On Thursday, April 15, African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) Chairwoman Penny Hess gave a solidarity statement to an important web event hosted by the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) Midwest Region titled “Smash Colonial Violence: We Will Fight Back!” addressing the recent police murder of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Park, MN, and in the midst of the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, MN.
The event, hosted by APSP Midwest Outreach Coordinator Jamaal Abegaz, featured:
- A keynote by APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela, and presentations by
- Malika Ngweji, APSP Midwest Regional Representative
- Kalambayi Andenet, InPDUM International President
- Ticharwa Masimba, Black Power Blueprint Economic Development Director speaking on the demand for black community control of the police
- Westbrook, speaking about police violence in Brooklyn Center and Minneapolis, MN
Penny’s statement begins at the 21:30 time stamp in the video. Transcript included below.
Jamaal Abegaz: At this point, I would like to recognize Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee for a statement on smashing the pedestal, a statement in solidarity. Comrade Penny Hess.
Penny Hess: Uhuru! And thank you Jamaal. And I want to really salute Chairman Omali Yeshitela who is on this call, Midwest Rep Malika Bouketchi and President Kalambayi, Ticharwa Masimba and all the great leaders who are here. It is an incredible honor to be here tonight.
From the African People’s Solidarity Committee, we express our solidarity with the family and community of Daunte Wright and George Floyd in Minnesota, Michael Brown here in St. Louis, and the thousands of African people who have been murdered by this colonial state in this country.
We stand in solidarity with the demand for black community control of the police.
I am the Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee which is a white organization formed by and working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
I salute Chairman Omali Yeshitela who is the leadership of the Party and our leadership.
I salute Deputy Chair Ona Zené Yeshitela who leads the Black Power Blueprint and all of the economic institutions of the entire Uhuru Movement.
The revolutionary assignment of the African People’s Solidarity Committee is to go into the white community to win other white people to recognize that there are two Americas — one of the oppressor, and of the oppressed; and of the colonizer and the colonized.
And to take responsibility for the fact that all the prosperity, opportunity, social and generational wealth, and even the fact that the police do not shoot us down and gun us down in the way that happens to African people every single day in this country.
This is the result of living in a country built on the enslavement of African people, on the theft of African people’s resources and stolen labor, the kidnapping from Africa, on the stolen land of the Indigenous people.
When we see African people gunned down and murdered with a knee to the neck or all the other ways that African people are routinely killed in this country, we have to recognize that it’s not brought about by racism, but by colonialism — the domination of a whole people by a foreign and alien state power for profit and gain — of which we are the colonizers as Chairman Omali Yeshitela has taught us and proves scientifically.
I unite with the analysis of African Internationalism, that the only solution for African people is to struggle for power over their lives and for national liberation as a people.
We as white people owe reparations.
If we want to stand on the right side of history, to rectify our historic relationship to African people, we must return the stolen resources to the movement for self-determination for African people.
I just say to other white people that might be listening or watching, that this is a critical time in history. If we want to be part of the future, then let’s be part of building this movement for true justice, which means African people have to be free, have power over their lives. Colonialism must go and we must pay reparations in a stand of genuine solidarity, under the leadership of the African working class.
I want to invite people to come out to the Uhuru Solidarity Movement’s international convention this weekend. You can check that out at uhurusolidarity.org.
Unity through reparations! Uhuru!
Penny Hess is Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and author of the book Overturning the Culture of Violence. She is also Editor of the White Solidarity with Black Power column that appears in The Burning Spear newspaper.
