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Hands Off Uhuru! stands with Code Pink, the People’s Forum and the Tricontinental Institute against the false allegations in The New York Times hit piece and attacks on free speech

The Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! Campaign condemns the August 5, 2023 New York Times red-baiting hit piece as lies, distortions, innuendo, attacking the free speech rights of longtime antiwar group Code Pink, the popular New York City event space, the People’s Forum, and the Tricontinental Institute for Social Justice. 

Hands Off Uhuru also supports the inalienable right of these and all organizations and individuals to freedom of assembly and association and the right to express support for and have relationships with the governments and peoples of China, Russia, Venezuela, Cuba and any other states.

Hands Off Uhuru! recognizes these attacks on the presumed First Amendment right to freedom of speech and political assembly as an extension of the U.S. government’s assault on the right of African people to free speech and the right to struggle for black freedom. 

On July 29, 2022 seven properties, offices and homes of the Uhuru Movement were militarily raided by the FBI, including the home of African People’s Socialist Party Chair Chairman Omali Yeshitela along with two members of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, known as the Uhuru 3, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel. 

Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru 3 were indicted in April on spurious  charges of being “under the influence” of Russian agents.

The right of African people to speak out in opposition to the U.S. government’s colonial oppression of our people, to openly advocate for our liberation and to enjoy the support of all organizations, nations and individuals who unite with our mission of winning black freedom–this is the precondition for any semblance of free speech and democratic rights for everyone. 

History shows us that an attack on the Black Liberation Movement, such as the assassinations and mass imprisonment of the COINTELPRO assault in the 1960s, opens the door for an attack on the rights of all people.

Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! unites with Code Pink’s comparison to the recent attacks on them to the McCarthyite repression of the 1950s. We note that the key force responsible for overturning the repressive McCarthy period in the 50s were the freedom fighters of the grassroots Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. 

It was the courageous struggles of the masses of black people, led by Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Chairman Omali Yeshitela and so many others that forced the U.S. government to grant civil and human rights to African, Indigenous, Mexican people, women, LGBT-Q and others. It was the Black Power Movement that celebrated its unity with the victory of the people of Vietnam, ending the US colonial war.

Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! calls on all who are outraged by the attacks on Code Pink, the People’s Forum (where Hands Off Uhuru! held an event in 2022), and the Tricontinental to join the Hands Off Uhuru Coalition that includes African, Indigenous, Mexican and other anti-colonial movements as well as anti-war and free speech activists and advocates. 

African, Indigenous and colonized peoples are fighting back, putting the state on trial, demanding our right to organize and advocate for our liberation from colonial oppression and for the rights of all colonized peoples and all those fighting against U.S. imperialist war and for free speech. 

We call for all to join the Black is Back Coalition 15th Annual Black People’s March on the White House on Saturday, November 4. 

Join with over 40 organizations and individuals raising the voices of the anti-colonial free speech movement and all those fighting for our human rights. 

Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!
Drop the Charges on the Uhuru 3!
Defend the right to free speech!
All Power to the People! Black Power to the African Nation!

Download the PDF version of this statement

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