The One Africa! One Nation! Marketplace in front of the Uhuru House at the Gary Brooks Community Garden in the majority-Black north side of Saint Louis, Missouri / credit: Black Power Blueprint
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in The Burning Spear. Light edits have been made to conform this piece to TF’s style.
This month, Regions Bank, a financial institution with branches in the U.S. South and Midwest, notified the Black nonprofit, African People’s Education and Defense Fund (APEDF), that the bank was “exiting” its 20-year relationship, closing accounts, withdrawing lines of credit and canceling mortgage loans.
This assault on the ability of African people to build economic self-reliance was the latest in a series of actions revealing government and corporate cooperation targeting the Black community programs of the Uhuru (Freedom) Movement, including its popular Women’s Health Center, Black Power Vanguard Basketball Court, “One Africa! One Nation!” Marketplaces, Gary Brooks Community Garden, Uhuru Jiko Commercial Kitchens and Bakery Cafe, Akwaaba Hall events venues, Black Power 96 radio station, Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles stores, Uhuru Foods & Pies and Uhuru House community centers for Black people.
Uhuru Wa Kulea African Women’s Health Center under construction in North St. Louis. It is being built as part of the Black Power Blueprint by the APSP to address the issue of infant and maternal mortality / credit: Burning Spear
Facebook has blocked the ability for supporters to crowdfund for Uhuru programs through their personal pages. GoFundMe froze over $9,000 in donations for the Hands Off Uhuru! Legal Defense Fund for more than three months until the group’s lawyers took legal action to get the funds released. The Stripe payment processing company also blocked contributions to the group for a period of time.
On February 14, the Pinellas County Commission revoked $36,801 in funding that had been previously approved for WBPU 96.3 FM Black community radio station in St. Petersburg, Florida, after expressing political opposition to its association with the Black power Uhuru Movement.
A community basketball court named, “Black Power Vanguard Basketball Court,” finished construction in 2022 in the majority-Black north side of Saint Louis, Missouri, as part of Black Power Blueprint / credit: Black Power Blueprint
These economic sanctions have come on the heels of a series of violent government-initiated attacks on the Uhuru Movement that began in earnest with the July 29 militarized FBI raid on seven Uhuru properties. That also includes two acts of arson, one arrest and interrogation, censorship in the removal of a change.org petition, and a U.S. State Department announcement of a $10 million reward for information that could tie Uhuru leaders to Russian government interference in U.S. elections and public opinion influencing.
Ona Zené Yeshitela, Board President of APEDF, says, “Our organization has built over 50 economic institutions, financed through our own fundraising work and the donations of thousands of people. These banks don’t want Black people to be able to feed, clothe and house ourselves. They do not want money circulating in the Black community.”
A volunteer work day at the Gary Brooks Community Garden in the majority-Black north side of Saint Louis, Missouri / credit: Burning Spear
Omali Yeshitela is founder of the Uhuru Movement and Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party. He is considered the primary target of the FBI raids and reportedly pending indictments on charges of serving as a pawn of the Russian government. A 1960s field organizer registering voters with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the 81-year-old Yeshitela has fought for Black Power for over 50 years.
He charges, “These banks are collaborating with the government to deny Black people the right to have free healthcare, to have economic development in our communities, for our children to have safe basketball courts. They want us on welfare. But we’ve got a right to have our own power. These banks are imposing economic sanctions on our movement because we are engaged in unifying the African Nation that represents an existential threat to the continuation of the colonial mode of production on which they are built and maintained.”
The African Doula Project trained 14 African women to become doulas/midwives at a session held at Akwaaba Hall/Uhuru House in the majority-Black north side of Saint Louis on the day of the FBI raid against the Uhuru Movement on July 29 / credit: Burning Spear
Yeshitela likens the economic aggression against Uhuru Movement institutions to those the U.S. government and society made against Marcus Garvey and his United Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), the bombing of Tulsa’s “Black wall street” and the destruction of the Black Panther Party Black-community survival programs.
He accuses the U.S. government of imposing economic sanctions against the Black-led Uhuru Movement, as they do against countries that do not bow to U.S. world domination, such as Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, China and Russia.
A four-plex apartment building in the majority-Black north side Saint Louis that serves as housing for the African Independence Workforce Program, creating jobs for those re-entering the community from the U.S. prison system / credit: Burning Spear
The actions of Regions Bank and other financial institutions come after widespread public exposure of the role of the slave trade in the birth of the U.S. banking and insurance industries and during a time of growing demands for reparations to Black people for slavery and colonialism.
A campaign has been launched to defend the Uhuru Movement, its leaders and institutions, chronicled at HandsOffUhuru.org. Supporters are raising funds for legal defense, mobilizing for protest demonstration at U.S. federal buildings, organizing call-ins to government officials and demanding “Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!”
Burning Spear is the official organ of the African People’s Socialist Party.
A scene in Nia Dacosta’s film, “Candyman” (2021), might go unnoticed, but it signifies the theme of representation appearing throughout the film. Representation refers to oppressed people being seen in media and politics, but it does not mean they wield power in those sectors.
Actor Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays the central character “Anthony McCoy,” whom we aren’t sure can be called a protagonist or an antagonist, even by the movie’s end. In the aforementioned scene, he stands at the intersection of a long-abandoned neighborhood, which is composed of former row-house apartments that used to surround the high-rise tower of Cabrini-Green, a public-housing project in Chicago. The street he is facing is empty of typical neighborhood life—adults going to and from work or errands, kids playing, teens hanging out. But remnants of their neighborhood, including the doorless, windowless apartment units that offer nothing but a foreboding darkness, stand as empty, haunting reminders of a people who used to live there but are long gone. The street is marked by a sign for “Mohawk St.”, and as he walks around the corner, another street sign reads “Locust St.” These are actual streets in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood in Chicago, lending credibility to the storyline by anchoring the tale in the actual remains of the infamous neighborhood, whose residents had been long displaced through gentrification.
A scene from “Candyman” (2021)
But the street names seem to also juxtapose the disappearance of Indigenous tribes, like the Mohawk. They are relegated to outposts that are out of sight, out of mind for the rest of us. The impetus behind the mass displacement of both the Black and poor residents of Cabrini-Green and Indigenous people is the locust-like swarm of gentrification, which could be argued is a modern day form of settler-colonialism. It might be a stretch to make this kind of observation of this scene. It might not have been one that DaCosta might have been intending to make. But it is a connection I couldn’t help making, considering “Candyman” is less of a horror film than an indictment of white supremacy and the terror that it inflicts upon the communities it ravages.
I will try not to provide many spoilers in this review. I will say seeing the first “Candyman” (1992) is critical to understanding the expansion of the story and themes in the current iteration. But those themes that are outside of the conventional horror narrative are as important to the experience as continuing the urban legend of “Candyman.”
Abdul-Mateen is convincing in his portrayal of “Anthony,” a young Black aspiring artist struggling to make his mark on the art world. Ebulliant actor Teyonah Parris plays McCoy’s partner, “Brianna Cartwright,” also a young Black up-and-comer working as a curator at the gallery where her partner’s work is being shown.
A scene from “Candyman” (2021)
The characters live together in one of the trendy, expensive apartments in the gentrified Cabrini-Green neighborhood, long after the towers had been torn down. Brianna and Anthony appear to have a loving, committed relationship, a lovely expression of Black Love that we all enjoy seeing so much, and we need to see more of. That is until Anthony learns about the legend of Candyman from Brianna’s brother, “Troy,” played by actor Nathan Stewart-Jarrett. Anthony is fascinated with the legend and pursues inspiration for new art by visiting what is left of the old Cabrini-Green neighborhood. He meets one of the last remaining residents, seemingly neighborly “William Burke,” portrayed by veteran actor Colman Domingo.
Here is where I’ll leave off describing the timeline of the movie, because how things happen almost take a backseat to what some of those things seem to represent.
Anthony slowly transforms into… something, and his physical transformation coincides with what seems like the fraying of his mental state. Anthony attempts to protect his partner, Brianna, in a pivotal scene that exposes something far more sinister in real life than a horror movie boogeyman: The horrifying and lasting effects of trauma and the unaddressed mental illness among Black people, particularly how Black men are misunderstood or ignored when they suffer mental health crises and trauma.
The tendency for many of us to dissociate ourselves from mental illness and trauma is touched on in a seemingly disconnected flashback that Brianna has of a traumatic childhood experience with her father. No, it’s not sexual abuse, but it is traumatic. But because she never confronts what happens, when her partner, Anthony, begins to display behavior that suggests his mental health is fraying, Brianna responds with less and less understanding, and more and more hostility. Focusing more on moving up in her career than her partner’s obvious growing difficulties, she ultimately leaves Anthony alone to face whatever he is experiencing.
A scene from “Candyman” (2021)
Brianna’s brother, Troy, is also pointedly critical of Anthony as the Black Man Living Off a Black Woman. But Troy himself is settling into a relationship with his new partner, “Clive” (played by Brian King), who Brianna accepts and notes is a welcome change from her brother’s usual unsavory choices. It is another interesting play on the trope of listless Black men being leeches on successful Black women that doesn’t sting any more or less because the one employing it in this case is a gay man. Rather it seems that this represents the pervasiveness of the deadbeat Black man stereotype—even other marginalized Black men believe it.
Much of the first third of the film revolves around Anthony’s transformation. That is where the trauma of centuries of racist violence against Black men emerges.
Much of Anthony’s transmogrification occurs in front of mirrors. That is obvious to the storyline and the myth of Candyman, but it doesn’t quite apply to Anthony because he isn’t sure if he is hallucinating or not. When he realizes that what he is seeing is real, the scene conveys less horror movie scare than a deep reflection into what happens to Black men’s souls living in a white supremacist system that loves their culture, their swag, their art and anything else from which society can profit. But this society doesn’t love them, and it will not hesitate to express its disregard for Black men in the most violent, inhumane ways possible.
That long history of racist violence against Black men is told in cleverly laid-out shadow puppetry, which simultaneously removes the physical gruesomeness of the acts portrayed while delivering their inhumane brutality. Each shadow-puppet story relates to a different iteration of Candyman, and the collective trauma of centuries of violent racist brutality against Black men turns the Candyman figure into something other than a villain. Terrifying in his visage and actions, certainly, but the question emerges as the connections are made between this history and the urban legend come to life: Is Candyman the monster, or is the monster what created Candyman?
A scene from “Candyman” (2021)
As viewers hopefully make this connection, they are invited if they are thinking further to ask a larger question: Are Black men, who lash out at a society that finds every way imaginable to destroy them, the monsters society says they are, or is the monster really society?
Indictments of white supremacist society and privilege, and the impact of the trauma of community having been erased, are woven throughout the film, reflecting ways Black people are either dismissed or used before being discarded.
The contempt and condescending paternalism of society’s gatekeepers is represented by the gallery owner and the art critic—and even the Black major-gallery curator—as they have little regard or use for Anthony as he struggles to produce content that will elevate his profile. They do not hesitate to disregard him when he is no longer of use to them.
The ease with which an oblivious white society appropriates Black culture, traditions and even urban legends—believing no consequences exist for that appropriation because they have no connection to the community those things come from—is reflected in a scene that is on the surface typical horror-movie, high-school kid hijinks.
The crushing trauma of surviving the systematic eradication of one’s community, and the desire to get back or revive what was taken or destroyed, is an underlying aspect of the actions of neighborly-seeming sole survivor/resident of Cabrini-Green, William Burke.
The way society is more accepting of a Black women’s efforts to climb the ladder, and how easily they dismiss Black men as they fall down it—even as they watch—can be extrapolated as we witness Anthony’s growing instability as it manifests itself when he and Brianna are trying to court a renowned gallery owner.
The way that our parents may have been doing the best they thought they could by moving their children out of the ‘hood and into “better” neighborhoods, encouraging them to forget where they came from in an effort to give them a better life, seeps through the cracks as Anthony confronts his mother about a past she has kept from him. The toll of keeping that secret trauma seems to have weighed heavily on his mother, as well, as family secrets are wont to do…
The running theme of racist police violence in the film—from beginning to end—is reminiscent of… well… every story we know about racist police violence. Brianna is ultimately put in a horrific situation, and then cynically used against Anthony in a way that shouldn’t be unfamiliar to our real-life experience with racist police terrorism. Brianna realizes then who she is, who Anthony is, and that he is the only one who can save her.
I have noticed among online fan reviews wildly divergent reactions to this movie, almost strictly along racial lines. If the reviewer is a white person, they almost unanimously and unequivocally hate this movie. I see these people as those who do not want to face the traumas and horrors of the history and continuing legacy of racist violence against Black people, which I believe this film effectively expands upon from the original “Candyman.” Although, I find it odd some who have seen this film say they loved the original, but hate this one because it’s “too political,” because they clearly missed the political history of Candyman in the original. They’re mad Candyman only kills certain people, but aren’t bothered at all by the historical track record and legacy of the broken bodies and souls of Black men, women, and children that created Candyman. So they do not see the connection between real life reflected in the film’s themes. But selective memory is what this society is great at, so this response is actually not a surprise at all.
But for others who understand what DaCosta’s “Candyman” is trying to say and why, it may not be scary in the traditional slasher/spine-tingler sense, so it’s hard to say whether or not the movie is “good” as a traditional horror film. However, the real-life nightmares and horrors reflected in this film are what many Black viewers will be all too familiar with.
As Brianna’s brother, Troy, says early in the movie, “Black people don’t need to be summoning shit.”
We don’t have to summon supernatural boogeymen. The horrors we live are real.
Jacqueline Luqman is a radical activist based in Washington, D.C.; as well as co-founder of Luqman Nation, an independent Black media outlet that can be found on YouTube (here and here) and on Facebook; and co-host of Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary.”
Photograph of Mykael Ash’s painting that depicts the 1917 East Saint Louis Massacre / credit: Frances Madeson
Every year on July 2, the extended family of 67-year-old Dhati Kennedy gathers on the banks of the Mississippi River to pray, sing and place a memorial wreath in the muddy waters.
“My father’s people came up from the South looking for a better life,” Kennedy told Toward Freedom. “But the perceived advancement of Black people at that time was often met with violence—and state sanctioned violence.”
About 60 family members clad in white join Kennedy every year to honor their grandfather, who died a hero defending the family from a pogrom waged by thousands of white people who swarmed Black neighborhoods on that day in 1917 in East Saint Louis, a riverfront city in Illinois. They also mourn and celebrate their grandmother, who helped pilot the family’s makeshift raft across the river to the larger city of Saint Louis in Missouri. This feat came after police closed the Eads Bridge, in what has been viewed as a way to prevent East Saint Louis’ Black residents from escaping. His grandmother was a widow for just a few weeks, though, before dying of pneumonia.
Escaping White Terror
Kennedy’s father, Samuel, was 7 years old when he and his siblings hung onto a vessel made out of doors ripped from their hinges. Having heard screams and gunshots, Kennedy’s teenage brothers scrambled to build the raft the family used to escape. Many witness accounts reported white gunmen setting ablaze the homes of Black families and shooting them as they fled the inferno with children in their arms.
Earlier in the day, Kennedy’s grandfather lost his life after luring six of the white killers away from his wife and children. He killed two of the attackers before the others murdered him.
“We give thanks to God and to our ancestors. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be here now. We pour libations and say, ‘Ashé,’” Kennedy said, describing the African spiritual act of pouring liquid that has been blessed to honor ancestors. Ashé is a Yoruba concept that originated in what is now Nigeria. It is used to describe the force of the universe. To some, it can mean, “So be it.”
Dhati Kennedy / credit: Frances Madeson
Little-Known History’s Impact
It’s a heavy legacy, one that Kennedy tries to wear as lightly as possible, so he can persevere in his lifelong mission to spread knowledge about this history.
The descendants and their supporters’ efforts reached a pinnacle in 2017, the massacre’s centenary year. Interviews and articles abounded in local, national and international media. Plus, ceremonies culminated in a march featuring thousands of people from both sides of the river.
Yet, five years later, the East Saint Louis Race Massacre is still not taught in the Illinois public-school history curriculum. Neither are the histories of similar atrocities that killed Black people and destroyed homes and businesses in other cities in Illinois, such as Evanston, Springfield and Chicago.
“We know that what happened in 1917 had an impact on this region economically, politically, socially, demographically—and had a huge impact psychologically,” Kennedy explained. “If you truly want to end racism, let’s tell the truth. Let’s get it all out there. Prejudice from individuals? That’s not the thing. It’s the systemic stuff holding us down that hurts us most.”
What Led to the Race Massacre
In the days preceding the 1917 race massacre, striking white workers from Aluminum Ore Company were out patrolling Black neighborhoods in a Ford Model-T car, firing potshots at Black workers, who—with few other options for employment—had been hired to replace them. Wage-seeking white men had become scabs, too. But the strikers terrorized the Black community. The East St. Louis Daily Journal, a local newspaper, had also run a series vilifying Black people migrating from southern states, calling them “Black colonizers” and blaming them for a crime wave. In May 1917, the paper had on several occasions claimed to predict future race riots, according to historian Charles L. Lumpkins.
The community was not completely defenseless, however, as some of the local Black men had served in World War I. While they didn’t have big armaments, they could stand guard outside their houses and shoot back with their squirrel-hunting rifles. Some were crack shots. On July 1, when two such Black defenders aimed fire at two white men in a Model-T they’d assumed had come gunning for Black workers, they accidentally killed two undercover police officers driving an unmarked car.
The next day, the duo’s error unleashed a mob of thousands of white people. In the end, more than 100 Black residents were slaughtered. Black adults and children reportedly had been beheaded, burned alive and drowned. Some were beaten with clubs and stones, while others were hung from street lamps. This came while officials either turned a blind eye or made matters worse by—for example—closing the main route of escape.
An estimated $400,000 worth of homes and businesses were destroyed. That would amount to $9.6 million today. The destruction displaced an estimated 6,000 Black East Saint Louisans.
“Much of the neighborhood where my father lived is vacant lots now,” Kennedy said. “Just acres and acres of vacant lots.”
A snapshot 105 years later leads to a tally of compounding losses: The East Saint Louis economy is limping along while the landscape remains blighted. Its population shrunk by 58 percent from 60,000 people in 1917 to 25,000 people in 2020. Plus, almost a third of its overwhelmingly Black residents live beneath the federal poverty line.
“It’s the wealthy who benefit from the turmoil that everyone else is in,” Kennedy said.
A political cartoon about the East Saint Louis massacre of 1917. The original caption read, “Mr. President, why not make America safe for democracy?” That referred to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s catch-phrase (“The world must be made safe for democracy”) to convince the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany, allowing the United States to become a combatant in World War I / credit: William Charles Morris for the New York Evening Mail
The Role of Reparations
Jeffrey “JD” Dixon is director of Empire 13, a grassroots activist organization originally formed to combat racial discrimination at Empire Comfort Systems, a nearby manufacturer. Then we have the Rev. Dr. Larita Rice Barnes of Metro East Organizing Coalition, a faith-based grassroots organization working for racial and economic dignity. Both organizations form part of a coalition building a political program from the ashes of the 1917 massacre. They believe the community deserves recompense for the cruelty and crimes that smashed the city like an insect, but never eradicated its heart.
“East Saint Louis is a city that’s so full of love that—no matter where you go—even to the gang bangers, which we have, there’s a spot of love,” Barnes said. “And even though [the] media has amped up a lot of negativity, we are striving to tell our own story, and share the truth about our people. We are known as the City of Champions.”
She’s referring to jazz composer Miles Davis; choreographer Katherine Dunham; and R&B legends Ike and Tina Turner. They had either been raised in the city or lived there. That’s not to mention a slew of athletes, including Major League Baseball players.
“We need economic relief and economic justice,” Dixon said. “America is an economic powerhouse because of slave labor, because of systemic economic oppression of Black labor—be it from lower wages, mass incarceration, icing us out of government contracts. Our Black communities have a Third-World country status, and we’re treated like second-class citizens.”
Dixon is still incensed Black residents of East Saint Louis could not cover damages through their property insurance policies because insurers said they needed riot insurance.
“There was no accountability for the hundreds of lives that were lost or for the millions of dollars of properties destroyed, the generational wealth lost from businesses and homes that could’ve been passed down to the next generation,” Dixon said. “Some of those businesses could’ve been Fortune 500 companies.”
A screen shot of a petition to Illinois elected officials, demanding reparations for the victims and descendants of the 1917 East Saint Louis Massacre
What Justice Might Look Like
Barnes and Dixon’s program stresses new ways to redirect public resources to the communities that have suffered the most systemic economic oppression. That could include direct payments, business and home loans on advantageous terms, grants, restoration of felon rights, and state legislation against race-based discrimination.
To commemorate the massacre, the group held a march through the old Black neighborhoods. Once teeming with homes and businesses, it is now an urban landscape of vacant lots. In an attempt to reclaim the streets and unite the past with the present with every step and chant, a few dozen marchers who braved the pouring rain on Saturday called out: “We are the people. The mighty, mighty people. Fighting for justice. Justice for the people.”
Barnes has considered that race-based reparations can cause resentment, and that an alternative course to improve the material conditions of Black people may be to lift up the multi-racial working class. But she is concerned about Black people who languish in poverty, beneath the working class.
“I believe in lifting from the bottom up, and reaching those closest to the pain,” she explained. “Working class-based reparations would fail to reach some people, and we can’t build successfully by leaving people behind.”
Barnes brought the struggle for reparations back to the memory of their ancestors.
“It was something that they wanted and couldn’t achieve,” she said. “But perhaps we can.”
Frances Madeson writes about liberation struggles and the arts that inspire them. She is the author of the comic political novel, Cooperative Village. Follow her on Twitter at@FrancesMadeson.
A 2-year-old argument about “anti-Blackness” in Cuba, which Black solidarity activists in the United States say has no basis in reality, has reared its head.
It appeared in a video posted on Twitter on May 1 that has since gone viral, generating more than 2 million views in four days. The video features Afro-Cuban Grecia Ordoñez, who claims Cuban Revolution leaders Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara were racists who engaged in “white saviorism.” She also claimed genocide was committed in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the time Cuba’s revolutionary government intervened to support rebels fighting the DRC government put in place after revolutionary leader and first Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961. Further, she pointed to Afro-Cubans being detained in Cuba as an example of racism.
Activists debunked her claims on Twitter, including a thread of articles and videos featuring members of anti-imperialist group Black Alliance for Peace.
For 2 years, the “anti-Blackness” claim has allowed "human rights" narratives to form around revolutionary states in the crosshairs of the U.S. empire. This video comes on the heels of one of the largest U.S. youth delegations to visit #Cuba (@PeoplesForumNYC). Here's a thread 🧵 https://t.co/oV3AhE9V0u
— Black Alliance for Peace (@Blacks4Peace) May 4, 2023
The thread included the following articles and videos:
While Ordoñez doesn’t point to evidence for the claim about genocide in Congo, a 2021 article in the Journal of Cold War Studies states:
“In reality, the main purpose was to crush the rebellion and secure Western interests in Congo. The intervention reflected a cavalier attitude toward sovereignty, international law, and the use of force in postcolonial Africa and had the adverse effect of discrediting humanitarian reasoning as a basis for military intervention until the end of the Cold War. The massacre of tens of thousands of Congolese in Stanleyville was a unique moment in which African countries united in their criticism of Western policies and demanded firmer sovereignty in the postcolonial world.”
Black Activists Reject Claims of Cuba’s Racism
The Black Alliance for Peace released a statement close to two years ago after protests erupted in Cuba over claims of racism. The statement, titled, “Biden’s Commitment to U.S. White Power Is the Real Race Issue in Cuba,” concludes, “We say to all those who pretend to be concerned about Cuba to demand an end to the embargo and to respect the right of the Cuban people to work through their own problems. As the first republic established on the basis of race and subsequently invented apartheid, the United States should be the last on the planet to lecture anyone on race relations.”
Activists like Asantewaa Nkrumah-Ture raised her voice against the claim that Cuba holds Black political prisoners.
“Who are ‘Black political prisoners’ in Cuba? What are their names? What organizations do they belong to & are those organizations independent of [U.S. National Endowment for Democracy] NED and [U.S. Agency for International Development] u.s. AID? Do they belong to [movement of jailed dissidents] Ladies in White? LOL, you sound more & more like Carlos Moore,” Nkrumah-Ture tweeted. Moore is an Afro-Cuban academic who wrote a 1988 book criticizing Cuban leader Fidel Castro as using racist means to grow Cuba’s influence around the world.
Who are "Black political prisoners" in Cuba? What are their names? What organizations do they belong to & are those organizations independent of NED and u.s. AID? Do they belong to Ladies in White? LOL, you sound more & more like Carlos Moore 🇨🇺
Further, activist and Ph.D. candidate Kimberly Miller tweeted in reply, “Are the ‘Black political prisoners’ you’re referring to leaders of San Isidro ‘movement,’ like Luis Alcántara or Denis Solís, who admittedly had members ‘who love Trump’ and directly met w/charge d’affaires at U.S. Embassy in Havana to foment regime change??”
are the “Black political prisoners” you’re referring to leaders of San Isidro ‘movement’ like Luis Alcántara or Denis Solís who admittedly had members “who love Trump” and directly met w/chargé de affaires at US Embassy in Havana to foment regime change?? https://t.co/NUpR919H9X
U.S. Solidarity Activists Detained After Visit to Cuba
Meanwhile, Ordoñez’s viral video came just as the largest solidarity delegation in recent history commemorated May Day or International Workers’ Day, alongside 100,000 Havana residents representing many sectors of work. Last year’s parade drew 700,000 Cubans in Havana, as well as thousands of people who celebrated across the island. However, this year, the more-than-60-year-old U.S. blockade on Cuba has caused fuel shortages that required Cuba to cancel the parade itself and instead organize events in Havana’s neighborhoods, as Musa Springer reported on Radio Sputnik’s “By Any Means Necessary,” co-hosted by TF Board Secretary Jacqueline Luqman.
“Cubans say they are in a second Special Period,” Springer said, referring to the first Special Period that occurred after the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, thereby causing drastic shortages of food, fuel and machinery in the 1990s. Cuba’s gross domestic product thus dropped by 35 percent in three years.
More than 1,000 foreigners from 58 countries, all representing 271 youth, labor, social and political organizations traveled into Cuba this year for the parade, as well as for an annual conference held the next day. The delegation, led by People’s Forum in New York City, included between 300 and 350 U.S.-based activists, including many young people who had never been to Cuba before. The People’s Forum tweeted that their delegation faced a second questioning behind closed doors upon their return to U.S. airports and that their digital devices had been confiscated for searches.
Upon arrival to U.S. airports, U.S. citizens and non-citizens usually line up at booths to be questioned by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol officers. Most people are allowed to continue into the United States after answering a few questions about the reason for their journey abroad. Any reason can provoke a second questioning in private, which can extend a traveler’s time inside the airport by hours.
Activist Bill Hackwell wrote in Resumen Latinoamerica English that both members of the International Peoples Assembly delegation and the LA US Hands Off Cuba Committee delegation faced a second round of interrogations, as well as device confiscations. At the time of his writing, members in those delegations had been freed.
A group of the U.S. solidarity activists who traveled with the People’s Forum met with Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel on May Day, or International Workers’ Day on May 1 / credit: Estudios Revolución
Hackwell commented on the irony by remarking on his experience in Cuba.
“What I have seen this past week is a government here more concerned about the well-being of the next generation of U.S. youth than their own government that marginalizes them by constricting access to jobs with a living wage, that makes access to education nearly impossible without the burden of student loans that they will carry for years, and that incarcerates them at a rate like no other country in the world.”
Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of the People’s Forum, thanked the Cuban people for their solidarity.
“These unfortunate incidents are further evidence of the wrong direction of a hostile U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba,” De Los Santos concluded in the tweet. “Their actions in fact demonstrate that the U.S. is far from a bastion of democracy and human rights, and rather than intimidate us, they motivate us to strengthen our struggles for true, transformative change here in the United States.”
🇨🇺✊🏽 After hours of harassment & interrogation, all the comrades who traveled to Cuba are FREE! Thanks for all the love & solidarity received from throughout the world!!
The aggressive attitude of the Customs & Border Patrol officials towards the members of our delegation during…
— Manolo De Los Santos (@manolo_realengo) May 4, 2023
Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez expressed his solidarity with the detained activists.
“Cheer up guys, we’re with you. Thank you for your courage, for supporting #Cuba and for facing the hatred of those who cannot stand the fact that the Cuban Revolution has the support of the most progressive youth in the very bowels of the beast. We send you a big hug.”
Ánimo, muchachos, estamos con ustedes. Gracias por la valentía, por apoyar a #Cuba y por enfrentar en las propias entrañas del monstruo el odio de quienes no pueden soportar que la Revolución Cubana tenga el apoyo de los jóvenes más progresistas. Les mandamos un fuerte abrazo. https://t.co/N6K2H92CaX
— Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez (@DiazCanelB) May 4, 2023
U.S. Government Attacks Black Socialists
Meanwhile, the Hands Off Uhuru campaign announced via email to the press that on Tuesday, May 2, African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela and African People’s Solidarity Committee Chairwoman Penny Hess appeared in federal court in Tampa, Florida, in response to the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s April 18 indictment. The Black socialist group is accused of allegedly attempting to “sow discord” in the United States with the support of Russia.
Yeshitela, an 81-year-old Black man, and Hess, a white woman active in the movement since 1976, were “booked, restrained with handcuffs and leg irons, and held in a cell for several hours before appearing before a judge who released them on conditional bond that included a requirement to hand over their passports.
On Monday, May 8, Uhuru Solidarity Movement Chair Jesse Nevel will appear in response to the same indictment.
