One Africa Worldview

As the COVID-19 virus wreaks havoc on African, Mexican, and Indigenous communities, the U.S. government is bailing out the Wall Street banks with trillions of dollars.

The COVID-19 so-called ‘relief’ stimulus package, signed into law by U.S. president Donald J. Trump, allocated a whopping $425 billion for corporations. That $425 billion is going to the Federal Reserve, whose banks will have the authority to lend it out at a multiple of 10 times, essentially creating money out of thin air. This means the real size of the bailout going to the banks and corporations will be upwards of $4 trillion.

Minutes away from the towering buildings on Wall Street, refrigerated trucks are parked on the side of a Queens hospital to handle the influx of dead bodies; most are African.

This week we talk with Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, an organization of white people in solidarity with Black Power under the leadership of the African People’s Socialist Party. 

Nevel is a former St. Petersburg, Florida mayoral candidate who ran on a platform of “Unity Through Reparations”. Today he leads a campaign to “Make Wall Street pay reparations”. 

In this program Nevel reviews the role of Wall Street banks and insurance companies in the slave trade during the founding of America and exposes their ongoing profiteering from African suffering today.

He details the profit-making of Amazon and others during the coronavirus pandemic through the CARES Act and exploitation of African and other oppressed workers. He discusses an upcoming car protest targeting the offices of J.P. Morgan and the home of it’s CEO Jaime Dimon.

Hosted by Ticharwa Masimba and Matop Nyungu, the weekly People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for community self-reliance and self-help.

The vastly disproportionate death rate of African people in the U.S. from COVID-19 is attributed to so-called “pre-existing health conditions”. These conditions are imposed on the African community because we can’t afford the profit-driven healthcare, have limited access to healthy food, and are forced to live in poor, high density housing, among other symptoms of a population dominated by an hostile U.S. government. 

The U.S. has been condemned throughout the world for its inability to respond effectively or humanely to the pandemic. While the U.S. currently has more than one quarter of the world’s COVID-19 deaths, the government has done very little to provide meaningful resources to the vast majority of people. 

Other countries like China, Venezuela and Cuba have led the way in responding to the coronavirus. They’ve identified potential cures, implemented rapid stay-at-home policies, provided free rent (along with already-free healthcare) and have dispatched doctors throughout the world to treat infected populations.

The U.S. has responded by cutting off funding to the European-based, World Health Organization for its praise of China’s response to the global pandemic. The U.S. has also responded to Cuba by continuing strict sanctions intended to starve the socialist-run island into submitting to a capitalist-dominated economy, and has even blocked the flow of personal protective equipment to the island. 

This week we talk with Lisa Davis, member of the People’s Organization for Progress, vice-chair of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (BIBC) and chair of the BIBC’s Healthcare Working Group. She was co-signer to a recent letter to the FDA head demanding expedited approval of a Cuban-developed COVID-19 drug treatment, Interferon Alpha 2B. Based in New Jersey, she is an outspoken critic of the lack of hospitals and denial of healthcare in the black community. She is a researcher and advocate of nutritional and traditional African approaches to health and well-being.  

“I believe that the reason black people have such horrible statistics when it comes to being able to survive COVID-19 in these hospitals is because we are in the hospitals of a system that was set up by the colonizers. Just as the police can look at us and say “they look like a criminal” and kill us, the medical profession has the same ability to do that”, says Davis.

Hosted by Ticharwa Masimba and Matop Nyungu, the weekly People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for African community self-determination.

Even before Covid-19, Africans in the U.S. had an unemployment rate at least twice the national rate, while the median net worth of white families was 10 times greater than  that of African families.

Those who are working make up a disproportionate number of “essential” workers, risking their lives to generate greater profits for corporations that pay them meager wages and do not even provide personal protective equipment.  

Small African-owned businesses are struggling to access emergency grant funds that are mostly going to giant politically-connected companies.  

The current crisis poses the question “how can the African community build n economic infrastructure to meet the people’s needs and ensure the health and safety of the African working class?”

This week we talk with economic development leaders and business owners: 

• Ona Zene Yeshitela, President of the African People’s Education and Defense Fund

Hosted by Ticharwa Masimba and Matop Nyungu, the weekly People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for African community self-determination.

This week we turn our attention to Africa and efforts being made there to prevent widespread deaths from COVID-19.

On April 17th, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa released a report predicting that “Anywhere between 300,000 and 3.3 million African people could lose their lives as a direct result of COVID-19."

The People’s War radio show talks with Luwezi Kinshasa, Secretary General of the African Socialist International, and Tafarie Mugeri, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party-South Africa. 

Luwezi Kinshasa is originally from Congo and speaks 7 languages. He is now based in London and works as an educator and organizer in African communities throughout Europe and the continent of Africa.

He discusses the continuing struggle for African people to control and benefit from the vast resources of Africa and the impact of neo-colonialism on the ability of African workers to overcome poverty, starvation and illness.

He also addresses the relationship of China to Africa and the treatment of African people by China and Chinese people both inside of China and inside of Africa.

Tafarie Mugeri was born and raised in South Africa, called Occupied Azania by African patriots. He is currently working throughout the townships bringing health education and organization to African people there.

Mugeri criticizes the ANC government’s response to the pandemic, “They are more concerned about controlling African workers than controlling the coronavirus”. He reports on recent police activity in the townships, the impact of lockdowns on access to food, and responds to statements made this week by South Africa’s President Ramaphosa. 

Hosted by Ticharwa Masimba and Matop Nyungu, the weekly People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for community self-determination.

Reverend Edward Pinkney is featured on this third episode of WBPU FM’s new weekly radio program covering the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of the African working class worldwide.

Rev. Pinkney is a longtime leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization, working for economic and social justice in Benton Harbor, MI, a 90% African city located between Detroit and Chicago.

Rev. Pinkney has a history of fighting parasitic capitalism in defense of the human and civil rights of the working class people in cities throughout Michigan, taking on the water shutoffs and emergency manager laws that eliminate democracy and turn public assets like water over to the corporations. 

He is a strong and active advocate for the release of prisoners serving unjust or inordinately long sentences.

On this show Rev. Pinkney discussed the health emergency facing prisoners across the U.S., drawing on his personal experience and personal connections inside the prison system.

He discusses the impact of the coronavirus on the African populations of Detroit, Flint and throughout the state of Michigan.

He also shares his views on the impact of corporate take-overs and gentrification of long-time African cities like Detroit and calls for the development of African-owned and controlled businesses and neighborhoods.

Hosted by Ticharwa Masimba and Matop Nyungu, the People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for community self-reliance and self-help.

African People’s Socialist Party Chairman Omali Yeshitela is the guest on this second episode of WBPU FM’s new weekly radio program covering the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of the African working class worldwide. 

Over the past five decades, Chairman Omali has initiated campaigns to defend the democratic rights of the African community, to organize and raise up African women, to mobilize opposition to U.S. wars and to popularize the demand for reparations to African people.

He’s built the worldwide Uhuru Movement and the African Socialist International with branches in the U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and on the continent of Africa. 

In this episode of the People’s War Radio Show, Chairman Omali explains the roots of the alarming rates of African deaths from COVID-19, exposes the corporate agenda for profiting from the virus and describes the work of Project Black Ankh in providing African-controlled emergency relief services.

Hosted by Ticharwa Masimba and Matop Nyungu, the People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for community self-reliance and self-help.

WBPU FM radio, “Black Power 96.3 FM” has launched a weekly radio program to cover the coronavirus pandemic from the perspective of the African working class worldwide. 

The People’s War Radio Show features guests covering all aspects of the current crisis - providing health and medical tips and resources, economic survival information, analysis of the political and international impact, how to prepare for the future and organize for community self-reliance and self-help.

This first episode features guest Dr. Aisha Fields who discusses the anticipated impact of the coronavirus on the African community, dispels the myth that black people are immune and offers practical tips for protection against infection and building one’s immune system.

Dr. Fields is a physicist who has dedicated her skills for the development and empowerment of African people. She is the International Director of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project (AAPDEP), a non-profit organization whose mission is to “collectivize the vast skills of Africans around the world in order to establish community based development projects that improve the quality of life for African people everywhere while promoting self-reliance and self-determination as key to genuine, sustainable development.”

AAPDEP has organized renewable energy, water purification, farming, healthcare and ecological sanitation projects in West and Southern Africa, and community gardens in Washington, D.C.; Houston, Texas and Huntsville, Alabama. AAPDEP’s “Project Black Ankh,” a worldwide African emergency response organization, is currently mobilizing volunteers to conduct health education and community support efforts to combat COVID-19. Project Black Ankh was initiated during the Ebola crisis in Sierra Leone and was employed to assist Africans trapped in flood waters in Houston during Hurricane Harvey where emergency aid was denied to the black community.  

Opening remarks by Chairman Omali Yeshitela to the 10th annual conference of the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, held November 3, 2019 in Washington, D.C.

The Black is Back Coalition (BIBC) is an activist organization that organized for self determination for African people with working groups on healthcare, police brutality and political prisoners.

It emerged during the first term of U.S. president Barack Obama in an effort to give voice to black community demands and interest.

The Coalition has held Electoral Schools in various cities to train community members to field candidates who can advance a "National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination."

Today the demand for reparations is being debated on the streets of the U.S., in the media, in Congress and by U.S. presidential candidates. How did reparations become a household word? The demand for reparations to African people goes back to the days of slavery and has long been advocated by historians and activists. In 1982 the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) organized and conducted a World Tribunal on Reparations for Black People. Since then, the APSP and the Uhuru (Freedom) Movement have held 11 more Tribunals in cities across the country gathering evidence and testimony to support the Reparations claim. They have taken to the streets in protest marches demanding reparations. They have built non-profit businesses and political campaigns winning voluntary reparations contributed from individual white community members.

Burning Spear Media has just re-released this 30-minute radio documentary that was produced on the 1982 Reparations Tribunal, shortly after it was held in NYC. It features excerpts from statements by the People's Advocate Chairman Omali Yeshitela, and moving testimony from Afeni Shakur, member of the NYC Panther 21 and mother of the rapper Tupac; Leonard Jeffries, a former professor of Black Studies at the City College of New York; Mafundi Lake, former political prisoner held in Alabama’s notorious Atmore-Holman prison; Job Mashariki, Black Veterans for Social Justice; Akil Al-Jundi, prisoner advocate and survivor of the 1971 Attica massacre; Professor Del Hunter, Medgar Evars College and Ebun Adelona, black community health care advocate

For more information and additional material on the reparations issue, contact Burning Spear Media at 727-824-5700 or visit theburningspear.com.