Omali Yeshitela Speaks - Softcover

Yeshitela, Omali

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1891624032 ISBN 13: 9781891624032

Publisher: Burning Spear Uhuru Publications, 2005

Synopsis

Omali Yeshitela is the Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party and leader of the Uhuru Movement. For the majority of his life, Yeshitela has worked for the liberation of African people. He speaks all over the world in his quest to build the African Socialist International.

Yeshitela's struggle for a united and liberated Africa under the leadership of African workers continues the unfinished legacy of Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Kwame Nkrumah.

In this new collection of 28 speeches, articles and interviews, Yeshitela emerges as the foremost revolutionary political thinker of our time. His analysis from the "point of view of the slave" is sharp, witty and irrefutable.

About this title

About the Author

Born October 9, 1941 in St. Petersburg, Florida as Joseph Waller, Omali Yeshitela entered political life during the Civil Rights Movement. As a SNCC organizer in 1966, Yeshitela led a group of young African people into the St. Petersburg City Hall and ripped down a racially offensive mural that had hung on the first landing for thirty years. He was subsequently given a five-year sentence, of which he spent two years in prison.

Yeshitela continued organizing while imprisoned, forming JOMO, the Junta of Militant Organizations in 1968. Four years later he founded the African People's Socialist Party, bedrock of the emerging Uhuru (Freedom) Movement that would wage struggles throughout the South and elsewhere to defend the interests of the black working class. In 1976 the Party formed the African People's Solidarity Committee (APSC), an organization of North American or white people who would work under the Party's leadership to build support in their own community.

By the late 1970s the Party's work expanded to California, and within a few years Yeshitela moved their headquarters to Oakland. There the Party created some of its most successful economic and political institutions including the Uhuru House community organizing center, Spear Graphics, the Uhuru Bakery Café and the Uhuru Furniture Store. A second furniture store soon followed in Philadelphia. Yeshitela continued to advance the political work by forming the African National Prison Organization (ANPO) in 1979, holding the first World Tribunal on Reparations for African People in 1982, and forming the African National Reparations Organization (ANRO) that same year.

During the 1980s, Chairman Omali waged countless campaigns and worked to give voice to the African working class. He edited The Burning Spear newspaper, published books and pamphlets and made groundbreaking advances in his own political theory. African Internationalism defines capitalism as a parasitic system born from the enslavement of Africans and the oppression of colonized peoples worldwide. During this period Yeshitela and the African People's Socialist Party built long-standing relationships with Mexican, Filipino and Arab liberation movements.

In the early 1990s, the Party's headquarters relocated back to St. Petersburg and the Chairman founded the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement. Seeking mass participation, InPDUM was designed to expose and stop U.S. government efforts that keep the African community from organizing. InPDUM's mission became increasingly relevant following the 1996 police murder of an 18-year-old African motorist in St. Petersburg. African workers rose up in rebellions and the Uhuru Movement went into immediate action, holding vigils, demonstrations and community meetings.

Weeks later on the day a grand jury exonerated the killer cops, police attacked the Uhuru House. They pepper sprayed Chairman Omali and other organizers, and used the city's entire supply of tear gas on over one-hundred people attending their regularly scheduled meeting. In response the African working class rose up in a second rebellion that brought down a police helicopter and pushed back the presence of over three hundred heavily armed police.

Following these uprisings, Chairman Omali and the Uhuru Movement became the recognized representatives of the African community. He ran for Mayor in 2001, winning every black and nearly every mixed precinct with his platform of “St. Petersburg united in shared prosperity.”

Various fronts of the Uhuru Movement are active today in cities throughout North America, Africa and Europe, with a growing base in South America. He leads the fight for a united, liberated Africa under the leadership of the African working class and is committed to the struggle for Africa as the birthright of African people everywhere.

Review

Omali Yeshitela Speaks highlights the contributions of one of the most important revolutionary thinkers and leaders today. --Dr. Rod Bush, Associate Professor at St. John's University and author of We Are Not What We Seem: Black Nationalism and Class Struggle in the American Century

Yeshitela gives us food for thought and, hopefully, fuel for action. --Mumia Abu Jamal, award-winning journalist, death row inmate framed by Philadelphia police, author of We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party

A must-read for activists, internationalists, socialists, as well as for non-activists, scholars and mainstream politicians. --Yuri Kochiyama, lifelong activist and close friend of Malcolm X

About this edition

• Publisher: Burning Spear Uhuru Publications
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1891624032
• ISBN 13: 9781891624032
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392