My Journey From Anarchism To African Internationalism: White Solidarity With Black Power

24 Pages·2016·5.8 MB·English

My Journey From Anarchism
To African Internationalism:
White Solidarity With
Black Power
By Comet Crowbar
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Written August 2016 by Comet Crowbar. First published on
http://www.uhurusolidarity.org/2016/08/28/my-journey-from-
anarchism-to-african-internationalism-white-solidarity-with-black-
power/
CC-by-SA. Feel free to reprint and distribute.
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1) My Journey From Anarchism to Uhuru Solidarity
2) The Problem Is Colonialism
3) African Internationalism
4) Defining Hierarchy: Critiquing Anarchist Critique of Uhuru’s
Leadership Structure
5) Democratic Centralism
6) Why Is Anarchism So White?
7) Anarchism and African Internationalism
8) Leadership
1.
MY JOURNEY FROM ANARCHISM TO UHURU SOLIDARITY
As someone who has self-identified as anarchist for the last 14
years, I was mad when I found out about Uhuru Solidarity Movement. I
was mad because I had never heard of it before. In all my years of reading
up on radical politics, queer-feminist literature, and anti-racism blogs, I had
never heard of such a powerful overturning force as the Uhuru Movement
for African Liberation, lead by the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP)
since 1972. How does something that’s existed for over 40 years not show
up on my metaphorical Dashboard of Life in all of my 30 years existing on
this earth? Thanks to social media and following comrade Gazi Kodzo1,
(this video2 in particular) who appeared on my Tumblr dashboard in a re-
1 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpAvlAbrBuYsExeTkCL4wuw
2 “So about Macklemore's song White Privilege” video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKK4rUtKI_Q
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blog is how I learned about the Uhuru movement.
Included in this movement is a white organization that works under
the APSP’s direct leadership: Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM). I joined
in January 2016, as soon as I became aware that it existed. It was exactly
the kind of revolutionary organization I was looking for that takes anti-
capitalism seriously. USM provides me as a white person with a very
defined role in the struggle to end oppression against African/Black people
and all colonized peoples, here in the united snakes and the world over. The
task that has been assigned to me, as a white person, is to collect white
reparations to African people.
There is nothing more anti-capitalist one can do as a white person
than to pay reparations for slavery. It is a stance in solidarity with
African/Black Liberation when I honestly acknowledge to myself that
everything I have, all of the wealth, access to resources and art-school
education, happy childhood in a middle-class suburb, safe home and white
“privilege” to not get murdered by cops– all of that wealth is built on the
backs of enslaved African people and the genocide of the indigenous
peoples of Turtle Island (the indigenous name for so-called north america);
the genocide of African and all colonized peoples which has never ended
and still exists today in all of it’s neo-colonial forms.
“Every white aspiration and dream, every expectation for
happiness and a good life– from a successful marriage to a
secure future for their children– requires drone strikes in
Pakistan, police murders and mass imprisonment in the
African colonies and barrios in the U.S., and starvation and
forced displacement of the oppressed throughout the world.”
– Chairman Omali Yeshitela from his political report to the 6th
congress of the APSP, An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African
Revolution versus Parasitic Capitalism, p.74
When I say I have wealth, let it be known that I make barely $1000
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a month while living in the 4th-most expensive city in the united snakes
(so-called boston). Yet I still consider myself wealthy relative to the rest of
the world, because I am a white person. When I pay reparations, I am
taking money entirely out of the white capitalist system and returning it to
African people so they can build their own self-determined future that was
stolen from them 500 years ago. And to that I say: Uhuru! (Uhuru means
freedom in Swahili.)
During all the years that I struggled to understand why the world is
so messed up and why the violence has no end in sight, I found hope within
anarchist circles and autonomous movements that were taking self-directed
action to change society. Direct action, horizontally-structured meetings,
note taking and organizing were all my jam. When I say “anarchism”
throughout this essay, I’m referring to ideas such as decentralized
organizing, non-hierarchical structures, consensus-based decisions, No
Borders No Nations, a stateless society, autonomy, and a fierce hatred of
and wish to dismantle the capitalist State. And when I say “anarchist” I’m
referring to a person who believes in those morals and/or self-identifies
that way.
Discovering zines and anarchist newspapers as a teenager
(CrimethInc, anyone?), being encouraged as a free-thinker, and empowered
by Do-It-Yourself philosophy/ do-acracy has all paved the way for me in
life to be a strong, confident, outspoken woman who does not compromise
my morals. It has shaped me in ways that I could never imagine without it,
and I am grateful for each step of my journey that’s gotten me to where I
am politically today. I hate the violence of the US Empire so deeply and I
want to see it stop at all costs. For me, finding anarchism seemed like the
end-all answer to stopping capitalism and oppression. That is, until I
discovered African Internationalism and my role in it, and then my world
changed.
I recently had a reflection about the common anarchist phrase, “No
one is free until we all are free”, which is currently a sticker on my water
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bottle. It has a circle-A and a human-fist-animal-paw-together-in-solidarity
symbol on the same sicker, too. I still believe this is true. I know that I
could never fully enjoy my life while other people are being tortured in
prison and murdered in the street and freezing from homelessness.
But I see that phrase now as unfinished. It has invisible words that
are hidden by whiteness. Because really, who are the exact kinds of people
being tortured in prison and murdered in the street and freezing from
homelessness? It is the African people of the world and all colonized
peoples everywhere of which this “all” refers to. From the perspective of
African Internationalism, this phrase would be edited to be a little more
concise: No one is free until African people are free. I think it’s similar to
the comparison between “All Lives Matter” vs “Black Lives Matter”:
Before all lives can matter, Black lives have to matter. And before Black
lives can matter, Black Power has to matter. The Uhuru movement is about
Black Power.
2.
THE PROBLEM IS COLONIALISM
Through political education from reading up on African
Internationalism, I now see how all of the problems of this violent society
are all based in Colonialism and Imperialism. Transgender oppression,
poverty, patriarchy, abelism and racism: all of these and more exist due the
structure of Colonialism. When academics refer to “intersectional” politics,
what they are actually covering over is how Colonialism is the thread
which connects all oppression everywhere.
Colonialism is when an entire nation of people oppresses and
dominates another entire nation of people. From this viewpoint there are
only two kinds of people in the world: those of the oppressor nation, and
those of the oppressed nation.
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KC Mackey at Club
Reparations on 8/13/16 in
Cambridge, MA. Banner
painted by Comet Crowbar.
Club Reparations, organized
by KC as part of her
Reparations Challenge, aims
to be a bi-monthly dance
party in Boston to raise
material solidarity in the
form of reparations to the
APSP.
Consider the hydra monster, a beast with many heads. Each head is
an institution of violence in our modern day society: the rape culture, the
Endless War and military occupation, the police genocide against Africans,
the fracking industry of ecocide and climate chaos. Colonialism is the
connecting body of the hydra, the true belly of the beast. The american
empire and wealth of all white people everywhere was built on
Colonialism.
Rape culture is the imperial conquest over another’s body and was
used as a tool in the dis-empowerment of African people during europe’s
attack and conquest of Africa. The oil and gas industries are the neo-
colonial faces of today, extracting billions of dollars in stolen resources
from this occupied indigenous land and elsewhere as the whole world
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burns via fracking and the nihilistic poisoning of entire watersheds; all so a
few white dudes at the top can make a pretty penny at the expense of
millions of people dying. Fracking and resource extraction is the same
colonial story of the rape of a woman every 2 minutes a day in this country
and the enslavement of African people which was the founding of
capitalism: the selling of rape-bred African babies as the first “stock” on
the stock market, to produce free slave-labor for white people. This is the
“primitive accumulation” of which Marx speaks of, and misunderstood.
This is the history of Capitalism, which has always been parasitic.
3.
AFRICAN INTERNATIONALISM
African Internationalism offers a solution to end this colonial
violence and parasitic capitalism that is wreaking havoc across the world.
The political theory of African Internationalism3 was coined by Chairman
Omali Yeshitela in 1979, and is based on the fact that the material
conditions that Africans/Black people face today all have a historical
context which stems from colonialism and imperialism. It is the political
theory of the African working class in Africa, the U.S. and where ever
Africans are who have been forcibly dispersed around the world. It’s the
theory necessary to reunite and liberate Africa and African people
everywhere.
The two main points of African Internationalism are to 1)
dismantle parasitic capitalism, and 2) build state power for a unified
African nation. It is only with State power could Africa ever legitimately
defend itself against the greedy hands of white people who to this day
continue to steal resources from it’s rich soil, and drone bomb millions who
must flee as refugees on their own planet. The APSP is striving for State
power to build a unified African nation, in the same way that Palestine is
3 http://www.slideshare.net/apscuhuru/basic-principles-of-african-
internationalism
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striving to have State power and be a self-determined nation of people
without colonizers like the Israeli Military occupying and murdering them.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela has often spoken of how this seizure of state
power is to be temporary, a necessity to ensure the lasting defeat of
colonialism. African Internationalism foresees a time when states will be
unnecessary, and humanity will live in a border-less society (as we
transition through revolution, to socialism, to communism.)
African Internationalism is not Pan-Africanism and it is not #Black
Lives Matter. It is something different; a truly revolutionary vision and
plan of action to permanently overturn the culture of violent parasitic
capitalism. And anyone, no matter if you are African or not, can unite with
the political theory of African Internationalism.
This theory is carried out in practice by the African People’s
Socialist Party. The APSP has a solid, well-researched plan of action that
has been playing out for the last near-half a century, since the government
attack and violent destruction of the Black Panther Party. “You can kill our
leaders, but you can’t stop out movement!” was the vibe of the Black
Liberation movement after it was entirely ripped apart by government-
enacted State repression programs like COINTLPRO. The Uhuru
movement grew out of that time period, and the APSP was founded in
1972. Their well-researched long-term plan of action to overthrow parasitic
capitalism has been happening for some time now and will continue into
the next century. It will not stop until justice has been served for all
African/Black people everywhere, and when white reparations have been
paid in full. These reparations paid back from white people who have raped
and pillaged the African continent of it’s resources for 500 years will be
used to build the new African economy, and Africa will be united as one
self-determined nation.
Sounds amazing, right? Finally, some real shit that isn’t cloaked in
a liberal agenda! For all of it’s revolutionary theory, it’s interesting how the
most push-back comes from so-called radicals or anarchists who question
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how the APSP organizes itself. The APSP follows the hierarchical
leadership structure known as Democratic Centralism, and the movement is
lead by Chairman Omali Yeshitela. Yeah, a dude. So patriarchal, right?
4.
DEFINING HEIRARCHY: CRITIQUING ANARCHIST CRITIQUE
OF UHURU’S LEADERSHIP STRUCTURE
Enter the anarchist: “Whoa hold up, you take orders from a
hierarchical leader? A man? How can that be radical at all! I don’t trust
that hierarchical structure, it sounds oppressive.” This is a very common
critique from the white left/“radical”/anarchist world upon first discovering
the Uhuru Movement for African Liberation. Somehow, despite all the
radical ideas mentioned above in the definition of African Internationalism,
it can so easily be written off as a “cult” with blind followers of a leader.
You wanna talk about cults? I think the biggest cult of all is the united
snakes government and the organized gangsters with automatic weapons
known as the Police!
In the African People’s Socialist Party, African/Black people have
chosen, via their own self-determination to exist as they wish, to organize
themselves in this way that suits their need for liberation. For white
“radicals” to critique that structure has weird tones of white-centric
entitlement that all radical/revolutionary organizing be done in one
particular way (non-hierarchically and consensus based) lest it be
invalidated as not being “legit”.
There also seems to be confusion around what the definition of
“hierarchy” means, so let’s break it down: We have to remember that
“hierarchy” in itself does not equate with “oppression”. Hierarchy does not
automatically equate with “power-over” and “dominance”. It is only under
Capitalism that hierarchy has always meant oppression.
Hierarchy under Capitalism plays out in bosses telling you what to
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