This article was originally published in the September 2021 issue of The Burning Spear newspaper and its online edition TheBurningSpear.com. It is republished with permission from The Burning Spear .
Join the March for Reparations to African People—October 16, 2021
On October 16th, 2021 the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM) will be taking to the streets, once again, to march in solidarity with the demand for reparations to African people for centuries of mass incarceration, police murders, brutal oppression and colonial terror.
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement is the mass organization of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC)—an organization of white people created and led by the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) to build solidarity with reparations and liberation for African people in our own white communities.
The March for Reparations is part of a decades-long campaign calling on white people to go beyond protest and get organized under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
Formed by APSP founder Chairman Omali Yeshitela in 1976, the African People’s Solidarity Committee has been waging campaigns against our white colonizer nation: organizing white people to pay reparations, to take a stand against genocide and to recognize that our interest is in material solidarity with the African working class.
The primitive accumulation of wealth
Based on the Chairman’s theory of African Internationalism, the economic system of capitalism that defines the world today was built on the assault of Africa, the ravaging of their resources and the stealing, trading and selling of African human beings.
In fact, the first stock market in the 1600s was started in Amsterdam, where over 600,000 enslaved Africans were sold as commodities.
Not soon after, enslaved Africans were brought, bought and sold in New Amsterdam and forced into backbreaking labor to build what is now present-day New York City.
Predecessors of big banks like Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase got their start-up capital from accepting enslaved Africans as collateral on loans made to white plantation owners. Banks still profit off of African people today as underwriters for police brutality bonds, meaning every time a cop murders an African, the city pays a settlement using loans borrowed from banks who profit from service fees, while white wealthy investors make millions on interest from the banks.
Even if we are not part of the one percent, we must take responsibility for the fact that we have been benefiting from a system of parasitism—latching on to the labor and resources of African people for hundreds of years, laying in complicity for our own comfortability and continuing to thrive at the expense of their livelihood and well-being.
We are not marching against racism
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela says, African people are not waging a war on racism: the ideas of black people in white people’s minds; they are struggling for freedom over their own black lives, to feed, clothe and house themselves. They are fighting for economic and political power in their own hands.
This is a war against colonialism—the total domination of African people by an occupying state power for the exploitation and profit for the white population.
This is a fight to rid the world of two realities: happiness, wealth, opportunity and safety for white people at the expense of genocidal poverty, mass murder and State-sanctioned violence for Africans.
We must march in solidarity with all colonized peoples of the world and struggle to stop Wall Street’s imperialist wars against the people of Palestine, Iraq, Mexico, Syria and all places infected by white power.
We must go beyond protesting
Joining the March for Reparations is more than marching in protest; it is taking a stand in material solidarity with the African Revolution.
Last year, the march swept across six cities, raising more than $25,000 for the liberation projects of the APSP, specifically the Black Power Blueprint: the black-led anti-colonial, self-determination organization based on the northside of St. Louis, MO.
The population in St. Louis, north of the Delmar Boulevard divide, is 94 percent black, where 30 percent of the residents live below the poverty line.
As stated on the Black Power Blueprint’s website, “the North Side now has more than 7,000 vacant, crumbling buildings and thousands of empty, overgrown lots on streets dotted with potholes, far from commerce and access to schools, grocery stores and other conveniences”.
The organization has been purchasing properties, renovating or demolishing buildings and constructing new spaces, like a community garden with a monthly farmers market, a 4-plex apartment for a workforce program for Africans coming out of the colonial prison system and a community center.
The Black Power Blueprint is currently in the process of raising funds for other self-reliance and economic development programs like a community commercial kitchen, a community basketball court and the African Women’s Health Center.
Marching for reparations to African people means returning the stolen resources being hoarded in our white community, turning our backs on our white ruling class and working under the leadership of the African working class to overturn white domination of African and colonized peoples.
We must unite with the African People’s Socialist Party’s goals, strategy and struggle for freedom and unity of all oppressed peoples around the world. Step up and challenge yourself and your white community to no longer live at the expense of another.
Unity through reparations!
Join the 2021 March for Reparations – October 16th in your city!
- Philadelphia, PA
- St. Petersburg, FL
- Oakland, CA
- St. Louis, MO
Visit uhurusolidarity.org
2020 March for Reparations in Philadelphia, PA
1993 March Against Genocide in Berkeley, CA
1992 March Against Genocide in Berkeley, CA
Len Demmer is a member of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and contributor to The Burning Spear newspaper‘s “White Solidarity with Black Power” column.
