All Roads Lead to the Congress

Plantation treatment at Chicago's Marshall Field Garden public housing apartments

Chicago—Members of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM) interview Lydia Shaw (go to link provided below) to expose and organize against the inhumane treatment Africans face in the Marshall Field Garden public housing units.

Lydia tells her story of when she successfully sued for damage to her property for bed bug infestation. She and other residents have been retaliated against ever since.

The Marshall Field Garden apartments bring in over $7 million per year, yet bed bugs, rats and repairs go unaddressed.

Lydia’s struggles successfully removed the previous property manager. However, the new building manager, Diana Woznicki, is even more notorious.

Diana is a former Chicago police sergeant who was fired after being implicated in a murder scheme. She is now the head of security of the Marshall Field Garden apartments and is the conductor of Illinois/U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) inspections for these buildings.

Diana Woznicki continues to act as a plantation owner. She orders raids on residents on a whim and calls police to bar black men from their families.

On Friday, October 4, 2013, 50 black men were barred from seeing their own families in their own homes as a result of Diana calling the police on them for no reason.

Diana receives no consequences for her actions and Chicago police are complicit.

This is a familiar story to Africans in public housing units throughout the U.S. and the world. Landlords forcibly remove black men from their families. The housing is poor and often unfit for human habitation.

The buildings are infested with rats, roaches and other critters that spread disease. The infestations, along with mold, affect the air quality, causing damage to the lungs, causing asthma and other breathing problems.

InPDUM Chicago is organizing to fight the colonial treatment that Africans face in public housing.

InPDUM President Diop Olugbala states: "In short, we want to turn the projects into liberated territories that the police and other agencies of imperialist government cannot penetrate without our consent. In these territories African people can experience democratic space, the right to live on our own terms: to control our own resources and government. The people of Marshall Fields must BECOME the PEOPLE'S HOUSING AUTHORITY! Community control of housing!

"Our work in Marshall Gardens must advance the following demands of InPDUM's Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP):

"18. We demand African community control of schools, police and all the institutions of coercive colonial state power that wreak perennial havoc within our colonized community.

"19. We demand the immediate withdrawal of the terroristic police and military troops from the African community and their replacement with African liberation forces whose struggles in defense of our community against our oppression demonstrate their loyalty to our community and their willingness to serve in its interest.

"57. We call for the establishment of an international commission for community control of housing and land that would lead the resistance against imperialism’s attempts to displace African populations and communities from specific geographic locations historically tied to those communities. The work of this commission would be carried out with recognition and unity of the struggles of the indigenous peoples of the Americas right to control of their own land.

"The RNDP is the blueprint for Black Power that was developed under the leadership of InPDUM and the African Peoples Socialist Party, through the democratic discussion and input of the membership of these organizations.

"The RNDP must guide the practical work InPDUM and the community conducts in Marshall Field and communities like it. While the people work to improve the material conditions in Marshall Field - demanding immediate repairs and renovations work and overall higher quality of living, the RNDP ensures that the people gain an understanding of what it will take to permanently solve the problems we face. We live in poverty and terror because we are powerless. We are powerless because we are not organized.

"Therefore we must get organized to destroy this parasitic system while building up a new system that benefits our community – starting right now.

"Clearly, InPDUM is building a strong Chicago Front of the International African Revolution! Revolutionary salute to you comrades!"

See the interview with Lydia Shaw, InPDUM Chicago, as well as President Diop Olugbala of InPDUM organize for community control of housing, below:

Forward to the Sixth Congress of the African Peoples Socialist Party!

One Africa! One Nation!

Uhuru!

The APSP USA Sixth Congress • Dec. 7-11, 2013 in St. Petersburg, FL