Political Report to the Fifth Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party

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Table of Contents

1. Imperialists cannot stem tide of national liberation
2. The Party is the anti-colonial force in this time
3. African People’s Socialist Party is heir to Marcus Garvey
4. Pan-Africanism was the petty bourgeoisie; Garvey led the African working class
5. African Internationalism advances Garvey Movement, defines imperialism in crisis
6. African Internationalism shows the way forward
7. African Internationalism led on the issue of reparations
8. African workers must lead the struggle against parasitic capitalism
9. ASI is the basis for a genuine Communist International
10. White nation-state built on pedestal of slavery, colonialism
11. White communists must be committed to overthrowing white power
12. The African Socialist International is growing in Africa
13. ASI resolution adopted at Party’s First Congress
14. InPDUM leads mass resistance
15. Revolutionary National Democratic Program: the political basis for black power
16. Black is Back Coalition helps to advance RNDP
17. African People’s Solidarity Committee another vehicle against U.S. imperialism
18. White people must side with African workers not parasitic capitalism
19. AAPDEP a tool against parasitic capitalist development
20. AISO wins students to African Revolution
21. African Redemption Church: the Party’s response to religious idealism
22. Influencing and organizing African labor
23. Party must address issue of African mass incarceration
24. Formalizing the leadership of African women
25. Solve the problem of recruitment
26. Accountability and democratic centralism
27. Party’s Department of Agit Prop has made great leaps
28. Cadre development and leadership is key
29. Office of Economic Development builds culture of self-reliance

InPDUM leads mass resistance

The main vehicle through which the Party carries out mass struggle is the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM). Although InPDUM has been beset with a bevy of contradictions over the years, the organization has recently begun to move forward in some crucial ways.

InPDUM has been the primary leader of organized, strategically informed mass resistance within the African community in the U.S. InPDUM gained critical notoriety during the campaign to elect Barack Hussein Obama as U.S. president. While too many others who claim leadership of our people either capitulated to or were immobilized by the campaign and election of Obama, InPDUM has been on the forefront of the struggle to expose him as just another fast talking shill for a very desperate imperialism.

In the process of this struggle InPDUM has also, by comparison, exposed the opportunism within the African Liberation Movement in the U.S. For the most part these opportunists have abandoned the African workers and masses, leaving them disarmed against imperialism in its new, seductive form. In the absence of a theoretically sound strategic approach to struggle that was based on a correct line and lacking a genuine revolutionary program, most of the African Liberation Movement was thrust into motion with actions defined by Obama’s campaign and election.

In other words, most stands and actions were based on spontaneity, long recognized as the mother of opportunism.

It was InPDUM’s presence and actions at an Obama rally that disrupted Obama’s St. Petersburg, Florida campaign appearance and rattled his composure with the simple chant and slogan/question: “What about the black community?”

It was InPDUM that participated in public forums that critiqued the Obama election as not only a shabby attempt at imperialist camouflage but also as a means of deflecting the political activity of the African masses away from self-interested independent revolutionary politics.

It was InPDUM that used the slogan: “What about the black community?” for its 2008 Convention where it launched our Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP) that addressed the needs and aspirations of our class and people. In an effort to raise the level of discussion during the election, InPDUM struggled to make the programs of the presidential candidates the focus of the debate and to force a comparison between the programs of the Democratic Party represented by Obama and the Revolutionary National Democratic Program of the African masses as put forward by InPDUM.

In addition, InPDUM has led the struggles in cities in California and Pennsylvania against the attempts by local governments to use budget cuts of crucial services to facilitate the bourgeoisie’s attempt to shift the burden of the capitalist economic crisis onto the backs of African people and the laboring masses. These struggles have resulted in vicious police attacks on our organizers in Philadelphia and an attempt to silence resistance through police and court repression.

Nevertheless, InPDUM has been unrelenting. While waging struggle in defense of the two comrades facing felony charges because of their public exposure of the budget bomb being launched against the African community of Philadelphia, InPDUM convened its October 2009 Convention in Philadelphia under the slogans: “They Say Cutback! We Say Payback! Reparations Now!” and “Independence In Our Lifetime!”

These slogans/demands anticipate InPDUM-led political activity among our people that will sharpen the contradictions for the masses who are watching the Obama regime shovel several trillion dollars of taxpayer’s money to banks and other ruling class institutions.

At the same time, because of predatory lending practices initiated by Obama’s campaign finance chairwoman, the Obama regime is overseeing the greatest theft of African community wealth in history in the form of massive loss of homes through foreclosures resulting from subprime mortgages.

With the demand for independence in our lifetime! InPDUM’s slogans also challenge the very legitimacy of Obama’s election as a response to the conditions of existence faced by Africans in the U.S. This is a serious rejection of the bourgeois attempt to present Obama’s election as the end of our history of resistance.

Now InPDUM is gearing up for some of the most important work of its existence. This work is given greater significance because of the crisis of imperialism that makes it especially vulnerable to the struggle of African people for revolutionary democracy.

When InPDUM was founded in 1991 its primary task was dictated by the period. It was a period when the U.S. Front of the African Revolution was still reeling from the defeat of the Black Revolution of the Sixties by the U.S government. The ongoing imperialist counterinsurgency against our movement and our people expressed itself as domestic neocolonialism accompanied by the imposition of a drug economy along with the military assault on the colonized African community that was justified in the name of a war against drugs.

Most of our revolutionary leadership had been destroyed by this assault known primarily as COINTELPRO. Much of the people’s leadership had been jailed, murdered, chased into exile and membership of their organizations dispersed. Our people were left leaderless except for the neocolonialist clients who were given prominent roles as buffoonish ideological transmitters and political covers for the nefarious activities of our imperialist oppressors and the capitalist social system.

InPDUM was founded at the height of this counterinsurgent assault, primarily as a vehicle to defend the democratic rights of the people while exposing the government’s counterinsurgent war on African people.

InPDUM’s aim was to draw Africans back into political life around the immediate vicious attacks that were effectively overturning hard-fought democratic victories won in the sixties.

While it was engaged in ongoing battles and campaigns that required bold leadership, InPDUM’s mission was, nevertheless, defensive. However, the depth of the current crisis of imperialism stemming from the unbridled resistance of the world’s peoples has demanded a different character of InPDUM. From a defensive stance organizing the community against imperialist assaults, InPDUM has now assumed a posture of aggressive mass leadership for the Final Offensive against imperialism.

The change from a defensive stance by InPDUM has been erratic and slow in coming. Additionally, in the recent past the Party has lost sight of the strategic significance of InPDUM for our revolutionary work. This is a contradiction that has been facilitated by inadequate leadership of this important Party organization.

Nevertheless, with the adoption of the Revolutionary National Democratic Program, InPDUM has been clearly positioned as the vehicle through which the first stage of our Revolution is to be waged. In its mass composition InPDUM is becoming the embodiment of the revolutionary national democratic sector of the African population that must be organized to seize black political power.

This requires a different perspective by the Party of InPDUM’s role. It is not defensive; InPDUM has to be the dynamic catalyst for political mobilization of African people in the immediate struggle for the achievement of the revolutionary national democratic power — for the achievement of black power.

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