Thousands of white people will take to the streets to stand in solidarity with the black community’s struggle for reparations and justice on October 17th, 2020.
The National March for Reparations to African People was a call-to-action to the white community from the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, the organization of white activists formed by and working under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party.
March for Reparations was a national political action and fundraising campaign to raise material resources directly towards the African liberation projects of the African People’s Socialist Party including its visionary Black Power Blueprint economic development program.
White people, here are ten reasons why we must march for reparations to African people:
(1) Justice for George Floyd and all victims of police murder.
Take a stand of genuine solidarity with the courageous African community uprisings that spread across the country after the brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and countless others. March in unity with the righteous struggle of African people to take political and economic control over their lives and resources so that never will another African life be destroyed by colonial police and white nationalist killers
(2) Make Wall Street pay reparations to African people.
March for Reparations to demand that Wall Street, Bank of America and other banks and corporations pay reparations to the Black Power Blueprint, the African community anti-colonial economic program of the Uhuru Movement. From the banks’ origins in slavery-profiteering to their present-day role in financing prisons, police and gentrification, they must pay reparations! Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic as African people are facing health disparities, massive evictions, unemployment, and starvation, with over 40 percent of black families unable to afford food, the billionaires have gotten 20% richer — by $565 billion. Make Wall Street Pay Reparations.
(3) Take responsibility as white people for the fact that we benefit from the oppression of African people. As Chairman Omali Yeshitela has shown, white people sit on the pedestal of a system built on the oppression of African people. Although we are not all part of the 1 percent, all white people benefit from this social system. There are two realities, two Americas inside this country: wealth, opportunity and security for white people at the expense of genocidal poverty and state-sanctioned terror for African people. We cannot continue to repeat the lie that “we are the 99 percent” and “we are all in the same boat” when the truth is, we did our part to help the 1 percent get to the top by killing, lynching, burning, and looting for their interests. The 1 percent got most of the stolen African wealth and we got a little bit of it too. But instead of fighting for a bigger share of stolen African resources for ourselves, it’s time for us to march for reparations to say that we refuse to be complicit any longer with our own government’s crimes against African people. We will not be their shock troops, we will not be their lynch mob, we will not fight their wars, we will not be their cops. We unite with reparations as a revolutionary demand. Reparations is not a favor or charity, but a return of the stolen wealth back into the hands of the African community.
(4) Reparations is a stand against U.S. wars of occupation at home and abroad. We must take a stand against the U.S. wars at home and abroad, from the colonial police murders of Africans in the U.S. and Immigrations Customs and Enforcement terror against the Mexican and other Indigenous people at the illegitimate colonial border; to the U.S. wars on the African continent as well as against the people of Syria, Yemen, Haiti, Pakistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Afghanistan, and U.S.-backed Israeli terror against the Palestinians. Victory to the African and oppressed peoples of the world!
(5) Demand freedom for all political prisoners. We must march to show our unity with the Black is Back Coalition’s demand for the immediate release of all Africans and colonized people held as political prisoners and prisoners of war in the U.S. colonial prison system. Free Sundiata Acoli, Jalil Muntaquim, Leonard Peltier, Mumia Abu Jamal and all others, as well as all African protestors arrested and jailed during the most recent wave of rebellions and protests. Take a stand against the colonial mass incarceration system in which 1 out of 3 African men will be imprisoned in his lifetime and over half of the 2.5 million people imprisoned in the U.S. are African people.
(6) Reparations must address the “racial wealth gap.” March for Reparations to address the ever-widening economic disparities faced by African people who face a completely different reality from what we in the white community experience. The median white family has 41 times more wealth than the median black family. Black people are twice as likely to die from COVID-19 as white people. 44 percent of black households have had a job or wage loss due to the pandemic.
Black families are twice as likely as white families to have zero or negative wealth. In the city of Boston the average white family has 31,000 times the wealth as the average black family, whose median net worth is estimated at $8. This is the legacy of slavery and colonialism. Reparations are owed to African people to address the enormous theft of resources by white power that elevated white people to the highest standard of living on the planet.
(7) Stand in solidarity with Mexican and Indigenous liberation. March for Reparations as a stand in solidarity with the Mexican and Indigenous people because this land belongs to them. We unite with the African People’s Socialist Party’s position that the land of the so-called “Americas” is the land of the Indigenous people, whether they speak Spanish or Lakota.
White people stole this land at gunpoint and then labeled the native people as the “illegal immigrants.” The Indigenous people in the U.S. are forced to live in concentration camps called “reservations” where the average life expectancy is 42 years and the COVID-19 pandemic is viciously impacting on their communities. March for reparations as a stand against the false, illegitimate colonial border separating the Mexican people from their own land in the Southwest. This is their land!
(8) Go beyond “anti-racism” and take a stand against colonialism. As Chairman Omali Yeshitela says, African people are struggling for black power over black lives, not to change the racist attitudes in the minds of white people. The movement for Black power for African people is a struggle against colonialism, the total domination of African people by a colonial state power for the profit-making advantage of the white population. That system is called colonialism. Reparations is a stand to go beyond an anti-racist politic that keeps ourselves as white people in the center. It is a stand against colonialism, for white solidarity with Black Power.
(9) Go beyond protest and get organized under the leadership of African Revolution. The March for Reparations is different from any other march of white people because it was called for by the African-led Uhuru Movement and because it is not a march for the sake of marching, but a call to white people to get organized under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party and build a mass movement for white reparations to African people.
(10) Our only future is in solidarity with African liberation. Reparations to African people is not a favor. It is our responsibility as white people and it is in our deepest interests as human beings. If we want to live in a world without any forms of oppression, a world in which all people whether LGBTQ, workers, disabled, women and everyone can live in genuine peace and social justice, we must stand in solidarity with the African people on whose backs the entire rotten social system of colonial-capitalism was built. The African Revolution is fighting to free the world of all oppression. This is the future we want to fight for and this is the world we want to live in.