We are here today with the objective to build an anti-colonial free speech movement. 

We say anti-colonial precisely because it is the colonial subjects inside this country and around the world who are the primary targets of the attacks by the United States government and all of the traditional colonial powers. 

This was shown by the murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Fred Hampton and others; the declaration by the U.S. Attorney General that the Black Panther Party would be destroyed by the end of 1969; the raids that became the order of the day in this country without any regard for law. 

It is the attacks on Mexican-Indigenous people crossing the colonial border coming onto their own land, and the fact that the Indigenous people are not even seen because they have been interred into concentration camps known as Indian reservations. 

Karl Marx said this was the origin of capitalism. He said, what was characterized as wage slavery in Europe required “slavery pure and simple in the new world.” 

The turning of Africa into what Marx called “a warren for the commercial hunting of Black skins,” and “interring indigenous people in mines,” was part of the construction of a colonial mode of production. 

For the first time in history there was a world economy that linked us in a parasitic relationship as oppressed and oppressors, a system now experiencing stress as a consequence of resistance of oppressed peoples and the struggle for more influence by other nations around the world.

Not everyone in this meeting has this worldview, but what brings us together is that we unite with the right of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) to have that belief system to propagate our views and to organize for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people everywhere. 

We say yes, free speech is an incredibly important issue, but free speech is not just some abstract declaration. The United States talks about free speech all the time as long as you don’t say anything that challenges the status quo. 

It’s difficult for the United States, which is in a growing contest with the so-called multipolar world, to say it is bombing Black people’s houses at 5 o’clock in the morning (as they did the Uhuru Movement on July 29, 2022), just as they bombed churches in 1963, because Black people wanted to participate in the electoral process.  

It’s hard for them to say publicly that we don’t want Black people to have connections with anyone except our colonizers and oppressors who come to our churches and shoot us.    

They can’t say this because they’re in contest with others over what is the best system. For a long time the United States didn’t have to do that especially after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when there was a victory dance done by the so-called unipolar world which dominated. One person even characterized this period as the “end of history.”  The world is this way and will never change again. 

Then come the people who are colonized and oppressed rising to take back their resources that fill the supermarkets, diamond shops and malls in the U.S., while the people who dig the diamonds are poverty stricken with no clean water or electricity.

This is the movement of oppressed people that Marx correctly summed up as the foundation upon which wage slavery rests—this is what we in the APSP are fighting to build. 

Free speech is critical. But unfortunately when Africans, Mexicans and others put forward our views, we have been historically attacked by both the U.S. government and the white Leftists, anti-imperialists who jumped in to silence and attack our views. They would come up with their own arguments for what Black people should do to be free. They end up objectively on the side of the colonizers in attempting to control what ideas we are allowed to have.  These are our ideas and we have agency! We don’t need Russians or anyone else to tell us.

We developed our own theory based on our own experiences using scientific methods developed by Marx and Engels’ dialectical materialism but based on our own place and destiny in the world. 

Some may disagree but that’s not the basic point. The basic point is agreeing that I’ve got the right and the African People’s Socialist Party has the right to organize and articulate around this without being murdered, raided or threatened with 10-15 years imprisonment.

People like to refer to the United States as a country of immigrants but Africans are not immigrants, we came here as captives. Africans and Indigenous: we didn’t come here looking for a better way of life, we lost a better way of life. 

The U.S. government and others express the notion of America being the place where oppressed people come to get freedom when America was built on oppression and the exploitation of African and Indigenous peoples.

We have agency. This is what makes this coalition beautiful.

This is a nonsectarian coalition. A coalition of anti-colonial free speech, the right to organize around our aims without fear of attack by a clearly hostile government on the one hand.

On the other hand we demand solidarity from those who stand with us to demand our right to do this.

Whether you agree that Africans are a colonially dispersed nation around the world, which it is, you have to believe in our right to say that. 

The African People’s Socialist Party makes some uncomfortable because it is distinguished for being an organization not simply trying to find a better place on the plantation, or a more benign imperialism; not trying to bring in Walmart socialism as Bernie Sanders does ($15 an hour over a number of years—which Walmart does now).

We are an organization created for the purpose of completing the Black Revolution of the 1960s that saw the assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and the destruction of so many people the consequences of which we have not yet overcome.

It’s not just a defense of the Uhuru 3, nor just keeping someone out of prison. I don’t want to go to prison, I’m not trying to be a martyr. But keeping us out of prison prevents them from being successful in this war to keep Black people from being free. 

We are in a counteroffensive, and must push back against a system in extraordinary crisis, where the social fabric is rending visibly. White people are climbing the walls of the capitol and defecating on the desk of the third most powerful person in the country while trying to chase down and hang the vice president. 

DeSantis in Florida is not alone; he stands with many others. There is little distinction between republicans and democrats. 

Our objective is to be free, to liberate ourselves, not to be compromised in the ultimate objective of liberation. You can’t do that unless you challenge the foundation of a social system built on genocide and the theft of resources, labor and genius of African and oppressed peoples around the world. 

I hope that everyone here can sign on and join this coalition because it allows us to be part of a massive counteroffensive. 

Push them back. No one can get elected in 2024 unless they deal with this. Biden is trying to overcome being “Sleepy Joe” and win the confidence of people in the democratic party. Biden said he wants to get the white vote. Biden as you know is a terrorist, was against civil rights legislation in the ’70s and as a senator, authored the crime bill.

We represent a clear alternative, crossing the entire ideological spectrum, and national/racial lines. This movement can represent an alternative.

Biden is not going to bring in reparations, Black community control of police, or stop those thugs at the border who are killing and harassing people, putting children in cages in this country.

We can put forward a people’s platform.

We are calling on everyone to participate in the 15th annual Black is Back Coalition mobilization on the white house on November 4. Generally speaking the white peace movement does not come out. All of us know that we’re supposed to go to the white peace movement’s demonstrations. We want to challenge them: Come out of this process with a platform that gives people a challenge and alternative that nobody gets elected in any office at the expense of the vast majority of the people.

I’m not a republican or a democrat. I’m red, black and green!

We can push back the state!

The future belongs to the people!

We are developing a magnificent anti-colonial coalition! Anti what’s happening to Black people!

We’re not going back to the back of the bus! 

We’re not going back to the slander against Indigenous, Mexican people!

We’re going forward and we’re going to take everyone who’s interested in the forward motion of history in this process.

Let’s build this coalition and let’s kick the ass of the ruling class! 

This is a people’s movement and we are reintroducing the question of power. 

We say, “All power to the people and Black power to the African nation.”

ALL POWER to the people, Black power to the African nation.