Racism At The North American Anarchist Black Cross Conference

Racism At The North American Anarchist Black Cross Conference
By: Lorenzo and JoNina Ervin

To: Denver Anarchist Black Cross

North American Anarchist Black Cross

Re: Racism at North American ABC Conference

Dear Comrades:

An ugly, racist incident happened at the September 11-14, 2014, conference of the North American Anarchist Black Cross (NA-ABC) which disrupted the meeting and created conflict among activists there, after a young activist read a letter from a white racist prison guard who opposed the parole of black political prisoner, Jalil Muntaqim. The letter was read at the instruction of Brother Jalil to show the racist and entrenched opposition to his parole by white cops and their fraternal and police associations. We do not blame Brother Jalil, who has been in prison for decades and had no way of knowing that black people would be sitting in the room when the letter was read, nor the young activist who read the letter, not knowing how it would impact the black people who heard it, and who later apologized for his error. We blame other activists on the panel and other listeners who sat by or said nothing. We also criticize the NA-ABC, which created a climate where this or another racist outrage was bound to occur because the organization has never dealt with its own internal racism.

We especially blame the National Jericho Movement, which put on the workshop where the letter was read and the Jericho representative at the conference, Paulette D'Auteuil. She not only refused to apologize or correct the young activist, but made racially inflammatory comments of her own, saying that blacks and other POC should “just leave the room,” rather than not reading such a letter in the first place, or even giving any warning of its contents. She thus encouraged other racist letters to be read to a room full of whites in the future, thereby advocating white radical racial segregation at NA-ABC annual meetings, which already have few black or POC participants. This is an absolute and utter outrage, and everyone should find this unacceptable. Then, Paulette took the posture that it was “all Jalil's fault,”and that we should take the matter up with him if we didn't like it. As we have pointed out already, we hold Brother Jalil blameless, and we do not believe he would intentionally attempt to embarrass or demean other black people by forcing them to listen to such a racist and inflammatory letter. The other Jericho representative at the conference, Kazi Toure, who is black, was not present in the room when the letter was read. But after learning what happened, he expressed embarrassment, chagrin, if not outright anger over the incident because he is black.

We therefore believe that Paulette should make a full public apology to the NAABC and to us as participants in the conference for her misbehavior, or she should not be allowed to attend further meetings of the NA-ABC. In addition, the entire panel where the racist letter was read should make a full public apology for not stopping the letter from being read, or failing in any way to rebuke the activist who read the letter. The panelists' silence just enabled the activist to repeat all this racist guard's drivel, in what the activist felt was a supportive environment of white people who “saw no problem” with the comments being repeated at a radical gathering, which included black people. Finally, the leadership of Jericho should make an apology for this entire matter: for allowing the racist letter to be read, failure to exercise control of the panelists, and the racist misbehavior of Paulette as Jericho representative to the event.

And yet, all of this is just a reflection of internal racism within the North American Anarchist Black Cross, and its organizational culture that is too white, too middle class, and closed off from urban communities of color. It has never been healthy to have privileged white people doling out support to black prisoners, while not building a support base in the black community from which those prisoners come, and not recruiting black and other activists of color. The fact that NAABC holds meetings on the side of a mountain removed from the city, instead of in an urban space in Denver, speaks volumes about your lack of black participation and community outreach. You are not making a welcoming environment for blacks to attend. So this incident is to be expected in this type of white environment, and it also explains how the majority of white people who heard the racist comments thought it was “no big deal,” that the speaker “meant no harm,” that black people who heard the racially offensive comment should not be disturbed, or were being “too thin-skinned,“ or that this was all just “racial agitation from Lorenzo and people he brought.” The fact is that this racist climate was already there inside the NA-ABC as a movement for a long time, and this was just the trigger for the latest incident. The ABC in North America is a Political Plantation, a white-led movement with serious internal racism, which it refuses to deal with, or even listen to peoples of color when we point it out. Some of you even blame us for raising it in the first place, and then refuse to make any changes. As one white person who did speak out from the audience said: listening to the letter from the prison guard was like listening to a “bragging letter” from a rapist. If you do not want women to apologize for their own rapes by demented men, why do you want black people to accept racist insults and then be faulted for speaking out?

Do not expect us to passively accept such racist indignities, even from our own white allies. On a personal level, the reading of the letter was the worst form of racist insult to Lorenzo. He was raised in the segregated South in the 1950's; had white racist vigilantes and cops put a gun to his head, then spit in his face and call him a nigger; tell him he had no right to speak up; that “niggers don't deserve civil rights,” and that only the rights of white people mattered. In those days, Lorenzo was restrained from speaking out because of the violent racism of the KKK and other white racists. Later, Lorenzo spoke out as a young civil rights protester. He also heard plenty of vile insults from racist prison guards during his 15 years as a political prisoner, including insults from guards who opposed his release on parole. What would make you think that Lorenzo wanted to hear these insults at an ABC meeting? He will never passively accept white supremacy or its insults, even if it comes from from the mouths of white radical socialists or anarchists, who feel that they are “sincerely motivated” and thus blameless in their own eyes.

We do not personally hold the Denver Anarchist Black Cross, which hosted the North America ABC conference, responsible for this incident, or think the Denver ABC had any intention for this incident to occur. However, we feel that the annual NA-ABC meeting is no longer a safe space for us as black activists, and we will not attend any future events. Nevertheless, because we care enough about ABC as a radical prison movement, and feel that positive changes should come out of this incident, we are proposing these solutions:

12 Point Racist Recovery Program for North American ABC:

1. The NA-ABC must create a permanent anti-racist/anti-oppression committee, which will be a semi-autonomous group able to challenge internal racism and call people out for offensive behavior. However, it must also train all ABC activists in anti-racist ideology, set new policies, and call for institutional change. This committee should also be in control of all anti-racist communications of the group.

2. Every year at the annual NA-ABC gatherings, there must be workshops to talk extensively about the dangers of internal racism within the ABC. Besides anti-racist workshops for white participants, black/POC conference attendees should have their own workshops to deal with the effects of white racism, and differences among ourselves. [For instance, at least two Hispanics made two anti-black comments at the conference. One said that he was not offended by the racist letter because he saw himself as a “white Mexican,” and another called Lorenzo a “token who should not be allowed to speak for all peoples of color”].

3. We are asking the Denver ABC and NA-ABC to join with the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality to create an online discussion list, “ABC-Anti-Racist” to discuss internal racism all during the period between ABC conferences.

4. We call upon the NA-ABC to provide a written disclaimer at the beginning of each workshop forbidding panel members to use racist or oppressive language against any racial group, nationality, or oppressed peoples. [NOTE: this rule cannot ever be used to stifle discussions of internal racism and white supremacy.]

5. We call upon the NA-ABC to use the book, “The Progressive Plantation: Racism Inside Radical Social Change Groups,” as a study guide for ABC chapters and activists. We ask P & L Press to print the book at no cost, and provide it to everyone, then hold consciousness raising study groups. We will provide the manuscript for you.

6. Join with us as we create a “Progressive Plantation” discussion page for activists on Facebook, inside and outside of the ABC.

7. We call upon you to create a permanent POC standing committee within NA-ABC to propose anti-racist internal politics for the entire group, challenge acts of racism, and involve more POC inside the ABC. Even though we will not attend any more NA-ABC meetings, we expect you to continue to work with us through this POC committee and other contacts.

8.There needs to be a process created and made part of the standing rules to expel persons or groups engaging in racist or oppressive behavior. This should come after giving them a warning.

9. When racist behavior takes place, the entire conference should shut down its workshops, and deal with it immediately, and the ABC should never cover up or ignore such incidents.

10. The ABC must make anti-fascist ideology and internal anti-racist training a central part of its politics.

11. We are not asking the North American ABC to completely divest itself` of political prisoner support work for black/POC political prisoners and POW's from the 1960's or 1970's, or those contemporary campaigns they have started in the animal liberation, radical environmental, and other such white radical campaigns. The NA-ABC, however, must change its white privilege model of selective support of black political prisoners to one of dealing with mass imprisonment of African/POC's, and the new generation of prisoners since the 1980's. Jericho is fully capable of dealing with its New African prisoners, and even those prisoners want the 20/50 plan applied to an overall campaign against mass imprisonment in this period. The NA-ABC must have its own politics on this, not just adopt Jericho's program. This will allow the NA-ABC to help build a new mass movement, work with black/communities of color, and build coalitions with activists of color, both inside and outside the prisons. [We had sent our mass imprisonment proposal prior to the conference, which was adopted by the Mass Imprisonment workshop].

12. Although we do not believe than any organization can deal with internal racism in isolation, we encourage the NA-ABC to try to deal with your problems internally if you can do so, but caution you not to cover up or defend yourself from charges of internal racism, but to implement or come up with viable plans to heal the group, rebuild unity, and show respect to all who attend your events in the future. We believe that this is the moment of truth for the North American-Anarchist Black Cross.

So this is our proposal dealing with anti-racist institutional change for the NA-ABC. We are open to discussing this matter further by a series of online conferences with the Denver ABC and others. This letter/proposal is not meant to be totally hostile or accusatory, and is made in good faith.

Love and struggle,

JoNina and Lorenzo Ervin, (on behalf of the Black Autonomy Prison Federation and the Ida B. Wells Coalition Against Racism and Police Brutality).

How We See The World In This Period

How We See The World In This Period
By: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin

This is an excerpt from the book Anarchism and the Black Revolution (2013).

Here is how Anarchists of color (specifically we within Black Autonomy) see the world: It is a situation presently organized into competing nation-states, in military and political alliances. Through international institutions like the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization, the Capitalist Western nations have been responsible for most of the world's famine, imperialism and exploitation of the economic resources of non-white peoples of the earth. But in fact, Anarchists hold all nation-states are instruments of oppression. Even though there are governments that claim to be "workers states,” "Socialist countries" or so-called "Revolutionary governments,” in essence they all have the same function as a fascist or capitalist regime: dictatorship and oppression of the many by the few.

The bankruptcy of the state is further proven when one looks at the millions of dead after two world wars, sparked by European Imperialism, (1914-1918 and 1939-1945) and hundreds of “brush wars" incited by the superpowers of the West or by Russia in the 1950s and continuing to this day. These include wars between not only the West, but between "workers' states" like China-Russia, Vietnam-China, Vietnam-Cambodia. Somalia-Ethiopia, Russia-Czechoslovakia and others over the last 40 years, who have gone to war over border disputes, political intrigue, invasion or other hostile action. As long as there are nation-states, there will be war, tension and national enmity. Shared political ideology, racial characteristics, or similar cultures will not prevent it.

In fact, the sad part about the decolonization of Africa in the 1960s was that the countries were eventually organized into the Euro-centric ideal of the nation-state, instead of some other formation more applicable to the continent, such as a continent-wide free federation. This, of course, was a reflection of the fact that although the Africans were obtaining "flag independence" and all the trappings of the sovereign European state, they in fact were not obtaining freedom. The Europeans still controlled the economies of the African continent and nationalist leaders who came to the fore were, for the most part, as pliable and conservative as possible.

Oh, there was an occasional radical like Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, who demanded full rights and freedom for African peoples, but he was quickly (and brutally) silenced in a CIA-Belgian colonial plot. The countries of Africa were like a dog with a leash around its neck; although the Europeans could no longer rule the continent directly thorough colonial power, it now did so through puppets it controlled and defended, like Mobutu in the Congo, Selassie in Ethiopia and Kenyatta in Kenya. Many of these men were dictators of the worst sort and their regimes existed strictly because of the support of European finance capital. In addition, there were white settler communities in the Portuguese colonies, South Africa and Zimbabwe, who oppressed the African peoples even worse than the old colonial system. This is why the national liberation movements made their appearances in the 1960s and 70s.

Anarchists support national liberation movements to the degree they struggle against a colonial or imperialist power; but also note that in almost every instance where such liberation fronts have assumed state power, they have become "State Communist" parties or new dictators over the masses of the people. These include some who had engaged in the mass epic struggles, but also include many based on the most obvious military dictatorship from the start. Their governments are not progressive and they tolerate no dissent.

For instance, no sooner had the MPLA (Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola) government been in power in Angola, than it began to arrest all its left-wing ideological opponents (Maoists, Trotskyites, Anarchists and others)and to forcibly to quell strikes by workers for higher pay and better working conditions, calling such job actions “blackmail" and “economic sabotage.”And with the Nito Alves affair and his alleged coup attempt, (Alves was a hero of the revolution and a popular military leader), there was the first party purge of opponents in the new government. Something similar to this also took place when the Sandinista National Liberation movement took over in Nicaraguan the 1980s. None of this should seem strange or uncharacteristic to Anarchists, when we consider that the Bolshevik party did the same thing when it consolidated state power during the Russian Revolution (1917-1921). It provided the model for all such later regimes.

Countries such as Benin, Ethiopia, the People's Republic of the Congo and other “revolutionary" governments in Africa, are not in power as the result of a popular social revolution, but because of a military coup or being installed by one of the major world powers. In addition, one or another of the African States exploits some other country perceived weaker; for instance Sudan, an Arab-controlled country, still has African slaves, which are powerless Blacks from the Southern part of the country. Thus, they have been fighting a civil war for 20 years.

Further; contrary to many of the romantic reports which dominated Western news reports, many of the national liberation movements were not independent social movements, but were rather under the influence or control of Russia or China as part of their geopolitical struggle against Western imperialism and each other.(This is not to say that revolutionary movements should not accept weapons and other material support from an outside power, as long as they remain independent politically and determine their own policies, without such aid being conditional, on the political dictates and the "party line" of another country).

But even though we may differ with them politically and tactically in many areas and even with all their flaws after assuming State power, the revolutionary liberation fighters (the people in arms as opposed to the vanguard organization) are our comrades and allies in common struggle against the common enemy — the U.S. imperialist ruling class. Their struggle releases the death grip of U.S. and Western imperialism (as Anarchists more precisely call it “Capitalist world power”) and while the fight goes on we are bound together in comradeship and solidarity. The movement in Chiapas, Mexico, by the Indigenous people there who found the EZLN, a revolutionary liberation movement, is one that we and many Anarchists support.

Yet, in analyzing national liberation movements, we cannot overlook atrocities committed by movements like the Khmer Rouge, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in Cambodia, which just massacred millions of people to carry out rigid Stalinist political policies and to consolidate the country, when it took over in the 1980s. We must lay this butchery and other crimes committed by State Communism bare for all to see, right at the feet of world communism and state socialism. We do not favor this kind of revolution, which is just sheer power seeking and terrorism against the people to install a so-called Left-wing ruling class.

This is why Anarchism has always disagreed with how the Bolsheviks seized power in Soviet Russia. They created a police state and Stalin's butchery of the Russian people seems to have set a model for the State Communist movements all over the world to follow throughout the years. Now the Soviet state is gone, along with most of the Eastern European governments, but the legacy of authoritarian socialism lives on with their movements in a variety of disguises.

WE believe that the national liberation fronts make one basic mistake of many nationalist movements of oppressed peoples and that is to organize in a fashion where class distinctions are obliterated. This happened in America also, where in the fight for democratic rights, the civil rights movement included Black middle class preachers, teachers and others in the leadership and every Black person was a "brother" or “sister,” as long as they were Black. But this simplistic analysis and social reality did not hold for long, because when the Civil Rights phase of the American Black struggle had spent itself, class distinctions and class struggle came to the fore. They have been getting sharper ever since.

Poor people are demanding to organize in their own name and class interest, because although the rich Blacks and professional class may have prospered since the 1960s, the poor and oppressed have just sunk deeper into poverty and prisons are being used as a social tool to lock up millions.
Although there are Black mayors and other bureaucrats now holding positions in the government, they have no power to change things for their people, they merely serve as pacification agents of the State, what we call "Black faces in high places.” Their symbolic representation is supposed to inspire hope or keep the masses of people believing in the system. They are not even a serious concession to our struggle. They are put in office to co-opt the struggle and deaden the people to their pain.

This American neocolonial system is similar to the type of neocolonialism that took place in the 3rd World in the1950s-1980s, after many countries had obtained their "independence.” Europe still maintained control through puppet politicians, economic domination and a command structure of petty bourgeois agents, who were willing to barter the freedom of their people for personal gain. These people have no real power to improve the lives of the masses; they merely preside over their misery. In Africa, some of the most corrupt leaders are/were colonial subjects for the European countries and enjoy no local popularity at all; they just inspire fear through military control and passive acceptance by the masses of people.  

So while Black revolutionaries generally favor the ideas of African inter-communalism, they want principled revolutionary unity. Of course, the greatest service we can render the peoples of the so-called “Third World" of Africa, Asia and Latin America, is to make a revolution here in North America—in the belly of the beast. For in freeing ourselves, we get the U.S. imperialist ruling class off all our backs.

As Anarchists of color, we wish to build an international organization against Capitalism, racism, colonialism, imperialism and military dictatorship, which could more effectively fight the Capitalist powers and create a world federation of Black peoples, a commune. We want to unite a brother or sister in North America with the Black peoples of Australia and Oceania/S.W Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and South America, Asia, the Middle East and those millions of our people living in Britain and other Western European countries. We want to unite tribes, nations and cultures into an international body of grassroots and struggling forces.

Only a Social revolution will lead to Black unity and freedom. However this will only be possible when there exists an international Black revolutionary organization and social movement. An organization which can coordinate the resistance struggles everywhere of African peoples; actually a network of such organizations, resistance movements, which are spread all over the world based on a consensus for revolutionary struggle. This concept accepts any level of violence that will be necessary to enforce the demands of the people and workers.

In those countries where an open Black revolutionary movement would be subjected to fierce repression by the state, such as neocolonialist Black puppet dictatorships in other parts of Africa, the Caribbean and even parts of Asia, it would be necessary to wage an underground resistance struggle. Further, the state has grown more and more violent, with widespread torture and executions, maximum-security prisons and massive police controls, spying and deprivation of democratic rights, police brutality and murder. Clearly such governments-and all governments-must be overthrown. They will not fall due to internal economic or political problems, but must be defeated and dismantled. So we call for an international resistance movement to overthrow governments and the system of Capitalist world governments.

The military dictators and government bureaucrats have only proven that they know how to spend money on pomp and circumstance, but not how to dismantle the last vestiges of colonialism in South Africa or defeat Western neocolonialist intrigues. Africa is still the poorest of the World's continents, while materially the richest. The contrast is clear: millions of people are starving in much of Equatorial Africa, but the tribal chiefs, politicians and military dictators, are driving around in Mercedes and living in luxury villas, while they do the bidding of West European and American bankers through the International Monetary Fund. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution!

Our ideas about the importance of inter-communalism are based on a firm belief that only a federation of free peoples will bring true Black power to the masses."Power to the people" does not mean a government or political party to rule in their name, but social and political power in the hands of the people themselves. The only real "people's power" is the power to make their decisions on matters of importance and to merely elect someone else to do so in rigged elections, or to have a dictatorship forced down their throats, ain’t it. True freedom is to have full self-determination about one's social, economic and cultural development. The future is Anarchist Communism, not the nation-state, bloody dictators, Capitalism or wage slavery.

Building an Autonomous Peoples of Color Movement:

Building an autonomous movement of peoples of color, based on Anarchist principles is different than Pan-Africanism or concepts of La Raza, or even socialist internationalism. It means building a movement that goes beyond skin color, language, or even shared history of a people, to build the strongest movement of international solidarity. Most solidarity movements are built around identification with a particular struggle. But either giving useless statements about race unity, or vague statements of support, or subordinating one’s own struggle to that of another is not what autonomy is about. What we need is an international movement based on shared oppression and commitment to a common struggle.      
      
This has to take us past the primacy of narrow nationalism, or regional struggles and back to the idea of revolution as worldwide social change, an international civil war of poor and oppressed peoples against the capitalist system. I am not referring to just development of a socialist state in one country as happened with the old Soviet Union, regional struggles with African anti-colonialism, or the old 1960s concept of Black Power.

The old ideas of political socialism and Pan-Africanism have been lost with nation-statism and Stalin-ism. Even the ideals of joint forms of oppression have been lost so that many believe that only the United States of America has an internal Black population subjected to racist oppression and that forms of oppression based on caste, ethnicity, or other peoples of color are not racism in the same sense. This is a grave mistake and cuts us off from many allies around the world.

Autonomy As A Revolutionary Tendency

Autonomy As A Revolutionary Tendency: What We Mean By Black Autonomy
By: Black Autonomy Federation

Originally Published on January 26, 2013

Because of the dual forms of oppression of non-white workers and the depth of social desperation it creates, Blacks and peoples of color must strike first, whether their potential white allies are available to do so or not. This is self-determination and that is why it is necessary for oppressed workers to build independent movements to unite their own peoples first. Malcolm X was the first one to really explain this. This self-activity of the oppressed masses of color when it reaches the radical stage is inherently a revolutionary force and is an essential part of the social revolutionary process of the entire working and poor class.

As Blacks and other oppressed peoples of color, we are living though some of the most perilous times in both American and world history. The white empire is declining, but in its desperation to cling to power, we face police murder and brutality, mass imprisonment of youth of color, racial profiling, degrading poverty and unemployment, repressive anti-terrorist legislation and new wars of conquest and yet we do not hear the voices of organized peoples of color in their millions in North America. Instead, we are part of “someone else’s agenda” or “someone else political organization”, but it is time now to build our own and speak for ourselves. We must not only demand our rights our “rights” in a Western capitalist society, but fight to build a new world.

The Black, Brown, Yellow, Red and other oppressed people of color on the face of this planet earth have been subjected to genocide, racism, warfare, slavery, torture, economic exploitation and other forms of oppression heaped on them by the Western imperialist countries. For centuries, we have sought to resist, individually and with anti-colonial/liberation and other struggles in our countries, but now we have to build a united front of peoples of color everywhere, fighting the same enemy, the same battles. The whole world is now a ghetto, a ‘hood, with poor/working class people of color in Brussels, London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Durban, Detroit, Lagos, Lebanon and cities throughout the world living the same lives of economic, social and cultural deprivation.

So, it is time to get our peoples organized in the barrios, the ghettos, the hamlets, the “quarters”, hovels, college dorms, high schools, churches, prisons and other places we find them. We need to organize a federation of autonomous people of color and begin to practice a lost art among activists these days: community based organizing for grassroots peoples’ power.

We must challenge ourselves to become serious organizers and activists in our own communities, to link up with others and someday build a powerful movement that can change the world. And we must make ourselves both a strong voice in the Anarchist scene and an alternative in the radical social change movement generally, instead of just marginal or token Black, Brown, Yellow, or Red faces in small numbers inside white radical tendencies. Autonomy means independence.

Class Unity and POC Autonomy

Class Unity and POC Autonomy Is The Only Real Solidarity
By: Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin

This is an excerpt from Anarchism and the Black Revolution (2013) by Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin.


If there is going to be real class unity or solidarity, there is no way forward for white Anarchists, Socialists, or autonomous people of color except to recognize the necessity of organizing movements based on new conceptions of class and race. We have to reject the hypocritical Anarchist or white radical rhetoric that Autonomist movements are somehow based mechanically on race and that a “mainstream” white radical movement is based on a superior conception of class or political unity. The conditions of Blacks and peoples of color require a new political assessment, and must be made a cardinal part of any radical tendency.

We demand our right to be culturally and politically different and further demand that white Anarchists/radicals respect our right to disagree on political questions and to take a separate path based on one party’s interests in opposition to the other. I am not talking about racial separatism, nor will I give in to yet another useless coalition, which like most Black-White coalitions have been organized with the whites truly dominating because of their access to superior resources and by having more political access.

I am talking about a situation where POC Autonomist forces unite with white radicals when there is unity on a particular political issue, but then they must have respect for our autonomy at other times when we disagree or want to go our own way. So people of color creating autonomous movements, instead of just joining white radical groups, is a reflection of their own racial exclusion inside white-dominated movements, as much as it is about local organizing, cultural autonomy, or political differences.

Now one thing white radicals must give up is the idea that the whole struggle hinges around white workers on their own deciding en masse to reject capitalism and racism. This fable will supposedly occur as the result of some kind “catastrophic event” or social crisis that brings out the “revolutionary marrow” of white workers, according to white radicals. The truth is that there has been a series of major depressions, two world wars and other catastrophic events and it has not caused a white-led revolution in 400 years of the American Republic, unless you count that series of events during the 1770’s, which did free white folks from England colonialism while they themselves continued to hold slaves!

The fact is white folks in America have been a good guard dog for the stolen wealth of American capitalism, so long as they got their share. White immigrants were left out of the white “club” and were considered “dangerous” foreigners. They were subjected to the cruelest class and social conditions. In the early 19th century, the White Anglo Saxon Protestants looked down their noses at Italians, Poles, Jews and East Europeans. These immigrants weren't considered white, but “social vermin,” unpatriotic and a “dangerous economic class.” However, when these estranged peoples got white political power and respectability, they were given a form of ethnic entrée’. Over the course of time, after having been accepted or worked their way into the “club,” they adopted the same prejudices towards Blacks and other peoples of color, as the worst WASP cultural snob had held against them.

White radicals know this, but many persist with this fiction of a “heroic white working class”, who are supposedly so tolerant and willing to work on an equal basis with Blacks. The truth is that there are no saviors coming from the white mother country to save Black people, we are responsible for our own liberation. They may be white allies who will work with us, but we will let only them work with us for equality, mutual aid and self-respect, not white self-interest.

History has proven that only when the slaves or the oppressed peoples themselves rebel, can the whites in sympathy support them, perhaps enough to turn the tide. The very idea that they (whites and peoples of color) are coming together because they “like each other” or the whites want to “show they are not racist’ is the most sophomoric liberalism, rather than any revolutionary ideology at all.
 Only when one understands that she or he is part of a revolutionary movement to restructure society, even if it only wins immediate gains in the early stages, can the talk of functional “unity” be given any credence whatsoever. Of course, such a movement cannot be white-led, which has its own tremendous negative implications and results. Rather than swallowing a false or romantic view, I will say that the only way Black/POC and white people can really work in cooperation is when there is shared leadership, interests and risk taking inside a mass movement for racial and social justice, rather than in civil society generally.

A white-led movement cannot ever be allowed to usurp the  basic role of people of color themselves to fight for their own freedom. The paternalistic idea that whites know what is best for peoples of color is virulent in the European, American, UK and South African Anarchist and Left movements. They even try to get members of color to submit to a political “loyalty oath” around issues of race, so that it will not become an internal issue. Let’s be honest: like many white people in a racist society generally, they try not to discuss such issues unless they firmly control the agenda and format. Again, they fear a challenge to their own racism.

For the most part, not only do the white radicals tolerate tokenism, rather than empowerment of POC in the Anarchist movement, they have wholly different ideas about fighting racism. They do not deal with the state’s mass imprisonment of the poor and Black youth, police murder in the streets, infant mortality, or massive poverty in communities of color. Instead, they see racism as discrimination in individual cases, marginal vigilante racist groups, or just something that the ruling class “uses” as a strategy to split Black from white. But these are concerns about racism from a white perspective, not from those actually victimized.

So, activists of color must bring the issue to them, based on our political understanding, experiences and based on our actual condition of oppression. We must be clear that although we may believe in many things together, we must lead the fight for our own freedom. White people still don’t fully understand you can only build a mass movement for total social change when the poor and oppressed peoples of color are leading it, not privileged white workers and activists. We can work with anyone, but only on conditions of principled unity and shared interest, not because of liberal racial clichés of …” it’s a good thing we’re all together in the same room”, “we’ve got to love one another…or “we’re all in the same boat.” The Black movement and the movements of other peoples of color need allies in its battle against the racist Capitalist class — not the usual White liberal or phony "radical" support, but genuine revolutionary working class support and solidarity, otherwise called "mutual aid" by Anarchists. The basis of such unity however must be principled and be based on class interest, rather than liberal "guilt tripping,", "do good-ing" or opportunism and manipulation by liberal or radical political parties.

The needs of the oppressed people must be the most important consideration, because they want genuine support, not fakery or leftist rhetoric. There is much distrust of White radicals among Black people because of years of these radicals’ misconduct in communities of color and improper dealings with activists of color. White radicals have always seen the issues revolving around their concepts of the white working class “coming to its senses”, recognizing its “historical mission as a leading class and saving us all”. How noble, but how wrong!

We believe that Blacks and people of color in America throughout the world must begin to organize autonomous movements among their own peoples, they cannot defer to white activists. No one will hear and act in response to our cries for help and no one can do that work in our communities that we alone can only do. One reason there are so few Blacks or Anarchists of color is because the movement provides no means to reach people of color, win them over to Anarchism or Socialism, and help them organize themselves. This must change if we want the social revolution to take place in America and if we want North American Anarchism or Socialism to be more than just another "white rights" movement. I have never understood why others have not had a problem with this. The failure of anarchism and socialism to build a racially and ethnically diverse movement is one of its greatest failings. It may yet doom the entire movement to defeat.

So Anarchists [and progressives] will have to get their own houses in order before they can effectively build an anti-racist movement to educate or organize other whites, and unite with POC on a principled basis. Because of internal racism, too many activists of color are starting to talk critically about the class and race flaws in the contemporary Anarchist, progressive and anti-globalization movements for it to continue to be ignored. Inviting peoples of color into the movement, but on a basis where they are fully empowered is absolutely essential. This should be elementary, not a problem to be debated endlessly, or evaded altogether.

African Inter-Communalism

African Inter-Communalism
By: Black Autonomy Federation

Originally Published on December 2, 2012


The Black Autonomy Federations / Anarchist ideals lead logically to internationalism or more precisely trans-nationalism, which means beyond the nation-state. Anarchists foresee a time when the nation-state will cease to have any positive value at all for most people, and will in fact be junked. But that time is not yet here, and until it is, we must organize for inter-communalism, or world relations between African people and their revolutionary social movements, instead of their governments and heads of state.

The Black Panther Party first put forward the concept of inter-communalism in the 1960s and, although slightly different, is very much a libertarian concept at its core. (This used to be called "Pan Africanism," but included mainly "revolutionary" governments and colonial or independence movements as allies). Because of the legacy of slavery and continuing economic neocolonialism, which has dispersed Blacks to every continent, it is feasible to speak of Black international revolutionary solidarity.

Here is how African / Black Anarchists see the world: the world is presently organized into competing nation-states, which through the Capitalist Western nations have been responsible for most of the world's famine, imperialism and exploitation of the non-white peoples of the earth. In fact, all states are instruments of oppression. Even though there are governments that claim to be "workers states," "Socialist countries" or so-called "Revolutionary governments," in essence they all have the same function: Dictatorship and oppression of the many over the few. The bankruptcy of the state is further proven when one looks at the millions of dead over two world wars, sparked by European Imperialism, (1914-198 and 1939-1945), and hundreds of "brush wars" incited by the superpowers of the West or Russia in the 1950s and continuing to this day. This includes "workers' states" like China-Russia, Vietnam-China, Vietnam-Cambodia. Somalia- Ethiopia, Russia-Czechoslovakia and others who have gone to war over border disputes, political intrigue, invasion or other hostile action. As long as there are nation-states, there will be war, tension and national enmity.

In fact, the sad part about the decolonization of Africa in the 1960s was that the countries were organized into the Euro-centric ideal of the nation-state, instead of some sort of other formation more applicable to the continent, such as a continental federation. This, of course, was a reflection of the fact that although the Africans were obtaining "flag independence" and all the trappings of the sovereign European state, they instead were not obtaining freedom. The Europeans still controlled the economies of the African continent, and the nationalist leaders who came to the fore were for the most part the most pliable and conservative possible.

Entire countries of Africa were like a dog with a leash around its neck; although the Europeans could no longer rule the continent directly thorough colonial rule, it now did so through puppets it controlled and defended, like Mobutu in the Congo, Mengistu Haile Mariam, leader of the Derg in Ethiopia, and Kenyatta in Kenya. Many of these men were dictators of the worst sort and their regimes existed strictly because of European finance capital In addition, there were white settler communities in the Portuguese colonies, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, who oppressed the African peoples even worse than the old colonial system. This is why the national liberation movements made their appearances in the 1960s and 70s.

Anarchists support national liberation movements to the degree that they struggle against a colonial or imperialist power; but also note that in almost every instance where such liberation front’s have assumed state power, they have become "State Communist" parties and new dictators over the masses of the people. These include some who had engaged in the mass epic struggles, but also include many based on the most obvious military dictatorship from the start.

They are not progressive and they tolerate no dissent For instance, no sooner had the MPLA government been in power in Angola, than it began to arrest all its left-wing ideological opponents (Maoists, Trotskyites, Anarchists, and others) and began to forcibly quell strikes by workers for higher pay and better working conditions, calling such job actions "blackmail" and 'economic sabotage." And with the Nito Alves affair and his alleged coup attempt, (Alves was a hero of the revolution and a popular military leader), theirs was the first party purge of opponents in the new government. Something similar to this also took place when the Sandinista National Liberation movement took over in Nicaragua in the 1980s. None of this should seem strange or uncharacteristic to Anarchists, when we consider that the Bolshevik party did the same thing when it consolidated state power during the Russian Revolution (1917-1921).

Countries such as Benin, Ethiopia, the People's Republic of the Congo and other "revolutionary" governments in Africa, are not in power as the result of a popular social revolution, but rather because of a military coup or being installed by one of the major world powers Further; many of the national liberation movements were not independent social movements, but were rather under the influence or control of Russia or China as part of their geopolitical struggle against Western imperialism and each other. This is not to say that revolutionary movements should not accept weapons and other material support from an outside power, as long as they remain independent politically and determine their own policies, without such aid being conditional on the political dictates and the "party line" of another country.

But even though we may differ with them politically and tactically in many areas, and even with all their flaws after assuming State power, the revolutionary liberation fighters are our comrades and allies in common struggle against the common enemy - the U.S. imperialist ruling class, while the fight goes on. Their struggle releases the death grip of U.S. and western imperialism or as Anarchists more precisely call it Capitalist world power), and while the fight goes on we are bound together in comradeship and solidarity.

Yet we still cannot overlook atrocities committed by movements like the Khmer Rouge, a Marxist-Leninist guerrilla movement in Cambodia, which just massacred millions of people to carry out rigid Stalinist political policies and to consolidate the country. We must lay this butchery and other crimes committed by State Communism bare for all to see. We do not favor this kind of revolution, which is just sheer power seeking and terrorism against the people. This is why Anarchism has always disagreed with how the Bolsheviks seized power in Soviet Russia; and Stalin's butchery of the Russian people seems to have set a model for the State Communist movements to follow over the years.

The national liberation front’s made one basic mistake of many nationalist movements of oppressed peoples, and that is to organize in a fashion that class distinctions are obliterated. This happened in America, where in the fight for democratic rights, the civil rights movement included Black middle class preachers, teachers and others, and every Black persons was a "brother" or" sister," as long as they were Black. But this simplistic analysis and social reality did not hold for long, because when the Civil rights phase of the American Black struggle had spent itself, “class distinctions” and class struggle came to the fore. They have been getting sharper ever since. Although there are Black mayors and other bureaucrats, and now Obama; they merely serve as pacification agents of the State, "Black faces in high places."

This neocolonial system is similar to the type of neocolonialism which took place in the 3rd World, after many countries had obtained their "independence" in the 1960s. Europe still maintained control through puppet politicians and a command of the petty bourgeois class, who were willing to barter the freedom of the people for personal gains. These people merely preside over the misery of the masses. They are not a serious concession to our struggle. They are put in office to co-opt the struggle and deaden the people to their pain.

So while Black revolutionaries generally favor the ideas of African inter-communalism, they want principled revolutionary unity. Of course, the greatest service we can render the peoples of the so-called "Third World" of Africa, Asia and Latin America, is to make a revolution here in North America - in the belly of the beast. For in freeing ourselves, we get the U.S. imperialist ruling class off both our backs.

We wish to build an international Black organization against Capitalism, racism, colonialism, imperialism, and military dictatorship, which could more effectively fight the Capitalist powers and create a world federation of Black peoples. We want to unite a Brother or Sister in North America with the Black peoples of Australia and Oceania, Africa, the Caribbean and South America, Asia, the Middle East, and those millions of our people Living in Britain and other Western European countries. We want to unite tribes, nations and Black cultures into an international body of grassroots and struggling forces.

All over the world, Black people are being oppressed by their national governments. Some are colonial subjects in European countries, and one or another of the African States exploits some. Only a Social revolution will lead to Black unity and freedom. However this will only be possible when there exists an international Black revolutionary organization and social movement. An organization which can coordinate the resistance struggles everywhere of African peoples; actually a network of such organizations, resistance movements, which are spread all over the world based on a consensus for revolutionary struggle. This concept accepts any level of violence that will be necessary to enforce the demands of the people and workers.

In those countries where an open Black revolutionary movement would be subjected to fierce repression by the state, such as in South Africa and in same Black puppet dictatorships in other parts of Africa, the Caribbean, and Asia, it would be necessary to wage an underground resistance struggle. Further, the state has grown more and more violent, with widespread torture and executions, prisons and maximum police controls, spying and deprivation of democratic rights, police brutality and murder. Clearly such governments-and all governments-must be overthrown. They will not fall due to internal economic or political problems, but must be defeated and dismantled. So we call for an international resistance movement to overthrow governments and the system of Capitalist world government.

But even in the Western imperialist countries, we must recognize the legitimacy of revolutionary violence. When such forms of revolutionary action are required, however, a clear difference should be seen among revolutionaries between simple terrorism without popular support and coherent political program and guerrilla warfare arising out of the collectively felt frustrations of the common people and workers. The use of military methods would be necessary in a case where the violence of the state made it imperative for Black revolutionaries to defend themselves by taking the armed offensive against the state and the ruling class, and to expropriate the wealth of the Capitalist class during the Social revolution.

The Black liberation movement needs an organization capable of international coordination of the Black liberation struggle, a world federation of African peoples. Although this would not just be an Anarchist movement, a federation like this would be made effective than any group of states, whether the United Nation or the Organization of African Unity, in freeing the Black masses. It would involve the masses of people themselves, not just national leaders or nation states.

The military dictators and government bureaucrats have only proven that they know how to spend money on pomp and circumstance, but not how to dismantle the last vestiges of colonialism in South Africa or defeat Western neocolonialist intrigues. Africa is still the poorest of the World's continents, while materially the richest. The contrast is clear: Millions of people are starving in much of Equatorial Africa, but the tribal chiefs, politicians and military dictators, are driving around in Mercedes and living in luxury villas, while they do the bidding of Western European and American bankers through the International Monetary Fund. They are part of the problem, not part of the solution!

Our ideas about the importance of inter-communalism are based on a firm belief that only a federation of free Autonomous peoples will bring true Black power to the masses "Power to the people" does not mean a government or political party to rule in their name, but social and political power in the hands of the people themselves. The only real "people's power" is the power to make their decisions on matters of importance, and to merely elect someone else to do so, or to have a dictatorship forced down their throats is not freedom. True freedom is to have full self-determination about one's social economic and cultural development. The future is Anarchist Communism and Autonomy, not the nation-state, bloody dictators, Capitalism or wage slavery.