Notes and quotes from Huey Newton’s autobiography

Since today is the 70th anniversary of Huey P Newton’s birth, I thought I’d share some of my thoughts on his autobiography, ‘Revolutionary Suicide’. In my opinion, Revolutionary Suicide is a crucial contribution to the field of revolutionary strategy and tactics, particularly for those working in the ‘belly of the beast’ – the imperialist countries of Europe and North America.

What made the Black Panther Party and affiliated black/brown power organisations so special? What made them stand out from the myriad of other radical/progressive/socialist organisations? I think the main thing is the fact that they were able to mobilise the *masses* – they were able to move beyond the usual middle-class left dogmas and outdated methodology (“fanning our flames to the hurricane”, to use George Jackson’s vivid expression) and really engage oppressed people in the struggle for their own freedom. Yes, they were smashed by the state; yes, many mistakes were made; but nevertheless they made unprecedented gains which we should actively learn from.

If you haven’t read it yet, I’d strongly recommend you to read ‘Revolutionary Suicide’, along with Huey’s ‘To Die For The People’, Bobby Seale’s book ‘Sieze the Time’, Assata Shakur’s autobiography and Mumia Abu Jamal’s ‘We Want Freedom’. That’s a minimum Panther reading list. Trust me, it’s worth it!

In terms of learning from Huey’s ideas about building a revolutionary movement, I think the following points from ‘Revolutionary Suicide’ are some of the key things for us to consider:

BUILD UNITY THROUGH REAL STRUGGLE. Learning to fight the oppressor is the way to stop fighting each other. Huey communicates this idea by relating the story of how, at his high school, the black students created unity in response to the dominance of white racist gangs.
BUILD UNITY THROUGH SHARED GOALS. Nobody agrees on everything, and yet left organisations insist on defining themselves on the basis of petty differences with each other. Work out a basic platform and move on it.
BUILD A SENSE OF COMMUNITY. Modern capitalism takes away our sense of community, of togetherness, or shared purpose. It promotes individualism and fear. Any revolutionary organisation or movement must seek to build unity and cooperation in the communities it works within. Socialism is built from the ground up.
BUILD ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION. The education system fails oppressed people. It teaches self-hate and subservience. The revolutionary must be an educator. Raising consciousness is a long-term, arduous, essential project and needs constant attention.
MOBILISE AMONG THE MOST OPPRESSED. Although the traditional US left was focusing its attentions on the industrial working class, the Panthers realised that this was not the most revolutionary class in society, as it had largely been bought off and was enjoying the fruits of imperialism and racism. Huey points out that a revolution must be built on the basis of those elements in society that have nothing to lose; that are ready to go against the system.
REVOLUTION STARTS NOW. Meet the survival needs of the people, in the here and now. Build power in the communities. Take responsibility. Political power doesn’t drop from the skies; it is built in real life, and that process begins now with the fight for survival. “Revolution is not an action; it is a process.”
ACTION SPEAKS LOUDER THAN WORDS. You can’t engage people with a load of talk and dogmatism. Find ways to get the attention of those people you want to revolutionise. Be relevant, be visible, get people moving in the struggle for real goals. No left-wing organisation that I know of in Britain gets anywhere near to this, as they have no roots in oppressed communities and therefore are not on the right wavelength.
BE RELEVANT. You don’t have to dumb down your ideas to be acceptable to the masses; you don’t have to take ‘popular’ positions; but you *do* have to be relevant. Many groups fail because they are completely divorced from the masses, and because they adopt an alienating, doctrinaire, superior attitude in relation to oppressed people.
STUDY THE ART OF REVOLUTION. Learn how others have developed movements and won freedom, and let their strategies inform yours.
BUILD YOUR OWN PLAN. While learning from others, remember that your struggle has its own unique characteristics, and therefore you must develop your own unique strategy based on a deep analysis of concrete conditions, rather than relying on blueprints or dogmas.
FIGHT THE POWER. Develop the skills to deal with the system on a daily level. Know your rights – with police, in school, with bailiffs etc. This is key for building pride, confidence and solidarity.
THE OPPRESSED MUST LEAD. Organisations have a definite need for people with what Huey calls “bourgeois skills” – middle class radicals with good writing, computer, administration skills etc. In many organisations unfortunately these skills bring leadership status to those that have them. This should be avoided!

Here are some quotes I thought were worth typing out:

On being a revolutionary

“I will fight until I die, however that may come. But whether I’m around or not to see it happen, I know that the transformation of society inevitably will manifest the true meaning of ‘all power to the people.’”

“By surrendering my life to the revolution, I found eternal life”

“The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man. Unless he understands this, he does not grasp the essential meaning of his life.”

“The oppressor cannot understand the simple fact that people want to be free. So, when a man resists oppression, they pass it off by calling him ‘crazy’ or ‘insane’”

“You can only die once, so do not die a thousand times worrying about it.”

On building a movement

“We discussed Mao’s program, Cuba’s program, and all the others, but concluded that we could not follow any of them. Our unique situation required a unique program. Although the relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed is universal, forms of oppression vary. The ideas that mobilised the people of Cuba and China sprang from their own history and political structures. The practical parts of those programs could be carried out only under a certain kind of oppression. Our program had to deal with America.”

“Che and Mao were veterans of people’s wars, and they had worked out successful strategies for liberating their people. We read these men’s works because we saw them as kinsmen; the oppressor who had controlled them was controlling us, both directly and indirectly. We believed it was necessary to know how they gained their freedom in order to go about getting ours. However, we did not want merely to import ideas and strategies; we had to transform what we learned into principles and methods acceptable to the brothers on the block.”

“To recruit any sizeable number of street brothers, we would obviously have to do more than talk. We needed to give practical applications of our theory, show them that we were not afraid of weapons and not afraid of death. The way we finally won the brothers over was by patrolling the police with arms.”

“Mao and Fanon and Guevara all saw clearly that the people had been stripped of their birthright and their dignity, not by any philosophy or mere words, but at gunpoint. They had suffered a holdup by gangsters, and rape; for them, the only way to win freedom was to meet force with force. At bottom, this is a form of self-defence.”

“We came to an important realisation: books could only point in a general direction; the rest was up to us.”

“Interested primarily in educating and revolutionising the community, we needed to get their attention and give them something to identify with.”

“It was my studying and reading in college that led me to become a socialist. The transformation from a nationalist to a socialist was a slow one, although i was around a lot of Marxists. I even attended a few meetings of the Progressive Labour Party, but nothing was happening there, just a lot of talk and dogmatism, unrelated to the world I knew. It was my life plus independent reading that made me a socialist – nothing else.”

“The street brothers were important to me, and I could not turn away from the life I shared with them. There was in them an intransigent hostility toward all sources of authority that had such a dehumanising effect on the community. In school the ‘system’ was the teacher, but on the block the system was everything that was not a positive part of the community.”

“[When we started patrolling the police] many community people could not believe at first that we had only their interest at heart. Nobody had ever given them any support or assistance when the police harassed them, but here we were, proud Black men, armed with guns and a knowledge of the law. Many citizens came right out of jail and into the party, and the statistics of murder and brutality by policemen in our communities fell sharply.”

“If we developed strong and meaningful alliances with white youth, they would support our goals and work against the establishment”

“Too many so-called leaders of the movement have been made into celebrities and their revolutionary fervour destroyed by mass media. The task is to transform society; only the people can do that – not heroes, not celebrities, not stars. A star’s place is in Hollywood; the revolutionary’s place is in the community with the people.”

“Revolution is not an action; it is a process.”

“The survival programs are a necessary part of the revolutionary process, a means of bringing the people close to the transformation of society.”

“The Breakfast for Children program was set up first. Other programs – clothing distribution centres, liberations schools, housing, prison projects, and medical centres – soon followed. We called them ‘survival programs pending revolution’, since we needed long-term programs and a disciplined organisation to carry them out. They were designed to help the people survive until their consciousness is raised, which is only the first step in the revolution to produce a new America. I frequently use the metaphor of the fact to describe the survival programs. A raft put into service during a disaster is not meant to change conditions but to help one get through a difficult time. During a flood the raft is a life-saving device, but it is only a means of getting to higher and safer ground.”

“We had the base now on which to construct a potent social force in the country. But some of our leading comrades lacked the comprehensive ideology needed to analyse events and phenomena in a creative, dynamic way. We [formed the] Ideological Institute, which has succeeded in providing the comrades with an understanding of dialectical materialism. About three hundred brothers and sisters attend classes to study in depth the works of great Marxist thinkers and philosophers.”

“I dissuade party members from putting down people who do not understand. Even people who are unenlightened and seemingly bourgeois should be answered in a polite way. Things should be explained to them as fully as possible. I was turned off by a person who did not want to talk to me because I was not important enough. After the Black Panther Party was formed, I nearly fell into this error. I could not understand why people were blind to what I saw so clearly. Then I realised that their understanding had to be developed.”

“My experiences in China reinforced my understanding of the revolutionary process and my belief in the necessity of making a concrete analysis of concrete conditions. The Chinese speak with great pride about their history and their revolution and mention often the invincible thoughts of Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. But they also tell you, ‘This was *our* revolution based upon a cornet analysis of concrete conditions, and we cannot direct you, only give you the principles. It is up to you to make the correct creative application.’ It was a strange yet exhilarating experience to have traveled thousands of miles, across continents, to hear their words. For this is what Bobby Seale and I had included in our own discussions five years earlier in Oakland, as we explored ways to survive the abuses of the capitalist system in the Black communities of America. Theory was not enough, we had said. We knew we had to act to bring about change. Without fully realising it then, we were following Mao’s belief that ‘if you want to know the theory and methods of revolution, you must take part in revolution. All genuine knowledge originates in direct experience.’”

“We must never take a stand just because it is popular. We must analyse the situation objectively and take the logically correct position, even though it may be unpopular. If we are right in the dialectics of the situation, our position will prevail.”

On education

“During those long years in Oakland public schools, I did not have one teacher who taught me anything relevant to my own life or experience.”

“Throughout my life all real learning has taken place outside school. I was educated by my family, my friends, and the street. Later, I learned to love books and I read a lot, but that had nothing to do with school. Long before, I was getting educated in unorthodox ways.”

“The clash of cultures in the classroom is essentially a class war, a socio-economic and racial warfare being waged on the battleground of our schools, with middle-class aspirating teachers provided with a powerful arsenal of half-truths, prejudices and rationalisations, arrayed against hopelessly outclassed working-class youngsters. This is an uneven balance, particularly since, like most battles, it comes under the guise of righteousness.” (quote from Kenneth Clark, ‘Dark Ghetto’)

“Strong and positive influences in my life helped me escape the hopelessness that afflicts so many of my contemporaries. My father gave me a strong sense of pride and self-respect. By brother Melvin awakened in me the desire to learn, and because of him I began to read. What I discovered in books led me to think, to question, to explore and finally to redirect my life.”

“I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was affecting the black race in America.” (quote from the Autobiography of Malcolm X)

On community

“When people in the congregation prayed for each other, a feeling of community took over; they were involved in each other’s problems and trying to help solve them. Here was a microcosm of what ought to have been going on outside in the community. I had the first glimmer of what it means to have a unified goal that involves the whole community and calls forth the strengths of the people to make things better.”

“Among the poor, social conditions and economic hardship frequently change marriage into a troubled and fragile relationship. A strong love between husband and wife can survive outside pressures, but that is rare. Marriage usually becomes one more imprisoning experience within the general prison of society.”

“Those in the community who defy authority and ‘break the law’ seem to enjoy the good life and have everything in the way of material possessions. On the other hand, people who work hard and struggle and suffer much are the victims of greed and indifference, losers. This insane reversal of values presses heavily on the Black community. The causes originate from outside and are imposed by a system that ruthlessly seeks its own rewards, no matter what the cost in wrecked human lives.”

On prison

“The state believes in the power of euphemism, that by putting pleasant name on a concentration camp they can change its objective characteristics. Prisons are referred to as ‘correctional facilities’ or ‘men’s colonies’, and so forth; to the name givers, prisoners become ‘clients’, as if the state of California were some vast advertising agency. But we who are prisoners know the truth; we call them penitentiaries and jails and refer to ourselves as convicts and inmates.”

“I have often pondered the similarity between prison experience and the slave experience of Black people. Both systems involve exploitation: the slave received no compensation for the wealth he produced, and the prisoner is expected to produce marketable goods for what amounts to no compensation. Slavery and prison life share a compete lack of freedom of movement. The power of those in authority is total, and they expect deference from those under their domination. Just as in the days of slavery, constant surveillance and observation are part of the prison experience, and if inmates develop meaningful and revolutionary friendships among themselves, these ties are broken by institutional transfers, just as the slavemaster broke up families.”

“Many white inmates are not outright racists when they get to prison, but the staff soon turns them in that direction. While the guards do not want racial hostility to erupt into violence between inmates, they do want hostility high enough to prevent any unity. This is something like the strategy used by southern politicians to pit poor whites against poor blacks.”

“The whites are not only duped and used by the prison staff, but come to love their oppressors. Their dehumanisation is so thorough that they admire and identify with those who deprive them of their humanity.”

“The spirit of revolution will continue to grow within the prisons. I look forward to the time when all inmates will offer greater resistance by refusing to work as I did. Such a simple move would bring the machinery of the penal system to a halt.”

“James Baldwin has pointed out that the United States does not know what to do with its Black population now that they ‘are no longer a source of wealth, are no longer to be bought and sold and bred, like cattle.’ This country especially does not know what to do with its young Black men. ‘It is not at all accidental,’ he says, ‘that the jails and the army and the needle claim so many.’”

“The great mass of arrested or accused black folk have no defence. There is desperate need of nationwide organisations to oppose this national racket of railroading to jails and chain gangs the poor, friendless and black.” (Quote from WEB DuBois)

“The masses must be taught to understand the true function of prisons. Why do they exist in such numbers? What is the real underlying economic motive of crime? The people must learn that when one ‘offends’ the totalitarian state, it is patently not an offence against the people of that state, but an assault upon the privilege of the few.” (George Jackson, ‘Blood in my Eye’)

“Giving a prisoner a number is another way of undermining his identity, one more step in the dehumanisation process. Of course, it has historical roots: the SS assigned numbers to prisoners in Nazi concentration camps during World War II”

On Malcolm X and black consciousness

“White America has seen to it that Black history has been suppressed in schools and in American history books. The bravery of hundreds of our ancestors who took part in slave rebellions has been lost in the mists of time, since plantation owners did their best to prevent any written accounts of uprisings.”

“Malcolm X’s life and accomplishments galvanised a generation of young Black people; he helped us take a great stride forward with a new sense of ourselves and our destiny. But meaningful as his life was, his death had great significance, too. A new militant spirit was born when Malcolm died. It was born of outrage and a unified Black consciousness, out of the sense of a task left undone.”

“IQ tests are routinely used as weapons against Black people in particular and minority groups and poor people generally. The tests are based on white middle-class standards, and when we score low on them, the results are used to justify the prejudice that we are inferior and unintelligent. Since we are taught to believe that the tests are infallible, they have become a self-fulfilling prophecy that cuts off our initiative and brainwashes us.”

“As far as I am concerned, the party is a living testament to Malcolm’s life work. I do not claim that the party has done what Malcolm would have done. Many others say that their programs are Malcolm’s program. We do not say this, but Malcolm’s spirit is in us

“Malcolm X impressed me with his logic and with his disciplined and dedicated mind. Here was a man who combined the world of the streets and the world of the scholar, a man so widely read he could give better lectures and cite more evidence than many college professors. He was also practical. Dressed in the loose-fitting style of a strong prison man, he knew what the street brothers were like, and he knew what had to be done to reach them.”

On black nationalism

“All these programs were aimed at one goal: complete control of the institutions in the community. Every ethnic group has particular needs that they know and understand better than anybody else; each group is the best judge of how its institutions ought to affect the lives of its members. Throughout American history ethnic groups like the Irish and Italians have established organisations and institutions within their own communities. When they achieved this political control, they had the power to deal with their problems.”

“The most important element in controlling our own institutions would be to organise them into cooperatives, which would end all forms of exploitation. Then the profits, or surplus, from the co-operates would be returned to the community, expanding opportunities on all levels, and enriching life. Beyond this, our ultimate aim is to have various ethnic communities cooperating in a spirit of mutual aid, rather than competing. In this way, all communities would be allied in a common purpose through the major social, economy and political institutions in the country.”

“Blacks are a colonised people used only for the benefit and profit of the power structure whenever it suits their purposes. After the Civil War, Blacks were kicked off plantations and had nowhere to go. For nearly one hundred years they were either unemployed or used for the most menial tasks, because industry preferred to use the labour of more acceptable immigrants – the Irish, the Italians and the Jews. However, when World War II started, Blacks were again employed – in factories and by industry – because, with the white male population off fighting, there was a labour shortage. But when that war ended, Blacks were once again kicked off ‘the plantation’ and left stranded with no place to go in an industrial society.”

On China

“What I experienced in China was the sensation of freedom – as if a great weight had been lifted from my soul and I was able to be myself, without defence or pretence or the need for explanation. I felt absolutely free for the first time in my life – completely free among my fellow men. This experience of freedom had a profound effect on me, because it confirmed my belief that an oppressed people can be liberated if their leaders persevere in raising their consciousness and in struggling relentlessly against the oppressor.”

“The behaviour of the police in China was a revelation to me. They are there to protect and help the people, not to oppress them. Their courtesy was genuine; no division or suspicion exists between them and the citizens.”

“The Chinese truly live by the slogan ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’ and their behaviour constantly reminds you of that. For the first time I did not feel threatened by a uniformed person with a weapon; the soldiers were there to protect the citizenry.”

On democracy

“Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim’s family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day’s pay – often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.”

Black Panthers Speak about Criminal Injustice

Black Panthers Speak about Criminal Injustice

This newsreel footage features interviews with Huey P. Newton (from Alameda County Jail), Eldridge Cleaver, and Bobby Seale. The footage also includes scenes from a Black panther rally at Hutton Memorial Park demanding the release of Mr. Newton. In this film, Huey Newton discusses the police brutality that so many Black people experience and calls for equal treatment for blacks within the criminal legal system. Bobby Seale outlines the 10 point of the Black Panther Party Program which are: 1) Freedom; 2) Full Employment; 3) Decent Housing; 4) End of Robbery of Black Communities by Whites; 5) Education, 6) Exemption of Blacks from Military Service; 7) End police brutality and murder of blacks; 8) All Blacks to be released from jail and prison; 9) Fair Trials; 10) Land, Bread, Housing, & Education.

Kevin Rashid – What is a “Comrade” and Why We Use the Term

by Rise Up

 

Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Minister of Defense, NABPP-PC

 

What is a “Comrade” and Why We Use the Term

 

The concept of “Comrade” has a special meaning and significance in revolutionary struggle. We have often been asked to explain our use of this term, especially by our peers who are new to the struggle, instead of more familiar terms like “brother,” “homie,” “cousin,” “dog,” nigga,” etc.

Foremost, is that we aspire to build a society based upon equality and a culture of revolutionary transformation, so we need to purge ourselves of the tendency to use terms of address that connote cliques and exclusive relationships. A comrade can be a man or a woman of any color or ethnicity, but definitely a fellow fighter in the struggle against all oppression.

Terms like “mister” or “youngster” imply a difference of social status, entitlement to greater or lesser respect and built-in concepts of superiority or inferiority. Terms like “bitch,” “dog,” nigga,” “ho,” etc., are degrading and disrespectful – even when used affectionately – as some do to dull the edge of their general usage in a world that disrespects us.

“Comrade,” however, connotes equality and respect. It implies “I’ve got your back,” and “we are one.” Comrades stand united unconditionally, and if need be, to the death. It implies a relationship that is inclusive, not exclusive, and not based on any triviality but revolutionary class solidarity. It represents the socialist future we seek to represent in the struggles of today, and the eventual triumph of classless communist society.

Most forms of address used by New Afrikans carry subtle implications of differing status and worth, or were originally meant to insult and dehumanize us. Embracing these terms has led to our subconsciously embracing these roles, and feeling and believing we are inferior and treating each other as worth less than others. So it is definitely important that we remind ourselves constantly that we are equal to and as good as anyone else and address each other accordingly. As Malcolm X put it in an interview with the Village Voice in 1965:

“The greatest mistake of the movement has been trying to organize a sleeping people around specific goals. You have to wake the people up first, then you’ll get action.”

“Wake them up to their exploitation?” the interviewer asked.

“No,” Malcolm replied, “to their humanity, to their own worth.”

Conscious use of the term “Comrade” instead of the many disparaging terms of address popular today, explicitly connects all people up as humans and equals. It reminds us of our interdependence for survival; promotes relations of equality, friendship and camaraderie between all oppressed and exploited people; it expresses the unified outlook of the proletariat; and it will promote a change in people’s outlook and thinking. It’s use identifies those committed to the revolutionary struggle and represents the future in the struggles of today.

As Amilcar Cabral expressed in “Our People are Our Mountians”: “I call you ‘comrades’ rather than ‘brothers and sisters’ because if we are brothers and sisters it’s not from choice, it’s no commitment; but if you are my comrade, I am your comrade too, and that’s a commitment and a responsibility. This is the political meaning of ‘comrade’.”

In the interpyrsonal sense, camaraderie binds people by respect, mutual support and trust, making organizations cohesive and stable. It builds and cements unity in the process of struggle, generating mutual confidence between people, affirming that we can rely upon each other regardless of the dangers that come from standing for the people and social justice for all.

Examples of genuine camaraderie are inspirational to the people and build their willingness to make a commitment to the struggle. The development and maintenance of organizational structure depends on the close and genuine camaraderie of the revolutionaries – what we call Panther Love!

Black Liberation in the 21st Century: A Revolutionary Reassessment of Black Nationalism

Kevin Rashid is a political prisoner and communist
revolutionary in the New Afrikan Black Panther Party-Prison Chapter, an
organization formed within prison. We present present Rashid’s
reassessment of the Black liberation movement for discussion. This piece
first appeared in Right On! #19

“Revolution.” Artwork Courtesy of Kevin Rashid

“[T]rue revolutionary leaders must not only be good at
correcting their ideas, theories, plans or programs, when errors are
discovered… but when a certain objective process has already progressed
and changed from one stage of development to another, they must also be
good at making themselves and all their fellow revolutionaries progress
and change in their subjective knowledge along with it….” -Mao
Tse-tung, On Contradiction  

Introduction

Some time ago comrades of the New Afrikan Maoist Party (NAMP)
expressed a desire to reconcile contradictions between their line and
the line of our New Afrikan Black

Panther Party—Prison Chapter (NABPP-PC) on the question of Black
National Liberation in the 21st Century. On this question, NAMP along
with several other organizations—including the New Afrikan People’s
Organization (NAPO), the Provisional Government of the Republic of New
Afrika, the Maoist International Movement (MIM) and others promote the
Black Belt Thesis (BBT) as it was set out by the Comintern (Third
Communist International) in the 1920s.

The NAMP comrades are correct in pointing out that our respective
organizations have a major line contradiction on this question. We have
as yet not publicly fleshed out our line on this, in contrast to that of
NAMP and others, so it is time we did so in a formal position paper.

In developing our line on the Black National Question in the U.S. we
have applied the method of historical dialectical materialism and
deepened the analysis put forward by Huey P. Newton of the original
Black Panther Party (BPP). This means we do not hold dogmatically and
idealistically to outmoded ideas and formulations that no longer fit the
current situation. Instead we base our analysis on the study of
concrete conditions in the context of their actual historical
development, realizing that everything is in a state of motion and
development from a lower to a higher level, and that correct ideas
develop in struggle and contradiction with incorrect ones.

The Black Belt Thesis and the New Class Configuration of the New Afrikan Nation

The BBT was developed by the U.S. “Black Bolshevik,” Harry Haywood,
in his 1928 and 1930 “Comintern Resolution on the Negro Question,” which
was adopted by the Comintern and the U.S. Communist Party with support
from V.1. Lenin. It holds that Blacks in Amerika (New Afrikans)
constitute a nation within the territorial U.S. and that we should
establish our own sovereign national territory in Alabama, Mississippi,
Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina (the “Black Belt” also  known as
the “Cotton Belt”). The states were chosen because we slaved there and
developed and evolved as a national group and “internal colony” where
Blacks made up the majority. The principle factors which supported the
BBT were economic and demographic that existed in the 1920s but no
longer exist today.

No one can sensibly deny that Black people were forged into a “nation
within a nation” because of their loss of Afrikan national identity
under slavery and exclusion from the white Amerikan nation under
conditions of “Jim Crow” segregation. Nor can one deny that this nation
is bound to its Afrikan origin and defined by the imposed value that a
drop of Afrikan blood sets one outside of the “melting pot” of white
Amerikan society.

But where the BBT breaks down is that our present situation doesn’t
fit into the neat definition used by the Comintern in the 1920s. The
reality is more complex today.

At the time the BBT was developed, Blacks in the “Black Belt” were a
predominantly peasant (sharecropper) nation tied to cotton production.
This condition was also shared by many poor whites and some Indians and
mixed bloods. The BBT was based on Comrade J.V. Stalin’s analysis of the
National Question as essentially a peasant question. Unlike the
analysis put forward by Lenin, and more fully developed by Mao, Stalin’s
analysis limited the National Question to essentially a peasantry’s
struggle for the land they labored on geographically defined by their
having a common language, history, culture and economic life together.
Hence the slogans “Free the Land!” and “Land to the Tiller!”

Indeed, ALL the national liberation struggles of the 20^th Century
occurred in peasant-based societies in opposition to colonial or
neo-colonial domination and feudal or semi-feudal class oppression.
Today, however, the Black population within the U.S. is no longer a
rural peasantry. It is overwhelmingly a proletarian nation (wage slaves)
dispersed across the U.S. and concentrated in and around urban centers
in predominantly Black or multi-ethnic oppressed communities.

The trend since World War I has been towards migration away from the
“Black Belt” South and from the rural to the urban setting (even within
the South). Check this out from “1001 Facts” on Black History:

“African Americans continued to move northward and cityward after
World War I in 1918. In fact, the migration increased during the 1920s
as another million southern African Americans picked up their bags and
left southern living conditions. The migration expanded in the 1930s as
the New Deal Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 forced many more to
migrate once the AAA paid white southern farmers not to produce crops
and made it profitable to dispense with Black sharecroppers.
Technological advances such as the cotton picker machine made large
numbers of unskilled agricultural laborers obsolete in southern
agriculture. Then, as World War II began, Black mass migration exploded
and nearly 5 million African Americans left the South for the North from
1940 to 1960… [This] Second Migration created huge ghettos in all the
major American cities. Whereas in 1890 close to 90 percent of African
Americans lived in the South, by 1960 only 50 percent of African
Americans still resided there. Moreover, the movement north was also a
movement toward urban rather than rural living. By 1990 over 84 percent
of African Americans lived in urban areas, making ‘African American’ and
‘urban’ almost synonymous in modem America.”

Therefore, without need of pursuing a struggle to achieve a New
Afrikan nation state, we have achieved the historical results of
bourgeois democracy, at least as far as transforming ourselves from a
peasant to a predominantly proletarian national grouping through the
“Great Migration.”

Of course the Amerikan liberal democratic revolution begun in 1776,
which was continued by the Civil War (1861-1865), remains unfinished—in
particular as far as Black people are affected. Pre-capitalist forms of
exploitation continue to exist, such as the “slave status” of U.S.
prisoners, institutionalized torture, legalized “lynching” as embodied
in the racist death penalty, and all manifestations of racism, sexism
and discrimination that prevent all from enjoying the “life, liberty and
pursuit of happiness” promised by liberal democracy.

To complete the liberal democratic revolution and move forward to
socialist reconstruction the proletariat must lead the struggle which is
stifled by the increasingly antidemocratic, fascistic and reactionary
bourgeoisie. The bourgeois are no longer capable of playing a
progressive role in history.

The Revolutionary Advantages of Our Proletarian National Character

That we New Afrikans are now a predominantly proletarian nation—and
one without a national territory—is an advantage to the cause of
building a multi-ethnic, multiracial socialist Amerika. Indeed, it
thrusts us into playing a vanguard role in leading the whole working
class and the broad masses in pulling down the capitalist-imperialist
system and achieving social justice for all.

This conception of our historical role corresponds with Lenin’s and
Mao’s lines on the National Question which we contrast with Stalin’s and
dogmatic continuation of the BBT. Lenin and Mao saw the national
question primarily as a matter of building the ranks of the proletarian
revolution to pull down the system of imperialism. In fact, in all of
his writings on Black liberation in the U.S. Mao consistently talks
about merging the Black liberation struggle with the proletarian
revolutionary struggle in the U.S. He doesn’t mention the land issue
once. In A New Storm Against Imperialism, (April 16, 1968), he stated:

“Racial discrimination in the United States is a product of the
colonialist and imperialist system. The contradiction between the Black
masses in the United States and the U.S. ruling circles is a class
contradiction. Only by overthrowing the reactionary rule of the U.S.
monopoly capitalist class and destroying the colonialist and imperialist
system can the Black people in the United States win complete
emancipation. The Black masses and the masses of white working people in
the United States have common interests and common objectives to
struggle for.

“Therefore, the Afro-American struggle is winning sympathy and
support from increasing numbers of white working people and progressives
in the United States. The struggle of the Black people in the United
States is bound to merge with the American workers’ movement, and this
will eventually end the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist
class.”

In his August 8, 1963 article, Oppose Racial Discrimination by U.S.
Imperialism, Mao’s emphasis is on racial discrimination, not “Free The
Land!” He sees Black liberation as driving forward the United Front
Against Capitalist-Imperialism and pulling white workers and other
strata towards socialist revolution in the U.S. The issue is not
integration versus separation but revolution.

Even Malcolm X came to embrace this position. In fact, every popular,
independent Black leader who came to hold this view and actively
advanced it was promptly assassinated. Why? Because neither separation
nor integration threatens the imperialist system—socialist revolution
does!

Separation, Integration or Revolution?

Take Brother Malcolm; in his early stages of political development,
he promoted Black separatism. Based upon his observation of independence
struggles across the predominantly peasant-based Third World of the
1950s and early 1960s, he adopted the view that revolution was about
land, and he embraced the slogan “Free The Land!”, which he elaborated
on in his Message to the Grassroots speech given in 1963. However, in an
April 6, 1964 speech given in Harlem, he expressly rejected both Black
separatism and integration, in favor of revolutionary change of Amerika
as a whole. He stated:

“We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for integration, nor are we fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition… for the right to live as free humans in this society” [my emphasis]

Malcolm increasingly came to identify capitalism and imperialism as
the ultimate enemy—embracing the need of Afrikan people everywhere to
consolidate their struggles into a united Pan-Afrikan movement, and for
Blacks in Amerika to unite in a common struggle with all the
“have-nots”, regardless of their skin color, against the common
exploiters who try to divide everyone and play us against each other. It
was at this crucial stage of his development as a revolutionary that he
was silenced with a bullet.

A few months before his assassination, Malcolm X criticized his earlier views on separatist Black Nationalism, finding that:

“I was alienating people who were true revolutionaries dedicated to
overturning the system of exploitation that exists on this earth by any
means necessary…. I had to do a lot of thinking and reappraising of my
definition of Black Nationalism. Can we sum up the solution to the
problems confronting our people as Black Nationalism? And if you notice,
I haven’t been using the expression for several months. But I would
still be hard pressed to give a specific definition of the overall
philosophy which I think is necessary for the liberation of Black people
in this country.”

At the opposite pole, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—who was initially
pro-integration and pro-capitalist—also came to identify capitalism and
imperialism as the ultimate enemy, expressly rejecting integration and
privately promoting socialist revolution in Amerika as the way forward.
He stated in November 1967: “Something is wrong with capitalism as it
stands here in the U.S. We are not interested in being integrated into
this value structure.” During later 1967 and 1968, shortly before his
assassination, King repeatedly promoted socialism to his inside circle,
but he refused to make this stand publicly for fear of government
assassination. But his private statements, public opposition to U.S.
imperialist wars abroad, and support for the rights of the poor and
workers’ strikes were enough for the imperialist ruling class to mark
him for death.

George Jackson, pursuing the same path and arriving at the same
conclusions in a more developed way, was likewise cut down by an
assassin’s bullet. He observed:

“It’s no coincidence that Malcolm X and M.L. King died when they did.
Malcolm X had just put it together…. You remember what was on his lips
when he died, Vietnam and economic, political economy. The professional
killers could have murdered him long before they did. They let Malcolm
rage on Muslim nationalism for a number of years because they knew it
was an empty ideal, but the second he got his feet on the ground, they
murdered him.”

Despite Malcolm X’s and even King’s clearly-stated revolutionary
positions that New Afrikan liberation lies neither in assimilation
(accommodation) nor separation (running away), but in fundamentally
changing Amerikan society as a whole, so that we can live as a free
people right here, the Black Movement, and those purporting to lead it,
have remained deadlocked between these two less than revolutionary
positions. The original Black Panther Party has been the notable
exception.

The Panthers recognized that the New Afrikan Nation can neither
effectively separate from nor integrate into capitalist imperialist and
white supremist Amerika. Neo-colonialism precludes the former and racist
national oppression precludes the later. Our path to liberation—which
even the Panthers found a bit difficult to consistently articulate—is to
overthrow U.S. imperialism and play a leading role in the global
proletarian revolution and socialist reconstruction. We must be the tip
of the spear and rally everyone who has contradictions with imperialism
to unite with us.

Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, who were greatly influenced by
Malcolm X, were organizing in this direction, in implementing the BPP’s
10 Point Program and Serve The People (STP), survival programs while
carrying out revolutionary agitation, education and political organizing
to build community-based people’s power. Huey saw that Blacks were an
oppressed nation inside Amerika, but his ideas on charting our path to
liberation took a quantum leap forward when he visited and toured Mao’s
revolutionary China. There he found that numerous racial and ethnic
minorities had attained genuine liberation within China’s socialist
state, without separating or integrating in the classic sense.

What Huey observed in China gave him a blueprint for organizing Black
folks to become self-reliant in the very urban communities where they
were concentrated in preparation for revolution in the U.S. The BPP’s
implementation of these ideas quickly earned it the label of the
“greatest threat to imperialism’s security, and the U.S. government
concentrated its forces in an all-out campaign to destroy the Panthers.
Here’s what Huey found in People’s China that inspired the BPP’s STP
survival programs and illuminated his ideas about Black liberation in
Amerika:

“I saw, crystal clear, how we can start to reduce the kinds of
conflicts that we’re having in [Amerika]. I saw an example of that in
China… what I saw was this: when I went there, I was very unenlightened
and I thought I knew something about China. I thought, as it has been
said so often, that China would be a homogeneous kind of racial/ethnic
territory. Then I found that 50 percent of the Chinese territory is
occupied by a 54 percent population of national minorities, large ethnic
minorities. They speak different languages, they look very different,
and they eat different foods. Yet there is no conflict. I observed one
day that each region—we call them cities—is actually controlled by those
ethnic minorities, yet they’re still Chinese…. I’m talking about a
general condition in China where ethnic minorities I’ve observed control
their whole regions. They have a right to have representation in the
Chinese Communist Party. At the same time they have their own
principles…. The cities in this country could be organized like that,
with community control. At the same time, not Black control so that no
whites can come in, no Chinese can come in. I’m saying there would be
democracy in the inner city. The administration should reflect the
people who live there.”

While Huey proved less than adept at linking together, organizing and
leading a multi-racial anti-imperialist united front in Amerika, Fred
Hampton, the leader of the BPP in Chicago, successfully pulled together a
revolutionary coalition of poor whites (Rising Up Angry and The Young
Patriot Party), Puerto Ricans (the Young Lords Organization), Mexicans
(the Brown Berets) and various student groups known as the “Rainbow
Coalition.” He was being considered for promotion to national leadership
when he as killed in his bed by FBI and Chicago police in a planned
assassination.

Around the country the Black Panthers did inspire and forge alliances
with many different ethnically-based groups including the White Panther
Party, I Wor Kuen (Chinese), Ang Katipunan (Filipino), the American
Indian Movement (AIM) and many others. This was paving the way for a
revolutionary united front against imperialism rooted in the oppressed
communities.

The NABPP-PC also finds relevance in Huey’s theoretical concept of
“Revolutionary Intercommunalism”, which recognized that the U.S. no
longer fits the classical definition of a nation state nor do the
countries under its neo-colonial domination. Using “Dollar Diplomacy”,
along with covert operations and outright invasions, the U.S. has
successfully imposed itself upon all of the former European colonies and
overthrown the socialist-oriented governments brought to power by
national liberation struggles in the 3ed World. This paved the way for
the U.S. becoming the world’s sole imperialist superpower. Amerika’s
consolidation of global power since the collapse of the Soviet Union and
the increasingly globalized economic interdependence gives greater
credibility to Comrade Newton’s theory of “Intercommunalism,” but we
embrace this theory conditionally, recognizing that nation states still
exist in the geo-political sense under various political and military
set ups of “reactionary intercommunalism,” although they exist within a
system of relative dominant and subservient positions with the U.S. in
the position of “Top Dawg.” The shackles of bourgeois nationalism still
bind the productive forces of the various nations to some degree, from
which world proletarian socialist revolution will liberate them,
creating the conditions for “revolutionary intercommunalism.’

Reassessing the National Liberation Question

As every national liberation struggle in the 20th Century has
demonstrated, genuine national liberation and self determination have
been unattainable. In each case the capitalist-imperialists have created
and appealed to aspiring native bourgeois and petty-bourgeois elements
within the oppressed national groups and used these puppets to derail
their own people’s liberation struggles. They have used “Dollar
Diplomacy” to forge neo-colonial bonds upon these new republics.

Through their neo-colonial designs, the budding socialist and
non-aligned Third World blocs were undermined and overthrown (sweeping
the tillers off the land) and their natural resources and productive
forces were brought under U.S. imperialist domination (with other
imperialist powers getting a share). In this world of U.S. imperialist
hegemony, any New Afrikan struggle for independence and separation from
the U.S.—along the lines of the BBT—would suffer the same fate in
spades. Even if we did manage to reconstitute ourselves as a territorial
nation in the “Black Belt,” we would only join the ranks of imperialist
dominated Third world nations—and with the imperialist U.S. right on
our border.

At a time when few within the Third World national liberation
struggles foresaw the danger of U.S. neo-colonialism, Amilcar Cabral
sounded a warning to other leaders of anti-colonial national liberation
movements in the Third World. He questioned whether the national
liberation movements were altogether born of the colonial peoples’
determination to be free or if they were also to some degree instigated
by imperialism to create and “liberate” Third World bourgeois and
aspiring petty bourgeois forces to serve as imperialist agents and
“front men” to impede and counter the growth of world socialism and
create global U.S. imperialist hegemony. Few took heed to his words—then
or now. Here is Cabral:

“In Guinea, as in other countries, the implementation of imperialism
by force and the presence of the colonial system considerably altered
the historical conditions and aroused a response—the national liberation
struggle—which is generally considered a revolutionary trend; but this
is something which I think needs further examination. I should like to
formulate this question: is the national liberation movement something
which has simply emerged from within our country, is it a result of the
internal contradictions created by the presence of colonialism, or are
there external factors which have determined it? In fact I would even go
so far as to ask whether, given the advance of socialism in the world,
the national liberation movement is not an imperialist initiative. Is
the juridical institution which serves as a reference for the right of
all peoples to struggle to free themselves a product of the peoples who
are trying to liberate themselves? Was it created by the socialist
countries who are our historical associates? Let us not forget that it
was the imperialist countries who recognized the right of all people to
national independence.”Cabral went on to point out the inherent
contradiction in the imperialists “promoting” Third World national
independence if indeed such struggles were a threat to imperialism:

“This is where we think there is something wrong with the simple
interpretation of the national liberation movement as a revolutionary
trend. The objective of the imperialist countries was to prevent the
enlargement of the Socialist Camp, to liberate the reactionary forces in
our countries which were stifled by colonialism, and to enable these
forces to ally themselves with the international bourgeoisie. The
fundamental objective was to create a bourgeoisie where one did not
exist, in order specifically to strengthen the imperialist and the
capitalist camp.”—Amilcar Cabral. The Politics of Struggle, (1964)

Cabral found that “what really interests us here is neocolonialism,”
which he observed was a new phase of imperialism devised after World War
II to replace the old colonial system, by “grant[ing] independence to
the occupied countries plus ‘aid.”

Witnessing the failed promises of ‘national liberation’ Cabral
recognized that to be genuinely revolutionary and ‘liberating’ the
struggles for national independence had to be joined with the struggle
of the international proletariat. He concluded:

“… that imperialism is quite prepared to change both its men and its
tactics in order to perpetuate itself. it will make and destroy states
and. as we have already seen, it will kill its own puppets when they no
longer serve its purposes. If need be, it will even create a kind of
socialism, which people may soon start calling ‘neo-socialism.’ if there
has been any doubts about the close relations between our struggle [for
national liberation] and the struggle of the international working
class movement. neo-colonialism has proved that there need not be any.”
-Ibid.

Even the U.S. imperialists admitted using such “new tactics” of
neo-colonialism as Cabral observed in supporting Afrika and Asia’s
various national liberation movements. In the words of Vice President
Richard Nixon on his return from a 1957 tour of Afrika:

“American interests in the future are so great as to justify us in
not hesitating even to assist the departure of the colonial powers from
Africa. If we can win native opinion in this process, the future of
America in Africa will be assured.” Quoted in Dirty Works 2: The CIA in Africa, edited by Ellen Ray, et al. (Seacaucus; Lyle Stuart, Inc., 1979, p. 58)

Accord this statement of the U.S. National Security Council:

“We must recognize, although we cannot say it publicly, that we need
the strong men of Africa on our side. It is important to understand that
most of Africa will soon be independent…. Since we must have the strong
men of Africa on our side, perhaps we should in some cases develop
military strong men as an offset to Communist development of the labor
unions.” Quoted verbatim from the record of a January 14, 1960 meeting
of the NSC

So clearly the U.S. government favored pushing its European rivals
and their colonial governments out of Afrika by supporting the Afrikan
national liberation struggles, by backing or placing native puppets at
the head of those anti-colonial movements. In doing so:

‘The stage was set for the transition to neo-colonialism: formal
political independence for the African countries, but continued economic
domination by imperialism, with imperialist political control exerted
indirectly through bureaucratic African governments more or less
subservient to imperialism, and military control exerted indirectly
through covert links between imperialist powers and African
military/police hierarchies” Daniel Fogel, Africa in Struggle: National Liberation and Proletarian Revolution, (ISM Press: CA, 1982, p.116).

National ‘Liberation’ has therefore proved empty of substance to
oppressed Third World peoples, absent the defeat of imperialism, just as
it would be in a struggle for New Afrikan national ‘liberation’ in the
southern U.S. territory absent the defeat of imperialism.

Moreover, any such struggle would almost certainly degenerate into an
imperialist-sponsored race war, similar to what went down in the Kosovo
conflict (1998-1999), and present day Sudan. In any such struggle,
Blacks would be at a decided disadvantage—witness our helplessness in
the face of the Hurricane Katrina Crisis and attendant martial law in
Louisiana and Mississippi (both “Black Belt states). And in that crisis
we didn’t have to contend with angry and desperate whites fighting to
keep their land and homes. Or do our proponents of the BBT expect whites
in the “Black Belt” to passively concede the territory and leave? Or do
they think we will just grab the imperialists by the throat and demand
that they give us five states, make all the arrangements, and then let
us run the show there without interference?

And what about the white proletarians who live in the “Black Belt?”
What stake would they have in this? Or would we want to just push them
into the arms of the reactionaries opposing us? Such a plan would only
divide the proletarians along racial lines, set them against each other
and give the imperialists a free hand to play the “Divide and Rule” game
‘Willie Lynch” style.

Furthermore, our migration back to the “Black Belt” would be “a leap
from the frying pan into the fire” for how would we survive in the
already poor economy of the rural South? “Returning to the Land” may
sound romantic, but trying to bust a living out of the depleted soil of
the Deep South was a dead end that caused the “Great Migration” in the
first place.

And what a loss it would be to the international proletariat for us
to give up our strategic positions within the urban centers across
Amerika. Of course revolutionary work should be done among the people of
the “Black Belt” South (including the poor whites and others) as well,
as part of building the revolutionary movement to overthrow
capitalist-imperialism.

The BPP did not promote a mass exodus of New Afrikans back to the
“Black Belt; rather they correctly looked to New Afrikan
self-determination right in the oppressed urban communities where Black
people are concentrated. It really wasn’t until Harry Haywood’s book
Black Bolshevik was published in 1978 that the BBT was revived among the
New Communist Movement in the U.S. The name New Afrikan was adopted by a
convention of 500 Black Nationalist leaders in Detroit in March of 1968
at a Black government conference.

For the NABPP-PC “New Afrikan” is more than the latest in a series of
monikers given to Black people in Amerika. Afrika is our common
heritage. It (not the “Black Belt) is our common historic homeland. When
a Black person comes to Amerika from the Caribbean, Brazil or from
Afrika they become a part of the New Afrikan Nation in Amerika—and
suffer national oppression and discrimination—even though their
ancestors never set foot in the “Black Belt.”

As proletarians, our relationship to production and the world economy
makes us “New” and different from the peasantry of the Third World and
our ancestors in the Old South. Even if we could go back it would be a
retrogressive step—and we doubt this is what the Black masses want.

We Have Not Liquidated the National Question

By our pointing out that the shift from peasantry to proletarian and
from rural to urban has fundamentally changed the National Question for
New Afrikans, we expect some critics will accuse us of having
“liquidated” the National Question. For those who dogmatically apply
Stalin’s analysis, the problem is: “How can we be a nation without a
land base?”

We reiterate that the issue is a bit bigger and more complex than that.

If we look at the New Afrikan Nation as being part of a greater
Pan-Afrikan Nation, inclusive of the peoples of Afrika and the Afrikan
Diaspora (as Malcolm X did, and this liberation struggle in the context
of world proletarian socialist revolution, then we shall see the issue a
bit differently. Then we can also see our struggle within the context
of a future socialist Amerika that is multi-ethnic and a strong ally of
the oppressed peoples internationally.

The proletariat fundamentally has no country and seeks to create a
world without boundaries or nation states. So to the proletariat
national liberation is not an end in itself but a stage to pass through
on the road to World Communism. It is a stepping stone to greater unity
and the ending of all oppression.

There are many white comrades (Communists, Socialists, Anarchists,
Radicals and Progressives) who are committed to supporting Black
liberation because it serves the cause of liberating all of humanity
from imperialism and exploitation, and because it strengthens the
workers’ movement. The cause of uniting the Black liberation struggle
with the proletarian class struggle is a step towards the total
liberation of humanity and the whole world becoming one people.

Just as the proletariat seeks to abolish itself as a class by
abolishing all classes, we must seek to abolish ourselves as a nation by
abolishing all nations—all national divisions and all national
oppression. But this has to begin with liberating ourselves as nations
from the grip of colonialism, neocolonialism and imperialism. Just as
the proletariat must rise as a class and “pick up the gun to put down
the gun” (what is the state but a special body of armed men and wimyn?),
we create nation states only to render them obsolete and allow them to
fade away when they are no longer necessary. The transitory nature of
nation states under socialism is clear.

Comparing Racial and National Oppression

We can only speak of New Afrikan national liberation because we
suffer from national oppression. National oppression is linked to but
not the same as racist oppression. The people of Haiti don’t just suffer
national oppression as citizens of a Third World nation but also racist
oppression because they are black. Iceland is a small island nation
too, but if an Icelander family emigrates to the U.S., they will be
accepted as whites. If a Haitian family moves here they will face racial
oppression. All people of color, to one degree or another, suffer
racist oppression because of the institutionalization of the ideology of
white supremacy.

The Haitian family will suffer oppression and discrimination in the
U.S. because they are immigrants, because they are Black, and because
they are not white. A Korean family will have to face the first and the
last but not the specific oppression and discrimination leveled at
Blacks (New Afrikans in Amerika). This oppression is rooted in the
history of slavery (not just in the “Black Belt” South) and colonialism
that spawned the white racist mentality.

Whereas in Amerika, the oppression of the indigenous people is a bit
different. People with Indian features (“Skins”) suffer   from national
oppression and so do Indians with black or white-skinned features. Black
Indians are also oppressed as New Afrikans. White-skinned Indians (if
they are identifiable by their dress) may be subjected to racial slurs
and discrimination, but this is really national oppression. There is a
difference between “white Indians” and “white people” in Amerika, but
the difference is national rather than racial.

Within the Indian nations there are divisions between “Bloods” and
those who are perceived as “Black Indians” and “White (or mostly white)
Indians.” These contradictions (which can be antagonistic) between “Red:
“White” and “Black” members of the same oppressed indigenous nations
are a reflection of the culture of racism that permeates Amerikan
society (a colonial settler state) and projects throughout the world.

We do not (as many Black nationalists do) confuse race with
nationality. Nationality is not confined by race. One can change their
nationality. One can also have dual or multiple nationalities. One can
be a Puerto Rican and a New Afrikan (and also a Taino Indian). One can
be a Palestinian, an Arab and a New Yorker all at the same time.
National identity is a complex issue.

Do not some New Afrikans identify primarily as Amerikans? What is
Obama trying to sell us? Yet look around any prison and what do you see?
Look at the statistics on poverty, infant mortality, hunger,
unemployment, and violent deaths. These tell a very different story—one
of continued (and intensified) national and class oppression for the
Black masses in the U.S.

I have written before that:

“As revolutionary New Afrikan nationalists, we realize that there is a
contradiction between race and nationalism, and moreover, that there is
no nation composed of a single race. All existing nations, like the
Indian nations here in North Amerika, include whites and mixed bloods,
even though there are contradictions. It was the policies of white
colonialism created by the ruling class that produced these
contradictions, and indeed the New Afrikan Nation. In this regard, we
say all people of Afrikan heritage, regardless of skin tone, are part of
a single New Afrikan Nation a Pan-Afrikan Nation. Indeed, most “Blacks”
in Amerika are “mixed bloods; mixed with white and/or Indian
bloodlines.

“We therefore move beyond black and white dogmatism Native Americans
have always done this in adopting any “race” of people into their
nations who embrace and respect their heritage and culture. All
non-chauvinistic nations have done this. We also accept that
nationalities can overlap and are not merely an either/or situation.
People the world over embrace multiple nationalities, and so can New
Afrikans. One can be a Venezuelan and a New Afrikan, or a Lenape and a
New Afrikan, etc. This concept becomes practical revolutionary
internationalism that has all nationalities struggling for both national
self-determination and united multi-national, anti-imperialist
cooperation…

“From our point of view, the key question is building alliances
between the oppressed nations [and nationalities] within the U.S. and
abroad and the multi-national proletariat.”—Kevin “Rashid” Johnson, On
the Questions of Race and Racism, Revolutionary National Liberation,
and Building the United Front Against Imperialism, 2007  U.S. Revolution
as an Advance Towards Global Communism

The success of socialist revolution in the U.S. would “break the
back” of global imperialism and create conditions for successful
revolution in every other country. This eventuality will create the
conditions for a global dictatorship of the proletariat and move the
struggle decisively towards rendering nation states obsolete. What then
will be the need for national boundaries or militaries?

Could we not then move forward towards classless society at an
accelerated pace? Could we not, for example, create a single
international currency and globalized planning of production and
distribution of goods? Would it not be possible to have a World Health
Organization that really provides for people’s health needs and a global
commission with clout to address the issues of ecological preservation
and balance? Could we not standardize wages and prices and ensure a
decent standard of living for everyone on the planet—eradicating
poverty?

Conclusion 

Most theories on the National Question do not address the dialectical
relationship between New Afrikans in the Diaspora and Afrikans in
Afrika, the contradictions between Afrikans everywhere and imperialism
in the Age of Neo-Colonialism and the Crisis of Capitalist-Imperialism,
and between New Afrikans in the U.S. and the white-supremacist,
imperialist U.S. ruling class. These questions demand a reanalysis of
the BBT and our strategy for Black Liberation.

Kwame Nkrumah’s concept of an AII-Afrikan (Pan-Afrikan) Revolutionary
Party (supported by a military arm) is the correct answer to
neo-colonialism. We can take a lesson in this from the struggles going
on in South Asia. India contains many nationalities with their own
languages and regions, yet they are being led by a united Communist
Party of India (Maoist). Likewise we can look to Nepal where the Maoists
have won the support of many national minorities and have created
autonomous regions. In Afrika, neo-colonialism had an advantage because
it was able to play the various budding nation states and tribal groups
against each other. Our strength is based on unity and common purpose.

Our concept of Afrika as a Pan-Afrikan nation departs from the
Comintern’s definition of the National Question which confines the
nation to the boundaries already in existence (even though these only
reflect the imperialists’ carving up of Afrika). We don’t expect that
the New Afrikan Nation will ever constitute itself again in the “Black
Belt,” but we can play a significant role in the constitution of a
Socialist Afrikan Union, and in the creation of a Socialist U.S.A.

We believe that it is the historic destiny of the nation of New
Afrikans in Amerika to play a leading role among the oppressed peoples
of the World in overthrowing capitalist imperialism and advancing
humanity to a higher stage of political-economic organization based on
the principles of social justice and equality.

Our unique history and position within the “Belly of the Beast” gives
us the opportunity to deal the coup de grace to U.S. imperialism. Our
long suffering at the hands of white supremacist Amerika gives us a bond
with all who have suffered racist and national oppression and enables
us to be truly internationalist in outlook.

As Mao predicted:

“The struggle of the Black people in the United States is bound to
merge with the American workers’ movement, and this will eventually end
the criminal rule of the U.S. monopoly capitalist class.”

This is the mission of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party Prison Chapter and our position on the National Question.

Dare to Struggle Dare to Win! All Power to the People!

“Books Taken from George Jackson’s Cell”

Books Taken from George Jackson’s Cellhttp://www.scribd.com/embeds/74717270/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list&access_key=key-1vkw0cio6wmenj7t5354(function() { var scribd = document.createElement(“script”); scribd.type = “text/javascript”; scribd.async = true; scribd.src = “http://www.scribd.com/javascripts/embed_code/inject.js”; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(“script”)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(scribd, s); })();