Invitation

The conditions in the African community in the United States are dire, much like the conditions Africans find ourselves in around the world. African communities in the U.S. have been devastated by the subprime mortgage crisis. While the U.S. government bails out bankers, brokers and lenders who created and profited from the predatory lending practice that targeted Africans for subprime and adjustable rate mortgages, hundreds of thousands of African families have lost our homes.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to imprison more and more Africans to feed its failing economy. The current situation where one out of every nine African men of childbearing age is in prison in the U.S. is but a continuation of the brutally vicious convict leasing system established immediately after the emancipation proclamation supposedly “freed” enslaved Africans, the establishment of slavery as a means of punishment in the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and the development of designer laws to drag masses of African people to prisons to provide free labor.

The so-called education system violates our children on a daily basis. As if an anti-African curriculum were not enough, the schools brutalize our children. Small children, like five-year-old Ja’eshia Scott in St. Petersburg, Florida or six-year-old Desire’e Watson in Avon Park, Florida, are handcuffed and imprisoned by police for so-called “temper tantrums.” Sixteen-year-old Pleajhai Mervin had her arm broken in Palmdale, California by one of the many cops who function in schools as military forces just because the cop said she didn’t clean up a dropped cake to his liking. Then there is Shaquanda Cotton who was locked up and sentenced to seven years in prison in Texas for allegedly pushing a hall monitor.

Lynch mob fervor continues to rise, be it from mobs of white workers or mobs of State military agents in the form of the police. The Jena Six case is but one example. Another example can be found in the case of Sean Bell who New York police decided to massacre with 50 bullets just hours before his wedding. Then there is the case of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnson of Atlanta, Georgia, who was shot down like a dog by a unit of police who kicked down the door of her home. Cases like these of vicious attacks against the African community can be found throughout the U.S.

Then again, no one can forget the Katrina situation in the Gulf Region, where the U.S. government not only left Africans to die with no access to food or clean water, but contained the African community of New Orleans with armed police and sent in troops from private contracting firms like those found in Iraq to murder African people. Even now, the government-imposed Katrina crisis continues as a fierce gentrification process is making it impossible for African people to return to our homes.

Amid this sea of colonial misery stands Barack Obama. Charming and articulate, Obama beckons us to follow him.

Obama is being presented to African people in this time of extreme crisis — when Africans would be looking for solutions other than through the system that has created all of our problems — as the solution. We are told that he brings “change we can believe in.” Never mind that he is the U.S. presidential candidate who has received the most funds from Wall Street. Nevermind that his advisors include Penny Pritzker, who made riches through the subprime crisis that is making Africans homeless now, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who as former U.S. president James Earl Carter’s national security advisor created the modern jihad to destroy the Soviet Union.

But does Obama actually represent a solution to the conditions of African people? Up to now, Barack Obama has refused to speak to the conditions African people face. The one time he was forced to mention African people — following statements made by his pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright — he only glossed over them, equating the experience of African people, who exist as a domestic colony within U.S. borders, with that of working-class white people who feel “anger over welfare and affirmative action.”

So what solution would Barack Obama’s election as U.S. president mean for Africans suffering under unbearable conditions in what is being called a “post-racial” society?

Malcolm X raised the question of “the Ballot or the Bullet” back in the 1960s, another time when African masses were looking for our own solutions of Black Power independent of the Democratic and Republican parties. During that time, one response by white power, in addition to a massive military assault against the African community and our organizations, was to put forward as our representatives people who look like us but who actually served white power.

Come to African Liberation Day in Washington, D.C. on May 25, 2008 and participate in a symposium to discuss the question: “Is Barack Obama Black Power?”

Speakers participating include:

• Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP)

• Queen Mother Dorothy Benton Lewis, National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)*

• Chokwe Lumumba, Chair of the New Afrikan People’s Organization (NAPO)

• Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report

• Claudette Perry, Global Afrikan Congress (GAC)*

• Ajamu Sankofa, National Conference of Black Lawyers and N’COBRA*

• Dr. Aisha Fields, Director of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP)

• Ivory Muhammad, President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM)

For more information, including registration for the event check out…

http://www.alduhuru.org/index.html

*For identification purposes only!