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Keynote: Omali Yeshitela, Chairman, African
People's Socialist Party
AFRICAN
REVOLUTIONARY • POLITICAL THEORETICIAN • POWERFUL SPEAKER • "LAST
MAN STANDING"
“You
have the emergence in human society of
this thing called the State.
What is the State?
The State is organized bureaucracy.
It is the police department…the Army, the Navy
It is the prison system, the courts.
The State is a repressive organization.
The reality is
the State becomes necessary
only at that juncture in human society
where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got!”
From
“Police State,” on let’s get free! by Dead Prez
Fiery,
uncompromising and courageous as the leader of the movement for a
liberated Africa, Omali Yeshitela has struggled for black freedom
for 40 years.
Leader
of the Uhuru Movement, and Chairman and founder of the African People’s
Socialist Party, Yeshitela continues to be on the frontlines of struggle,
building African-worker controlled institutions, developing ground-breaking
political theory, writing countless books and articles, speaking worldwide,
fighting for reparations, galvanizing allies, influencing the popular
culture and bringing African people together to liberate Africa and
all its resources.
Omali
Yeshitela has faced arrests, trials, imprisonment and personal sacrifice
in his struggle to complete the Black Revolution of the Sixties. Chairman
Omali never stopped building fighting organizations in the interests
of the African working community. He survived the U.S. government's
attack on the Black Power Movement of the 1960s that imprisoned, assassinated
or silenced most black revolutionaries by driving them underground.
For this he has been called "the last man standing."
Omali
Yeshitela
Built
the African Socialist International, an organization made up of
African people in Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and around the
world to liberate and unite Africa and all its resources as the
birthright of African working people everywhere. Its founding congress
is scheduled for March 2008 in West Africa.
- Made
reparations for African people a household word after he launched
the first International Tribunal on Reparations for African People
in New York in 1982. The Tribunal ruled that African people are owed
$4.1 trillion in reparations for stolen labor alone. Twelve subsequent
sessions of the tribunal have been held in various cities around the
country. The latest session of the Tribunal will be held in Berlin,
Germany in June 2007.
Campaigns
and organizations:
Freed Dessie Woods, sentenced to 22 years for defending herself
against a white man who tried to rape her in 1975.
African
National Prison Organization, 1980.
African National Reparations Organization, 1982.
Measure O, the bold Community Control of Housing Initiative that
won 22 percent of the vote in Oakland, CA in 1984.
Acquitted
in 1990 when brought to trial for defending African youth being
harassed by the police;
International
Peoples’ Democratic Uhuru Movement in 1991 to defend the democratic
rights of the African community.
Led
the community fight back after the police murder of 18 year old
TyRon Lewis and the subsequent police attack on the Uhuru House
in 1996. The Clinton administration was forced to send in his HUD
chief and hold hearings by the Human Rights Commission.
Ran
for mayor of St. Petersburg in 2001, winning all the black and mixed
precincts but one.
Built
the Florida Alliance for Peace and Social Justice in 2001, the only
African-led anti-war organization.
Built
African working class-led institutions and businesses:
Umoja restaurant, St. Petersburg FL, 1970s
African
Connection Bookstore, Louisville, KY, 1980
Florida
Black Voice newspaper, Gainesville, FL, 1981
Spear
Graphics printing, Oakland CA, 1980s
Uhuru
Bakery Café, Oakland CA, 1987
Uhuru
Furniture Stores, Oakland, Philadelphia and St. Petersburg, since
1989
Uhuru
Foods concessions and catering, since 1987
Uhuru
holiday pies since 1981
Developed
groundbreaking political theory:
African Internationalism, Yeshitela’s political theory that proves
that capitalism is parasitic, built on the enslavement, genocide
and theft of the land, labor and resources of African and oppressed
peoples.
Proved
that the whole white population sits on the pedestal of the oppression
of African and other peoples.
Analyzed
that the U.S. government’s defeat of the Black Revolution of the
60s, along with the imposition of drugs into the African community,
mass imprisonment of African people and police violence in the African
community are part of the counterinsurgency against African people
carried out by public policies of police containment.
Proved
that all black people wherever they are located around the world
are African people and that Africa and all its resources are the
birthright of African people everywhere.
The Burning Spear newspaper, 1968-present
"Tactics
and Strategy for Black Liberation," pamphlet 1978
The
Struggle for Bread, Peace and Black Power, 1981
Stolen
Black Labor, 1982
Reparations
Now!, 1983
A
New Beginning, 1984
Not
One Step Backwards,
1984
The
Road to Socialism is Painted Black, 1987
Izwe
Lethu I Afrika, 1992
The
Politics of Black Revolution, first published 1989
"Why
I Became a Revolutionary," pamphlet, 1998
Omali
Yeshitela Speaks, 2005
One
Africa! One Nation!, 2006
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