About APSC

The African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) was formed and is led by the African People’s Socialist Party, which leads the Uhuru Movement working for the liberation of African people inside the U.S. and around the world.

Based on the strategy and campaigns of the African People’s Socialist Party, APSC organizes in the white communities. We call on white people to unite with our true human interest in recognizing that the struggle of African people for liberation and justice has a relationship to the fact that our lifestyle rests on a pedestal of African oppression. APSC organizes forums, demonstrations, studies and events to educate other white people about the true history of this country, founded on slavery and genocide, and what we can do to support the struggle of African people.

APSC is active in bringing campaigns of the Uhuru Movement into the white communities on local and national levels. Campaigns in support of African community demands for an end to police brutality and massive imprisonment, and for economic development, reparations and justice for African people everywhere, are key to APSC’s work.

APSC raises resources for the work of the African People’s Socialist Party based on the reality that the white world lives on the pedestal of African oppression.

APSC’s fundraising programs include Uhuru Foods, a food concession, staffed by volunteers, with booths at major street fairs, events and farmer’s markets in Northern California and Florida. In addition APSC coordinates an annual holiday pie campaign, tours and direct donor campaigns to raise funds for the African Liberation Movement.

APSC takes part in the African People’s Education and Defense Fund’s Uhuru Furniture stores based in Oakland, Philadelphia and St. Petersburg as institutions building an economic structure led by and for the benefit of the African working class community.

In order for white people to understand the issues and demands raised by African, Indigenous, Arab and other oppressed peoples here and around the world, it is necessary for us to see the world as they experience it.

The African People's Solidarity Committee (APSC) is an organization of white people formed by the African People's Socialist Party as part of its strategy to win the liberation and unification of Africa and all African people worldwide.

The African People's Solidarity Committee is the front of the African Liberation Movement inside white society.

APSC embraces the African People's Socialist Party theory, African Internationalism, as our own. African Internationalism goes to the root of the causes of the political crisis that the capitalist system is experiencing today.

By taking on African Internationalism as our own worldview we begin to see the world through the eyes of African and oppressed peoples, instead of through the viewpoint of white power.

Theory

Understandings :: Recommended Reading

Understandings

African Internationalism, the political theory developed by Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party, is based on these understandings:

• Capitalism was built and is maintained on slavery and colonialism, the theft of land, labor and resources from African and other oppressed peoples.
• Capitalism is a parasitic system. Without the gold, diamonds, oil and vast resources of Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East, capitalism could not exist. Most of the conflict regions of the world today are places where oppressed peoples are struggling to regain control of their land and resources from U.S. power.
• All of white society sits on the pedestal of the oppression of African and other peoples - rich and poor, workers and bosses alike. That's why white workers and people in general have never joined in solidarity with the movements of African people in this country. Generally the white left reflects nothing more than the interests of sectors of the white population seeking a greater share of the stolen resources on top of the pedestal.
• All black people are African people, whether they are in the U.S., the Caribbean, Europe or on the continent of Africa itself. Their struggle is not against racism, the ideas in the heads of white people, but for political power, national identity and national liberation as a united African people. Africa and all its resources are the birthright of all African people everywhere.
• The struggle of African people, along with the Iraqis, the Palestinians, the Lebanese and all those struggling against U.S. imperialist war and domination is for national liberation and self-determination of their land and resources.
• The role of white people is to stand in solidarity with the just struggles for the liberation of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
  To get off the pedestal built on the backs of Africans and others, to turn loose our "whiteness" and join the rest of humanity means breaking with our unity with the U.S. system of imperialism, the enemy of oppressed peoples. For a future of peace and justice on earth we must stand in solidarity with the movement for African liberation and the liberation of all oppressed peoples. We must be part of ending the U.S. economic and political stranglehold on the majority of the human race for the benefit of the white world.

Recommended Reading

One Africa! One Nation! by Omali Yeshitela Available Now!

Overturning the Culture of Violence by Penny Hess Now on sale - ONLY $10!

African Socialist International resolution on trade

African Socialist International resolution on white people

Reparations

General Info :: Ten Reasons Why

General Info

The demand for reparations to African people is growing around the world.

The word reparations means payment or repair for damage done.

The UN sponsored World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in August, 2001 supported the demand for reparations for African, Indigenous and Palestinian people. In response the U.S. and Israel walked out of the conference which ended just days before September 11, 2001.

The African People’s Socialist Party held the first World Tribunal on Reparations for African People in 1982 in Brooklyn, NY. Twelve subsequent sessions of the tribunal have been held since then.

The verdict of the Tribunal, which was held on the basis of international law that allows an oppressed people to bring their case before the world arena, was that the U.S. is guilty of genocide and the enslavement of African people, which built the wealth of the U.S.

The Tribunal called for $4.1 trillion to be paid by the U.S. to African people based on the wealth accumulated in this country from stolen enslaved and underpaid labor of African people alone. The figure of $4.1 trillion in reparations is generally agreed to by experts and scholars today.

The case for reparations being led by the African People’s Socialist Party stems from the fact that the trade in African people was the catalyst for the industrial revolution, the rise of capitalism and the capitalist world economy, which flourishes only by stealing the resources of the majority of the peoples on the planet.

Reparations are also due for the theft of African gold, silver, diamonds and natural minerals and resources that continues today. Africa is the richest continent in resources but more than half of Africa’s population lives on a dollar a day.

Reparations are due as well for the crimes against African people. This includes the chilling history of the lynching, of convict leasing, of white mob terror. It includes the 10 million people slaughtered in the Congo under Belgium in the 19th century, the millions of hands chopped off African people, the genocide by the Germans in Namibia, the terror by the British in South Africa, to name but a few examples.

The reparations demand must include terror against African people today, including police murders, the incarceration of more than 35 percent of young African people, the enforced poverty today, as well as the U.S. backed genocidal wars in Africa today and the continued plunder of Africa’s resources.

The demand for reparations can even be extended to the massive theft of African culture for the enrichment of white society. This includes music, song, dance and other arts—the countless talented Africans who have died in poverty but whose talents or inventions have enriched white people.

Progressive white people must support the demand for reparations to African people. Our lifestyle, prosperity and even our experience of democracy comes from the rape of Africa and is maintained by the economic, political and military domination of African and oppressed peoples all over the globe.

The U.S. and Western governments and corporations owe reparations. Do general white people owe reparations to African people? Yes, we do, not just in a moral sense, but literally. We have the highest standard of living in the world only because African people have been enslaved, lynched, imprisoned and brutalized by regular white working people for our ongoing benefit today.

Ten Reasons Why

Ten reasons why the U.S., Western powers and white people everywhere owe reparations to African people:

1. The enslavement of African people is the cornerstone upon which the wealth and power of the U.S. and Europe is built. For more than 500 years the rape and colonization of Africa, along with the genocide of the Indigenous Peoples and the domination of the majority of the world, has been the foundation of the “American dream” of wealth and democracy for the white population.
   
2. White people benefit economically, politically and socially from the suffering, enslavement and oppression of African people. The oppression of Africans makes up the pedestal upon which our lives are constructed. Every wave of landless European workers climbed up the “ladder of success” at the expense of African people in a system overflowing with wealth and opportunity created by slavery, theft and genocide.
   
3. Countless millions of tons of gold, silver, minerals, plants, animals and natural resources were stolen from Africa for our benefit. Slavery and colonialism have devastated Africa, the richest continent on the planet, subjecting its people to the violence of genocide, poverty, starvation and repressive social systems today.
   
4. White society inflicted immeasurable pain, suffering and terrorism on African people. The popular and festive lynchings, carried out by all sectors of the white population, were part of the fabric of the American way of life. The burnings and armed attacks on Africans; the brandings and torture, the ripping of babies from the wombs of mothers, the enforced poverty, the attacks on family life, the exclusion from work, the violent destruction of African business and enterprise, such as in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the denial of civil and democratic rights and the degradation of African culture – throughout our history white people consistently initiated or complied with such crimes against African people.
   
5. White people carried out genocide, torture, maiming and violence on the continent of Africa through colonialism. For example, the Belgians killed 20 million people in the Congo and cut off the hands of millions more in the process of exploiting the rubber crop. Throughout Africa there were massive mutilations, decapitations and terror perpetrated by colonizers without a word of protest from white people anywhere.
   
6. Priceless and irreplaceable intellectual property has been stolen from African people. From the splendid art of ancient Africa now seized and stored in museums of Europe and North America, to the genius of African music – jazz, blues, reggae, rap and dance – African art enriches white people and corporations at the expense of those who created it. African art, technology and science made white people wealthy while Africans lived and died in poverty.
   
7. African people have been deprived of millions of life years. Countless young, healthy people died in the holds of ships crossing the Atlantic and their parents died of grief. Millions more were worked to death in a few short years as slaves. Today African people in the U.S. live 7 years less than white people and infant mortality in some African communities is greater than in underdeveloped countries. AIDS is skyrocketing throughout the African world and death by curable diseases continues to grow.
   
8. The public policy of police containment, endorsed by the majority of white people is responsible for rampant police murder, brutality and terror in African communities. Laws such as “Three Strikes” legislation, voted in by white citizens, policies allowing discrimination in sentencing and the death penalty, and the utilization of militaristic police forces have turned African communities into war zones of terror, fear and death.
   
9. Fifty billion dollars every year is made from the prison economy in the U.S. and $500 billion is reaped from illegal drug sales at the expense of African people. The majority of drug users and sellers are white but the majority of people incarcerated on drug charges in the concentration camps called prisons are African. Drug money is laundered through major corporations and real estate firms, yet African people are slanderously labeled “drug kingpins.” Generally built in rural white areas, the prison industry has fueled economic prosperity for white people for decades.
   
10. An apology and reparations are ethical and principled – the only genuine rectification that white people can make. Unity and an end to racism can never be realized when we continue to live at the expense of African people. We can no longer turn our heads to the fact that our lifestyle is built on the suffering of others. Peace, justice and even the survival of the planet depend on the ability of African and other peoples to have justice and self-determination. Reparations is our opportunity as white people to join the leadership of African people and oppressed humanity in building a world in which every child can grow up to realize her or his talents and aspirations, a world in which life can truly prevail.

Uhuru!

download the "Ten Reasons" PDF