Ukraine: Biden Administration’s “Wag the Dog” Diversionary War?

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January 27, 2022. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) along with the ANSWER Coalition, CODEPINK, Maryland Peace Action, Popular Resistance, and many other organizations will gather in Washington today at noon in front of the White House as part of an emergency mobilization of anti-war activists to express opposition to the unnecessary and extremely dangerous possibility of war in Ukraine.

With a 39% job approval rating, more deaths from covid than during the Trump administration, and a failure to deliver on most of promises made during the 2020 presidential campaign, the intentional escalation of tensions by the United States with Russia appears as a clumsy attempt by the Biden administration and the Democratic Party to divert attention from the historic failures of the administration’s domestic policies.

There could be no other rational explanation for why the Biden administration would encourage the Ukrainian coup government to reject the Minsk II agreement that provided a diplomatic framework for peacefully resolving the internal struggle between the Ukrainian government and regions that declared themselves independent of that government, unless, according to BAP National Organizer, Ajamu Baraka:

“The manufactured crisis with Russia over Ukraine, demonstrates once again the incredible recklessness and outrageous opportunism that the U.S./NATO/EU Axis of domination is prepared to pursue in order to achieve its geo-strategic objective of full-spectrum economic and political global domination.”

Whatever the explanation, it is clear that for African peoples, the U.S./NATO/EU Axis of Domination continues to represent the greatest threat to peace, human rights, and social justice on the planet today. That is why it is so absurd to see the Black Misleadership class lining up to demonstrate their support for war with Russia while Black people still face the structural violence of capitalism and the terror of state violence from the domestic army occupying our communities that are referred to as the police.

BAP says that it is irrational for any African to embrace the agenda of empire by giving credence or legitimacy to the crude mobilization of public opinion for conflict on behalf of NATO, a structure created to perpetuate white power and the colonial/capitalist project.

We are clear: we say once again, not one drop of the blood from Black workers, the colonized and nationally oppressed in defense of the U.S. capitalist oligarchy.

Banner photo: The Pentagon has put 8,500 troops on high alert as the U.S. escalates tensions with Russia over Ukraine. (Stefani Reynolds/The New York Times)

The News From the Venezuela Election? Victory for the People of Venezuela and Defeat for the U.S.

Black Alliance for Peace Statement on Venezuelan Elections

The news out of Venezuela related to the elections is that there is no news. All attempts to attack and delegitimize the process failed and the people of that beleaguered nation once again chose independence and dignity over surrendering to the imperialist gangsterism of the United States and their white supremacist, European colonial allies.

For the first time in four years elements of the political opposition participated in elections that saw nearly 70,000 candidates representing 37 national political parties and 43 regional organizations for 23 governors, 335 mayors, 253 lawmakers, and 2,471 councilors.

Demonstrating once again that it is committed to open, fair, and clean elections, the Consejo National Electoral (CNE), the governmental body responsible for organizing elections in the country, issued credentials to over 300 international observers from 55 countries and institutions such as the European Union (EU), the United Nations (UN), and the Carter Center.

The result?

The “Great Patriotic Pole” (GPP), a coalition of parties and social movements organized by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), won overwhelmingly including 20 out of 23 key governorships in the sub-national election.

According to BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka, “The support of the Venezuelan people for their process demonstrates once again, like what we just saw in the Nicaraguan elections and the failed revolt in Cuba on the 15th, that the white supremacists do not understand that when a people have tasted freedom, reconnected with their pre-colonial cultural traditions of knowledge production and independence, they become immune to the political, ideological and material attempts to drive them back into subordination.”

The elections in Venezuela and Nicaragua, the abandonment of reactionary forces in Cuba by the Cuban people, and the solidarity from progressive forces globally in support of the struggles for national liberation and self-determination in the Americas, represent the upsurge of popular opposition and the growing weakness and fragility of U.S. and European imperialism.

They all forcefully affirm that the colonial realities are being reversed. It is a victory for all oppressed, colonized, and working-class peoples when a people, working to build a new society for themselves freed from the dehumanizing effects of the colonial/capitalist system, are able to withstand the systematic assaults on their democratic process and national sovereignty. BAP stands firmly with all of these attempts and proudly salutes the people of Venezuela.

No compromise, no retreat! 

#NoMore U.S. in Africa: BAP Statement to Nov. 21st Rallies for Ethiopia

We in the Black Alliance for Peace stand in uncompromising opposition to the U.S.-led imperialist aggression against Ethiopia and by extension against her neighboring countries Eritrea, Somalia, and beyond. U.S. policy against Ethiopia cannot be understood without putting it within the broader context of U.S. imperialism’s geostrategic interest in the Horn of Africa in particular, and the whole of Africa in general. 

It is not lost on the Black radicals and revolutionary Pan-Africanists that the U.S. settler colonialist state is an extension of Western Europe and as such it is motivated by a white supremacist, imperialist worldview. 

In spite of its benevolent rhetoric, the U.S.’ unwavering commitment to full spectrum dominance reveals the only true intentions it has for Ethiopia and for our homeland, Africa. Since the 1950s African movements against colonialism and for continental unity, have been sabotaged by U.S. administrations of both parties. Leaders such as Patrice Lumumba of Congo were assassinated by the CIA, and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana was overthrown in a CIA orchestrated coup. Ten years  ago, the U.S. led the NATO bombing of Libya  which decimated the country, killing not only the leader Muammar Gaddafi but also an untold number of Libyans. This was the first operation of its U.S. Africa Command, AFRICOM, that has since been responsible for thoroughly militarizing the continent of Africa, including waging an unmitigated drone war in Somalia.

The relative instability in Ethiopia can only be sustained through U.S. support. The empty rhetoric from officials like U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken represents the propaganda aspect of the hybrid war waged against Ethiopia.

It is important that we see the sanctions, media misinformation, and arrogant ultimatums by U.S. imperialism for what they are; the desperate machinations of a global power in crisis. 

Western imperialism is being confronted by people-centered expressions of resistance in Africa and globally.

This week a French military convoy from Ivory Coast transiting across Burkina Faso towards Niger (a source of uranium for France) was stopped by 10,000 demonstrators demanding that the French forces evacuate from the region. The convoy had already been stopped on November 17th in the Burkina Faso city of Bobo Dioulasso and on the 18th in the capital of Ouagadougou. The imperialist press won’t cover this resistance.

Now expressions of solidarity from around the world are standing up for the Horn of Africa. 

While the Black Alliance for Peace is committed to peace, we understand there can be no peace without justice, and we will stand in solidarity with all peoples (and nations) who strive to liberate themselves from all forms of neocolonial oppression. 

BAP takes a resolute anti-colonial, anti-imperialist position that links the international role of the U.S. empire to the domestic war against poor people and working-class Black people within the United States.

We unequivocally support and uplift mutual cooperation, solidarity, and peace among all parties and people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the broader Horn of Africa region. We support African-led, localized conflict resolution that is not tied to advancing imperialism, neo-colonialism or any other nefarious Western agendas.

We must all transform our mobilizations into organized protracted struggle that forges a transcontinental cooperation that will save ourselves from the greatest threat to peace and stability on the planet, the U.S. government. 

The U.S.-EU-NATO axis of domination will ultimately find its deathbed in Africa at the hands of the Pan-African masses.

U.S. out of Africa!

Shut down AFRICOM!

No compromise!

No retreat!

Banner photo: Refugees, who arrived recently from Ethiopia, setting up their shelter in Sudan. (UNFPA/Sufian Abdul-Mouty)

The Resignation of Biden’s Special Envoy to Haiti Once Again Exposes the White Supremacist Foundations of U.S. Foreign Policy, No Matter Which Party Is In Charge

For Immediate Release

Media Contact:
Jemima Pierre
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The Resignation of Biden’s Special Envoy to Haiti Once Again Exposes the White Supremacist Foundations of U.S. Foreign Policy, No Matter Which Party Is In Charge

SEPTEMBER 23, 2021—Dan Foote’s career as a member of the U.S. foreign service and foreign policy community has been problematic. Yet, the blatant racism of Biden’s Haiti policies—in both controlling Haiti’s governance and the illegal and inhuman abuses of Haitian asylum seekers—was too much even for his special envoy to Haiti. In his resignation letter, Foote wrote the U.S. approach to Haiti was "deeply flawed" and that his advice had been "ignored."

Foote’s resignation letter is welcome, as are the statements from the Congressional Black Caucus and other Black formations that have been silent on Biden’s—and other Democratic Party—foreign policies on Haiti and the world, are welcome. But they are too late and too narrow.

As Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Committee Coordinator Jemima Pierre has commented regarding the spectacle of border patrol violence against Haitians at the U.S.-Mexico border:

“This latest racist treatment of Haitian people by the U.S. deserves our absolute condemnation and it is important to acknowledge how immigration impacts Black populations in ways that are distinct from other migrants. But we also have to place this wave of migration to the US-Mexico border within the broader context of U.S. and western imperialism in the region. To not do so is to continue to exceptionalize Haiti and Haitian people in ways that hide their connections to the rest of the western occupied world —and draw attention to the mere representation of Haitians, rather than the structural and historical causes of Haitian migration.”

The Black Alliance for Peace has consistently pointed out the uninterrupted racist and imperial policies of the Biden administration in Haiti and throughout the Americas. The support for Jovenel Moïse in Haiti; the illegal sanctions on Venezuela and recognition of the unelected Juan Guaidó as president; subversion of democracy in Peru, Ecuador and Bolivia; continuation of the ban on remittances from the United States to Cuba; support for the crackdown on demonstrators in Colombia; and the targeting of Nicaragua have reflected the bipartisan nature of imperial policy in the Caribbean and Latin America.

Coming on the heels of the boycott of the United Nations Meeting on Race yesterday by most of the white colonial nations, led by the U.S. and the U.S./U.K./Australia racial pact against China, the underlying white supremacy of Western imperial policy is quite transparent to anyone who chooses to see.

Banner photo: Border Patrol agents on horseback push Haitians back from the U.S. border in September 2021. (Reuters)

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Biden Administration’s Order to Deport Haitians as Illegal and Racist

UPDATED on September 20, 2021, in the second paragraph

For Immediate Release

Media Contact:
Jemima Pierre
(202) 643-1136

Black Alliance for Peace Condemns Biden Administration’s Order to Deport Haitians as Illegal and Racist

SEPTEMBER 18, 2021—When a white Fox News reporter used a drone to film the thousands of Haitian and other Black asylum seekers camped beneath a bridge spanning the Rio Grande and linking Del Rio, Texas to Ciudad Acuña, in the Coahuila state of Mexico, he immediately (and deliberately) brought a stereotypical image of Black migration: That of the teeming, African hordes, ready to burst the borders and invade the United States. Such images are as cheap as they are racist. And, typically, they erase the larger question: Why are so many Haitians at the U.S. border?

But before that question could be addressed, the Biden administration struck with a decisiveness not seen throughout its 9-month tenure in office in ordering Haitian refugees—many of them with legitimate asylum claims—to be summarily deported to Haiti. As of September 20, more than 300 Haitian asylum seekers have been forced to board deportation flights to Haiti. The Associated Press and other U.S. media outlets have reported the Haitians were flown back to their “homeland.” But few knew where the flights were going, and many would have preferred to return to Brazil and other places they had sojourned. Cold, cynical and cruel, the Biden administration promises more deportations in the coming days.

This rogue state action is both morally indefensible and illegal under international law. The United Nations 1951 Refugee Convention “recognizes the right of persons to seek asylum from persecution in other countries” and stipulates that states have an obligation to provide reasonable measures to allow for individuals to seek asylum.

“Seeking asylum by individuals who may be facing prosecution, imprisonment and even death because of political affiliation or membership in racial, national, sexual or religious groups is a recognized requirement under international law,” says Ajamu Baraka, national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP). “That the Biden administration has ordered federal authorities to mass deport thousands of Haitians, which will probably have the effect of driving many of them who will resist deportation back into Mexico and Central and South America, is both unprecedented in its scope and fundamentally racist.”

What makes the Biden policy even more outrageous is U.S. policies have created the economic and political conditions in Haiti that have compelled tens of thousands to flee.

Janvieve Williams of BAP member organization AfroResistance points out, “Racist U.S. policies in Haiti, supported by the Core Group, the UN, and other international organizations, have created the situation in Haiti—and at the border.”

If successive U.S. administrations had not undermined Haitian democracy and national self-determination, there would be no humanitarian crisis in Haiti or on the U.S. border. George W. Bush greenlit the 2004 coup against elected president Jean Bertrand Aristide. The UN sanctioned the coup with a full-scale military occupation. The Obama administration installed Michel Martelly and the Duvalierist PHTK party. And the Biden administration upended democracy in Haiti by supporting Jovenel Moïse despite the end of his term. All of these imperialist interventions have ensured that thousands would have to seek safety and refuge outside of Haiti. The U.S. policy response? Imprisonment and deportation. The United States has created an endless loop of dispossession, depravity and despair.

The Black Alliance for Peace calls on the Congressional Black Caucus and all human-rights and humanitarian groups to demand the Biden administration live up to its responsibility under international law and give Haitians a fair chance to seek asylum. We also call on the Biden administration and the Core Group to stop their interventions into Haitian politics and allow Haitian people to form a government of national reconciliation to restore Haiti’s sovereignty.

Banner photo: Haitian migrants seeking asylum in September 2021 under the Del Rio International Bridge in Texas as a U.S. Border Patrol agent walks by. U.S. policies have created the conditions in Haiti that have compelled tens of thousands to flee. (Veronica G. Cardenas / The New York Times)

Haiti's White Rulers Have Spoken on Haiti's Political Future

For Immediate Release

Media Contact:
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communications@blackallianceforpeace.com

JULY 9, 2021—The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) condemns the arrogance and illegality of United Nations Special Envoy for Haiti Helen La Lime’s July 8 statement that Haitian Prime Minister Claude Joseph will be the new president, just one day after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse.

The decision was announced to the press after a closed-door UN Security Council meeting had been called on Haiti. But BAP asks: Who gave the United Nations special envoy the power to make that kind of determination for the people of Haiti?

This sounds like a play right out of the old regime-change book. As BAP stated in its July 7 press release, BAP smells a rat.

BAP is concerned the political situation the United States created by supporting a dictatorship in Haiti is quickly replicating the moment when the United States swept in to colonize the predominantly African/Black country after the 1915 assassination of Haiti’s president, Vilbrun Guillaume Sam.

“The Black Alliance for Peace remains steadfast in our call against foreign intervention and occupation of Haiti,” says Jemima Pierre, BAP’s Haiti/Americas Coordinator. “We call on all anti-imperialist and Black internationalist forces to stand with the Haitian people and oppose U.S. and European interventions deployed under the guise of the ‘Responsibility to Protect.’”

What Haiti needs is authentic national sovereignty and self-determination.

“When people say Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, they fail to understand it is the Pan-European colonial powers that have kept Haiti with its hands tied behind its back,” says BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka. “We say time out on white Western powers causing destruction in the global South.”

Shortly after Democrats wrung their hands over the possibility of Donald Trump staying past his term in office, Biden came into office and immediately lent his support to Moïse to stay beyond the February 7 term limit. That decision sent thousands of Haitians protesting in the streets week after week.

“The Haitian people clearly understood that the United States, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States were behind this,” says Chris Bernadel, a member of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Committee. “During these massive protests, they called for all of these Western powers to exit Haiti.”

While Biden expressed support for Black Lives Matter and for democracy during his campaign for president, true support would have meant ending U.S. meddling in Haiti’s affairs. This assassination relieves the Biden-Harris administration of the embarrassment of having to reconcile the contradiction between pretending to respect Black lives and democracy and supporting a dictator who had reigned after his term had ended on February 7.

That is why for BAP, it doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger to kill Moïse because the Pan-European colonial-capitalist powers are responsible for the suffering of the Haitian people.

BAP vigorously opposes any and all foreign institutions and structures intervening in Haiti. The Haitian people must be allowed to exercise self-determination and address their internal political situation without interference, as BAP noted in its July 6 press release.

Banner photo: Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse and first lady Martine Moïse sit during his swearing-in ceremony in Port-au-Prince on February 7, 2017. (Dieu Nalio Chery/AP)

BAP's U.S. Out of Africa Network Statement on the Latest Zionist Genocidal Assault on Gaza and Palestinian People

As the zionist occupier unleashes another round of genocidal violence against Gaza, the Black Alliance for Peace stands firmly with the Palestinian people in their long and just struggle against the depravities of settler colonialism. Over the past week the zionist occupier has brutally bombed homes, schools, media houses, killing at least [200 people, including 59 children] since the writing of this statement and still climbing. We know that the latest escalation comes after a series of illegal, immoral, and racist acts initiated by the zionist occupiers: the attempted forced evictions of Palestinians from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in East Jerusalem; and the assault on the Al Aqsa Mosque (the third holiest site in Islam) during Ramadan and one of the holiest days in Islam, a day before Eid al Fitr.

We also know that May 15th marked the 73rd anniversary of the Nakba or “The Catastrophe,” when the zionist occupiers drove more than 700,000 Palestinians off their land, with hundreds of thousands landing – and remaining until this day – in refugee camps. Today, there are more than 4 million registered Palestinian refugees worldwide. Since then, the constant land grabbing and state-sponsored terror by the occupation illegal government, have left Palestinians as refugees in their own land, separated from family and friends by road blocks and walls, cramped in the open air prison that is the Gaza strip, under constant surveillance, and brutalized by military force, including bombing, assassinations, and indefinite detentions.

The latest attacks represent the ongoing Palestinian Nakba.

But we know that the ongoing Nakba is only possible because of the Pan-European white supremacist and imperial support for the crimes of the zionist entity. The settler colonial state of the U.S., for example, supports this entity with $3.8 billion a year in military aid. It also continues to support the settler’s land expropriation, and provides legal cover for zionism’s atrocities through its undemocratic veto power on the UN Security Council.

Revolutionary Africans must stand with the Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism. We know that this settler colony was planted in the Middle East by imperialism to serve the dictates of the Pan-European white supremacist colonial/capitalist project. It is why we must also understand the ways that zionism has and continues to work against African liberation. The zionist occupier of Palestinian lands and people gave political, economic, and military support to the racist apartheid regime in Azania/South Africa to further the oppression and exploitation of African people. And currently, Jewish Africans from Ethiopia serve as cheap, exploited labor and suffer from the most egregious racism at the hands of their fellow “Jews” from zionist Israel in occupied Palestine. There is also the continuing racist treatment of Black migrants (from Eritrea, Sudan, and Ethiopia) in the settler colony.

The zionist occupier in Palestine currently poses an existential threat for African and other oppressed communities. Israel Defense Forces (IDF) commandos train security forces in more than a dozen African nations in tactics they use to control, colonize, incarcerate and terrorize Palestinian people. Israel also engages in policing exchanges with local U.S. police forces to promote and extend some of the most violent policies, behaviors, and tactics of the U.S. settler state disproportionately used against African (Black) and indigenous people.

A stand against zionism is a stand against colonization and a demand for the return of the land to Palestinians. It is a call for the end of settler genocide. It is also part and parcel of the African people’s struggle for true liberation. African People must be a part of the struggle against zionism. We must see, therefore, that the zionist dehumanization of Palestinians and its culture of anti-Blackness depend on the same system - white supremacy.

The Palestinian resistance against zionist expansion and genocide is a just struggle. Palestine will be free because its struggle is supported by the majority of the people of the world.  The Black Alliance for Peace stands with Palestine, and its call for self-determination!

Support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

No compromise! No retreat!

The U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) is a network of volunteers committed to strategizing around creative and radical tactics for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from Africa, the demilitarization of the African continent, the closure of U.S. military bases throughout the world, pressuring the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) to unequivocally oppose AFRICOM and conduct hearings on its impact on the African continent. The USOAN is the driving force for the U.S. Out of Africa! Shutdown AFRICOM! campaign of the Black Alliance for Peace.

Sign up to join the U.S. Out of Africa Network.

Banner photo: Iraqi protestors in Baghdad wave Palestinian flags during a protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people. (Thaier al-Sudani/Reuters)

In Colombia, Black Lives Also Matter!: A Black Alliance for Peace Statement

Gruesome reports have emerged of systematic repression in various cities in Colombia since the April 28 call for a national strike to protest U.S.-ordered neoliberal changes in the Colombian tax system. In response to the strike, the Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (ESMAD, or Mobile Anti-Disturbances Squadron)—the Colombian riot police—and regular police units have been beating, shooting, tear gassing and murdering people across the country.

For the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), it is important that as the public is just becoming aware of the situation in Colombia, they understand two elements. First, the context of the strike in Colombia had been shaped by decades of right-wing government actions in the forms of vicious state wars against the people using paramilitary structures and death squads, all in service of the national and comprador Colombian bourgeoisie and their capitalist masters in the United States and Europe. And secondly, along with Indigenous peoples, Afro-Colombians have disproportionately suffered during the 60-year-long armed conflict and paramilitary terror in Black-held territories.

This last point is particularly important as the Colombian conflict is being reported in the corporate press in ways that have almost erased the reality of Black Colombia, the third-largest group of African people outside of Africa after Brazil and the United States.

The violence unleashed by ESMAD has taken place where large numbers of Afro-Colombians reside, most of whom already were internally displaced because of the armed conflict in other parts of the country. 

That component of the strike actions must be considered to correctly understand what is unfolding in Colombia.

Black people in Colombia have been displaced because the government did not provide protection to Afro-Colombian and Indigenous communities. Why do they deserve these rights? Unlike in the United States, where the legal system only recognizes African/Black people as individuals, Afro-Colombians are recognized as a people. Both Afro-Colombian people and Indigenous peoples occupy resource-rich lands. That is why the violence increased in the territories where Afro-Colombians lived, despite a “peace process.”

And what interests benefit from the violence that caused dispossession? U.S., Canadian and European transnational companies, along with elements of the Colombian ruling class.

So, while BAP stands in solidarity with the workers, campesinos, women and Indigenous peoples in their fight against neoliberal capitalism and U.S. imperialism, we will not allow the realities and physical presence of African peoples in Colombia to be erased.

We note with some degree of irony that the international community has showered Colombia with deserved attention and mobilizations in solidarity, while they are relatively silent on the Haitian people's struggle.

And we ask: Why the difference?

BAP will not make distinctions. We stand against imperialism in all its forms, including its white-supremacist, ideological expressions that violate the spirit of solidarity and anti-imperialism.

We recognize effective anti-imperialist struggle requires an organized opposition in the United States that is connected to radical and revolutionary forces throughout the so-called “Americas” region. This is not an easy task that can be accomplished tomorrow or only through dramatic mobilizations.

We are sure to hear all kinds of calls for various kinds of reforms coming from groups and individuals who just yesterday discovered the struggle in Colombia and who will move on to the next popular mobilization tomorrow. However, we say for those who are serious and want to support the people of Colombia, they should ground themselves in understanding how the struggle in Colombia relates to Venezuela, Haiti, the southside of Chicago and all of the radical struggles unfolding in the Western Hemisphere. And we ask them to be prepared to fight like their lives depend on it. Because for the oppressed and colonized, it does.

¡En Colombia, las vidas de los negros también importan!: Declaración de Black Alliance for Peace 

Han surgido informes espantosos de represión sistemática en varias ciudades de Colombia desde el llamado del 28 de abril a una huelga nacional para protestar contra los cambios neoliberales ordenados por Estados Unidos en el sistema tributario colombiano. En respuesta al paro, el Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios (ESMAD o Escuadrón Móvil Antidisturbios) —la policía antidisturbios colombiana— y unidades policiales regulares han estado golpeando, disparando, lanzando gases lacrimógenos y asesinando a personas en todo el país.

For the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), Es importante que, dado que el público recién se está dando cuenta de la situación en Colombia, comprenda dos elementos. En primer lugar, el contexto de la huelga en Colombia había sido moldeado por décadas de acciones gubernamentales de derecha en forma de feroces guerras de estado contra el pueblo que usa estructuras paramilitares y escuadrones de la muerte, todo al servicio de la burguesía nacional y compradora colombiana y su capitalista. Masters en Estados Unidos y Europa. Y en segundo lugar, junto con los pueblos indígenas, los afrocolombianos han sufrido de manera desproporcionada durante los 60 años de conflicto armado y el terror paramilitar en los territorios controlados por negros.

Este último punto es particularmente importante ya que el conflicto colombiano está siendo informado en la prensa corporativa de maneras que casi han borrado la realidad de la Colombia negra, el tercer grupo más grande de africanos fuera de África después de Brasil y Estados Unidos.

La violencia desatada por la ESMAD ha tenido lugar donde residen un gran número de afrocolombianos, la mayoría de los cuales ya eran desplazados internos debido al conflicto armado en otras partes del país.

Ese componente de las acciones de huelga debe ser considerado para comprender correctamente lo que se está desarrollando en Colombia.

Los negros en Colombia han sido desplazados porque el gobierno no brindó protección a las comunidades afrocolombianas e indígenas. ¿Por qué merecen estos derechos? A diferencia de los Estados Unidos, donde el sistema legal solo reconoce a los africanos / negros como individuos, los afrocolombianos son reconocidos como personas. Tanto los pueblos afrocolombianos como los pueblos indígenas ocupan tierras ricas en recursos. Por eso la violencia aumentó en los territorios donde vivían los afrocolombianos, a pesar de un “proceso de paz”.

¿Y qué intereses se benefician de la violencia que provocó el despojo? Empresas transnacionales estadounidenses, canadienses y europeas, junto con elementos de la clase dominante colombiana.

Entonces, mientras el BAP se solidariza con los trabajadores, campesinos, mujeres y pueblos indígenas en su lucha contra el capitalismo neoliberal y el imperialismo estadounidense, no permitiremos que se borren las realidades y presencia física de los pueblos africanos en Colombia.

Observamos con cierto grado de ironía que la comunidad internacional ha colmado a Colombia con merecidas atenciones y movilizaciones de solidaridad, mientras guarda un relativo silencio sobre la lucha del pueblo haitiano.

Y preguntamos: ¿Por qué la diferencia?

BAP no hará distinciones. Nos oponemos al imperialismo en todas sus formas, incluidas sus expresiones ideológicas supremacistas blancas que violan el espíritu de solidaridad y antiimperialismo.

Reconocemos que la lucha antiimperialista efectiva requiere una oposición organizada en los Estados Unidos que esté conectada con las fuerzas radicales y revolucionarias en toda la región llamada “América”. Esta no es una tarea fácil que se pueda lograr mañana o solo mediante movilizaciones dramáticas.

Seguramente escucharemos todo tipo de llamados a reformas de diversa índole provenientes de grupos e individuos que ayer mismo descubrieron la lucha en Colombia y que pasarán mañana a la próxima movilización popular. Sin embargo, decimos para aquellos que son serios y quieren apoyar al pueblo de Colombia, que deben basarse en comprender cómo la lucha en Colombia se relaciona con Venezuela, Haití, el lado sur de Chicago y todas las luchas radicales que se desarrollan en el hemisferio occidental. . Y les pedimos que estén preparados para luchar como si sus vidas dependieran de ello. Porque para los oprimidos y colonizados, lo hace.

Banner photo: Afro-Colombians mobilizing to defend their territory in the North of Cauca (@renacientes on Twitter)

BAP-Chicago Statement in Solidarity with Haiti

“We stand with the Haitian people because it is our responsibility as believers in self-determination and people-centered human rights, to do so.”

“We will never retreat, even when they attempt to confuse us with intersectional imperialism and identity reductionism.”

The following remarks were delivered at a Black Alliance for Peace protest in front the Haitian consulate in Chicago, on March 15, by BAP member Charisse Burden Stelly, a Visiting Scholar in the Race and Capitalism Project at the University of Chicago and Assistant Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement. We fundamentally oppose militarized domestic state repression; the policies of de-stabilization and subversion abroad; and the permanent war agenda of the U.S. state globally. 

The reason we’re here today in front of the Haiti Consulate-General is simple: we stand in solidarity with the Haitian people against the corrupt and illegitimate regime of Jovenel Moïse, which is propped up by the Joseph R. Biden administration, the United Nations, and the Organization of American States. We understand the connections between the imperial occupation of Haiti and the police occupation supported right here in Chicago by Lori Lightfoot and her anti-people, anti-poor politics, and throughout the United States more broadly. Just like we can’t breathe here in the United States because militarized police forces continue to brutalize, suffocate, and murder us with impunity, neither can the people of Haiti breath as their sovereignty, self-determination, and livelihoods are snuffed out by Pan-European forces like the Core Group, the United Nations, and the International Monetary fund. 

“We understand the connections between the imperial occupation of Haiti and the police occupation supported right here in Chicago.”

The Haitian people have taken to the streets because they demand rule by the people and for the people; they have organized a general strike because they demand economic and material conditions that support their needs and livelihoods and not the profits and enrichment of the global elite. Their struggle is connected to the labor struggles right here in the U.S., like the one that’s currently underway in Bessemer, Alabama, for an Amazon Union.

BAP is here today, despite the snow and wind and cold because we see the protests of our Haitian brothers, sisters, and siblings against the Moïse regime as intimately linked to the End SARS struggle in Nigeria, to the Uganda people’s demand for an end to the Museveni dictatorship—the Uganda PEOPLE, that is, and not so-called opposition leaders who are in cahoots with the US State department—to getting Africa Command (AFRICOM) off of the Continent and especially out of the Horn of Africa, and to the demand for an end to brutal sanctions against Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Iran, and other racialized nations that reject U.S. imperialism. 

“The Haitian people demand economic and material conditions that support their needs and livelihoods and not the profits and enrichment of the global elite.”

BAP is also here today because we understand that the U.S. funding and training of the Haitian police to undermine the people’s protests is linked to the U.S. 1033 program that militarizes local police departments so they can defend property and the interests of the ruling elite against poor, working, oppressed, and marginalized peoples. We know that this process is linked to the prison industrial complex that tortures and confines political prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal, Mutulu Shakur, Sundiata Akoli, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, Rev. Joy Powell, and Russell Maroon Shoatz. We say free ‘em all! And this also means freeing all Africans from the yoke of U.S. imperialism.

At Black Alliance for Peace we say NO COMPROMISE, NO RETREAT because unlike the petit bourgeois Negroes who take every opportunity to compromise with the ruling elite to oppress and repress us, we will NEVER compromise with imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, warmongering, and capitalist exploitation. And unlike the liberals who think that just because the troglodyte Donald Trump is out of office that we no longer have anything to struggle against, we will NEVER retreat from holding any administration accountable for their crimes against humanity even when they attempt to confuse us with intersectional imperialism and identity reductionism. 

“We will never compromise with imperialism, colonialism, neocolonialism, warmongering, and capitalist exploitation.”

In the spirit of chairman Fred Hampton, who said “peace if you’re willing to fight for it,” in the spirit of the freedom fighter Amilcar Cabral who said “tell no lies and claim no easy victories,” in the spirit of mama Ella baker who said  “Remember, we are not fighting for the freedom of the Negro alone, but for the freedom of the human spirit--a larger freedom that encompasses all mankind,” we protest, in the belly of the beast, in the heart of empire, the tentacles of U.S. imperialism, funded by our tax-payer dollars, that brutalize African, oppressed, and poor people throughout the world and here at home. Today we stand with the Haitian people not because they need us to free them—because the Haitian people, since at least 1791, have proven that they are more than capable of liberating themselves—but because it is our responsibility as African people, as anti-imperialists, as anti-war activists, and as believers in self-determination and people-centered human rights, to do so.

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) seeks to recapture and redevelop the historic anti-war, anti-imperialist, and pro-peace positions of the radical black movement. Through educational activities, organizing and movement support, organizations and individuals in the Alliance will work to oppose both militarized domestic state repression, and the policies of de-stabilization, subversion and the permanent war agenda of the U.S. state globally.  

Banner photo: Black Alliance for Peace: We Fight for Haiti Because We Are Haiti. People rally in front of the Haitian consulate in Chicago demanding the U.S./UN/OAS end its interference in Haiti at an action in solidarity with Haiti organized by BAP-Chicago.

On Human Rights Day the U.S. Celebrates with Death

Immediate Release                                                                                                                               

Contact: info@blackallianceforpeace.com                                     

December 10 is celebrated in most places as international Human Rights Day in commemoration of the day that the international community promulgated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) — elevating the fundamental right to life, freedom of speech, participation in government and the elements like housing, health and education that should characterize a life of dignity — the document that served as the beginning point of a set of principles that would serve as foundation for the evolving human rights framework.

Therefore, since it is quite clear that the number one violator of human rights on the planet is the government of the United States of America, it is perhaps quite fitting that U.S. national authorities would celebrate this day by executing an individual, together with four additional Federal prisoners, scheduled to be submitted to this ritualistic process of state murder over the next few weeks.

In a statement issued on December 9th, Black Alliance member Aaron Greene said:

“The U.S. death penalty has always been a symbol of white supremacy and a violation of human rights law. Having already executed 11 people this year, the Trump administration plans to execute five people (four of them Black) during a lame-duck session. This would be the first time a president has carried out executions during a lame-duck session since the Cleveland administration carried out the execution of an Indigenous man in 1890.”

As Attorney Jaribu Hill, director of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights and member of the BAP coordinating committee has stated:

“The death penalty is the ultimate human rights violation and can be carried out even beyond the ritualistic lynching unfolding today on Human Rights Day.”

The execution serves as a backdrop for structural violence in the U.S. that has resulted in death and hospitalizations from COVID-19 and the failure of the U.S. state to protect the human rights of its residents and citizens. The conscious decision to sacrifice workers health, allow critical support to elapse, and to commodify vaccine production for profit is consistent with the complete disregard of human life not only in the U.S. but globally. Reports have been circulating for months revealing the incredible level of suffering that the people of Iran and Venezuela are facing in trying to protect the lives of their people in the midst of crippling, inhumane sanctions that deny them vital equipment and medicines.

Understanding how ritualistic state murder can continue in the U.S. is impossible without understanding the cultural values of the U.S. settler state, where violence and de-humanization were the core values that allowed for the conquering of the land, enslavement, and brutal capitalist exploitation. “Violence and death as entertainment, incessant wars, a military budget that consumes 60% of Federal budget, mass incarceration, mass shootings, are all symptoms of a decadent and sick society,” according to Ajamu Baraka, National Coordinator of the Alliance.

That is why it should be impossible for any U.S. official to stand up in any public forum and declare the U.S. as a nation committed to human rights.

Below are five people that are scheduled to be executed:

• Brandon Bernard (Black Man) – Currently incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana. Brandon was 18 years old when first incarcerated and now is 40 years old. Brandon was only an accomplice to the alleged crime and five of the nine surviving jurors for his case no longer view the death penalty as a necessary punishment. Brandon would be the youngest executed in 70 years and his scheduled date of execution is December 10, 2020 (Human Rights Day).

  • Learn more about Brandon’s Case: https://www.helpsavebrandon.com

• Dustin Higgs (Black Man) – Currently incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana. Dustin was sentenced to death on January 3, 2001. Dustin was convicted as an accomplice to three murders in 1996, even though he actually did not pull the trigger, but was guilty by association under the so-called law of party’s theory. He is scheduled to be executed on January 15, 2021, which would be the last federal execution carried out by the Trump Administration. January 15, 2020, is the birth date of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther, King, Jr.

  • Learn more about Dustin’s Case here: http://www.savedustinjhiggs.com

• Lisa Montgomery (White Woman) – Currently incarcerated in Fort Worth, Texas. Lisa was sentenced to death on October 22, 2007. Lisa suffers from severe mental illness and experienced relentless physical, emotional, and sexual abuse including being trafficked by her own mother. She is the only woman under a federal death sentence and would be the first woman executed in 70 years. Execution date of January 12, 2021.

  • Learn more about Lisa’s case here: https://www.deathpenaltyworldwide.org/project/savelisa

• Cory Johnson (Black Man) – Currently incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana. Cory was sentenced to death in 1993. His lawyers have continuously argued that he suffers from an intellectual disability, which should prohibit him from being executed under federal law. Cory is one of the longest serving people now on federal death row. His execution date is January 14, 2020.

  • Learn more about Cory’s case here.

• Alfred Bourgeois (Black Man) – Currently incarcerated in Terre Haute, Indiana. Alfred was convicted and sentenced to death in 2002. Alfred is intellectually disabled and should be constitutionally ineligible for the death penalty. He is scheduled to be executed on December 11, 2020.

  • On December 2, 2020, Alfred Bourgeois attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court for a stay of Dec. 11 scheduled federal execution and review of intellectual disability claim. Read the press release, cert petition, stay motion here.

Photo credit: Leonard Freed/Magnum Photos

Black Alliance for Peace Calls on All U.S. Elected Officials to Support the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW)

BAP's Call to Support TPNW Is Cornerstone of Its Candidate Accountability Campaign

Global humanity made a significant step toward addressing one of the most intractable and irrational issues it faces—the production, potential use and normalcy of nuclear weapons—with the ratification by Honduras of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) on October 24, bringing the number of ratifications to 50 nations and triggering the 90-day period in which the treaty will enter in force as international law on January 22, 2021.

Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on July 7, 2017, the TPNW is the first legally binding international agreement to prohibit nuclear weapons. The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) embraced this call and made support for the treaty’s ratification an integral element of its public educational work related to its anti-war campaign work.

“With the passage of the TPNW just a few months after BAP was launched in 2017, we understood this treaty and opposition to nuclear war had to be centered in our efforts to re-awaken the movement against war of all types, which had fallen into a slumber under the pro-war, right-wing administration of Barack Obama. Demanding that U.S. public officials at every level of government support the TPNW is a cornerstone of BAP’s current Candidate Accountability Campaign,” according to BAP National Organizer Ajamu Baraka.

BAP’s Candidate Accountability Campaign is a mass-based effort to present a set of anti-war and pro-peace demands to candidates and public officials that they must embrace in order to win the support of the public.

Along with the demand that candidates and public officials “sponsor legislation and/or resolutions to support the U.N. resolution on the complete global abolition of nuclear weapons,” BAP also demands that elected officials:

• Oppose the militarization of U.S. police through the Department of Defense’s 1033 program

• Oppose Israeli training of U.S. police forces

• Call for and work for the closure of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM)

• Advocate for the closure of 800+ U.S. foreign military bases

• Oppose Trump’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit”

• Commit to opposing all military, economic (including sanctions and blockades) and political interventions;

• Advocate for an end to U.S. participation in NATO

The bipartisan commitment to use illegal force to maintain U.S. global hegemony must be challenged by the U.S. public. The fact that the U.S. operates today as a rogue state, completely ignoring international law and basic morality as it subverts governments, imposes murderous sanctions, supports anti-democratic regimes from Israel to the United Arab Emirates, and desecrates the concept of human rights, means it is up to the U.S. public to reign in the U.S. state. BAP's demands are a first step toward that goal.

“It is an irrational and immoral use of public funds to spend over a trillion dollars to upgrade the U.S. nuclear arsenal that both the Obama and Trump regimes committed to," according to Baraka. “This criminal use of public funds and the outrageous theory that the U.S. can launch a first strike against Russia or China, and catch their missiles in their silos, demonstrates that the U.S., no matter who occupies the White House, is an existential threat to collective humanity.”

Contact: Ajamu Baraka
(202) 643-1136

Photo credit: United States Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Black Alliance for Peace Expresses Deep Sorrow and Outrage at the Murder of Ahmed Erekat

The Black Alliance for Peace expresses its deep sorrow for the senseless murder of Ahmed Erekat by Israeli authorities in the occupied Palestinian territory on June 24th.

The soils of occupied Palestine continues to be soaked in the blood of Palestinians whose only crime is being Palestinian occupying land that a vicious white supremacist colonial state wants to seize as part of its own version of a God-given “manifest destiny.” We send our special condolences to Noura Erakat, a fighter for human rights for Palestinians and all oppressed who is the cousin of young 27-year-old Ahmed who was left to bleed for over 90 minutes after being shot. And our condolences extend to Ahmed's entire family.

This cowardly act is another fiendish act by a morally corrupt state in a long line of unbelievable atrocities experienced by Palestinians at the hands of Israeli colonialism since 1948.

The Black Alliance for Peace condemns this criminal act and pledges to redouble our efforts to mobilize Black public opinion in the U.S. and globally to oppose the organized barbarity of the Israeli state.

Alianza Negra para la Paz (BAP) Declaración por el Día de África 2020, “Levantémonos para acabar con AFRICOM”

Cincuenta y siete años después de la fundación del Día de la Liberación de África (ALD por sus siglas en ingles), la necesidad apremiante de la unidad africana es más evidente que nunca.

La Alianza Negra para la Paz (BAP) reconoce el papel crucial de la ALD en la revitalización del internacionalismo y el antiimperialismo como base de un proyecto de liberación negra reconstituido y comprometido con un auténtico proceso de descolonización. A nivel mundial, la clase obrera africana está encerrada en un combate mortal contra las fuerzas del capitalismo neoliberal que se concentra en los intereses geoestratégicos de las clases dominantes de los Estados Unidos.

Para preservar estos intereses, los Estados Unidos están involucrados en una agresiva reconquista militar de África a través del Comando de África de los Estados Unidos, AFRICOM, formado en el 2008 con el objetivo de imponer una mayor influencia estadounidense en todo el continente africano. AFRICOM ha convertido a las naciones africanas en estados vasallos siguiendo los dictados de las políticas exteriores de los Estados Unidos, que son contrarias a las necesidades de los pueblos africanos.

Hoy en día existen 46 bases estadounidenses en territorio africano, así como relaciones militares entre 53 de los 54 países del continente y los Estados Unidos. Las tropas de las Fuerzas Especiales de EE.UU. ahora operan en más de una docena de naciones africanas. Utilizando la cobertura política y moral de un falso papel antiterrorista, los políticos estadounidenses de todos los orígenes raciales y étnicos validan esta presencia estadounidense en África.

La BAP pide que se ponga fin a AFRICOM y a toda injerencia extranjera en los asuntos de los países africanos. La guerra, los ataques de drones y las sanciones han devastado naciones y millones de personas. Es preciso forjar un movimiento de masas para poner al descubierto su propósito y los verdaderos objetivos de AFRICOM y hacerlo inseparable del movimiento de resistencia a la represión policial militarizada en las comunidades africanas (negras) de los Estados Unidos.

La campaña de la BAP para “Cerrar AFRICOM” es el instrumento organizativo para construir un movimiento de masas transnacional que tiene como objetivo acabar con el militarismo, la guerra y la subversión de los Estados Unidos en el continente. La campaña “Cerrar AFRICOM” es parte de una campaña más amplia para cerrar todas las bases de EE.UU. y la OTAN en todo el mundo.

La campaña y su brazo organizador, la Red EE.UU. Fuera de África (USOAN), hace un llamado a todas y todos los africanos en el mundo y a todas y todos los antiimperialistas para que se unan a nosotros en otro día histórico de resistencia el 16 de junio, el día de Soweto, para “levantarse por el cierre de AFRICOM” con acciones en el espíritu de la juventud africana que se levantó contra el gobierno sudafricano de supremacía blanca en 1976.

África y la nación africana mundial deben ser y serán libres. Pero el imperialismo no será derrotado gritándole, por muy elegantes que sean las denuncias. El imperialismo sólo será derrotado a través de la lucha. La campaña “Cerrar AFRICOM” es un punto de concentración que apunta al componente militar del imperialismo estadounidense y occidental.

Aprovechemos la oportunidad del ALD 2020 para volver a dedicarnos a crear estructuras de cooperación y coordinación entre los africanos en la diáspora y en el continente para enfrentar y derrotar a los enemigos de África, tanto extranjeros como nacionales.

¡África debe ser libre!
¡Levantémonos para Cerrar AFRICOM
¡Derrotemos al supremacista blanco paneuropeo, al patriarcado colonialista/capitalista!

Crédito de la foto: Biblioteca Pública de Washington DC Star Collection / The Washington Post

BAP: Acusación de Maduro es un preludio de la agresión racista al estilo panameño

La Alianza Negra para la Paz considera la acusación de Maduro como un preludio de la agresión racista al estilo panameño

Debemos hacer recordar a nuestra gente que más de 150 millones de africanos viven en las llamadas Américas. Sobretodo debemos realzar esta realidad en momentos críticos como éste, cuando los medios corporativos y la opinión establecida están legitimando un gangsterismo estadounidense capaz de matar a miles de personas en Venezuela. (La Clase Obrera Negra Jamás Abandonará a Venezuela.)

El apoyo de la Alianza Negra por la Paz (Black Alliance for Peace—BAP) hacia el pueblo venezolano y su proyecto de establecer la paz, los derechos humanos y el desarrollo para su pueblo, no se verá detenido por el último ataque sobre esa nación, a saber, la acusación sin sustancia o credibilidad que lanzó la administración Trump en contra de Nicolás Maduro.

El uso de la guerra de drogas y armas biológicas contra poblaciones colonizadas insurgentes ha sido un rasgo característico del proyecto colonial EEUU/Europeo desde 1492. Como pueblo africano en los Estados Unidos, tenemos una historia larga y tortuosa de ser blanco de la narco-guerra de EEUU contra nuestro pueblo como arma de subversión contrarrevolucionaria.

Se ha documentado que la disfusión amplia de heroína que ocurrió en las comunidades Negras durante el periodo de la guerra estadounidense contra Vietnam fue facilitada por la Agencia Central de Inteligencia de EEUU (CIA), y la misma se volvió arma conveniente dentro de la estrategia multifacética de contrainsurgencia que desató el Estado en contra del Movimiento de Liberación Negra de los 1960 y 70.

Durante los 80, periodistas valientes como Gary Webb documentaron la introducción de cocaína “crack” en nuestras comunidades. Webb estableció la relación entre las diversas agencias de inteligencia—primordialmente la CIA—y los narcotraficantes, quienes utilizaban a Nicaragua como punto de tránsito para drogas en ruta a Estados Unidos. La relación se dio para poder asegurar ingresos para comprar armas en apoyo a los contrarrevolucionarios en Nicaragua, quienes estaban trabajando con EEUU para derrocar al gobierno sandinista ascendido al poder en 1979. Los aviones aterrizaban en EEUU llenos de cocaína, y se volvían a Centroamérica con armas destinadas a Nicaragua.

Por tanto, el narcoterrorismo no es nada nuevo para nuestras comunidades. Después de introducir drogas peligrosas a nuestras comunidades, el Estado procedía a desatar una llamada guerra en contra de las drogas. La guerra en contra de las drogas en EEUU, al igual que la “guerra contra el delito” (war on crime) en general, siempre tuvo por intención ser arma para hacer la guerra contra los elementos más organizados del movimiento de resistencia Negra. Del mismo modo, la acusación contra el Presidente Maduro se está utilizando para socavar el proceso revolucionario en Venezuela.

El cargo lanzado en contra del dirigente venezolano puede tener semblanza de credibilidad para algunos sectores de la población estadounidense, y será utilizado por la prensa corporativa para legitimar aún más los objetivos ilegales y asesinos del imperialismo de EEUU. Sin embaro, en BAP estamos muy clarxs acerca de quiénes son los verdaderos narco terroristas.

La recompensa ofrecida por Maduro nos recuerda la expansión de la recompensa puesta sobre la cabeza de nuestra querida hermana luchadora por la libertad, Assata Shakur, quien fue agregada por la administración de Obama a “la lista de los terroristas más buscados.”

Aquella movida no nos detuvo ni nos confundió, y esta agresión actual contra el pueblo venezolano tampoco nos confundirá.

Hay que levantarse en solidaridad con los pueblos y las naciones del mundo que están en lucha por la paz, por los derechos humanos centrados en los pueblos, y por una nueva visión de la humanidad, más allá de la explotación capitalista y el dominio imperialista.

No Retroceder, No Transigir
Comité Coordinadora, Black Alliance for Peace

BAP: Maduro Indictment is a Prelude to Panamanian-Style Racist Aggression

We must remind our people that over 150 million Africans live throughout the so-called Americas. We especially must raise this reality at critical moments like this when the corporate media and establishment opinion is legitimizing U.S. gangsterism that could kill thousands of people in Venezuela. (Black Working Class will Never Abandon Venezuela) 


BAP’s support for the people of Venezuela and its project for establishing peace, human rights and development for its people will not be deterred by the latest attack on that nation with the flimsy and incredible indictment of Nicolas Maduro by the Trump Administration. 

The use of drug and biological warfare against insurgent colonized populations has been a consistent feature of the U.S./European colonial project since 1492. As an African people in the United States, we have a long and tortured history of being on the receiving end of the U.S. state’s narco-war against our people as a weapon of counterrevolutionary subversion. 

The widespread expansion of heroin that occurred in Black communities during the period of the U.S. war against Vietnam was documented as having been facilitated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and became a convenient weapon as part of the multipronged counter-insurgency strategy of the state against the Black Liberation Movement of the 1960s and 70s. 

In the 80s, the introduction of crack cocaine into our communities was documented by courageous journalists like Gary Webb, who established that there was a relationship between the various intelligence agencies — once again primarily the CIA — and drug dealers using Nicaragua as a transit point for drugs into the U.S. The relationship was established in order to secure revenue for arms purchases to support counterrevolutionaries in Nicaragua, who were working with the U.S. to overthrow the Sandinista government that came to power in 1979. Planes would land in the U.S. full of cocaine and leave with arms for delivery back to Central America, destined for Nicaragua.    

Therefore, narco-terrorism is nothing new for our communities. After introducing dangerous drugs into our communities, the state would then wage a so-called war on drugs. The war on drugs in the U.S., as the general “war on crime,” was always intended as a weapon to wage war against the most organized elements of the Black resistance movement, just as the indictment of President Maduro is being used to undermine the revolutionary process in Venezuela.  

The charge leveled at the Venezuelan leader might have some semblance of credibility for some sectors of the U.S. population, and it will be used by the corporate press to further legitimize the illegal and murderous objectives of U.S. imperialism. However, for BAP we are quite clear about the real narco and state terrorists. 

The bounty placed on Maduro reminds us of the expansion of the bounty placed on the head of our dear sister and freedom fighter Assata Shakur and her addition as the first woman ever to the U.S. “most wanted terrorists list” by the Obama Administration. 

We were not deterred or confused by that move and we will not be confused by this one against the people of Venezuela. 

Stand in solidarity with the struggling peoples and nations of the world for peace, with people(s)-centered human rights, and a new vision of humanity beyond capitalist exploitation and imperialist domination.


No Retreat, No Compromise
Coordinating Committee, Black Alliance for Peace

Photo: BAP Coordinating Committee members in Venezuela

Black Alliance for Peace – Baltimore Demand End to Policing "Surge"

Immediate Release:

Black Alliance for Peace – Baltimore Demand Public Officials Reject Trump Military “Surge” for Baltimore

JANUARY 7, 2020—Baltimore City is one of 7 cities, including Detroit, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis and Milwaukee, selected for the Trump Administration’s “Operation Relentless Pursuit” which is intended to “surge” federal, state and local resources into cities where violent [horizontal] crime rates remain high.

“This newest version of the so-called war on crime must be seen for what it is – the latest incantation of the State’s relentless war on Baltimore’s Black working class and poor and should be categorically rejected by Baltimore’s public officials,” according to BAP organizer Vanessa Beck. 

At the end of October, during the International Association of Chiefs of Police conference in Chicago, President Trump announced, “In coming weeks, Attorney General Barr will announce a new crackdown on violent crime—which I think is so important—targeting gangs and drug traffickers in high crime cities and dangerous rural areas.”

In Detroit, right before the holidays, Attorney General Barr was joined by leaders of the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and U.S. Marshals Service at a press conference to unveil what amounts to a new domestic military surge. 

In an op-ed written in Detroit News, Barr says,

“Operation Relentless Pursuit will surge an unparalleled amount of federal backing to Detroit and the other most dangerous cities in the United States. It will build on the Justice Department’s successful Project Safe Neighborhoods, which encouraged community-based solutions to sew violent crime. It will also complement Project Guardian and DEEP (Disruption and Early Engagement Program), agency initiatives focused on reducing gun crime and preventing mass shootings. 

With Operation Relentless Pursuit, local law enforcement will have access to state-of-the-art technology and our nation’s top federal agents, who will be tasked with investigating and taking down the most violent offenders and their criminal organizations. We’re matching our rhetoric with resources by committing significant manpower and up to $71 million in additional funding for our federal, state, and local partners.”

BAP-Baltimore demands that public officials reject this blood money. 


BAP-Baltimore is clear when we say, “Police are used to enforce the status quo of white power and colonial control over the lives of Black, Brown, and other oppressed nations of people.” 4 of the 7 targeted cities have majority Black populations – Baltimore, 62.8%; Detroit, 79.12%; Cleveland, 50.41%; and Memphis, 63.9%. Increased militarization of police departments leads to increased numbers of civilians murdered by police, in addition to the everyday terror experienced by residents in occupied communities.

Baltimore, Detroit, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Kansas City, Memphis, and Milwaukee all participate in the Department of Defense (DoD) 1033 Program. Through the 1033 Program, military equipment gets transferred to civilian law enforcement agencies. Related is the “Deadly Exchange” program, which is a massive exchange between the U.S. and Israeli police and Israeli military where hyper-militarized policing techniques and technology are shared.

The Black Alliance for Peace – Baltimore says No Compromise, No Retreat when calling for the demilitarization of local police departments. There should be no confidence in any imperialist parties or state institutions to address the horizontal violence plaguing our communities. The behavior of police departments in this state and across the U.S. shows us the role of the police is to protect private property, sectors of the middle-class community, and the ruling-class interests. Police are called to colonized communities of ALL oppressed folks to carry out the standard imperialist orders, with every intent to do more harm on behalf of the state than actually serving any positive purpose.

BAP-Baltimore intends to resist this latest assault on the human rights of the Black and Brown poor and working class.

Media contact: blackallianceforpeacebaltimore@gmail.com

If you Believe in Peace, Commit to Defeating the Warmongers! No War with Iran!

No Retreat, No Compromise is the call the grassroots members of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) proclaim as we face the dogs of war, exploitation, and criminal imperialism. We fully expect the crisis of neoliberal capitalism to intensify as the rulers desperately attempt to salvage a world order that is rapidly changing to their disadvantage. 

But we know that in their desperation they will fall back on the one instrument that has been primarily responsible for their global hegemony - naked violence. 

It is imperative that the people of the U.S. Empire take clear moral and political positions in opposition to U.S. warmongering. The illegal and reckless attack on Qassem Soleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards of Iran, represents a dangerous escalation of rogue actions by the U.S. government that have been increasing in frequency over the last two decades, at home and abroad.

Yesterday the Trump regime established a military "surge" against the “enemy” in Afghanistan. Today it is bringing a military surge to the U.S. to fight the domestic enemy – the Black working class and poor - under the guise of fighting crime. We are clear, the real crime that the Trump surges are intent on fighting is the crime of resistance that historically has emerged from the African American peoples and the other colonized and nationally oppressed peoples. 

We will be ready. 

BAP is clear: we will not fight for the rich. We understand our objective interests as an oppressed people and will not be moved by appeals to national chauvinism meant to galvanize the poor and working class to support wars of choice initiated by the white supremacist colonial/capitalist oligarchy.  

BAP opposes war with Iran and is supporting the national mobilizations this weekend demanding No War on Iran and the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq. 

And BAP also calls on all progressive forces to join us to fight the domestic military surge, to oppose the training of U.S. police forces by the Israeli state, to struggle to shut down AFRICOM, to demand the closing of the over 800 U.S. bases worldwide, to advocate against the normalization of nuclear war, and to expose the collaboration of  self-defined "progressive and radical" forces with the U.S. war-state. 

The Trump Administration along with the Democrats are united in their objective interests, despite the impeachment charade, to support white power in the form of their imperialist agenda. But they need us – the people – as the cannon fodder and the passive supporters. 

They cannot have us. We will struggle against them, for ourselves and for humanity. 

Dr. King warned about the spiritual death of the U.S. with its addiction to war and militarism, its materialism and extreme social alienation, but he was wrong. 

The spiritual death of what became the United States occurred in 1619 when the settlers imported the first Africans and decided to expand beyond the coast of the country by force resulting in the monstrosity called the United States today.  

We who believe in freedom - in the possibilities of real democracy, of people-centered human rights, of peace and a livable planet - cannot wait. We must understand that our aspirations must be translated into concrete struggle. We must be clear: we cannot win without a sharp understanding of the forces of oppression that must be defeated. For BAP, it is obvious when we look in the mirror “while driving as Black” that the enemy is not the Iraqis, Russians, Syrians or Venezuelans.  

U.S. Out of Iraq and Afghanistan

Oppose the Trump Domestic Surge Targeting Black People

Stop the Department of Defense 1033 Program that Militarizes Police Forces

Shut Down AFRICOM and ALL U.S. and NATO bases

Cut Obscene Military Budget by 50%

YahNé, Paul, Jaribu, Vanessa, Netfa, Margaret, Brandon, Dedan and Ajamu

Black Alliance for Peace, Coordinating Committee