colonial, occupying army, not “Racist”!

As members of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, we were honored to be able to participate in the powerful January 20th protest led by the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement demanding justice for Bryan Jones and all of the hundreds of other African people that have been brutally murdered by the Philadelphia killer police.

We have to raise some serious differences with Matt Pillischer’s reporting of the protest.
The demonstration was organized and led by Kamau Becktemba, leader of the Philadelphia Branch of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM). Matt arrogantly states that this protest was “a promising beginning”. However, Kamau Becktemba and the Uhuru Movement are very well known for having been on the frontlines leading the African community struggle to stop the brutal, murderous police attacks against the African community for the past 15 years! It was the Uhuru Movement-led massive protests in the late 1990s that led to a serious reduction in the police killings of African people for many years.

The African working class-led Uhuru Movement understands that the police are carrying out the public policy of police containment of the African community; they are not “racist”. The police are on the frontlines of a counterinsurgency war to crush the just resistance of African people who have always organized against slavery, colonial terror and all the conditions they face in this country and around the world – from crushing poverty, the government drug economy, massive imprisonment & colonial schools etc.

The struggle to end police terror is part of a world-wide movement of the African working class, organizing to take back all their stolen resources, their land and culture and to end the relationship of slave and slave-master for ever – in fact to liberate and unify Africa!

The call was made at the protest for members of the white community to stand in unity with African people’s right to liberation, justice and reparations, and to end our hundreds of years old relationship to African people as part of the oppressor nation. We are being called on to break from being the benefactors of the prison and drug economies that bring billions of dollars a year to the white economy; to stop being the gentrifiers, the prison guards, the ones who call African people violent while we live on their stolen resources and labor!

Yet Pillischer ignores this call completely, reiterating the tired old white left position that the police killings of young African men in Philly are part of an attack on all “workers”. White kids are NOT getting gunned down by police, whether “workers” or rich. White kids are NOT being sentenced to life in prison for tiny amounts of drugs, or even doing any time at all for the most part. We have to wake up and hear the call from African, Arab, Mexican and indigenous people: join in unity under the leadership of colonized people to end U.S. imperialist terror and domination, and actively support their right to self-determination and liberation!

Come out and participate in the Uhuru Solidarity Movement work. Come to weekly meetings, studies and forums at the Uhuru Solidarity Center, 3733 Lancaster Ave on Thursdays at 7:30pm. Come to the March 17th Philadelphia session of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African People, an African revolutionary court established by the Uhuru Movement in 1982. Take a principled stand in solidarity with the right of African people to freedom and independence!