One Africa Worldview

It’s been a month since the beginning of Russia’s military campaign to stop NATO expansion in Ukraine. 

The March 2nd vote in the United Nations General Assembly on a resolution denouncing Russia revealed a split between the white countries of the world and many of the countries of Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America, 52 of which either voted against the resolution, abstained or did not cast a vote at all. 

On today’s episode of Black Power Talks, we explore the African Internationalist perspective on this war.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

We discussed hip hop and politics with our guest for this episode is Jermaine"Complex" Simpson.  Complex is a rapper from San Diego, California.  

Born Jermaine Simpson, Complex was raised in the heart of the African community of San Diego.  Complex is the author of four albums, West Coast MC’n, State of Mind, A Beautiful Mess and Wrath and Roses.  Much like his favorite artists, Ice Cube, Rakim, Tupac, and among others, Complex straddles the lines of a few genres of hip hop, namely the hardcore hip hop and the much more political genres of rap music.  He explores topics such as mental health, reparations, police terror, and African resistance.

In his colonial job, Jermaine is a trained counselor and holds four different degrees and many other certifications but his profession is as a hip hop artist.  After a long hiatus, Jermaine released his first studio album in over 15 years in January 2021, A Beautiful Mess.  In January 2022, he released his fourth album, Wrath and Roses.  You can find his music at https://complexgotbars.com/

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

In this episode, we engage what is amongst the most important interventions into socialist and communist thought ever, Colonialism as the Mode of Production.  Since its inception, the African People’s Socialist Party, the Uhuru Movement and the ideology of African Internationalism has clearly stated that the African struggle for liberation is against colonialism. 

In his recent treatise, Colonialism as The Mode of Production, Chairman Omali Yeshitela synthesizes 50 years of his relentless leadership and the Party’s relentless leadership on this question and points the way forward.

Chairman Omali Yeshitela’s “Colonialism as the mode of production” Chapter Two of his political report to the 3rd Plenary of the Seventh Congress of the African People’s Socialist Party.  Today’s episode is composed of excerpts from the January 16, 2022 episode of Omali Taught Me, the regular Sunday study held by Chairman Omali Yeshitela.  The episode can be viewed in its entirety at the The Burning Spear TV youtube page.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

In this episode, we speak with Professor Layla Brown about her scholarship, the covid-19 pandemic and the way forward.  Professor Brown’s work is emblematic of that anticolonial turn, or might we say anticolonial return, that has taken place in Africana Studies.  This anticolonial return has been directly impacted by the spread of African Internationalism, evinced in the Chairman Omali Yeshitela's 2019 Oxford Union "Africa Debate".

Professor Brown is trained as a Cultural Anthropologist, researcher, and educator.  She earned her PhD from Duke University and specializes in the contemporary and historical study of social movements in the African Diaspora.  She places specific focus on African communities in the Americas as well as African women liberation.  She is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology and Africana Studies at Northeastern University but is currently a visiting professor in Germany.  Professor Brown’s recent research looks at the covid-19 colonial virus pandemic, African resistance, and colonial domination.  Her recent article “The Pandemic of Racial Capitalism: Another World is Possible” was published in From the European South.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

On today’s episode of Black Power Talks, we discuss the Covid-19 Omicron Variant surge and a recent trip to Cuba with Dr. Aisha Fields.

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.”

Dr. Fields recently led a team of AAPDEP officials to Cuba where they visited the Latin American School of Medicine, ELAM, and learned about Cuba’s progressive fight against Covid-19 which dwarfs the US.

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 '' is a worldwide African emergency response organization.  Since March 2020, Project Black Ankh has mobilized 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.

On this episode of Black Power Talks, we discussed the role of the African Intellectual in the world.  African students and teachers everywhere are entering into their spring semesters.  Spring semesters are often filled with academic conferences and graduations.   On campuses, African students are organizing summits where they tackle some of the pressing issues in the world such as the mass imprisonment of African people, reparations, and the university investments into the colonial settler state of Israel.  On the flip side, many African students will increasingly feel the pressure to decide their postgraduate career plans.  

In his fundamental essay, "The Role of African Intellectuals in the World," Secretary General Luwezi Kinshasa identifies the colonial contradictions of higher education and lays out a blueprint for African students and intellectuals to join the revolution.  Students cannot be apolitical because the colleges they attend are not apolitical.  The role of intellectuals is to solve the solution of a given society. Colonialism uses African genius to solve colonial problems.  Luwezi calls on African students to become African Working Class intellectuals and solve the problems of the African Nation.

In this episode, we hear from a presentation that SG Luwezi gave on the role of African Intellectuals.  Luwezi the Secretary General of the African Socialist International.  Under the leadership of Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Luwezi oversees the work of  the African People’s Socialist Party around the world, including but not limited to Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.  SG Luwezi was born in the Congo and is currently based in London. He is affectionately known as Mwalimu, which means “teacher” for his extensive knowledge and engaged story-telling about the history of the world’s peoples.

Then we talk with Solyana Bekele.  Solyana is the Managing Editor and a writer for The Burning Spear Newspaper.  Solyana is also a junior at Hampton University, one of the oldest Black colleges in the US.  Solyana studies Political Science and Journalism.  Solyana was born in Ethiopia and raised in the Washington DC area.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

On this episode of Black Power Talks, we learn about the colonial origins of Santa Claus, also known as Sinter Klaas or St. Nick, the patron saint of shipping.

Colonial ideology purports the Christmas holiday to be a celebration of the birth of Jesus. In fact, the Christmas holiday season is centered around the obsessive pursuit and aspiration to purchase gifts, central to this is the Santa Claus Myth.

The Santa Claus myth has its origins in Dutch traditions surrounding the characters Sinter Klass and Zwarte Piet, Black Pete in English.  These traditions are celebrated in the Netherlands, also known as Holland, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, and throughout the colonial Dutch world with blackface festivals.  Africans have organized organized a serious pushback against these festivals, yet they persist. 

To help us understand the colonial-capitalist contradictions of the holiday season and the colonial origins of Santa Claus, we share clips from Chairman Omali Yeshitela.  The first clip is an excerpt from a conversation between Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Peggy Burke of the Global Afrikan Congress, speaking direct from Amsterdam that took place on November 28th, 2004.  

The second clip is an excerpt from a presentation given by Chairman Omali 2 weeks later, on December 19th, 2004, to the regular Sunday community meeting at the Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

On December 22, 2021, The Burning Spear Newspaper turned 53 years old.  The Burning Spear Newspaper is the oldest Black Power Newspaper in continuous print. The Burning Spear Newspaper was founded by Chairman Omali Yeshitela, then named Joseph Waller, in 1968, in St. Petersburg, Florida.  First established as a newsletter produced on a mimeograph machine, the Burning Spear, or The Spear for short, became a full-spread newspaper in 1969.

Dubbed, the Voice of the International African Revolution, the Burning Spear Newspaper has been the leading organ of political and material support for the oppressed and exploited people of the world such as: Vietnam, Iran, Mozambique, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Occupied Palestine, Zimbabwe, Occupied Azania (South Africa), Cuba, Venezuela, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Congo, Walter Rodney's Guyana, Maurice Bishop’s Grenada, and everywhere else colonized and oppressed people have struggled for liberation. 

The Burning Spear Newspaper has been the base through which an entire African Internationalist media complex was formed.  This includes a publishing house, audio and visual communications.  

In this episode, we speak with the Editor-In-Chief of the Burning Spear Newspaper, Akile Anai.  Akile Anai is also the Director of Agitation and Propaganda for the African People’s Socialist Party.  Akile oversees the work of print, audio, and visual media of the Burning Spear Publications and Black Power Media.  She also supervises the political education processes of the Uhuru Movement and co-hosts the weekly political study #OmaliTaughtMe. Akile was featured in Ebony magazine as a Millenial of Change.

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

On December 9, 2021, Denzel Draughn, an organizer with the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in San Diego, California was found not guilty on all charges after a highly-profiled case of resistance to police terror. 

Denzel faced eight felonies, two counts of pepper spraying a group of San Diego cops and six counts of preventing an arrest.  Denzel faced as many as 11 years in prison and had been originally charged with almost 20 felonies.   Denzel had testified that his actions were in defense of the protestors who had been brutalized by the San Diego Police Department, and the jury agreed in their unanimous decision.

With similar cases in the docket against organizers in San Diego, and around the United States, the case versus Denzel Draughn had important legal implications.  The jury's acquittal represents the shaky foundation of colonial-capitalism, and the willingness of many to break with the culture of violence. The aggressiveness of the San Diego DA represents a hunkering down of the colonial state.  We can see similar measures in Florida where Governor Rick DeSantis's House Bill 1 has attempted to criminalize protest with the possibility of up to 15 years in prison.

In this episode, we talk with Denzel Draughn and his partner Parrish Davis about their victory in court as well as the way forward.  Denzel and Parrish are both organizers with the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement in San Diego, California.  They have participated in many programs and campaigns in San Diego including the Black Power at the Border Working Group that brought material resources and political education to African migrants across the colonial border in Tijuana Mexico, the Uhuru Shule Virtual Freedom School for children during the Covid shutdown, and Beta Selam Academy.  They are currently developing the Black Community Control of the Police Working Group in San Diego. 

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.

In this episode, we talk about the current surge in the movement for reparations to African people in the United States and elsewhere.  In St. Petersburg, Florida, organizers with the Reparations Now Committee of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement are leading the Take Back the Dome Campaign in response to the decades of economic devastation that the building of the 86 acre Tropicana Field has caused the African Community in St. Petersburg, Florida.

The struggle over the Tropicana Field has implications for the liberation struggles of African people around the world.  In the small Caribbean island of Barbuda, Africans are fighting wealthy white American land developers and neocolonial African politicians who have turned their communally owned land into vacation resorts.  

In a repeat of the build up to the 1984 Summer Olympics, the African and Mexican-Indigenous Communities in Inglewood and South Los Angeles are being ripped up and exported to the surrounding deserts.  In their stead, a new complex of sports stadiums have been developed. With the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood as the site of the 2022 Super Bowl, the working class communities have been promised economic development and jobs.  

The history of Tropicana Field and the Gas Plant area suggests otherwise.  But the history of resistance led by the Uhuru Movement offers a political way forward and revolutionary optimism for the people.

To discuss this with us today, we have Chimurenga Selembao.  Chimurenga is the National Director of Organization for the African People’s Socialist Party and the President of the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement branch.  It is in that role where he leads the Take Back the Dome Campaign.  A lifelong member of the Uhuru Movement, in 2001, Chimurenga took the Reparations Demand to the world stage at World Conference Against Racism in Durban South Africa.  

Black Power Talks is produced by WBPU 96.3 FM "Black Power 96" in St. Petersburg, Florida. It is hosted by Dr. Matsemela Odom and Dexter Mlimwengu, bringing an African Internationalist perspective to the important issues of our world.