FBI attempts to isolate the black freedom struggle with recent attack against Uhuru Movement
On July 29, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) attacked the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and Uhuru Movement. Early in the morning, they raided the homes of movement members as well as Uhuru Movement offices in St. Louis, Missouri and St. Petersburg, Florida with battering rams, flashbang grenades and drones, stealing files, computers, phones and other equipment.
Their claim was that this assault was because of political association with people in Russia. They claimed that the Party was forwarding Russian foreign policy, but the reality is that this is just a poor attempt to isolate the Party and the African liberation movement and disconnect us from other oppressed peoples around the world and any other anti-imperialist forces who support African peoples’ struggle against our oppression. It is a desperate lash out from a dying colonial-capitalist U.S. government, still reeling from its own instability, fragmentation and isolation.
Their bogus explanation also refuses to acknowledge the Party’s profound 50-year history of leadership toward African redemption, which has extended beyond the confines of the U.S. and established internationalist solidarity with oppressed peoples the world over.
The Party had a relationship with and supported the Sandinistas in the Nicaraguan Revolution in the 1970s and ‘80s, with the Chairman even speaking in Nicaragua. We stood in solidarity with the people of Iran and even defended Iranian people in this country when they faced lynch mobs after the Iranian people seized the U.S. embassy on their soil.
Our Party built a relationship with the Irish Republican Socialist Party (IRSP) in the 1980s that led to the IRSP stating that their organization “will not accept any financial donations from any Irish American organizations that do not openly give support to Black Liberation and National Liberation and Socialism in Ireland and Africa.” Chairman Omali Yeshitela went to Belfast, where he met with leading members of the IRSP and as a consequence, their office was burned down and their leader, assassinated.
The Party has also enjoyed an over 30 year-long relationship with our sister organization in the Mexican Liberation Movement, Unión del Barrio. These are but a few of the international relationships the Party has built over its 50-year history, not to mention the organizations and bases we’ve built on the ground around the world in places like South Africa (Occupied Azania), Kenya, England, France, The Bahamas, Jamaica and elsewhere.
The basis for this work can be found in our 14-Point Platform, in Point 4, which states, “We want the right to free speech and political association, a guarantee of the right to work for the betterment and emancipation of black people without fear of political imprisonment and the loss of life, limb and livelihood.”
This is followed by Point 5 which states, “We want the right to international political and economic association with Africans and all other peoples anywhere on the face of the Earth.”
This attempt by the U.S. government to isolate Africans and our international struggle for freedom will not succeed. They will not trap us behind colonially imposed borders and identities while they move throughout the world, wreaking havoc and devastation against the rest of us.
Most of all, we will continue to engage in the struggle to liberate Africa and African people, both in the U.S. and around the world, and if these desperate attacks by the U.S. government tell us nothing else, they tell us this—we are winning.
Complete the International African Revolution!
Hands off the Uhuru Movement!
Hands off the African Nation!
