** On December 16, 2024, Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel will go before Judge William Jung in Federal Court in Tampa where the government wants to put them in prison for 5 years and fine them $250,000 each on a conspiracy conviction entirely tied to their exercise of their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association.
On the morning of September 12th, 2024 a federal jury in Tampa, Florida returned a verdict in the anti-colonial free speech trial of the century, where Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel faced bogus charges of working as Russian agents.
The 12 person jury concluded a not guilty verdict on the foundational charge, “working as an unregistered agent of the Russian Government”. The jury contained no black jurors, but to their credit, they saw clearly that African people have agency and sovereignty over their actions. The government presented 14 witnesses, 12 of them FBI agents, while the defense needed to present no witnesses to show that the government’s accusation of being Russian agents was fabricated.
The jury returned a contradictory guilty verdict on the lesser charge, “conspiring to work as an unregistered agent of the Russian government.” This charge carries a maximum sentence of five years and $250,000 each.
The not guilty verdict on the primary charge was a devastating blow to the prosecution whose main objective was to convict on the Russian agent charge. With their lack of evidence and exposed lies, they were unable to convince the jury that Russia was behind the 60 year legacy of anti-colonial struggle led by Chairman Omali Yeshitela.
The lawyers are preparing to appeal to ensure all of the baseless accusations are defeated and no prison time is served. Sentencing on the conspiracy conviction is set for December 16. This is a precedent-setting case where the government seeks to end First Amendment protections for everyone by criminalizing dissenting speech and opinion.
The trial took place 2 years after a militarized multi-city FBI raid used flash bang devices, drones, armored vehicles, automatic weapons and scores of flak-jacketed soldiers to seize computers, hard drives, phones and files from seven homes and offices of Uhuru Movement leaders.
The African People’s Socialist Party was founded in 1972 and has, for over 50 years, maintained a consistent world view and carried out a consistent program of organizing for the liberation of African people worldwide. It is guided by the political theory of African Internationalism, developed by Chairman Omali Yeshitela and published in numerous books as well as on the pages of The Burning Spear newspaper, issues of which can be viewed in the digital newspapers collection of the University of Florida. Chairman Omali’s groundbreaking work on the colonial mode of production as the foundation of the world capitalism system has influenced policy-makers, academics and activists.
Chairman Omali Yeshitela has traveled to over 19 countries organizing for African liberation and winning support for the African liberation struggle. He has spoken at the United Nations and represented the African Nation at gatherings in Nicaragua; Big Mountain AZ (Navajo aka Dine); South Africa; Namibia; Sierra Leone; Ghana; Kenya; England; Ireland; France; Spain; Germany; Sweden; Netherlands; Jamaica; Bahamas; Canada; Suriname; and Russia. In 2019, Chairman Omali won the “Africa Debate” at the Oxford Union in England.
From its earliest days, the APSP publicized the fact that African people face genocide at the hands of the U.S. government and brought this charge before the world community and the United Nations. The APSP held the first “International Tribunal on Reparations for Black People in the U.S.” in Brooklyn, New York in 1982. The Tribunal heard testimony to show how the U.S. violates the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. For 40+ years, the APSP introduced the reparations demand into Black community struggles against police violence, unjust imprisonment, and the denial of decent housing, education, healthcare and economic development, making “reparations” the household word it is today. As part of the current U.S. government attempt to cover its own crimes against African people, an Uhuru Movement petition titled, “We Charge Genocide” with over 130,000 signatures was abruptly removed by Change.org.
The APSP has maintained economic self-sufficiency throughout its existence, ensuring that its political agenda serves the interests of its self-defined program for African liberation and is not dictated by any external force. Picking oranges, backyard fish fries and selling The Burning Spear newspaper on the street provided resources for the APSP in its infancy, soon expanding to a bookstore, restaurant, bakery cafe, graphic design business and growing a broad base of financial supporters who contribute based on their unity with the Uhuru Movement’s strategy. We set the terms!
The APSP’s strategic move to create the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) and a mass movement for white reparations to the black community today provides resources from thousands of individual and business donors from members of the colonizer nation. This strategic front of the African revolution sends organizers from the APSC into their own white communities and puts an end to the complete unity of white people with their ruling class. It gave those born into the colonizing nation the opportunity to break from their ruling class and join with the rest of humanity in the struggle to build a new world where no one group lives at the expense of another.
The FBI is attacking the ability of the Black community to feed, clothe, house, educate and protect our community. The Uhuru Movement has created over 50 economic institutions and black community programs around the world, over the years to improve the quality of life for African people – bakery cafes, commercial kitchens, fitness gyms, community gardens, a basketball court, doula training program, radio station, farmers market, health fairs, book fairs, outdoor venues and marketplaces, childcare collectives, rainwater harvesting, disaster relief agency, infant-maternal health clinic, vocational school, free telehealth program, workforce housing and more. The government has recently enlisted the assistance of several financial institutions to impose economic sanctions attacking these black self-determination programs.
The FBI is attacking black community efforts to participate in the electoral arena. “They told us we should go to the polls and vote if we wanted to make change; now they arrest us for participating in the electoral system”. For decades, the Uhuru Movement has run candidates for local offices and put initiatives on the ballot, fighting to bring the needs of the African working class into the electoral arena. After the 2008 founding of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, the Uhuru Movement’s electoral work has been influenced by the Coalition’s 19-point platform known as the “National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination” created by and popularized through the Coalition’s annual candidate training schools. The Uhuru Movement’s electoral work is defined by the needs of the Black community, not by some foreign government.
The U.S. government has a decades-long legacy of waging war on the African liberation movement. The U.S. Bureau of Investigation (later called the FBI) hired its first black agent in 1919 to infiltrate Marcus Garvey’s UNIA, framing him, jailing him, exiling him back to Jamaica and destroying that movement of 11 million Africans worldwide. Scores of Black leaders, activists, musicians, artists and organizations have been targeted by the FBI, many of them with an accusation of ties to Russia, such as W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King, Jr. Others, like Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and James Baldwin were targeted by the FBI for their support of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s.
The Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! Campaign was initiated following the July 29, 2022 violent FBI raids and is winning support from individuals and organizations throughout the U.S. and the world. The FBI raids, economic sanctions and indictments have prompted ongoing protest actions and statements of outrage spanning the political spectrum and spawned a broad-based non-sectarian anti-colonial free speech movement in the Hands Off Uhuru Fightback Coalition.
Links with background on the U.S. government state attacks on the African People’s Socialist Party, Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement:
“In clear violation of the First Amendment, the Department of Justice is prosecuting US citizens for domestic speech and political activities because they do not align with the policies of the US government.” – National Lawyers Guild
“It is clear that the charges against the Uhuru 3 are politically motivated in that they are being applied selectively. The United States’ charges against the Uhuru 3 set a dangerous precedent threatening the First Amendment rights of all people.” – U.S. Peace Council
“How dare you, the United States … say that we don’t have enough intelligence and history to organize around reparations and colonial capitalism, to organize around genocide; we need Russia to come in and do that for us?!” – NYC Councilman Charles Barron
“It’s part of the war against black freedom movements… I think it’s very important to do what one can and all that one can to defend the rights and liberties of our brothers and sisters at the African People’s Socialist Party.” – Dr. Cornel West
“We must demand that the FBI cease invoking the Foreign Agents Registration Act to spy on and criminalize Black social justice leaders.” – Collin P. Poirot and Azadeh Shahshahani, The Nation
“This is an absolutely remarkable – and chilling – indictment.” – Glenn Greenwald, System Update
“This fake and racist case flows from the Russiagate hysteria that convinced millions of Americans that Russia was paying dissident groups to destabilize the US political system.” – Max Blumenthal, The Greyzone
“It is alarming. I would hope that the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU and others who we depend on at fraught moments like this, would leap to the defense of these defendants.” – Dr. Gerald Horne
“The latest group of Americans to find their constitutionally protected opinions become felonies are, believe it or not, an organization of black nationalist left wingers who oppose the war in Ukraine…. That man is facing 10 years behind bars for expressing views about Ukraine that the Biden administration doesn’t want to hear. That’s terrifying.” – Tucker Carlson
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Chairman Omali Yeshitela is the 83-year-old leader of the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement, political theorist and strategist who developed the theory of African Internationalism. He has traveled to over 17 countries building the Black Power struggle throughout Africa, Europe and the Americas, and establishing solidarity relations with other colonized peoples’ movements. He has driven the establishment of over 50 black community economic institutions designed to free African people from the colonial mode of production.
Penny Hess is the Chairwoman of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, the solidarity component of the African People’s Socialist Party, leading the movement for white solidarity with black power and reparations, under the leadership of Chairman Omali. She is author of “Overturning the culture of violence” that chronicles the creation of white wealth at the expense of slavery, genocide and land theft of African and Indigenous people.
Jesse Nevel is Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, organizing campaigns for white reparations to the African community and a former mayoral candidate in St. Petersburg, Florida. He is a young anti-Zionist Jewish man, well-versed in the history of Zionism, the development and use of international law and the concept of genocide and on the colonial theft of the land of Palestine.
Attorney Leonard Goodman is a distinguished criminal law attorney based in Chicago who has won high profile and precedent-setting cases including in the U.S. Supreme Court and the Illinois Supreme Court. He is a published columnist covering legal and social justice topics and teaches Federal Criminal Law at DePaul University.
Attorney Mutaqee Akbar is a criminal defense trial attorney who graduated Cum Laude from the University of Miami School of Law and is a Managing Partner at Akbar Thomas law firm in Tallahassee, Florida. He is president of the NAACP Tallahassee chapter and is engaged in efforts to stop the current rewriting or banning of black history curriculum in Florida schools.
Mwezi Odom is the Chair of the “Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa! campaign, which has built a broad-based anti-colonial free speech movement in response to the bogus federal case against the Uhuru 3. She is based in San Diego and serves as Secretary General of the African People’s Socialist Party.
Akilé Anai is an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the case of the Uhuru 3. She is Director of Media and Communications for the African Peoples Socialist Party. She ran for St. Petersburg, FL City Council in 2019 and was featured as a “Millennial for Change” in Ebony Magazine.
Jainabah Lumumba is a proud third-generation African Internationalist, born in Oakland and granddaughter of Chairman Omali Yeshitela. Today she serves as Southern Regional Representative on the National Central Committee of the African People’s Socialist Party and is responsible for mobilizing local support for the Uhuru 3 in Tampa/St. Pete Bay Area.
Dr. Matsemela Odom is the President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and an Africana studies professor based in San Diego, California. Dr. Odom organizes academic and intellectual workers and students in support of the “Hands Off Uhuru! Campaign and the fight for anti-colonial freedom of speech within the education system.
Yejide Orunmila is the President of the African National Women’s Organization that works to bring African women into political life and organizes resistance to the separation of African children from their families. Based in Washington D.C., she is part of the Hands Off Uhuru! Campaign steering committee.
Luwezi Kinshasa is Secretary General and Dir. of International Affairs of the African Socialist International, which is the African People’s Socialist Party represented worldwide. Born in Congo and based in London, he has organized support for the Hands Off Uhuru campaign throughout Europe and on the continent of Africa.
