African Liberation Day
Get on the Bus!
On May 23-24, Africans from the U.S. , Canada and elsewhere in the dispersed African world will converge on Washington , D.C. for African Liberation (ALD). Recognizing that ALD cannot just be a celebration of some liberation that the African nation has not yet won, the African Peoples Socialist Party (APSP) will be using this ALD mobilization to forever change the North American front of African (Black) liberation movement. The theme of this year’s ALD is “Separated by Colonial Slavery, Reunited by Revolutionary Resistance! “.
With this ALD mobilization the APSP is calling on African people to join the African Socialist International, a worldwide revolutionary organization to unite and liberate Africa and her dispersed people! While ALD has always been a strategic tool of the African Peoples Socialist Party to bring masses of African (Black) people into revolutionary political life, this year’s ALD will serve as the conference to consolidate the North American Region of the African Socialist International – the single revolutionary organization that will function as the general staff for the international African revolution necessary to liberate and unite Africa and African people worldwide under the leadership of the African working class. This is a very special undertaking, as this is part of a global effort to unify the African working class all over the world. Our first ASI regional conference was in October 2008 in Sierra Leone , West Africa with over 500 African organizations in attendance and we are soon to have an East African regional conference in Nairobi , Kenya in April.
In early March the Caribbean was rocked with resistance when masses of African workers rebelled against French colonialism in Martinique and Guadeloupe . Weeks later, we saw the same type of resistance occur in Kenya and Sierra Leone , where African workers rose up against the violent conditions imposed on us by neo-colonialism in those countries. Most recently, we began to see resistance in the U.S. , where from coast to coast the African working class is beginning to carry out courageous acts of resistance against U.S. colonial oppression.
Lovelle Mixon made international headlines when he killed 4 police officers in Oakland , CA – an act of resistance that was a response to such oppression. African communities of Oakland and throughout the U.S. are locked down under a deadly colonial occupation no different than the conditions imposed on the Iraqi and Afghani people under the U.S. military occupation and the near genocidal colonial assault on the Palestinian people by the illegitimate settler-state of Israel. Just like the resistance of Nat Turner and Gabriel Prosser, enslaved Africans once vilified and today considered heroes, African people in Oakland have a right to struggle.
The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, the mass organization of the APSP, has been intervening in the spontaneous and leaderless struggle the African working class are engaged in with the capitalist colonialist U.S. government. This intervention gives our people the leadership necessary to not only fight, but win! In Oakland InPDUM organizers have been leading demonstrations and community forums to defend the African working class from the same attacks that Lovell resisted. In Philadelphia , the InPDUM is hard at work pushing back attacks being made by the local neo-colonial government led by Mayor Michael Nutter.
InPDUM organizers in Philadelphia have been waging an unrelenting struggle against Nutter’s $billion war against the African community which is used specifically for police and prisons as opposed to economic development and reparations. During a recent city council meeting where Nutter was to unveil his 2010 war budget, police attacked 2 members of InPDUM who were staging a peaceful protest from the audience. Among the City Hall 2 is InPDUM’s International Organizer Diop Olugbala who police attempted to choke to death as if to say that speaking in the interest of the African community is illegal.
This resistance is significant on many levels. Perhaps most important is the fact that the resistance of Africans in the belly of the beast have the ability to serve the death-blow to imperialism from within its own borders. In the U.S. and Canada , we live and work in close proximity (sometimes within walking distance) of the same institutions from where imperialism launches its attacks on African people daily. We should not allow for U.S. imperialism to know one day of peace within its own borders as long as our people suffer and toil within them. Through the leadership of the African Socialist International – whose North American region will be established at the ALD this year, the struggles being made throughout the U.S. have their greatest significance. There will be no freedom for Africans in Oakland, Philadelphia or anywhere else independent of a freedom fought for African people worldwide.
As we all know, African Liberation Day is a very important day in the history of African (black) people worldwide. At this time we celebrate the past works or our African heroes as well as perfect strategies on how we can continue this much needed work of liberating our people. The Toronto African Liberation Day Committee is currently organizing a bus trip from Toronto to African Liberation Day (ALD) in Washington DC . Tickets are on sale for $140.00 which includes bus fare, housing (hotel) and the ALD Conference fee. This is not just some regular trip to DC but an attempt to unite the African (Black) community in Canada with the international African revolution all over the world. Come to African Liberation Day and find out how we can really get free! This Time till it’s won!
GET ON THE BUS!
For more information call 647-210-2381 or email ald.toronto@yahoo.com
The Washington, DC conference will be held at the Rosario Charter School at 1100 Harvard Street NW
Hotel Information where we will be staying:
Holiday Inn Georgetown
2101 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20007
Telephone: 202-338-4600
OR (877) 863-4780
The bus departs from Toronto on Friday May 22nd @ 7pm and returns Monday May 25th Before 6am.
