Minneapolis, MN – On August 30, the newly-formed U.S. Out of Africa Committee of Women Against Military Madness hosted its first event, “Understanding the Tools of Empire: A Panel on Mass Incarceration, Police Violence, and Extraordinary Rendition.” 

Dozens of community members packed the main room of the Lucy Parsons Center. They wanted to learn about the relationship between racialized policing and mass incarceration inside U.S. borders, and U.S. intervention and state-sponsored abductions in Africa.

Khrys Wetzel, a founding member of the U.S. Out of Africa committee (UOA) and volunteer with the MN Anti-War Committee (AWC), opened the function. Wetzel grounded attendees in a brief history of Black August. In 1979, the Black Guerrilla Family, a group of revolutionaries incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison started it. Black August is a month to commemorate persecuted and slain Black freedom fighters. It is also an opportunity to strengthen organized resistance to racial injustice and state repression of Black people and other oppressed nationality peoples. 

Panelist Jae Yates of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice (TCC4J) explained, “North American policing has its roots in the slave patrols responsible for capturing escaped slaves and forcibly returning them to plantations.”

Yates continued, “Post-Reconstruction, these militias were formalized into modern police departments that funneled Black people into prisons for crimes that boiled down to taking up space in public.”

Panelist Alissa Washington, the executive director of Wrongfully Incarcerated and Over-sentenced Families Council (WIAOFC), said, “These struggles aren’t identical, but they’re connected through systems of power that decide whose lives deserve protection, whose suffering matters, and whose lives can be treated as disposable.”

Washington highlighted the sprawling nature of the U.S. prison system, which now comprises 20% of the global prison population. This, in spite of the fact that U.S. residents only make up 4.2% of the world’s population. The U.S. prison system is by far the largest on earth, with Black, Chicano, indigenous and other oppressed nationalities jailed at higher rates than whites.

One of the primary campaigns that WIAOFC has championed is the call to free Washington’s fiancé Cornelius Jackson, known as Corn. Jackson was sentenced to life without parole at the age of 19 for being present at the scene of a crime he did not commit. Panel attendees listened with rapt attention as Washington described Jackson’s case, then joined her in chanting “Free Corn!”

Nicholas Tolliver, another founding member of UOA emphasized that the same system that surveils, represses, incarcerates, and kills Black and other oppressed people across the U.S. also inflicts horrific violence on civilians in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. 

Over the past quarter-century, the U.S. has used the “War on Terror” as a pretext for expanding military intervention in countries across the African continent. This causes regional instability, rampant corruption, and bloody counterinsurgent aggressions funded and directed by the U.S. government and the Pentagon.

The strategic command center of the U.S. military in Africa, AFRICOM, carries out lethal drone strikes and summary executions with impunity. Companies including Honeywell and Palantir reap enormous profits manufacturing equipment and planning for this military violence. Meanwhile, the shadowy state-sponsored kidnapping practice of extraordinary rendition continues to transfer people to foreign countries. Prisoners are detained indefinitely and subjected to extrajudicial torture.

While racist domestic police forces brutalize, criminalize, incarcerate, and kill people inside U.S. borders, the U.S. military-industrial complex invests in militarized violence across the countries of Africa and beyond. 

Panelists closed by encouraging audience members to join groups like UOA, TCC4J and WIAOFC in order to build the collective power needed to effectively combat the oppressive U.S. state and its imperialist appendages overseas.

#MinneapolisMN #MN #OppressedNationalities #BlackAugust #AFRICOM #AntiWarMovement

‘Black August’ is a month-long celebration that marks the remembrance of the lives of freedom fighters who gave their all for African American progress, freedom and mass consciousness. The origin of Black August was first initiated in honor of the fallen soldiers who valiantly fought to liberate George Lester Jackson from the modern day slave trade we now call the U.S. penal system.

On Aug. 7, 1970, freedom fighters – James McClain, William Christmas, Ruchell Magee, Khatari Gaulden and 17-year-old Jonathon Jackson led a courthouse rebellion in a brave display of all out resistance and armed struggle. Unfortunately, lives were lost as they typically are in any war. Magee, who is currently still incarcerated, was the only survivor. And though our heralded comrade, George Jackson was not completely freed, the efforts of Jonathon and others would inspire decades of continued resistance and revolutionary solidarity.

In 1970, George Jackson had just completed the book Soledad Brother, a philosophical revolutionary classic. Jackson however, was assassinated by San Quentin prison guards one year later on Aug. 21, 1971. His second book, Blood in My Eye was published posthumously by Black Classic Press. Jackson’s legacy has inspired millions worldwide, while his literary works continue to teach even in his physical absence. This is the background in which Black August was first formed. It was deep within the belly of the California Penal System that it was first embraced and formally established as a month of reverence, as a time of revolutionary celebration.

Inmates today have continued to protest and press forward all over the U.S. Hunger strikes have roused hundreds of thousands in states such as California, Georgia and North Carolina. Letter writing campaigns have served as vital lines of inspiration and direct communication. Human rights activists such as Mumia Abu-Jamal have served as critical catalysts, tirelessly working to empower the voices of those who continue to be oppressed by the public and private prison industry.

Today, in the spirit of continued resistance we honor the deaths of Mark Clark, Fred Hampton and Geronimo Pratt. We honor the sacrifices and life work of political prisoners, Eddie Conway, Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli. We honor the countless victims of COINTELPRO’s callous attacks upon the people. We duly recognize the destructive ills of capitalism and its disastrous effects upon the oppressed, worldwide. In the age of the prison industrial complex, school-to-prison pipeline and widespread police brutality, the struggle for justice and liberation is alive now more than ever.

In the 34th year of Black August, may we all take heed to the spirited words of our brother and mentor, George Lester Jackson: “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved.”

Lamont Lilly is a contributing editor with the Triangle Free Press, a Human Rights Delegate with Witness for Peace and organizer with Workers World Party. He resides in Durham, North Carolina.

#DurhamNC #PeoplesStruggles #MarchOnWashington #Antiracism #BlackAugust #FreedomFighters #GeorgeJackson