1. The African Peoplea��s Solidarity Committee is a white organization that was founded by the African Peoplea��s Socialist Party led by Chairman Omali Yeshitela. We organize in the white communities under the leadership of the African Liberation Movement. We are a strategic component of the African movement aimed at breaking the colonial unity that most white people have with U.S. or European imperialism. Our work is not based on charity. The African Peoplea��s Socialist Party has a political theory called African Internationalism. This a worldview seen through the eyes of oppressed African workers as opposed to the eyes of European oppressors. We have adopted African Internationalism as our worldview and therefore under the APSPa��s leadership we can unite with the conclusions that African and oppressed peoples have come to. Everyone can begin to look at the world from the other side of this oppressive equation. You can too. We believe that if we white people are going to be a positive part of the future of this planet then we must see the world as the majority of humanity experience it. We must unite with conclusion that imperialism and colonial domination in all forms must go.

The African People’s Solidarity Committee understands that:

2. Capitalism was born and is maintained from the enslavement of African people, the genocide of the Indigenous people and the colonial theft of the land, labor, resources and self-determination of the majority of the peoples on Earth. This understanding is a key component of African Internationalism, the political theory of the African Peoplea��s Socialist Party. Capitalism had no benign origins. It was born from the blood, suffering and brutal repression of hundreds of millions of people for the benefit of the white population, a tiny minority of the world. An honest look at history shows that the trade in African human beings, the slaughter of Indigenous peoples and the theft of their resources transformed Europe from feudalism to capitalism. Capitalism was always parasitic and brutal. Capitalism continues to require the subjugation and theft of the resources of the majority of nonwhite people to maintain the wealth and power of the few.

3. The problem facing African people inside the U.S. is not racism. It is colonialism. Africans are one people around the world. Some were divided by colonial borders imposed on the continent of Africa. Some were forcibly dispersed to the U.S., Brazil, the Caribbean and elsewhere through the trade in African people. In either case African people have been nothing but commodities, slaves and disposable pawns for the colonial theft of valuable resources. African people inside the U.S. have been described as a�?second class citizens,a�? but a second class citizen is a colonial subject. African people had to struggle for the right to vote and only won it a hundred years after the end of chattel slavery. Today African people in the U.S. have one dime for every dollar white people have. Africans make up over 50 percent of the 2.5 million people filling the lucrative U.S. prison system. It is well documented that the U.S. government imposes drugs on African communities, and these communities bear the brunt of the governmenta��s a�?War on Drugs,a�? a militaristic counterinsurgency plan to maintain the colonial status of Africans. African people are facing up to 50 percent unemployment in urban areas and face mass foreclosures after being targeted for subprime mortgages. It might make us feel good to attend sessions on a�?unlearning racism,a�? but it does not change any of the colonial conditions faced by African people inside this country. African people will lead and win their self-determination and liberation. We can stand in solidarity with that struggle.

4. All white people sit on the pedestal of slavery and colonialism. This is a key point of African Internationalism and it is a hard one for many white people to accept. Many of us say, a�?Ia��m not wealthy and I didna��t do it!a�? But the reality is that while very few of us are Bill Gates or a Rockefeller, all of us owe our sense of entitlement to the greatest enjoyment of democratic rights and highest standard of living in the world to the fact that this land was stolen from the Native people and this economy is built on the enslavement of Africans. When Europe set out to conquer the world it was under a system of feudalism. A few lords and ladies ruled over the majority of the people who were serfs, tied to the land. As the plundered resources of Africa and the Americas flowed into Europe the system of capitalism was born. The capitalist ruling class was born as the overthrew the feudal lords. The capitalist middle class was born and became prosperous in this process also. This same process also gave birth to the capitalist working class, transformed from landless peasants to the richest workers on earth. Stolen land in the Americas, Australia and Southern Africa was literally given away to European workers and jobs were plentiful with only one tacit stipulation: stay loyal to white power and help carry out the colonial oppression of African, Indigenous, Arab and Asian people. White workers and their whole families voluntarily carried out open terrorism against African people through popular lynchings. Today millions of white working people continue to support brutal wars against the people of the Middle East and against African people inside this country. This is happening even as white workers may be losing their jobs and homes while the bankers and elite rake in billions of dollars of tax payers’ money. Historically white working people have preferred to be messed over by our own ruling class and maintain our a�?whitenessa�? than stand in solidarity with African and oppressed peoples. The world is changing today as the U.S. and Europe are losing their military, economic, political and cultural hegemony over everybody else. The growing resistance of African, Arab and other peoples are opening the eyes of many of us who want to see a positive future

5. Indirect rule in the form of neocolonialism keeps imperialist plunder and colonial subjugation intact. The mainstream media talks about the a�?corruptiona�? of African political leaders in Africa and in the U.S., but all the African leaders with the interests of the masses of the people at heart were assassinated or overthrown. Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba and others in Africa and Malcolm X and Fred Hampton among others inside the U.S. were ousted or murdered by U.S. government agencies. The current heads of state in Africa and African elected officials in the U.S. are doing just what the U.S. government wants them to do: carry out the will of imperialism with impunity. From Mobutu to Mandela, white power in black face has degraded the conditions for African people in the past 40 years and carried out atrocities that would cause rebellions if the leaders were white. In the U.S. the election of Barack Obama is a perfect example of neocolonialism. Having transferred billions of dollars of tax payers’ money to the Wall Street bankers and continued the brutal war policies of George Bush, Obama has served to attack African men and brush off all the urgent conditions facing African people in the U.S. today. The African Liberation Movement is exposing the reality of neocolonialism and today African and oppressed peoples are waking up to the reality that white power in black face must be defeated.

6. The African Socialist International is organizing African people around the world to unite and liberate Africa and all its resources under the leadership of African workers. An organized, anti-colonial, socialist resistance movement of African people is growing on the continent of Africa, in the U.S. and elsewhere. It is a revolutionary movement. Why should Africa have vast natural resources yet millions of African people are starving, living without homes, democratic rights, public schools, clean water, plumbing or an electrical grid due to ongoing colonial plunder facilitated by neocolonial leaders? Why should diamond, oil, bauxite and other foreign mining corporations make billions of dollars on Africaa��s resources and the people have nothing? It doesna��t make sense that the benefits of Africaa��s resources, land and labor are enjoyed by the white world at the expense of African people. The violence it takes to impose such an unjust system on the colonized is not sustainable. African people are one nation. The continent of Africa will be one country and the false borders imposed by the colonial powers to facilitate plunder will be destroyed. This is the unstoppable motion of history, the power of the people and it is only just.

7. Reparations are due to African people. The African Peoplea��s Solidarity Committee is a revolutionary, anti-imperialist organization under the leadership of the African Peoplea��s Socialist Party. It would be the ultimate hypocrisy for us to support African liberation while continuing to sit on the stolen resources of African people. The African Peoplea��s Socialist Party raises the reparations demand and has made it a household word based on the understanding that the wealth of America is built on the backs of African people. In 1982 the APSP held the first World Tribunal on Reparations for African People. Based on international law, the tribunal found that African people are owed $4.1 trillion for stolen labor in the U.S. alone. That does not include the amount of profit from the 400 year trade in African people and all its spin off industries or wealth garnered from the cotton, rum or tobacco industry or from stolen African labor in Brazil, Guyana, Jamaica and elsewhere. That does not include the ravages and genocide of direct colonialism where in Namibia, for example, the 90 percent of the Nama and Herrero peoples were annihilated. It doesna��t include the physical and psychological affects of the centuries of torture and terror inflicted on African people through kidnappings, dislocations, forced labor, lynchings, mutilations, beatings, whippings and mass imprisonment. It does not include the jobs and wealth created through the very lucrative present day prison industry fueled by discriminatory colonial laws targeting massive numbers of African people young and old, women, men and children. The African Peoplea��s Solidarity Committee has built fundraising institutions such as Uhuru Foods, auctions and donor campaigns to fund the work of the African Peoplea��s Socialist Party as it builds the movement to liberate Africa and African people everywhere. We consider this our responsibility and the responsibility of all conscious white people who recognize that participation of white people in the building of a just world requires the righting of the historical wrongs and the active return of stolen land and resources to their rightful owners.