UNESCO (GHA-UNESCO).

•7  Edward Wilmot  Blyden (1832-1912) was a free American  Black who had a good education  but  had considerable difficulty in finding a job because of the colour of his skin. After much research, he went to Liberia, where he was able to settle and became involved in the development of the colony which had just been created by the American Colonisation Society. He travelled a great deal in Africa, America and Europe and wrote a number of books on the past and future of Africa. His key text, Christianity, Islam and the Negro Race, published in London in 1887, proposed research on ways and means to achieve African unification.

•8  See. GHA (UNESCO), vol. VII, chap.  29, p. 800.

•9  On the change of name, one of his biographers states that he took the first name of “George” in memory of his father-in-law, a sergeant major in the gendarmerie George Semper, and the name of “Padmore” in memory of one of his best friends, Eric Padmore. Cf. James R. Hooker, Black Revolutionary, 1967,  p. 6, quoted by Wikipedia, “George Padmore.”

•10 Comintern is the abbreviation in Russian for the “Third International or Communist International” created by the Bolsheviks in 1919 to coordinate the activities of the Communist Parties and workers’ movements throughout the world.

•11 The tragedy of the Congo-Océan evokes one of the most troubling aspects of the status of the African workers during the years of European colonial expansion in Africa (1920-1940). It caused many outraged reactions worldwide. The French writer André Gide alluded to it in Un voyage au Congo, Gallimard, 1927;  see also the journalist Albert Londres in Terre d’ébène, Albin Michel, 1929.

•12  Being a Communist and not an American citizen, Padmore could no longer return to the United States after his stay in the Soviet Union. Cf. Mark Salomon The Cry was Freedom: Communists and African Americans, 1917-36, Jackson, University of Mississippi Press, 1998, p. 60, quoted in the Wikipedia entry, “George Padmore.”

•13  Many nationalist activists from the colonial countries supported Communism whose antiracist and anti- colonialist theories seduced them during the decades of 1920-1950. But the often opportunistic behaviour of the Comintern dictated by the realpolitik of the Soviet State and the “national interests” of certain Communist parties of the European countries led to the disillusionment of a number of African and Asian patriots. Like Padmore, Richard Wright, Aimé Césaire and other intellectuals broke away from the Communists.

•14 On  his  contacts  with  the  militants  of  South  Asia  cf.  George Padmore,  in  http.//www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects: makingbritain: content/ george padmore.

•15 On  his  many  contacts  with  the  African  and  American  press  cf.  Grioo.com,”  George  Padmore,”http://www.grioo.com/ pinfo6396.html, and Sir Stafford Cripps, “Foreword,” Africa and World Peace, London, Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd., 1937,  p. IX quoted by Wikipedia in the entry: “George Padmore.”

•16  It is worth pointing out here that President Woodrow Wilson of the United States had come to the Peace Conference, attended by the victors of the First World War, with his famous “fourteen points” of which the item on the “right of peoples to self-determination” aroused the interest of the colonised peoples.

•17 A number of organisational problems and the desire to reach the various circles of the diaspora scattered throughout the European capitals can probably explain why the second Congress was held in three sessions in the three cities mentioned and the third Congress in two sessions and two locations. See Philippe Ouedraogo, op.cit

•18  See Cyril James, Notes on the Life of Padmore, op. cit., and Kwame Nkrumah, “Padmore the Missionary,” “The Opening of the George Padmore Memorial Library,” in Obeng, Selected Speeches of Kwame Nkrumah, Accra, Afram Publications, 1979-1997, vol. 2, pp. 124-127.

•19 The organisation of this Congress was very structured; the oldest member, Dr William B. Du Bois, the veteran of Pan-Africanism, chaired every session; the Executive Secretariat, led by Dr Peter Milliard (Guyana), included Ras Makonnen  (Treasurer), George Padmore and Kwame Nkrumah  (Secretaries), Jomo Kenyatta (Deputy Secretary)  and Peter Abrahams  (Public  Relations  Secretary).  See GHA (UNESCO), vol. VIII, chap.  25,  pp. 779- 780.

•20  GHA (UNESCO), vol. VIII, chapter  25,  op. cit.,  pp. 780-781.

•21  In the second half of the 19th   century, Great Britain had granted self-government to several of its colonies settled by Europeans which had become dominions, i.e. member States of the Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, etc.). The Pan-African Congresses had been demanding the implementation of this policy in the exploited colonies of tropical Africa and the West Indies since 1919.

•22  Cf. Richard Wright, Black Power, New York, Harper and Brother, 1954.

•23  Cf. George Padmore, Pan-Africanism or Communism?, London, Dennis Dobson, 1956,  French translation published by Présence Africaine, Paris, 1962.

•24  For the details  of these  meetings  see GHA (UNESCO), vol. VIII, chapters  24  and 25,  and Grioo.com, op.cit.

•25  It was during one of his missions to Liberia, probably for the Second Conference of African Heads of State of Monrovia (August 1959), that he suffered the liver attack whose irreversible progress was to end in his death on 23 September 1959; cf. “George Padmore. Facts” in http:/biography.yourdictionary.com/george padmore.

•26 These unions of States, which had neither formal structures nor functional legal and technical institutions, were of a symbolic nature. As an expression of the wishes of the Heads of State to agree and act together for African Unity, they served as ideological levers.

•27 In 1960, 14 French colonies of West and Central Africa had achieved independence; in the same year, they were joined by the two giant countries of Nigeria and Congo-Kinshasa. Between 1961 and 1964, the Africa of the Great Lakes Region also achieved independence: Burundi, Kenya, Tanganyika and Uganda.

•28  By 1980,  most of the African countries were independent, with the exception of Namibia which became independent in 1990.  In the same year, the release of Nelson Mandela began a new era in South Africa by enabling the abolition of apartheid, the last vestige of colonialism.

•29 See GHA (UNESCO), vol. VIII, chap.  24:  “Pan-Africanism and regional integration,” op. cit.

•30  UDEAO (West African  Customs  and Economic  Union, 1966), CEAO (West African Economic Community,

1973) ECOWAS (Economic  Community  of West African  States, 1975), UDEAC (Central African Customs and Economic Union, 1966), CEAC (Central African  Economic  Community,)  CEMAC (Central African Economic and Monetary  Community),  CEPGL (Economic  Community  of  the  Great  Lakes  Countries,)  ECCAS (Economic Community of Central African States, 1983), SADCC (Southern African Development  Coordination  Conference, 1980) and PTA (Preferential Trade Area for Eastern and Southern Africa States, 1984); cf. GHA (UNESCO), vol. VIII, chap. 24, op.cit.

•31  See Cyril James, Les Jacobins noirs, pp. 240-242, quoted by Elikia M’Bokolo in George Padmore, Kwame Nkrumah, Cyril James et l’idéologie de la lutte panafricaine, op. cit., p. 4.

•32 “One day, the whole of Africa will surely be free and united and when the final tale is told, the significance of George Padmore’s work will be revealed.” Speech broadcast and quoted by Carol Polsgrove, Ending British Rule in Africa: Writers in a Common Cause, London, 2009, pp. 162-163, in Wikipedia, “George Padmore,” op.cit.

•33 See Elikia M’Bokolo, op. cit., p. 2.

•34  See Elikia M’Bokolo, op.cit., pp. 3 and 5.

•35  On John La Rose and his role in the black communities of Great Britain cf. http://  enwikipedia.org/w/indexphp? title= JohnLaRose&oldid= 560896544George_Padmore

Linking the strugglez: Amilcar Cabral and his impact and legacy in the black liberation movement

24 Friday Jan 2014

Posted by newafrikan77 in Uncategorized

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cc MLOf all the African political leaders none have made more profound theoretical and strategic contributions to the advancement of the black liberation movement than Amilcar Cabral. As long as capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, and neo-colonialism exist as forces that exploit and oppress African (and all) people, Cabral’s insights and analysis will always have relevance

“Keep always in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting…..for material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children. National Liberation, War on Colonialism, building of peace and progress – independence – all that will remain meaningless for the people unless it brings a real improvement in the conditions of life.” Amilcar Cabral, from “Destroy the economy of the enemy and build our own economy”, 1965.[1]

Since the close of the Fifth Pan-African Congress in Manchester, England and the end of the second great inter-imperialist war (better known as World War II) in 1945, the radical-wing of the Black Liberation Movement in the United States (US) has been inspired by and drawn many lessons from its reciprocal interactions with the national and social liberation movements of Africa (primarily from 1945 through 1994) and the Diaspora (particularly those of the Caribbean).

The Black Liberation Movement or BLM is the historic movement of people of African descent within the territories now occupied and claimed by the settler-colonial government of the United States for self-determination and social liberation in three primary (and often mutually inclusive) forms[2]:

• Repatriation back to Africa

• The creation of a sovereign, independent national-state for Black or New Afrikan people in the southeastern portion of what is presently the United States

• The socialist and/or anti-capitalist transformation of the United States by an anti-racist, anti-imperialist multi-national alliance

The radical elements of the BLM – composed primarily of revolutionary nationalists, socialists, communists, and anarchists – have over the years learned and incorporated many of the critical aspects of the theories and strategies of radical social transformation developed by many of the twentieth century intellectual and political towers of the African world revolution, such as Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, Amy Ashwood Garvey, Aime Cesaire, Constance Cummings-John, Sekou Toure, Leopold Senghor, Amy Jacques Garvey, CLR James, Julius Nyerere, Walter Rodney, Patrice Lumumba, Govan Mbeki, Frantz Fanon, Robert Sobukwe, Winnie Mandela, Abdias do Nascimento, Mariam Makeba, Steven Biko, Maurice Bishop, and Thomas Sankara[3]. Of all of these leaders and theoreticians from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America however, none have made more profound theoretical and strategic contributions to the advancement of the BLM than Amilcar Cabral.

All of the above named figures made valuable contributions to the BLM, particularly in the realm of providing ideological clarity on various questions, such as the relevancy of Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism to the struggles of African peoples worldwide, the exploratory power of dialectical and historical materialism, and the necessity of fighting for a United States of Africa and a unified Pan-African world guided by scientific socialism.

What separates Cabral from the others however, is that his work provided detailed theoretical and strategic clarity on a number of fundamental questions that were critical to understanding the transition from “American colonialism” to neo-colonialism following the defeat of legalized white supremacy in the early 1960’s. Some of Cabral’s particular contributions centered on the following questions[4]:

• The limitations of national liberation within the capitalist world-system

• The internal material basis for neo-colonialism within colonized and oppressed nations and the critical dangers associated with this form of capitalist penetration and imperialist rule

• The ideological and theoretical weaknesses and shortcomings of the peoples movements for liberation and the detriments they pose to the success of the movements

• The centrality of culture to anti-imperialist resistance and the need to create a new culture through struggle to restore oppressed people into full agents of their own history and identity

• The imperative of class struggle within the oppressed nation and the necessity of class “suicide” amongst critical segments of the nation (or nation-class as Cabral himself stated), but most particularly the petit bourgeoisie who often constitute the leadership of the movements given their strategic location within the capitalist mode of production and its national/international hierarchies

All of these questions and issues have haunted the BLM since the 1970s, and continue to pose some of the most quintessential challenges confronting the movement. Although the historic development of Guinea-Bissau is profoundly different than that of the Black or New Afrikan nation contained within the United States, there are some fundamental dynamics regarding how colonized and oppressed peoples are subjected and exploited within the capitalist world-system established through European colonialism and imperialism, that can be generalized to address the varied examples of the colonial experience. Cabral’s works not only discerned generalities of the colonial phenomenon that were applicable to the New Afrikan context, they also provided critical specificities that can and are still being used by various forces of the BLM to sustain and advance the struggle for liberation.

Cabral’s theoretical insightful works did not spring from thin air. Cabral was the product of a rather unique nexus of historical conjunctures that enabled him to directly experience and engage the various dynamics he wrote about and reflected upon. Cabral developed his theories on the motive forces of history, colonialism, imperialism, questions of national liberation, neo-colonialism, class and class struggle within national liberation movements, the transition to socialism, and the centrality of culture and identity to resistance and social transformation from his unique social experiences, central location in the struggle against Portuguese colonialism, and his critical study of the numerous challenges and failures of the national liberation movements on the African continent in the 1950s and 60s.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A LEADER

Cabral was born in Guinea-Bissau in 1924 and was reared primarily in Cape Verde, a small island chain off the Northwest Coast of the African continent formerly ruled by Portugal. He attended university in Portugal and studied to be an agronomist. In the employment of the Portuguese colonial administration in the 1950s, Cabral was able to gain extensive knowledge of the cultures and social conditions of the various peoples of Guinea-Bissau and (to a lesser degree) Angola performing agricultural census studies. In September 1956, along with five other comrades from Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, Cabral established the Partido Africano da Independecia da Guinea e Cabo Verde or PAIGC (which translated into English means the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde), which lead Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde islands to political independence in the 1970s. While living in Angola, also in 1956, Cabral collaborated with Mario de Andrade and Antonio Agostinho Neto to form the Movimento Popular Libertacao de Angola or MPLA (in English this translates into the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), which played a leading role in the liberation of Angola.

In 1957, as part of a conference in solidarity with the Algerian anti-colonial movement in Paris, Cabral again partnered with Mario de Andrade and Antonio Agostinho Neto to form the Movimento Anti-Colonista or MAC (which translated into English means Anti-Colonialist Movement) to discuss strategies to overthrow Portuguese colonial rule. In 1958, Cabral attended the All-African People’s Conference in Accra, Ghana organized by Kwame Nkrumah to coordinate support for the liberation movements from the existing independent nation-states and to unite the liberation movements on a continent wide basis [5]. In 1960, while in Tunisia, Cabral established the Frente Revolucionaria Africana para a Independencia Nacional das colonias Portuguesas or FRAIN (which translated into English translates into the Revolutionary Front for the National Independence of the Portuguese Colonies). FRAIN was established to coordinate the strategies and initiatives of the PAIGC and MPLA against Portuguese colonialism. In 1961, while in Casablanca, Morocco, Cabral helped to establish the Conferencia das Organizacoes Nacionalistas das Colonias Portuguesas or CONCP (which in English translates into Conference of Nationalist Organizations of the Portuguese Colonies) to expand upon and replace FRAIN to include FRELIMO from Mozambique and the MLSTP from Sao Tome and Principe to coordinate resistance to Portuguese colonialism on the African continent. In January 1963, Cabral and the PAIGC initiated the armed phase of the resistance movement in Guinea-Bissau, which lead to its formal political independence from Portugal in September 1974[6].

As these initiatives illustrate, Cabral was a principle architect in the overthrow of Portuguese colonialism and the weakening of imperialist domination of Southern Africa via the white settler colonial regime in South Africa. As the spokesperson for the PAIGC, MPLA, and CONCP, Cabral was able to travel extensively throughout the African continent (and the world). Cabral used the knowledge gained on his travels to judiciously assess the many failures of the first wave of national liberation movements and the national-state governments produced by many of these movements. These combined experiences shaped his worldview, theory, and most importantly, his practice as a revolutionary nationalist, socialist, and internationalist. It was Cabral’s particular ability to systematically and scientifically summarizes these experiences in a coherent and concrete fashion that made his work applicable to the ongoing struggle for liberation of people of African descent in the United States.

UNITING WITH OUR “COMRADE”

“I am bringing to you – our African brothers and sisters of the United States – the fraternal salutations of our people in assuring you we are very conscious that all in this life concerning you also concerns us. If we do not always pronounce words that clearly show this, it doesn’t mean that we are not conscious of it. It is a reality and considering that the world is being made smaller each day all people are becoming conscious of this fact.

Naturally if you ask me between brothers and comrades what I prefer then if we are brothers it is not our fault or our responsibility. But if we are comrades, it is a political engagement. Naturally, we like our brothers but in our conception it is better to be a brother and a comrade. We like our brothers very much, but we think that if we are brothers we have to realize the responsibility of this fact and take clear positions about our problems in order to see if beyond this condition of brothers and sisters, we are also comrades. This is very important for us.

We try to understand your situation in this country. You can be sure that we realize the difficulties you face, the problems you have and your feelings, your revolts, and also your hopes. We think that our fighting for Africa against colonialism and imperialism is a proof of understanding of your problem and also a contribution for the solution of your problems in the continent. Naturally the inverse is also true. All the achievements towards the solution of your problems here are real contributions to our own struggle. And we are very encouraged in our struggle by the fact that each day more of the African people born in America became conscious of their responsibilities to the struggle in Africa.

Does that mean you have to all leave here and go fight in Africa? We do not believe so. That is not being realistic in our opinion. History is a very strong chain. We have to accept the limits of history but not the limits imposed by the societies where we are living. There is a difference. We think that all you can do here to develop your own conditions in the sense of progress, in the sense of history and in the sense of our total realization of your aspirations as human beings is a contribution for us. It is also a contribution for you to never forget that you are Africans.” Amilcar Cabral, from “Connecting the Struggles: An Informal Talk with Black Americans”, October 20, 1972, New York City.[7]

The BLM came to know Amilcar Cabral and his work through a dynamic set of interlocking organizations and networks linking activists based in the United States with the national liberation movements in Africa and Asia (the Vietnamese in particular), and revolutionary and progressive governments and social movements in Latin America (particularly Cuba), Africa (primarily Ghana, Tanzania, Guinea, and Algeria), Asia (particularly China) and the Eastern Bloc. These links consisted of survivors from the anti-communist repression and purges of the late 1940s and 50s, from groups like the Council on African Affairs (CAA) headed by the likes Alphaeus Hunton, Paul Robeson, and W.E.B. DuBois, which was formally active from the late 1930s to the mid-1950s[8]; to liberal organizations like the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), started in the early 1950s[9]; and a host of religious and academic institutions, Black and white, that had been active, particularly around missionary activities in Africa and supporting students from Africa to attend academic institutions in Europe and the United States since the 19th century. Through these links, activists engaged in progressive social movements were able to encounter their international counterparts via international conferences, student exchanges, solidarity missions, and campaigns.

Another critical link that facilitated the introduction and ongoing communication between revolutionaries from the continent with revolutionaries from the BLM in the United States were Black ex-patriots that lived in Europe (particularly London and Paris) or on the African continent, particularly in Ghana after it gained its independence in 1957 and was able to host a number of Black radical activists, intellectuals, and artists like George Padmore, W.E.B Dubois, and Shirley Graham-Dubois[10]. Conversely, African students and political exiles based in the United States and Europe played this critical role in reverse.

The first major student and youth oriented organization to introduce the BLM to the likes of African revolutionaries like Amilcar Cabral, Eduardo Mondlane, and others was the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee or SNCC. Over the course of its 9-year existence from 1960 to 1969, SNCC took several delegations to various parts of Africa to exchange lessons in the struggle and engage in international campaigns. SNCC’s first major trip to the continent was in the fall of 1964, when a delegation of 11 members visited the Republic of Guinea, led by President Ahmed Sekou Toure [11]. The SNCC delegation was exposed to an extensive amount of literature about the national liberation movements on the continent while in Guinea, some of it invariably from Cabral and the PAIGC, which was operating out of Guinea at that time [12].

The next major SNCC trip to the continent was in the fall of 1965, when several members visited Ghana and attended the Organization of African Unity (OAU) conference being held in the capital Accra [13]. Cabral and several members of the PAIGC were in attendance at the OAU conference. However, it is unclear to what extent they were able to meet and exchange at the conference. But, they were definitely exposed to the PAIGC’s politics at the conference via presentations made by their representatives.

The first critical introduction of Cabral and his work to the BLM was provided by Immanuel Wallerstein, a renowned academic on African affairs, via an interview he conducted and published in 1965 entitled “Our Solidarities”[14]. This interview was one of the first major pieces on Cabral and the struggle of the PAIGC against Portuguese colonialism to appear in English. It received modest distribution via the left wing press in the United States, but was read and disseminated by Black activists in New York City, Detroit, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, Oakland and Los Angeles that were active in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM). Although its impact was limited at the time, it did serve notice to many activists who played critical roles in the development of the BLM over the course of the next twenty years, that there was a major struggle occurring in Guinea-Bissau and other Portuguese speaking colonies on the African continent.

The BLM’s first major encounter with Cabral and his work occurred in January 1966 in Havana, Cuba on occasion of the Tri-continental Conference of Solidarity of the Peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America [15]. Cuba, like Ghana, Guinea, and Tanzania on the African continent in the 1960s, played a critical role as a revolutionary socialist state engaged in active struggle against US and European imperialism. In this role, Cuba gave shelter, support, and resources to revolutionary organizations throughout Latin America and the world. In this same vein, Cuba was also home to many BLM exiles. The most prominent BLM exile in Cuba during the 1960s was Robert F. Williams. Robert Williams was a militant from North Carolina who fled into exile to avoid false imprisonment for an act of self-defense against white terror in 1961[16]. Williams was one of the most outspoken advocates for armed self-defense and the formation of Negro Gun Clubs in the late 1950s and early 1960s. His organizing, self-defense network, and militant advocacy had a major impact on the thinking of Malcolm X, the Louisiana and Mississippi based Deacons for Self-Defense and Justice, the Revolutionary Action Movement, and the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense.

In support of Williams and the BLM in general, the Cuban government provided him with contacts to the various revolutionary organizations that visited or had representatives stationed on the island and with access to printing and broadcast facilities to propagate his message back to forces within the United States[17]. Robert Williams, other BLM exiles, and several members of RAM attended the 1966 Tri-Continental Conference, and like most in attendance, were highly impressed with Amilcar Cabral and his address to the conference. This address, known as the “Weapon of Theory”, was a watershed moment in advance of revolutionary theory, particularly that branch of theory dealing with national liberation and neo-colonialism, called Tri-Continentalism by many following the conference.

Through the “Crusader” journal and his extensive personal correspondence with BLM partisans, Williams, along with the RAM cadre in attendance, introduced Cabral, his works, and the struggles of revolutionaries in Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique to their first major audience within the movement. Following the Tri-Continental Conference BLM revolutionaries began critically studying Cabral and the national liberation movements against Portuguese colonialism in the pursuit of how they might help advance the struggle for Black national liberation within the territories claimed by the United States.

From 1966 through the 1970s, more and more BLM partisans visited Africa and engaged in regular and sustained contact with African revolutionaries, particularly those individuals and movements that were operating out of the progressive states of Algeria, Egypt, Guinea and Tanzania (Ghana was removed from this equation in 1966 following a military coup that overthrew the Nkrumah government) such as the PAIGC, MPLA, FRELIMO, the African National Congress (ANC), the South African Communist Party (SACP), and Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC). These exchanges facilitated the deeper exposure of the BLM to the ideas and movements of African revolutionary leaders leading national liberation movements like Amilcar Cabral, or states engaged in socialist experiments like Sekou Toure in Guinea or Julius Nyerere in Tanzania.

In 1969, Basil Davidson, a progressive British Africanist scholar, published one of the most historically important works on Cabral, the PAIGC, and the national liberation movement in Guinea-Bissau entitled “The Liberation of Guinea: Aspects of an African Revolution”[18]. This work was read extensively by partisans of the BLM, particularly amongst college students in the late 1960’s and early 70’s in organizations like the Pan-African Union (PAU) in California and the Student Organization for Black Unity (SOBU) in North Carolina[19]. Another critical work also published in 1969 was “Revolution in Guinea: An African People’s Struggle”, by a British collective called Stage 1. This was one of the first English publications of a collection of Cabral’s speeches and writings, and received a decent distribution in the United States amongst BLM forces. It was from this publication that many in the BLM were introduced to the saying most commonly associated with Cabral, “Tell No Lies. Claim No Easy Victories”[20].

By 1969 there were several radical Black and multi-national solidarity committee’s operating throughout the United States that were providing material and political support to the national liberation movements against Portuguese colonialism and white settler colonialism in Southern Africa (Azania, Zimbabwe and Botswana in particular)[21]. The solidarity committee’s played a critical role in spreading Cabral’s ideas throughout the BLM. These networks also played a critical role in providing forums for African revolutionaries in the United States to make their case and present their ideas directly. Cabral and the PAIGC directly benefitted from this organizing on two occasions. Cabral first visited the United States in 1970, where he gave several lectures throughout the state of New York and held several dialogues and interviews in New York City related to the promotion of the PAIGC’s and allied CONCP organizations advocacy for self-determination and national independence at the United Nations. [22]

In addition to Cabral’s first visit to the United States, another critical event occurred in 1970 that had a major impact on the spread of his ideas in the BLM. In February of that year, members from the Afrikan People’s Party (APP) and the House of Umoja (HOU) based in Los Angeles collaborated with Guyanese revolutionary Eusi Kwayana and the African Society for Cultural Relations with Independent Africa (ASCRIA), along with Forum from St. Vincent, the Afro-Caribbean Movement from Antigua, and the PAC from Azania to develop the Pan-Afrikan Secretariat (PAS) in Georgetown, Guyana[23]. Guyana, then lead by Prime Minister Forbes Burnham, was operating as a progressive base for revolutionary international coordination throughout the Caribbean, South America, and Africa, and was home to several BLM exiles and ex-patriots from the late 1960s to the 1990s. The PAS was the first organization to call for the international launching of African Liberation Day (ALD), originally called World Wide African Solidarity Day (WWASD), and held the first ALD observances in 1970 and 1971 respectively in Guyana, Canada, Europe and several cities in the United States[24]. WWWASD/ALD was specifically intended to promote the African World Revolution, giving particular focus to the struggles against Portuguese colonialism in Africa, settler-colonialism in Southern Africa, neo-colonialism in Africa and the Caribbean, and the New Afrikan Independence Movement within the confines of the United States.

A connected development occurred on the East Coast through the auspices of SOBU and Malcolm X Liberation University (MXLU). In the fall of 1971 Owusu Sadaukai, one of the founders of SOBU and MXLU, toured the liberated territories of Guinea-Bissau, Angola, and Mozambique. In Mozambique, Sadaukai was implored by Samora Machel, the leader of FRELIMO, to build an international campaign in support of the national liberation movements of Mozambique, Angola, and Guinea-Bissau. Upon his return, Sadaukai released a six-part report on his trip in the movement publication the “African World”[25]. This series was widely distributed in the movement and played a pivotal role in helping to launch and guide the formation of the African Liberation Day Coordinating Committee (ALDCC). The ALDCC, a broad coalition of BLM forces representing different tendencies and trends within the movement, called for and organized the groundbreaking May 27, 1972 ALD demonstration that mobilized more than 100,000 participants throughout the United States, including Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. Following the success of ALD, the ALDCC expanded and transformed into a more permanent structure, the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC), which was the fulcrum of support for the national liberation movements in African through the mid-1970’s[26]. ALD and the ALSC were very intentional in their promotion of the works of Amilcar Cabral and other national liberation leaders of the era, such as Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel of FRELIMO and Robert Sobukwe of the Pan-Afrikanist Congress (PAC).

Just as critical as the promotion Cabral and the views of other CONCP leaders was the film “A Luta Continua”, which was produced by Robert Van Lierop and disseminated by the Africa Information Service (AIS) in 1972[27]. AIS was founded by BLM activists Prexy Nesbitt and Van Lierop in 1971 specifically to distribute educational materials about the national liberation struggles against Portuguese colonialism lead by CONCP. The film was shot in 1971 in Mozambique and Tanzania, and focused on the armed struggle being waged by FRELIMO. The film spread like wildfire from 1972 through the mid-1970s, and perhaps more than anything made the ideas of Cabral and Machel real and concrete to millions of Black folks in the United States. AIS subsequently published “Return to the Source: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral”, the first major collection of Cabral’s writings and speeches published in the United States, in 1973.

The AIS was also instrumental in coordinating Cabral’s final visit the United States in 1972. During this visit Cabral asked the Africa Information Service to set up a meeting with various leading forces in the BLM.[28] The meeting was held in New York City on October 20 and involved participants from over 30 BLM organizations. The speech was entitled “Connecting the Struggles: An Informal talk with Black Americans”, and had a profound and lasting impact on the BLM in all its diversity, as it clearly affirmed the interconnectedness between the African liberation struggles on the continent with those in the United States, the Caribbean, and beyond.

Agents of the Portuguese colonialists assassinated Amilcar Cabral shortly after his last trip to the United States on January 20, 1973[29]. The effectiveness of Cabral’s work and leadership in helping to guide a peoples’ revolutionary movement proved the notion of “cut off the head and body will whither” theory to be false in this case. Following his assassination, the PAIGC escalated the war against the Portuguese and not only lead Guinea-Bissau to political independence in 1974, but resulted in the overthrow of the Fascist Salazar-Cateano regime in April 1974, that ruled Portugal since 1932, by a group of Portuguese military officers called the Movimento das Armed Forcas or MAF (which translated into English means Armed Forces Movement) admittedly influenced by the theories and moral example of Amilcar Cabral[30].

Half a world away, Cabral’s works had also become common parlance within the BLM by the time of his death. His works greatly aided the political and theoretical development of the BLM in the 1970s, which unfortunately played itself out in many fractious debates, broken alliances, and organizational splits during the middle of the decade (many greatly aided by the provocations of the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI). Despite the fragmentation of the BLM during this period, Cabral’s work has had a lasting influence on the movement, as it is still being studied and referenced today in the formulation of strategy and the programmatic orientation of revolutionary nationalist and Pan-Afrikanist organizations like the All African People’s Revolutionary Party (AAPRP), the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), the Organization of Black Struggle (OBS), the Pan-African People’s Organization (PAPO), the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG –RNA), the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM), and the New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO).

A LUTA CONTINUA!

In the 41 years since his untimely death, Amilcar Cabral’s political legacy lives on in the strategies and tactics used by the forces of the BLM to defeat the neo-colonial control of Black communities, the advance of neo-liberal exploitation and social decomposition, to counter the consolidation of the Black faction of the trans-national capitalist class, to stop the genocidal assault against the working class via mass incarceration and economic displacement, and build self-determining institutions and communities to liberate our people.

What the radical forces in the BLM have learned to be undeniably true is that as long as capitalism, colonialism, white supremacy, patriarchy, imperialism, and neo-colonialism exist as forces that exploit and oppress African (and all) people, Cabral’s insights and analysis will always have relevance.

In our opinion, the foundation for national liberation rests in the inalienable right of every people to have their own history, whatever formulations may be adopted at the level of international law. The objective of national liberation, is therefore, to reclaim the right, usurped by imperialist domination, namely: the liberation of the process of development of national productive forces. Therefore, national liberation takes place when, and only when, national productive forces are completely free of all kinds of foreign domination. The liberation of productive forces and consequently the ability to determine the mode of production most appropriate to the evolution of the liberated people, necessarily opens up new prospects for the cultural development of the society in question, by returning to that society all its capacity to create progress.

“A people who free themselves from foreign domination will be free culturally only if, without complexes and without underestimating the importance of positive accretions from the oppressor and other cultures, they return to the upward paths of their own culture, which is nourished by the living reality of its environment, and which negates both harmful influences and any kind of subjection to foreign culture. Thus, it may be seen that if imperialist domination has the vital need to practice cultural oppression, national liberation is necessarily an act of culture.” Amilcar Cabral, from “National Liberation and Culture”, February, 20, 1970 Syracuse, New York.[31]

REFERENCES:

BOOKS

Braganca, Aquino de, Wallerstein, Immanuel (1982) The African Liberation Reader, Three Volumes, Zed Press, London, England.

Bush, Roderick D. (2009) The End of White World Supremacy: Black Internationalism and the Problem of the Color Line, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Bush, Roderick D. (2000) We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century, New York University Press.

Cabral, Amilcar (1973) Return to the Source: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral, edited by Africa Information Service, Monthly Review Press, New York, New York.

Cabral, Amilcar (1969) Revolution in Guinea: An African People’s Struggle, Stage 1, London, England.

Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, Monthly Review Press, New York, New York.

Chabal, Patrick (2003) Amilcar Cabral: Revolutionary Leadership and People’s War, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey.

Cruse, Harold (2002) The Essential Harld Cruse: A Reader, Palgrave Macmillian.

Davidson, Basil (1969) The Liberation of Guinea: Aspects of an African Revolution, Penguin Books, Middlesex, England.

Ferguson, Herman (2011) An Unlikely Warrior: The Evolution of a Revolutionary, Black Classic Press.

Gaines, Kevin K. (2008) African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era, University of North Carolina Press.

Grady-Willis, Winston A. (2006) Challenging U.S Apartheid: Atlanta and Black Struggles for Human Rights 1960-1977, Duke University Press.

Johnson, Cedric (2007) Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Kadalie, Modibo M. (2000) Internationalism, Pan-Africanism, and the Struggle of Social Classes, One Quest Press, Savannah, Georgia.

Lumumba, Chokwe (1991) The Roots of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: Revolution Requires Maturity, New Afrikan Productions, Jackson, Mississippi.

Meriwether, James (2009) Proudly We can be Africans: Black Americans and Africa 1935-1961, University of North Carolina Press.

McCulloch, Jock (1983) In the Twilight of Revolution: The Political Theory of Amilcar Cabral, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, England.

Minter, William, Hovey, Gail, and Cobb, Charles Jr. (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, Africa World Press, Trenton, New Jersey.

Sherwood, Marika (2011) Malcolm X Visits Abroad, Tsehai Publishing, Los Angeles, CA.

Tyson, Timothy B. (2001) Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power, University of North Carolina Press.

Van Deburg, William (1993) New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture 1965-1975, University of Chicago Press.

Von Eschen, Penny (1997) Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anti-Colonialism 1937-1957, Cornell University Press, New York, New York.

Young, Robert J. C. (2001) Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, England.

ARTICLES

Davidson, Basil (1984) On Revolutionary Nationalism: The Legacy of Cabral, Latin American Perspectives, Issue 41, Volume II, pp. 15-42.

Magubane, Bernard (1983) Toward a Sociology of National Liberation from Colonialism: Cabral’s Legacy, Contemporary Marxism: Journal of the Institute for the Study of Labor and Economic Crisis, No. 7.

Mullen, Bill V. (2002) Transnational Correspondence: Robert F. Williams, Detroit and the Bandung Era, Works and Days, 39/40, Volume 20.

UNPUBLISHED DOCUMENTS

Tyehimba, Watani Sundai Umoja (2012) ‘NAPO/MXGM Roots and Timeline: A View from the House of Umoja’, Unpublished, Atlanta, Georgia.

[1] Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral.

[2] Chokwe Lumumba (1991) The Roots of the New Afrikan Independence Movement: Revolution Requires Political Maturity, page 1-2.

[3] For biographies on many of these individuals see Adi, Hakim, and Sherwood, Marika (2003) Pan-African History: Political figures from Africa and the Diaspora since 1787.

[4] There are three key speeches of Cabral that present the clearest articulations of his theories and strategic reflections and which have had the most profound and enduring impact on the BLM. These speeches are: “the Weapon of Theory” (1966), “National Liberation and Culture” (1970), and “Identity and Dignity in the Context of the National Liberation Struggle” (1972).

[5] Mario de Andrade (1979), “Biographical Notes”, Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral, Monthly Review Press.

[6] Ibid, and Young, Robert J. C. (2001) Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, pp. 283-292.

[7] Cabral, Amilcar (1973) Return to the Source: Selected Speeches by Amilcar Cabral, pp 75-76.

[8] Von Eschen, Penny (1997) Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anti-Colonialism 1937-1957.

[9] Minter, William, Hovey, Gail, and Cobb, Charles Jr. (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, pp 15-22.

[10] See Ibid, pp. 59-150, Sherwood, Marika, (2011) Malcolm X Visits Abroad, and Gaines, Kevin K. (2008) African Americans in Ghana: Black Expatriates and the Civil Rights Era.

[11] See Ibid, pp 83-112.

[12] Wilkins, Fanon Che (2007), The Making of Black Internationalists: SNCC and Africa before Black Power 1960 – 1965.

[13] Ibid.

[14] See reference in Minter, William, et al, (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, and Braganca, Aquino, Wallterstein, Immanuel (1965) The African Liberation Reader Volume 1: The Anatomy of Colonialism.

[15] Young, Robert J. C. (2001) Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction, pp. 204-216.

[16] Mullen, Bill V. (2002) Transnational Correspondence: Robert F. Williams, Detroit and the Bandung Era.

[17] Ibid.

[18] Davidson, Basil (1969) The Liberation of Guinea: Aspects of an African Revolution.

[19] Tyehimba, Watani (2012) A View from the House of Umoja, and Johnson, Cedric (2007) Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, Chapter 4.

[20] Amilcar Cabral, “Revolution in Guinea: An African People’s Struggle”, published by STAGE 1, 1969.

[21] Johnson, Cedric (2007) Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, Chapter 4, and Minter, William, et al, (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, chapters 3 and 4.

[22] Minter, William, et al, (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, Chapter 3 and Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral.

[23] Tyehimba, Watani (2012) A View from the House of Umoja.

[24] IBID, page 20.

[25] Johnson, Cedric (2007) Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, page 138 – 139 and Minter, William, et al, (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, Chapters 3 and 4.

[26] Johnson, Cedric (2007) Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics, Chapter 4.

[27] Minter, William, et al, (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, chapter 4.

[28] Minter, William, et al, (eds) (2008) No Easy Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over a Half Century 1950 – 2000, page 93, and Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral.

[29] Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral.

[30] See Immanuel Wallerstein biography in Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral.

[31] Cabral, Amilcar (1979) Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings of Amilcar Cabral.

*Kali Akuno

A shorter version of this article was printed in ‘No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral,’ edited by Firoze Manji and Bill Fletcher Jr, 2013 by CODESRIA.

* THE VIEWS OF THE ABOVE ARTICLE ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR/S AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT THE VIEWS OF THE PAMBAZUKA NEWS EDITORIAL TEAM

* BROUGHT TO YOU BY PAMBAZUKA NEWS

Panthers and Zapatistas: Encounter

19 Sunday Jan 2014

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downloadBY CALEB DUARTE

ZAPANTERA NEGRA

A multimedia exploration of the artistic and political connections between the Black Panther Party and the Zapatista movements as incubated in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. To coincide with Emory Douglas’, the former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, residency in its space, EDELO (En Donde Era La ONU), a creative laboratory, will develop an art exhibition and single-issue newsletter. The exhibition will showcase pieces by local Zapatista artists and will explore their artistic identification with the Zapatista and Black Panther movements; the newsletter will pay homage to Douglas’ work in the Black Panthers’ popular press and will showcase new articles and artworks that will explore the connections between art and social movements as manifested in today’s multifaceted world.

Project Overview

At the peak of its popularity in 1970, 139,000 copies of The Black Panther newsletter were distributed throughout the United States on a weekly basis. Within its pages, Emory Douglas, the movement’s Minister of Culture, published his artworks in an effort to “illustrate[e] conditions that made revolution seem necessary; and… construct a visual mythology of power for people who felt powerless and victimized.” The newsletter and its accompanying illustrations played a central role in the articulation of the “What We Want, What We Believe” portion of the Black Panther’s Ten Point Program

In 1994, the Zapatista uprising, a Mexican, indigenous movement originating in the southern state of Chiapas, generated and disseminated a different sort of mass communication made possible by the rise of the internet. Photographic, video, and written information regarding the movement’s actions spread around the world in real time, increasing awareness of the Zapatista cause while also building solidarity for what the New York Times termed “the first post-modern revolution.” Positioning itself as a struggle against neoliberalism waged against 500 years of oppression, Zapatismo has employed new technologies of information distribution in order to articulate their wants, beliefs, and various identities to themselves and to their global audience.

The Black Panther and the Zapatista movements occurred in distinct cultural, political, and historical milieus; nonetheless, the two share a common appreciation of the power of the image and the written word to build their respective social movements into personal, collective, transformative, and public experiences. In contrast to the strong self-definition established and disseminated by these two movements via pertinent media channels, today’s multimedia, plugged-in landscape seems to promote the opposite development.

Today we tweet, text, and browse through myriad contexts, occasionally gaining a glimpse into the exterior world but more frequently losing ourselves in the internet’s echo chamber of opinions and perspectives. ZAPANTERA NEGRA (ZPN) will be a single-run magazine of 20,000 full-color copies that will merge the powerful imagery and layout style of Emory Douglas with the visions and voices of Zapatista painters and embroidery collectives. It will bring the two similar movements together on the page to demonstrate their commonalities, tie the movements to the present, and articulate a new, collaborative, interdisciplinary mode of information distribution and political, social, and economic self-identification.

Emory Douglas, the former Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party, will be in residency at EDELO in Chiapas, Mexico in November of 2012. During his time in Chiapas, he will visit Zapatista communities and work with Zapatista painters while simultaneously guiding a team of artists and editors in the layout and construction of ZPN. The newsletter will also include personal reflections authored by writers, academics, and artists on how art has moved and encouraged their own self-definition, work, and hope in a possible, better world.

ZAPANTERA NEGRA will be distributed in five countries and within select educational, artistic, and political institutions. Its project coordinators hope to develop a grassroots distribution network that will also allow for its dissemination to communities with little access to alternative media. The newsletter will also have a social media platform where “friends,” “followers,” and “fans” will be able to download, print, and wheatpaste the newsletter on overpasses and walkways. The newsletter production and distribution will be paralleled by the production of a collection of tapestries made by Zapatista embroidering communities that merge and exchange Black Panther imagery as articulated by Emory Douglas with that of the Zapatista movement.

This work is an attempt to highlight the positive and transformative roles art has played with in social, cultural, and revolutionary movements in promoting the possibilities of imagining other worlds. It is also a project that demonstrates how contemporary art practices side step between the traditionally, political, and conceptual performative works, from the ground up, with in communities of struggle, as opposed to contemporary “high” art practices taught by leading art institutions. This is a grass roots effort to bring together two very powerful visual and political social movements of our time. And in times of much revolutionary fever and economic insecurity, we feel it is important to share what Art can and has done to create change and break societies notions of normality.

TEAM

Emory Douglas – Lead Artist – San Francisco, CA RIGO 23 – Artistic direction – San Francisco, CA Caleb Duarte – Project Coordinator -Chiapas MX Grace Remington – Editor – Lima Peru Francisco Duarte – Translation – Nogales Mexico Mia Eve Rollow – EDELO Residency Coordinator – Chiapas MX Jose Luis – Exhibition coordination and Zapatista Painter Chiapas MX Antonio Vazquez– Painter from the community of Chenalho Chiapas MX. Lorena Rodriquez Zapatista woman’s embroidery collective project Chiapas MX. Carla Astorga – Distribution South America – Santiago de Chile Anne Brigitte Kouakou – Distribution – Oakland CA Kency Cornejo – Distribution – Los Angeles CA Kenya Moses –Social Media – San Francisco CA Design and printing – Victor Vayajel, SCLC Chiapas MX.

They meet to make Art http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1561896108/the-black-panthers-and-the-zapatistas-an-

A Message to My Sistas by Assata Shakur

18 Saturday Jan 2014

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At this time I’d like to say a few words especially to my sisters: SISTERS. BLACK PEOPLE WILL NEVER BE FREE UNLESS BLACK WOMEN PARTICIPATE IN EVERY ASPECT OF OUR STRUGGLE, ON EVERY LEVEL OF OUR STRUGGLE. I think that Black women, more than anybody on the face of the earth, recognize the urgency of our situation…

Because it is We who come face to face daily with the institutions of our oppression. And because it is We who have borne the major responsibility of raising our children. And it is We who have to deal with the welfare systems that do not care about the welfare of our children. And it is We who have to deal with the school systems that do not educate our children. It is We who have to deal with the racist teachers who teach our children to hate themselves. It is We who have seen the terrible effects of racism on our children.

I JUST WANT TO TAKE A MOMENT OUT TO EXPRESS MY LOVE TO ALL OF YOU WHO RISK YOUR LIVES DAILY STRUGGLING OUT HERE ON THE FRONT LINES. We who have watched our young grow too old, too soon. We who have watched our children come home angry and frustrated and seen them grow more bitter, more disillusioned with the passing of each day. And We who have seen the sick, trapped look on the faces of our children when they come to fully realize what it means to be Black in Amerikkka. And we know what deprivation is.

How many times have We run out of bus fare, rent money, food money and how many times have our children gone to school in hand-me-down clothes, with holes in their shoes. We know what a hell-hole Amerikkka is. We’re afraid to let our children go out and play. We’re afraid to walk the streets at night. We sisters, We have seen our young, the babies that We brought into this world with such great hopes for, We have seen their bodies bloated and aching from drugs, scarred and deformed by bullet holes. We know what oppression is. We have been abused in every way imaginable. We have been abused economically, politically. We have been abused physically, and We have been abused sexually. And sisters, We have a long and glorious history of struggle on this land/planet.

Afrikan women were strong and courageous warriors long before We came to this country in chains. And here in Amerikkka, our sisters have been on the front lines. Sister Harriet Tubman led the underground railroad. And sisters like Rosa Parks, Fannie Lou Hammer, Sandra Pratt and our Queen Mother Moore have carried it on. Sisters, We have been the backbone of our communities, and We have got to be the backbone of our nation. We have got to build strong family units, based on love and struggle. We don’t have no time to play around.

A REVOLUTIONARY WOMAN CAN’T HAVE NO REACTIONARY MAN.

If he’s not about liberation, if he’s not about struggle, if he ain’t about building a strong Black nation then he ain’t about nothing. We know how to struggle. We know how to struggle and finagle to survive. We know what it means, sisters, to struggle tooth and nail. We know what it means to struggle with love. We know what unity is. We know what sisterhood is. We have always been kind to each other, brought each other hot soup and biscuits. We have always helped each other through the hard times. Sisters, We must celebrate Afrikan womanhood. We don’t want to be like Miss Ann. She can keep her false eyelashes and her false, despoiled image of womanhood. She can keep her mink stole and her French provincial furniture. We will define for ourselves what womanhood is. And We will create our own style and our own ways of dress. We can’t have no white man in France telling Afrikan women what to look like. We will create our own New Afrikan way of living. We will create our own way of being and living our own New Afrikan culture, taking the best of the old and mixing it with the new.

SISTERS WE HAVE GOT TO TAKE CONTROL OF OUR LIVES AND OUR FUTURE WHEREVER WE ARE. AND WE HAVE GOT TO ORGANIZE OURSELVES INTO A STRONG BODY OF AFRIKAN WOMEN.

No One Can Stop The Rain

(A poem by Assata Shakur)

Watch, the grass is growing.

Watch, but don’t make it obvious.

Let your eyes roam casually, but watch! In any prison yard, you can see it –growing.

In the cracks, in the crevices, between the steel and the concrete,

out of the dead gray dust,

the bravest blades of grass shoot up,

bold and full of life.

Watch. the grass is growing.

It is growing through the cracks.

The guards say grass is against the Law.

Grass is contraband in prison.

The guards say that the grass is insolent.

It is uppity grass, radical grass, militant grass, terrorist grass, they call it weeds.

Nasty weeds, nigga weeds, dirty, spic, savage indian, wetback, pinko, commie weeds – subversive! And so the guards try to wipe out the grass.

They yank it from its roots. They poison it with drugs. They maul it, They rake it.

Blades of grass have been found hanging in cells,

covered with bruises. “apparent suicides

The guards say that the GRASS IS UNAUTHORIZED DO NOT LET THE GRASS GROW.

You can spy on the grass. You can lock up the grass.

You can mow it down, temporarily.

But you will never keep it from growing.

Watch, the grass is beautiful.

The guards try to mow it down, but it keeps on growing.

The grass grows into a poem.

The grass grows into a song. The grass paints itself across the canvas of life.

And the picture is clear and the lyrics are true, and the haunting voices sing so sweet and strong that the people hear the grass from far away.

And the people start to dance, and the people start to sing, and the song is freedom.

Watch, the grass is growing.

Assata Shakur

Queen Mother Assata Shakur

18 Saturday Jan 2014

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1. “Before going back to college, I knew I didn’t want to be an intellectual spending my life in books, and libraries without knowing what the hell is going on in the streets. Theory without practice is just as incomplete as practice without theory. The two have to go together.”

2. “A wall is just a wall. It can be broken down.”

3. “My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a revolutionary, a black revolutionary. This is not the time to feel depressed or defeated. This is not the time to forget about struggling, or to forget about all the sisters and brothers who have been railroaded into dungeons. Rather, it is the time to feel outraged, to feel determined, to fight against this government tooth and nail, not for what it is doing to me, but for what it is doing to us all. I would like to make this a better world for my daughter and for all the children of this world, for all men and women of this world.”

Image by Miranda Bergman, 1977, printed by Jane Norling

Mumia on COINTELPRO Activistz and Other Ordinary Heroez

17 Friday Jan 2014

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via @Moorbey   http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/01/15/mumia-on-cointelpro-activists-and-other-ordinary-heroes/ 

 

“The Linear Ancestors ofEdward Snowden“

Mumia on COINTELPRO Activists and Other Ordinary Heroes

by HEIDI BOGHOSIAN and JOHANNA FERNANDEZ

Mumia Abu-Jamal was one of hundreds of journalists who received in the mail a packet of covertly-copied COINTELPRO documents. They were sent by eight activists who broke into FBI offices in Media, Pennsylvania in 1971—and whose identities just became known last week. On WBAI’s “Law and Disorder,” on January 13, Mumia told us that he wasn’t sure if he received the papers because he was a radio reporter at the time, or whether the activists saw his name as a Black Panther Party member targeted for surveillance. The papers detailed names and activities of individuals he knew well for years, living and working closely together in communal spaces, who were FBI informants.

Mumia calls the Media activists the “linear ancestors of Edward Snowden.” In our radio conversation, we marveled at the fearlessness of ordinary people, like the eight of the heist, who, moved by their consciences, knowingly broke the law in the 1960s and 1970s for the betterment of society.

We asked Mumia, “Who are your ordinary heroes?” He was quick to point out that when we talk about Martin Luther King and Huey P. Newton we must ask: would their names be known to us without the everyday activists who joined movements to push them forward?  “For Martin’s case it was church women for the most part. Think about the Baptist Church—probably 70% of its population are women, and black women, those nameless black mothers, and grandmothers, sisters, and daughters—they made that movement possible, so they’re my heroes.” He also mentioned women like Frankye Malika Adams from the Brooklyn Chapter and Sister Love from the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP) who came out at great personal expense and built the BPP from the ground up. “We remember the names of the brothers, but how many of us remember the work and the sacrifice of the Sisters who got it done, who made it possible?” he asked.

A decade after receiving the papers, Mumia went on trial in Philadelphia for the killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner. The trial was politically charged because of his 1960s membership in the BPP and because the crime involved the alleged killing of a white police officer by a black man. At the time of his arrest, Mumia’s muckraking radio journalism on police brutality and corruption in City Hall, and his sympathetic reporting on the radical MOVE organization made him an obvious target of the state. Declassified memos revealed that the Philadelphia police, in consultation with the FBI, had for many years tried to peg a crime on Abu-Jamal. During the sentencing phase of his trial, an article he wrote for the Party newspaper denouncing the COINTELPRO-orchestrated murder of his colleague Fred Hampton was read out of context and used by the prosecutor to argue premeditation. This, along with other prosecutorial misconduct, resulted in a sentence of death.

To listen to the full interview, click here.

Heidi Boghosian is executive director of the National Lawyers Guild and a co-host of Law and Disorder.

Johanna Fernandez is a professor of history at Baruch College and a co-coordinator of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.

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