by Kwame Beans Shakur, Co-founder and Chairman of New Afrikan Liberation Collective and Nationwide Director of Jail Lives Matter
As We start calling on Our many formations and campaigns below the Jail Lives Matter (PLM) banner to unite for the organizing and promotion of the “Jail Lives Matter: Liberate Our Elders Webinar and Panel Dialogue,” We have to be clear on Our goals and goals inside the total jail motion. It is a continuation of the Spirit of Mandela (SOM) Worldwide Tribunal in October 2021, and the monumental conclusions that discovered the u.s. responsible of Genocide on all 5 counts.
Being held inside the stomach of the beast, We’re in a relentless state of warfare and affected by colonial violence on all ranges. This generally results in Us participating in “on the go politics,” that means We’re consistently reacting to these particular person assaults and organizing round points with no long-term technique in place.
The target of PLM is to interrupt down the dialectical/historic connection between the colonization and nationwide oppression of the New Afrikan/Indigenous/Chicano nations inside the u.s. empire by way of the thirteenth and 14th amendments, which give rise to the Jail Industrial Slave Advanced (PISC).
There can’t be a disconnect between the New Afrikan (Black) motion for Nationwide Independence/Self-Authorities and the motion to abolish legalized jail slavery as a result of they’re one and the identical. PLM and SOM aren’t about complaining how dangerous jail meals and situations are – We’re constructing infrastructure and calling on the worldwide group to assist Us in Our battle for self-determination. In the middle of doing so, We should educate the world to the true politics of imprisonment within the u.s. and the position these prisons helped play within the repression of anti-colonial actions throughout the excessive tide of Our struggles within the Sixties and ‘70s.
Following the teachings and path of Brother Malcolm X, plenty of Our leaders, together with his widow, Sister Betty Shabazz, assembled in Detroit, Mich., for the Black Authorities Conference in 1968 to declare Ourselves free and impartial from u.s. colonial shackles.
The colonial authorities and the united nations, then and now, refuse to acknowledge this as a reliable battle for Nationwide Liberation.
Worldwide Regulation provides us the fitting to proclaim our nationality and affirms that nobody ought to be arbitrarily denied their proper to a nationality. In the course of the convention in Detroit, we established our New Afrikan creed, New Afrikan Declaration of Independence, New Afrikan Structure and a governing physique referred to as the Provisional Authorities of the Republic of New Afrika.
The colonial authorities and the united nations, then and now, refuse to acknowledge this as a reliable battle for Nationwide Liberation. The u.s. solely honors worldwide legislation and common meeting protocol when it applies to them or an allied nation that helps its capitalist conquest of the world.
After the emancipation, “releasing” of the slaves, in 1865, We started constructing a brand new (New) Afrikan nation within the Black Belt territory. The identical people who had simply “given Us Our freedom” seen that We have been creating Our personal political infrastructure, changing into economically self-sufficient, and feared that We’d quickly be able to defend Ourselves on a army degree over the land for Self-Authorities.
Understanding that we wouldn’t peacefully return onto plantations in handcuffs and shackles, they despatched the u.s. military into Our territory and disarmed Our folks, murdered a few of Our leaders and introduced that we have been now paper residents of the u.s., and that “all males have been equal” below the 14th modification. This isn’t the way in which the world works. One energy doesn’t power one other sovereign group of peoples into involuntary citizenship by way of delivery certificates/social safety numbers to strip them of a nationwide identification and stop them from Independence. That’s Genocide and colonialism.
Following its personal patterns 100 years later, they once more feared New Afrikan peoples reaching Nationwide Independence for Self-Authorities and the u.s. authorities despatched its colonial forces into Our group to homicide, body and enslave Our Freedom Fighters. The worldwide legal guidelines that We have been presupposed to be protected below additionally state that throughout the course of Our Nationwide Liberation struggles, Now we have the fitting to defend Ourselves by any means, together with armed battle, if the federal government that We’re combating towards engages in armed colonial violence towards the folks.
There is no such thing as a hiding or denying the dialectical/historic hyperlink between the colonization and nationwide oppression of New Afrika and the creation of the 13th modification and mass incarceration.
The worldwide legal guidelines that We have been presupposed to be protected below additionally state that in any case the place Our Freedom Fighters are captured, they shall be tried and handled as Political Prisoners (PPs). As an alternative, these Brothers and Sisters have been captured and charged as criminals. In some instances, they have been hunted and assassinated or enslaved and held in solitary confinement for years, and even bodily tortured, as within the case of Sekou Odinga.
There is no such thing as a hiding or denying the dialectical/historic hyperlink between the colonization and nationwide oppression of New Afrika and the creation of the 13th modification and mass incarceration. Dialectical/historic materialism means to overstand the science of Our socioeconomic actuality, the trigger and impact of capitalism.
Subsequently, as soon as We all know how and why these prisons exist, then and solely then, can Now we have a severe dialog about jail abolition. That’s the reason i say that this motion We’re (re)constructing isn’t to complain about poor jail situations. Now we have to tie this work into the united entrance and the packages for decolonization that stem from it.
We’re presenting a case to the Worldwide group of Genocide and home neocolonialism contained in the u.s., the place Now we have been denied the fitting to regulate Our personal instructional, financial, political, cultural, or social improvement which has traditionally led to the destruction of Our group, creating an increase in financial “crimes,” or what i name acts of survival, which have shaped a pipeline from the ghetto to the PISC (Jail Industrial Slave Advanced).
There are organizations/formations and people in each state who determine as revolutionaries or professional abolitionists. Now we have ones (folks) in every area who determine as New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalists (NARN). Nonetheless, it does little or no in regard to the general goal for decolonization on a nationwide degree when We’re working in a state of fragmented sectarianism.
When i say decolonization, i’m not merely talking about New Afrikan/Black folks separating from euro-americans or the u.s. authorities. That slender definition and idea comes from a fundamental and slender understanding of colonialism, pondering of it solely within the bodily sense or the kidnapping of Afrikan peoples and our colonization on this land. Slave masters, the colonial authorities and the PISC wouldn’t nonetheless achieve success in Our captivity as a nation had they remained content material with solely holding Us in bodily bondage on plantations.
It’s the blueprint for Us to finally obtain Self-Authorities for Nationwide Independence.
Via our research, We’re educated to overstand colonialism because it operates on an academic, financial, political, cultural, social, non secular, psychological and psychological degree. As soon as We have been colonized on the latter two, it made it simpler for Our folks to be built-in and assimilated into the neocolonial interval on all different ranges. Subsequently, if We have been to win Our battle for Nationwide Independence, if prisons have been abolished and We have been to easily decolonize on paper or by geographical location, We’d nonetheless endure from capitalism/colonialism on a psychological and cultural degree as a result of We didn’t undergo the basic transition stage of decolonization that altered Us into a brand new folks on all ranges for Our new society.
To ensure that Us to acquire what Frantz Fanon referred to as a collective mastery, and what he described because the restoration of nationhood for Our folks, We should set up and undertake a Nationwide Technique. We can’t obtain liberation by obsessing over the works of Marx/Lenin/Mao or Fidel/Che in struggles that occurred in different nations greater than 50, 60, or 100 years in the past. Because of this a scientific research of Our personal dialectical/historic connection to capitalism is important, as a result of it’s going to present that We’re combating a extra distinctive and superior type: neocolonialism. We’re so built-in into the colonial-oppressor system that We rely on them and can’t independently survive on Our personal as We stand right this moment with out the umbilical twine for education, jobs (financial construction), housing (land), meals (agriculture), clothes and medical care.
FROLINAN (Entrance for the Liberation of the New Afrikan Nation)
It was by way of this data and overstanding that the FROLINAN handbook and FROLINAN Nationwide Technique was established by veteran comrade, Jalil Muntaqim. It’s the blueprint for Us to finally obtain Self-Authorities for Nationwide Independence. The Nationwide Technique contains our 10 Applications for Decolonization. When correctly utilized on a person, organizational and group degree, this Nationwide Technique and any of the chosen Applications for Decolonization permits Us to eradicate the codependency on Our oppressor as We set forth a brand new path towards self-determination to regulate Our personal future. When We will start successful over Our NARN formations to collectively acknowledge, dissect and undertake this technique, then these Applications for Decolonization will finally function the infrastructure of Our communities across the nation.
With a brand new era of cadre having studied the setbacks and shortcomings of the previous, working in unison and spirit with these veterans/Elders who gave Us the science within the New Afrikan POW Journals, We’re in a position to once more begin (re)constructing for Our restoration of nationhood.
Though the FROLINAN Handbook/Nationwide Technique was formally put ahead within the ‘90s, We’re simply now seeing the primary tangible indicators of its calling. With a brand new era of cadre having studied the setbacks and shortcomings of the previous, working in unison and spirit with these exact same veterans/Elders who so graciously gave Us the science within the New Afrikan POW Journals: Books 1-12, We’re in a position to once more begin (re)constructing for Our restoration of nationhood. Following the teachings of Baba Jalil, his youthful cousin, Abbas Muntaqim, and comrades in Oakland, California, established the Folks’s Applications 5 years in the past based mostly on the idea of We Are Our Personal Liberators and FROLINAN’s Nationwide Technique, together with a bodily location to deal with these packages and a cell well being clinic to manage the work.
Jalil himself was lastly free of captivity in October 2020 after serving 49 years and instantly started working implementing the Folks’s Liberation Applications of Rochester, New York. Following these examples, New Afrikan Liberation Collective (NALC) has bought a constructing in my very own group that can function a Folks’s Applications for Decolonization in Terre Haute, Indiana. Jalil, Abbas and I hope that by creating these infrastructures within the East, West and Midwest, the packages and participation of the folks will set an instance for all the Motion, each in and out, to return collectively in Class Wrestle for Nationwide Unity.
The ”PLM: Liberate Our Elders Webinar and Panel Dialogue” is a proposal for nationwide unification and a continuation in Our cry of Genocide to the worldwide group. We’re proposing that this occasion be held on the Prince Compound in Houston, TX, throughout the summer time of 2023.
In 2022, the Lawful Committee was added to the PLM Nationwide Coordinating Committee (NCC). Now we have attorneys and lawful counsel in Los Angeles, D.C. and Illinois, who’re spearheading this committee by litigating instances and recruiting different attorneys, legislation professors and pre-law college students across the kountry. The Lawful Committee will play a important position within the “PLM Liberate Our Elders” webinar by working to usher in worldwide legal professionals, in addition to organizing occasions to livestream the panel dialogue on school universities across the u.s., together with Harvard and Howard.
Now we have to maneuver within the Spirit of Mandela and put a global highlight on the Mandela Rules, which has been handed within the u.s. common meeting and already adopted in states which have put an finish to the inhuman use of long-term solitary confinement. How is it that Now we have Political Prisoners, like Larry Hoover, who’ve been enslaved 49+ years and held captive in supermax services (solitary confinement, 23 hours a day, single cell) for 27 consecutive years? This in itself is Genocide and psychological torture. We want solidarity and technique, aided by worldwide assist with a view to abolish this.
REBUILD TO WIN! FREE THE LAND!! WE ARE OUR OWN LIBERATORS!!!
Kwame Shakur is a New Afrikan political prisoner presently enslaved in solitary confinement on the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. He’s the chairman and co-founder, with Shaka Shakur, of the New Afrikan Liberation Collective and is the nationwide director of Prison Lives Matter. To get entangled along with his Freedom Marketing campaign, please electronic mail kwameshakurdefense@protonmail.com. Donate to the New Afrikan Folks’s Middle here. Ship our brother some love and lightweight: Kwame Shakur, 149677, WVCF, P.O. Field 1111, Carlisle, IN 47838.
