BAP-DC, a citywide alliance in Washington, D.C., of the Black Alliance for Peace, extends warm and revolutionary greetings to the resilient working-class and poor people of Haiti on this 220th commemoration of Haitian Flag Day. We understand it was on this day in 1803 that the Haitian people adopted their flag. Just six months later, the Haitian people defeated the enslavers and colonizers, ensuring their place in history as the first republic of African people in the world. We understand the colonizers have persisted in oppressing Haiti, despite the Haitian people’s victory 219 years ago. The people of Haiti have . . .
Local Organizing Updates
Winning Beyond the Gender Binary for Pan-Africanism
The experience and work of the Anti-Patriarchy Task Force shows unequivocally the power of ideology, organization, and principled collective struggle. . . .
BAP Supports National Day of Action Against Police Terror
Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organization Community Movement Builders (CMB) is calling all organizations, organizers, and community members to a National Day of Action Against Police Terror on March 9, 2023. In the wake of the brutal killings of Tyre Nichols and forest defender Manuel Tortuguita, the city of Atlanta is going full steam ahead to build what activists have dubbed “Cop City.” Atlanta officials have proposed a $90 million complex be built on 85 acres of forest. This would only arm and deploy more police—whom we refer to as the domestic army—in African and colonized working-class and poor . . .
Wes Moore: Another ‘First Black’ In A Colonial System
Recently, Maryland swore in its first Black governor, Wes Moore, in a “historic” ceremony cemented with a tearful introduction by Oprah Winfrey and a hand on Frederick Douglass’ Bible. The Black elite flocked to fill the rooms of the inauguration to witness the third elected Black governor in U.S. history. Yet, this “first Black” gubernatorial win is history repeating itself. African/Black communities have witnessed “first Blacks” consistently continuing over-policing, surveillance, criminalization, and austerity policies. As Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) member organization Ujima People’s Progress Party understands, “The Black middle-class’ allegiance to capitalism, and not Black liberation, has largely led . . .
South Africa, Why Are You Scared of White People?
The incident that took place at the Bloemfontein Maselspoort resort complex on the afternoon of Christmas 2022 reminded me of Julian Kunnie’s inquiry on democratic South Africa when he quizzed, “Is apartheid dead?” At the resort, two teenage boys of African descent were involved in a racist scuffle with several seemingly Dutch descendants [Afrikaners/ white people] about the use of a swimming pool that was ‘exclusively segregated for whites only’. Social media was abuzz about the incident and the New York Times strangely got hold of the story and video footage of the incident. Most members of the society condemned . . .
I Witnessed the Truth about Nicaragua
Entering adulthood alongside the dwindling of 2020 uprisings for Black liberation (that I had naively seen as the beginning of the end), I felt very stuck. Understanding I am a poor queer Black woman, I saw myself facing a world where the options presented for survival were dehumanizing at best, and the innate dream of living as a free person essentially destroyed. I wanted to fight the liberal tendency of American youth to begin with strong spirits of resistance, before colleging, working and/or drugging, and ultimately, laying down into the nuzzle of the . . .
Missouri is About to Murder Kevin Johnson
Editors Note: At 7:40pm CT on November 29, 2022, the State of Missouri murdered Kevin Johnson. It is, or should be, universally recognized, that poor children are not responsible for their hunger, that abused children are not to blame for being abused, and that we all have a collective responsibility to protect those too young to protect themselves. Yet if we fail in our duty to protect, and those we’ve failed to protect are irreparably damaged, and through that irreparable damage grow up to break the law, we as a society treat those same tormented children as unworthy of empathy . . .
The African Middle-Class is Either Sleeping or Disarmed
Capitalism and its fraying edges should be discarded, its presence grows dull and boring even though millions of Africans experience capitalism in its most vicious expressions, maybe this is why there is a kind of passiveness to its observation or critique. It becomes the most affected, the most harmed, and the most vulnerable that move to educate whoever will listen on the contradictions staring everyone in the face and how to resist and change the status-quo. With the Nigerian, and by extension, African middle-class in mind, it is vital to note the subtle complicity with neoliberalism within our societies. The . . .