Past Congresses

First Party Congress: “A New Beginning…The Road to Black Freedom and Socialism” - 1981

The African People’s Socialist Party was founded in 1972 at the peak of the military offensive by the U.S. government against the just aspirations of our people for freedom and social justice.

The First Party Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) was convened in September 1981. The Political Report of the First Congress titled, “Bread Peace and Black Power and A New Beginning, the Road to Black Freedom and Socialism,” was written as a defense of the U.S. front of the African Liberation Movement.

The defense was theoretical and Political. On a theoretical level the African Liberation Movement had to be defended from a parasitic white nationalist left which is essentially a brand of the European left, which since the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties had piled upon the back of our movement crypto-neo-imperialist theories which refused to recognize our struggle for national liberation and our organized revolutionary connection with Africa. We characterized rhe parasitic white nationalist leftist as Ideological Imperialist and Ku Klux Kommunists and waged relentless ideological and political struggles with them. The struggles benefited our entire movement as well as enhanced the ideological development of our Party.

The 1981 Party Congress represented a qualitative leap by the U.S. based African Liberation Movement to forge a revolutionary working-class vanguard party organization capable of liberating African people from the cruel weight of domestic colonialism and providing direction for all serious revolutionaries who were dedicated to the defeat of U.S. imperialism.

The first Congress summed up 9 years of experience and lessons of the Party in a period of continuous military and ideological onslaught on our movement by the U.S. government and prepared the political groundwork necessary for the demands of the new revolutionary period.

The Chairman’s Political Report to the 1st Congress laid out a political analysis of the period and the location and future of the peoples and Party within this period as well as the theoretical basis upon which our political analysis relied.

The Chairman further summed up the tasks of the first Congress as follows: “All of the work of this Congress will be done within the context of our understanding of the urgency of our Party-building efforts. Indeed, the Congress itself is an attempt to carry out a significant aspect of our Party-building efforts. This is no small matter, for as we well understand, the leadership of a revolutionary Party, entrenched in the masses and guided by a correct line and theory, is the subjective force necessary for revolution even when other objective conditions are ripe.”

Solidarity Statements with the First Congress was expressed by the following organizations:

1. The Colombian front for Socialism, (FECOPES) in San Francisco California
2. Casa El Salvador
3. Pan Africanist Congress of Azania
4. The Sandanista National Liberation Front
5. The New Jewel Movement of Grenada
6. Casa Chile in San Francisco, California
7. Revolutionary Workers Party of Argentina
8. Association of Vietnamese Patriots in the U.S.
9. National United Movement of Barbados

Second Party Congress: "This Time 'Til It's Won" - 1987

The Second Congress of the APSP was convened on January 16 – 23, 1987. The Political Report, “This time ‘til It’s Won…Power in Our Hands,” noted the political impact of arrival of the African working-class through the Party on the U.S. based anti-colonial movement. The report revealed the success of the Party’s struggle against opportunism as represented by the strategic relationship between liberal imperialism and U.S. domestic colonialism. The Political Report exposed how the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties allowed the African petty-bourgeoisie to rise in influence.

Between our 2 Congresses we were proven correct by events in the world. Because of this the Chairman’s Political Report to the second Congress addressed itself more specifically to a review of the practical struggles led by the Party and the practical task of building and consolidating the Party as the revolutionary instrument of the conscious will of the domestically colonized African working class.

The Political Report to the 2nd Congress has special significance to our Party. It is the Main Resolution upon which most of the other resolutions to the Congress were based and our policies, determined. The document was of great significance to the masses of our people as it held up for public view the Party’s absolute loyalty to the strategical significance of the most despised and slandered African working class.

The document also revealed the Party’s struggle to hold up the Party’s Congress itself as a fundamental aspect of the effort to uphold the revolutionary process among the colonized masses by institutionalizing the means within the Party whereby the Party and the Revolution become the actual property of the people.

In convening the Congress the Chairman recognized and summed up our limitations as a growing Party this way, “this Congress is not taking place under the best of circumstances. We the national leadership of the Party, the main organizers of this Congress, are still encumbered by ignorance, inexperience and many other problems which have impacted negatively upon the ability of the Party’s membership to experience the Congress that you deserve. However, we start this Congress with the clear understanding that the work of this Party subsequent to our first Congress has not been characterized by errors and shortcomings. Indeed, our progress have been generally good despite our shortcomings.”

The fact is that we can say with great confidence as we begin this 2nd Party Congress that we do so as a Party whose place in history has already been determined by its’ magnificent deeds. We begin our Second Congress as a Party that understands most of our weaknesses but also as a Party with great strengths and the promise of an excellent future.

Third Party Congress: "Izwe Lethu I Africa" - 1990

Fourth Party Congress: "The Final Offensive" - 1997