Message from the Pan-African Revolutionary Socialist Party
Let it not be lost on you that the African woman is the most oppressed person on the face of the earth. To put this reality into context using the popular maxim “when white America catches a cold, Black folks get pneumonia”. We maintain, for the African woman, she is under intensive care with full respiratory failure. Witness the brutal assassination of Breonna Taylor at the hands of the police.
The Crisis in the African World
Against the backdrop of global white supremacy, born out of capitalism, The World Health Organization has declared our homeland, Africa, as the world’s most dramatic public health crisis. Whether we are looking at Africa’s inadequate healthcare system, which is a byproduct of the neocolonialists’ and their African puppets’ siphoning of resources from the continent, the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on African people (again born out of generational inequality-capitalism) and state violence at the hands of police officers (modern day policing finds its genesis in slave capture and control), we understand that the African is catching hell all over the world.
The despicable, yet heart wrenching, video capture of the murder of George Floyd, at the hands of the Minneapolis Police Department, only serves to highlight the insulated brashness with which this capitalist apparatus operates within the u.s. While the world has taken notice, and we are witnessing worldwide protests, it is imperative that we use a historical materialist analysis of the condition of the African worldwide (Nkrumaism) to inform our next steps. As sure as the earth orbits the sun, this will not be the last case of police murder against an African person this year, this month, or even this week. A 2019 analysis by a u.s. advocacy group, Mapping Police Violence, discovered that 99 percent of police killings between 2014-2019 did not result in an officer being charged, and certainly not convicted. We stand in solidarity with all those fighting against police violence. We scream vehemently “POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!” We also understand that this moment obliges us to intensify the struggle by studying strategies and tactics developed in Pan-African organizations (political education).
The Enemy
But why are African people and people of African descent catching hell all over the world? We believe it’s not the man (i.e. the police); it’s the plan (i.e. capitalism). Capitalism is an economic system in which the means of production (for example, the mineral resources, the industries, the equipment, the technology, the medicines) are owned and controlled by a few people, the capitalist class, who live off of the labor of the workers for the maximization of capitalist profit. This is pure exploitation which leads to oppression. Capitalism, therefore, is the primary enemy of all African, poor and working class people.
While it exploits and oppresses all of us who are not of the owning, ruling class, it exploits and oppresses people of color, especially African people even more because this unfair economic system gives birth to, breeds, national oppression (racism) and gender oppression (sexism). And because some form of capitalism has been around for hundreds of years (whether slavery, colonialism, settler-colonialism, neo-colonialism), racism and sexism have been ingrained within the capitalist system. They have become institutionalized. The capitalist justice system is an institution and thus racism is an integral part of it. The police force, as an integral part of the capitalist justice system, will breed racist cops–generation after generation until capitalism in all of its forms is destroyed. That is why we say it’s not the man (the police), but the plan (the economic system of capitalism) that is our primary enemy.
The Solution
Only the destruction of capitalism and the establishment of socialism will rid us of racist police. And to destroy capitalism and to establish socialism we as African people must educate, mobilize and organize ourselves. We must educate ourselves about our enemy, about our history, culture and current reality. We must mobilize ourselves to demand immediate change. Most importantly we must organize ourselves for permanent change. For African people, the quickest solution for eradicating our exploitation and oppression is to establish not only socialism, but socialism within our own unified land base of Africa: Pan-Africanism. With its immense wealth, a unified, socialist Africa will more quickly empower African people and those of African descent to demand justice wherever they happen to be born or to live in the world. Join a revolutionary Pan-African socialist organization today!
Forward ever to African People everywhere! Forward to Pan-Africanism! Forward to Socialism! Forward to the Exploited and Oppressed Peoples all over the World!
For more information on the Pan-African Revolutionary Socialist Party (PRSP): www.prsponline.org
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