In the early morning hours of Saturday, January 3, the United States launched a military operation inside Venezuelan territory, escalating its long-standing campaign of aggression against the Venezuelan people and their government. This attack was insidiously framed as a response to so-called “narco-terrorism,” as a pretext to justify recent military operations in the region.

This act of war was carried out unilaterally by U.S. President Donald J. Trump without the prior authorization of the U.S. Congress, further exposing the fiction of U.S. democracy and its so-called system of checks and balances. The reality is that the U.S. executive branch exercises unchecked power when it comes to enforcing domination, and violence against nations it deems expendable.

As Chairman Omali Yeshitela has correctly stated, the colonizer makes and justifies its own rules. Slavery in the Americas was once legal, and Africans who escaped enslavement were criminalized for breaking the law. Today, the same colonial logic is at work. The U.S. invents legal justifications to rationalize kidnapping, invasion, and regime-change operations against sovereign nations.

This attack represents a dangerous escalation of U.S. imperialism and a blatant enforcement of colonial rule in the Western Hemisphere. On one hand, the U.S. presents President Maduro as the head of a criminal enterprise, a claim unsupported by credible evidence; on the other, U.S. President Donald Trump, openly revealed the real objective during the press conference that followed, the reassertion of U.S. control over Venezuela’s oil resources and the enrichment of U.S. oil interests.

The truth became even clearer when Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued veiled threats against Colombia and Cuba, exposing the broader scope of this aggression. This was never about narcotics or law enforcement. It is about punishing governments that refuse to submit to U.S. domination and that are actively working to free themselves from political, economic, and military subservience.

The audacity of the U.S. arresting a sitting president of a sovereign nation and attempting to subject him to U.S. courts demonstrates complete contempt for international law, national sovereignty, and the will of the Venezuelan people. The United States does not respect its own laws, nor does it respect the sovereignty of any nation, ally or adversary, when imperial interests are at stake.

That the U.S. was able to carry out a military operation in a region surrounded by sovereign nations—within one of the world’s most politically diverse regions, bound together by a shared history of colonialism and resistance—should alarm people everywhere. If international law truly mattered, neighboring countries would be well within their rights to defend Venezuela’s sovereignty. Instead, we have seen warm condemnations from some and open support from others, reflecting the depth of U.S. coercion and influence in the region.

While the full details of this attack may not yet be known, ANWO is clear about its character. The history of U.S. imperialism, combined with our own lived experience as African people subjected to domestic colonialism within the United States, leaves no doubt that this attack was calculated, surreptitious and driven by colonial-mode-of-production.

ANWO stands in unwavering solidarity with the people of Venezuela and with all nations resisting U.S. imperialism. We call on African people and oppressed peoples everywhere to recognize this attack for what it is and to strengthen international resistance to colonial domination in all its forms.

Forward Ever! Backward Never! 

¡Siempre Adelante!

Assata’s life was defined by courage. She was not only a symbol of resistance but an uncompromising African woman who dared to live free. Faced with the full force of U.S. state violence — its prisons, police, and propaganda — Assata refused submission. She broke through the chains of colonial captivity and built a new life in Cuba, where she continued her commitment to the struggle for African liberation.

In 1973, Assata was falsely accused and later convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper, charges she always maintained were lies of the U.S. government. Despite the absence of credible evidence and medical testimony proving she could not have fired a weapon, she was sentenced to life in prison. It was under these conditions of colonial injustice that Assata escaped captivity in 1979 and went into exile in Cuba, where she lived for more than four decades.

For her defiance, the U.S. branded her a “terrorist” and placed her at the top of its most wanted lists. Under Barack Obama’s administration, her bounty was doubled to $2 million in an attempt to capture and silence her. Yet despite decades of pursuit, Assata remained unbroken and untouchable.

Assata Shakur stands as an example for us all, especially for African women. Her clarity, her determination, and her refusal to bow to U.S. imperialism make her worthy of emulation. Her story reminds us that freedom is not granted,  it is seized through struggle.

We also extend our gratitude to the Cuban people and their revolutionary government, who defended Assata’s freedom for more than four decades. By providing her refuge, dignity, and solidarity, they showed the world what true internationalism looks like. Their protection ensured that Assata triumphed over the U.S. government’s attempts to silence her. In her victory, we all won.

Assata reminded us: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.” As ANWO, we commit ourselves to this duty, to fight without compromise, to win liberation for African women, and to continue the struggle until African people everywhere are free and united.

May Assata Shakur rest in power.

Long live her legacy. Long live African women’s resistance.

Hands off Cuba!

Trump’s America is not so different from the America African people have been experiencing for our entire existence. From the inception of this colonial project, our labor has been stolen and exploited for the benefit of the colonizer. 

At any given time, African people may experience pockets of job growth, but even when the parasitic economy appears to be doing well, African unemployment has consistently been the highest of any group since the federal government began publishing labor statistics by race and gender, in 1970.

The August 2025 Jobs Report

So while it may seem staggering to some, we are not surprised at the rate at which African women are being pushed out of the labor market. Every month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) publishes the Employment Situation Summary (often referred to as the “jobs report”). 

In August 2025, the U.S. economy added just 22,000 jobs. Economists noted that this was a sharp slowdown reflecting deep structural instability in the labor market. Amid this fragility, the unemployment rate for Black women soared to 7.5 percent, nearly double the national average of 4.3 percent.

Federal job cuts (97,000 positions lost since January) have disproportionately impacted agencies where Black women are overrepresented.

Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley highlighted that over 300,000 Black women have lost jobs since February, calling it “a staggering loss of economic security and generational progress.” But this framing reflects the outlook of the African petty bourgeoisie.

Petit Bourgeois Illusions vs. Working-Class Reality

The African working class cannot afford illusions of reform or inclusion. For us, real “generational progress” will not come from climbing the colonial ladder but from tearing it down by reclaiming our stolen resources, building African self-reliance, and overturning parasitic capitalism itself.

The U.S. economy was built on the stolen labor of African people. From the enslavement of African women to the underpaid domestic and service work that continues today, African women’s labor has always been a primary pillar propping up this system.

The Vivid Truth about Poverty Programs

The African working class bears the brunt. It is African women in hospitals, schools, social service offices, and federal agencies who are being cast into unemployment lines, forced to choose between food and rent.

Take social services, for example. These are the very institutions where African women are concentrated both as workers and as recipients. 

During one of my recertification appointments for WIC—a federal program that provides food, health referrals, and nutrition support to low-income pregnant women, new mothers, and young children—the worker admitted that my income, though low enough to qualify for assistance, was still higher than her own paycheck. This is the colonial contradiction laid bare: African women employed by the state to administer poverty programs are themselves trapped in poverty wages.

The colonial state uses our labor to administer its scraps while locking us in the same cycle of deprivation. It demands that African women prop up its welfare system while ensuring that neither the worker nor the recipient can ever escape dependence on a parasitic economy. This is colonial capitalism waging economic war on African women, forcing us to subsidize the very system that exploits and discards us.

The Nature of Parasitism

This is parasitism. The wealth of the white ruling class is fed by draining the blood, sweat, and tears of African people, while leaving us in permanent instability. The jobs report is a reminder that African people must build our own future outside the colonial economy.

That means advancing African self-reliance by creating cooperative economic systems and community-controlled institutions that serve us rather than the colonial state. It requires organizing the African working class, with African women workers at the forefront as leaders who experience the sharpest edge of colonial oppression and who hold the clearest vision of liberation.

Rejecting Reform, Embracing Revolution

We must also reject the petty bourgeois illusion that assimilation into the colonial system can ever deliver freedom. No individual achievement or professional advancement will overturn the conditions of colonial exploitation. Liberation demands the destruction of the system itself.

As a recent Time article put it, “Black women are the canary in the coal mine on the health of the economy.” The authors warn that rising unemployment among Black women is a signal of what’s to come for other workers. While this framing makes clear that African women workers are among the most vulnerable, it ultimately reduces our suffering to a benchmark for the broader economy.

It fails to grapple with the deeper reality that African working-class women are not simply indicators of crisis but the very foundation of the colonial parasitic system, a system that extracts our labor and discards us when convenient. By stopping at reformist prescriptions for policymakers, the article reflects the outlook of the petty bourgeoisie, seeking to better manage African women’s exploitation rather than overturning the system that produces it.

The Path Forward: African Internationalism

For African people, the lesson is not that we are early warnings for others, but that our lived experience exposes the colonial economy itself as unsustainable, demanding its complete destruction and replacement with African-controlled systems of power and life.

Our struggle must be carried out under the banner of African Internationalism. African women in the U.S., Latin America,  the Caribbean, on the continent of Africa, and across Europe are united by a common oppression under colonial capitalism. Only by wielding African Internationalism as our guiding theory can we claim a common victory.

Background

WSMV 7 News Blast

WSMV News 7 issues a news alert on television after Anthony Crum fraudulently reports Khaila to the Child Abduction Unit.

Police Alert on “Kidnapping”

Rutherford County Sheriff Office bulletin for Missing Children “Endangered Children” showing images of Iris Crum and Khaila.

Iris testifies about abuse

In a 2023 video recorded by Iris’ maternal grandmother. Iris talks about the scars on her body and how she got them.

• Khaila had sole permanent custody of daughter Iris Crum in 2020.
• On a visit with father, Anthony Crum, in 2020, Anthony took Iris and never returned her.
• From 2020-2021 (8 months), Khaila sought help to get her daughter back without success.
• From 2021-2023, Anthony moved Iris to various states, resulting in legal issues in each state.
• In May 2023, Iris’ school contacts Christina, Iris’ grandmother, to say Iris had been abandoned.
• This is the first time they had any news of Iris since 2021.
• Anthony eventually picks up his daughter and reaches out to Christina, telling her that he cannot take care of Iris because he does not have any money or resources.
• Anthony returns Iris to her grandmother, Christina, with significant signs of abuse: cigarette burns, hair missing and frail.
• Christina records Iris revealing that Anthony gave her those scars.
• Khaila calls CPS in California to report Anthony.
• The California courts ignore the evidence of abuse.
• Khaila also calls DCS in Tennessee, where she had been living at the time. DCS did not show up to an evidentiary hearing. Tennessee also ignores evidence of abuse.
• Anthony retaliates by calling the Child Abduction Unit (CAU) on Khaila, saying she kidnapped her child and brought her to Tennessee.
• The system ignores evidence of violence. Instead of protecting Iris, they take Anthony’s side. He is white.
• Tennessee and California issues warrants for Khaila’s arrest.
• Several news and police agencies blasts out a kidnapping alert and mugshot of Khaila; winning support from some people on social media to talk about the case.
• The media has shown that it will bend over backward to depict white men as heroes and Black women as villains.
• Khaila who was 5 months pregnant was arrested, extradited to California and held for 5 months on a $1.1 million bail.
• Iris is returned to Anthony Crum. Her location is unknown.
• Khaila and her mother, Christina, hired attorneys, spending over $50,000, to no avail.
• January 2024, Anthony Crum and Iris, are in a motor vehicle accident. Anthony Crum dies on the scene. Iris is taken to Anthony Crum’s father.
• California Family Code 3010 (b) states that upon death, the child must go to the other parent.
• Khaila immediately goes to Family court and is awarded custody.
• Khaila and ANWO members go directly to the home of Dale Crum, Anthony’s father. He is not there. Iris is not there.
• Khaila calls the Sheriff’s office for help, as directed to do when she was awarded custody. However, the Deputy did not help.
• When Khaila asked the Deputy to do a welfare check, he refused.
• Iris is still missing. Possibly hurt from the motor vehicle accident. Neither Khaila nor Christina have seen Iris since 2023.

ANWO Gets Involved

ANWO got involved in 2024 at the family’s behest. We attended criminal and custody hearings for Khaila and Iris. All down the line we have seen the demonization and criminalization of Khaila Czereda Wilks without cause.

The ONLY reason Khaila is still dealing with a criminal case and does not have custody of her child is because the colonial state sided with Anthony Crum, a known criminal in several states, who abused Iris and admitted his ineptitude.

Meanwhile, Khaila, a married mother of three, is prevented from caring for her daughter even after his death. California Family Code 3010 (b) is clear that when one parent dies, custody automatically goes to the other parent. However, the state still will not return Iris to her African mother.

Family Support

Khaila’s family at a criminal court hearing in 2024 to free a pregnant Khaila from prison on false allegations of kidnapping and child endangerment.

We have decided to stand with Khaila and Christina and demand that Iris be returned to her mother. This case is not purely custodial, this is clear bias where an African woman caught a felony kidnapping case and is currently labeled a threat to her daughter, at the behest of a white man.

Take Action

Use the letter linked below to demand justice for Khaila and Iris. Or send personalized statements to:

Attorney General Rob Bonta  openjustice@doj.ca.gov
cc: Public Inquiry Unit piu@doj.ca.gov
cc: mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov
Call: (916) 210-6276
For TTY/TDD, call (800) 735-2929 

San Diego County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Review Unit 
CASRU@sdcda.org
cc: SanDiegoDA@sdcda.org
cc: mayortoddgloria@sandiego.gov
Call: (619) 531-4040

Take Action

More ways to Help

1. Share the hashtag #WhereIsIrisCrum #ReuniteIrisCrum #JusticeForKhaila #ProtectBlackFamilies on social media.
2. Email and call the key officials demanding immediate action.
3. Engage with media outlets to amplify this issue.
4. Participate in Twitter storms and rallies

This fight is not just for Khaila and Iris—it is for all African mothers and families facing the colonial state. Take action today!

Assets

Short email to key officials :

Subject: Urgent Action Needed – Justice for Khaila Wilks and Iris Crum

Dear Attorney General Bonta and District Attorney Stephan,

I urge your immediate intervention in the wrongful prosecution of Khaila Wilks Czereda, a mother unjustly charged with child abduction due to fraudulent legal actions, perjury, and prosecutorial misconduct in San Diego. Despite holding sole legal and physical custody of her daughter, Iris Crum, Khaila has been criminalized through the misuse of outdated court orders and suppression of exculpatory evidence. I am requesting the immediate dismissal of all charges, a full investigation into Attorney Nancy Wilson and the Crum family for fraud, accountability for judicial and prosecutorial misconduct, and the swift return of Iris to her mother as required under California law. This gross injustice must be corrected immediately—I look forward to your urgent response.

Regards,
[Your Name]
[Your Organization, if applicable]
[Your Contact Information]

Respectfully,
<signed>

Check back for additional assets.

This is a victory for the African nation and freedom loving people everywhere. Let us remind you that this was a political trial. Twenty-eight months ago the United States government declared war on our party. An attack on over 50 years of African self determination and an attempt to crush our successes. They tried and I mean really tried to imprison our leader and comrades. They thought that we would cower and roll over, as many do when up against the machine. But we said hell NO! We are African Internationalists, so we kicked it into high gear and put theory to practice. 

For the past two and half years we have been engaged in a serious fightback that has led to this beautiful victory. We let the government know that when you touch one of us you touch all of us. We will not shut up and forget that this country was built on the rape and pillage of Africa and our people. Africans will continue to exercise free speech, Africans will have freedom, and 

Africans will have power by any means necessary.

This isn’t the end but only the beginning comrades. The Uhuru 3 will be appealing the conspiracy conviction. Join us as we continue to expose the colonial reality of the majority, and work to build a world free of exploitation. We are our own liberators and will not stop until we are free!

Not yet uhuru! 

Hands Off Uhuru! 

Hands Off Africa!The people united will never be defeated!

Sonya Massey, along with Alberta Spruill,  Eleanor Bumpurs,  7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones, 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston, Deborah Danner,  Aaliyah Anders, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor were all murdered by the colonial state; and these women are only a few named. 

The police are a violent occupying force in the African community.  They do not come to protect and serve, they come to dominate and occupy. It should come as no surprise that African women, who are part of the colonized African masses along with the rest of 
African people experience the same violence from the state that often leads to injury or death. 

African women have been beaten, sexually assaulted, profiled, harassed, and murdered by the colonial police who, nine times out of ten, aren’t held accountable for their crimes. This treatment is a continuation of the initial attack on Africa that rendered African people property and made the special oppression of African women the norm. These heinous interactions have not changed as African women of all ages, economic status, hues, with mental issues or without continue to suffer at the hands of the police.

African women are tired of our people being killed and are screaming for police reform.  However, reform does not end police killings or ensure our freedom. Instead, it puts us in negotiation with a state apparatus that exists only to maintain power over us. 

It begs the question, how much longer then, should we wait for the oppressor to criminalize itself? When will African women or our whole people, for that matter, gain freedom in “the land of the free and  home of the brave?” 

The truth is that we will never be free or safe under U.S. domestic colonial terror. One cannot wear enough chucks or pearls, or be the black face of U.S. imperialism, or be a basketball playing negro President and think that these things will bring us freedom. 

Freedom is won through the blood, sweat, and struggles of the people fed up with an oppressor that constantly takes from us – our lives, our money, our labor and so much more.

The solution is to do as our ancestors have done in every generation since Africa was attacked and its people became the perpetual victims of colonialism. That is to fight, organize , and  fight some more, but this time we don’t stop until this monster is slain.   

The African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) is an organization of African women who understand the treatment of African women everywhere is a direct result of colonialism, which is the antithesis of human development and self-sufficiency. 

The police are not killing African women because of racism – the ideas of superiority in white people’s heads.  We are being killed because of the colonial mode of production, which requires the violence and occupation of the struggling oppressed masses.

Colonialism reinforces imperialism,  feudalism, slavery, and patriarchy therefore it is necessary to destroy the colonial mode of production. In other words, we need to create spaces for us, by us to fight for freedom and liberation in the name of Sonya Massey and so many others who’ve been martyred by the colonial state. 

We must commit to end the political and social oppression and economic exploitation of African women and all African people.

Marked as one of the largest protests against sexual and gender-based violence in the country, the protest was a response many believe is an escalation of murders of women.  In 2023, the organization Femicide Count recorded 152 killings, equating to one woman every three days. The majority of these women are victims of intimate partner violence. 

Following the protests, ANWO looked at articles that cite numbers like 90 women killed over 3 years and 500 women killed in 7 years. Although, it is unnerving, this isn’t femicide – a massive targeting of women because they are women. 

Unfortunately the murder of African women is part of the overall colonial violence that African people endure under the colonial mode of production.

Colonized women endure heightened violence under colonialism 

A December 2023 article in The Root reported that black women were 30% of all crime victims in Chicago in 2022.  Black women victims constituted 67,000 of the 270,000 crimes reported in Chicago that year. In a system that does not value black people and black women even less, these statistics are on trend with all other trends that show horrible conditions faced by African people. 

According to Frantz Fanon, an African psychiatrist who tracked violence during direct French colonialism in Algeria and the resulting Algerian revolution,  violence among the colonized was high until the national liberation struggle redirected that violence. The effects of colonialism instigate horizontal and vertical violence.    

ANWO is overwhelmingly opposed to gender-based violence and killings of women because they are women. Although the fourteen documented murders of African women in Kenya since the start of the year seems like an alarming increase; in a country of 53 million, it’s minute and possibly in line with all other murders happening in the country including the murders of men, children, and non-gender-conforming persons.

Even though Kenya has one of the highest quality of living in Africa, the biggest threat to women in Kenya is that they live under neo-colonial democracy. Kenya is aligning itself with the U.S. and other Western imperialist nations by doing their bidding. Such as answering the call of the U.S.-influenced United Nations by sending the Kenyan police force to Haiti, to police other African people. In addition to this, Kenya’s Labour Ministry sent 1,500 farm workers to Israel to fill the agriculture gaps caused by the Palestinian resistance.  Essentially making Kenyan laborers “scabs,” to undermine Palestinian resistance.

Ultimately, if African women in Kenya want to end the violence they experience, they must become anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist and contend with the overall colonial nature of their government which foments violence inside their country and in other places around the world.

RESOLUTION

Honoring and recognizing Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles and the African People’s Education & Defense Fund for defending the rights of the African community; providing affordable furniture and home goods to Philadelphians; providing jobs, job training, and volunteer opportunities; and committing all profits to supporting economic development and self-determination programs for Black communities across the country. 

WHEREAS, Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles, located at Broad and Parrish Streets in North Philadelphia, is a Black-owned business that has operated since 1994 reselling affordable furniture and household goods, providing free furniture donation pick-up services, and providing moving services to Philadelphians. Through its work, Uhuru Furniture has saved thousands of tons of furniture from landfills, helped furnish the homes of thousands of Philadelphians, and provided volunteer opportunities, job training, and work experience to its community; and 

WHEREAS, For years, Uhuru Furniture has been a mainstay resource for thousands of Philadelphians and was voted “Best Home Furnishing Store in Philly” multiple times by local Channel 17 viewers. After 29 years in business, Uhuru Furniture will be closing its Philadelphia location on October 31st, 2023; and 

WHEREAS, Uhuru Furniture has served Philadelphia as an economic development institution of the civil rights nonprofit the African People’s Education & Defense Fund (APEDF), which strives to develop and institutionalize programs that defend the human and civil rights of the African community and address the disparities in education, health, health care, and economic development in the African community; and 

WHEREAS, Since 1994, the APEDF has established institutions and programs that put African people in control of their own community life. By building institutions that put economic, political, and cultural power in the hands of the community, the APEDF seeks to combat the colonial conditions that challenge their people’s ability to clothe, feed, and house themselves; and 

WHEREAS, Through on-the-ground institutions like Uhuru Furniture, the APEDF has shown what self-determination for the African community looks like. It is a monumental victory and testament that Uhuru Furniture has succeeded for three decades through conditions that normally keep Black-owned institutions out of the economic arena; and 

WHEREAS, Uhuru Furniture has been instrumental in supporting the creation and growth of other APEDF initiatives that continue to enact the APEDF mission. The Black Power Blueprint programs in St. Louis, MO continues to expand, contributing an African farmer’s market and community garden, a community basketball court, a doula training program, and a women’s health center to the North St. Louis Black community; and

WHEREAS, Under the slogan “Our Labor, Our Future”, the APEDF is launching a new initiative, the African Independence Workforce Program (AIWP), that aims to reverse the negative economic impact of the colonial economy and the prison system. AIWP will train members of the African community, in particular formerly incarcerated members, to contribute to a prosperous future through the development of an independent liberated economy; and 

WHEREAS, The AIWP emerges from the real, material need to reverse the impact of the past 40 years of mass incarceration that has torn apart families, left African communities impoverished, and left families without fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, sisters, and brothers. The AIWP seeks to receive brothers and sisters back into communities and reverse the damage done by the prison system that has been used as a colonial tool against African families; and 

WHEREAS, Uhuru Furniture is one of a network of initiatives that have contributed toward the creation of the AIWP and the enactment of its mission. AIWP now serves to create opportunities for formerly incarcerated African men and women, alongside all its community members, to receive training, gain employment, and become stakeholders in a prosperous economy; and 

WHEREAS, The City of Philadelphia recognizes the powerful work of Uhuru Furniture, the African People’s Education & Defense Fund, and the African Independence Workforce Program. In particular, we recognize and commemorate Uhuru Furniture’s impact on Philadelphia, as a small Black-owned business dedicated to economic development and self-determination for its community; now therefore be it 

RESOLVED, THAT THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF PHILADELPHIA, Honors and recognizes Uhuru Furniture & Collectibles and the African People’s Education & Defense Fund for defending the rights of the African community; providing affordable furniture and home goods to Philadelphians; providing jobs, job training, and volunteer opportunities; and committing all profits to supporting economic development and self-determination programs for the Black community across the country. 

FURTHER RESOLVED, That an Engrossed copy of this resolution be presented to the African People’s Education & Defense Fund’s Board President Ona Zene’ Yeshitela, as evidence of the respect and recognition given by this legislative body.

Introduced by 

Council Member Kendra Brooks Cosponsors – 

Mark Squilla 

Sharon Vaughn 

Mike Driscoll 

Curtis Jones 

Jamie Gauthier 

Anthony Phillips 

Isaiah Thomas 

Katherine Gilmore Richardson October 26, 2023

Ajike’s life was stolen like the lives of so many other African people domestically colonized within the borders of the U.S Colony-at the hands of White Vigilantes and colonial police.  

African and Native people, indigenous to this land, have been suffering from colonial oppression and domination since the U.S. Colony was created. The list of Africans we have lost since this violent occupation continues to grow and the time for justice is now.

Nothing this colonial “justice system” will do, will bring Ajike back.  Nor will it stop other Ajike’s from dying in the future.  Ajike will never get to hold her children, laugh, cry, or feel anything ever again.  

Stand your ground laws rooted in settler colonialism

Susan Lorincz appears in court after killing Ajike

As Ajike bled out in front of Lorincz’s door; her baby crying over her body, Lorincz had already developed a defense under the Florida law of Stand Your Ground.   

We were introduced to this law in February 2012 when a 17-year-old African teenager, Trayvon Martin, was killed by white vigilante George Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense after stalking and harassing Trayvon as he walked home after purchasing candy from the store. 

Zimmerman was ultimately acquitted, by a 6-woman jury who accepted self-defense as justification for murdering Trayvon. 

Marissa Alexander during her trial

However, when Marissa Alexander, an African woman living in Jacksonville, FL,  attempted to use this as a defense when protecting herself from abuse,  she was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison, despite not having killed anyone.

The violence we are experiencing today is the same violence that stripped African people from our homeland to slave for white colonizers as part of their process of colonizing this land, robbing native indigenous peoples of their homeland. 

The same patriotic Americans who so vehemently proclaim allegiance to the colonial U.S. flag are defending their rights to stolen land,  the foundation of the stand-your-ground laws that allow the colonizers to go free while African and other colonized people are trapped by it.  

It’s not meant for us.  The slave master makes freedom illegal for the slave. The trail of African bodies is evidence of this.  The problem does not lie with this specific law or with the violent actions of white vigilantes, or the colonial police. 

The problem is that, even though African people in the U.S. have fought to chisel out human rights concessions,  we still live under colonial capitalism. We will not find peace or freedom until we destroy the pedestal of power that places white power colonial policy over the lives of the colonized.  For us, it’s not enough for our lives to matter, we must have the power to prevent harm and exact justice if we are harmed. 

Unfortunately, we do not have that power any place on the planet, but it is possible to build it.   We are building it. 

We must Organize and Replace the colonial mode of production with a system that ushers in Black Power.  The time to protect and defend the lives of African and other colonized people is NOW or, we will keep experiencing this violence.

The African National Women’s Organization is an international membership-based organization for African women, formed by the African People’s Socialist Party as a part of our revolutionary strategy to occupy all spaces of resistance.  The Party recognizes that African women are specially oppressed under colonialism and that we have an interest in resisting that oppression through organization.  

Comrades in San Diego hold protest in support of Uhuru 3 comrades.

How can we expect justice for Ajike under colonialism, when organizing for African freedom has been criminalized? The U.S. State Department has indicted the Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party Omali Yeshitela and two other leaders of the Uhuru Movement, Jesse Nevel Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, and Penny Hess, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee, for promoting this freedom.  

Chairman Omali Yeshitela has dedicated over 52 years to building the Uhuru Movement,  which boasts African members and supporters from all over the globe.  He also organized white solidarity with the African revolution, which calls on white people like Chairs Jesse Nevel and Penny Hess to organize white people to defend our struggle for self-determination and win reparations for the African community.  

So there is a stance the colonizer can take to reject their position on the pedestal and to work side-by-side with African people fighting for liberation.  This is the future.  To not take that stand, sitting on the sidelines acting as if Susan Lorincz is a bad apple, is to maintain your position on the necks of African and other colonized people. 

We call on African women in particular to not accept this!  You must support your interest by joining ANWO and getting involved with creating a world where colonialism will no longer exist because you had a hand in destroying it. The time has come that we take control of the means of production so that we can live in true Freedom and Prosperity.  Not for a few of us, but for “All of Us”. 

At our March 2023 Black women’s convention, ANWO established leadership for our safety and security program.  We are building our capacity to defend ourselves as the crisis of imperialism deepens and the level of white vigilantism escalates.  You can expect future opportunities with ANWO to participate in creating safe communities, protecting ourselves from harm, and training to protect others.  

Sign up for our newsletter  to learn about us, the African People’s Socialist Party, and our Solidarity Movement.

Once again we express our deepest sympathies to the family of Ajike Owens.  Ajike’s death will not be in vain.  Long Live Ajike Owens.  Rest in Power, sis.

The following article is the transcript from the presentation given by President Yejide Orunmila during the Black is Back Coalition’s February 18th livestream 

African people have been fighting for our freedom since Africa was first attacked by Europe.  This has always pitted our struggle for self-determination against the colonial mode of production. We are talking about a mode of production that raped, pillaged, enslaved and colonized people and lands using both ends of the rifle, machetes and any other weapons of mass destruction they could think of.

The colonizer is always developing strategies to infiltrate and destroy our efforts to free ourselves from their grip.  Why?  Because without us they wouldn’t survive.  

During his 2023 State of the Union address, Joseph Biden highlighted how much his administration has accomplished for the people of this country.  He capped it off by saying that the United States is the only country that has faced adversity and come back stronger than it did before. He alluded to the United States being a great beacon of freedom. 

The United States is still the Greatest Purveyor of Violence 

Of course, this is the narrative of the colonizer.   What do the colonized say?  Martin Luther King Jr. said the United  States was the greatest purveyor of violence.   That was in 1967 and they killed him. This was a man who touted non-violence  in the face of violence and the United States killed him. 

In 2023 we started the year with the murder of Tyre Nichols at the hands of the colonial police.  It doesn’t matter that the police were black. It matters that they are agents of the colonizer, carrying out colonial law.  Unlike their white counterparts, however,  who can kill and get off; they go directly to jail. 

In my lifetime there has been constant war managed by U.S. imperialism.  I was a child, but remember Oliver North and what the U.S. government called the Iran-Contra Affair.  They called it a “scandal” attempting to minimize the gigantic scope of what occurred. 

The Iran-Contra Affair was a serious network of U.S. agents and government officials that attempted to undermine the Nicaraguan fight for self-determination by developing an opposition (The Contra)  and  supplying them with guns and money in exchange for cocaine that was sold in the United States as a fundraiser in support of the the U.S. campaign against the Sandinistas. 

This influx of cocaine in the U.S. led to the crack epidemic in African communities. This scandal had horrific consequences for millions of people around the world.  It’s like defining Christopher Columbus “discovering” America as a little white lie.  The colonizer trivializes its impact on the people they devastate. 

The Chairman says they are not devils and that we must be dialectical ,but, this is diabolical. Right? 

Colonial Policy has always opposed African Self-Determination 

The United States, the place where they say you can “bring your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”, was just a call for desperate Europeans who sought  a better life for themselves and did so on the backs of Africans.   

In order to get that better way of life, they had to stand at the feet of every hanged negro, rape every black woman, call every black man a rapist, burn a cross at every home, bomb every church and drop bombs on thriving African communities.  

The poor wretched colonizers, coming from desperate, starving, filthy and violent places,  to a land that was carved out of the blood native people. They enthusiastically became settlers establishing their little house on the prairie as long as they were willing to defend it by fighting and killing native peoples who have used that prairie for centuries.

No, Joe.  The United States is not the beacon of freedom you say it is.  It is, as the Chairman says, a prison of colonized nations. 

FBI is an agency of the colonial U.S. Gov’t

So, when the FBI created this indictment against the Uhuru Movement they were attacking the ongoing struggle for African self-determination.  The African Freedom Struggle.  A movement that had set a goal to extricate ourselves from the binds of colonial domination. 

Like Harriet, Nat, Marcus, Malcolm, Nkrumah, Sankara, the Panthers, Bishop and so many other African people that had fought for freedom,  the Party has set a course and are organizing our way out. The Party and the Chairman are the Vanguard.  

What is the freedom are we talking about?  We are talking about a freedom that overturns the current social world order. A freedom that destroys the colonizer and by doing so destroys the designation of the colonized. A freedom that frees people and lands up to determine our own future without the ever-looming threat of violence that comes from the colonizer nations.  

The colonizer nations who have historically waged massive campaigns to infiltrate, subvert, kill, and destroy our struggle to protect their parasitism. Without this parasitic relationship to the colonized they would shatter when faced with adversity.  Their success is dependent on our oppression. 

Freedom means overturning the social system 

The Uhuru Movement believes African people should be free. We have rejected the status quo.  We have rejected the centuries long war against our very existence and have the audacity to tell the world that we want our freedom.   Not by cowering in the night.  By organizing a response to the colonizer in every community that we can.  Building organizations and institutions that have become the beacon of light to the African working class. 

We are doing it out in the open. In every community we can, we create Burkina Fasos  (lands of upright men and women). What we create now in times of serious crisis and oppression is  just the baseline of what we can achieve.  Imagine if we had access to all of our resources and land, the incredible things we could accomplish for ourselves.  To know that when we free Africa we  free the world.  

Obviously this is a challenge to the colonizer. This is why they constantly develop strategies to undermine our efforts.   So when they created this indictment and attributed our freedom struggle  to the Russians and not to U.S. colonial violence and the prison of nations they’ve created, they are opening up another campaign of untruths.   

Dangerous Negroes are reborn through the struggle for African Liberation 

Well, they’ve made a mistake, haven’t they?  The Uhuru Movement is prepared to put the colonial state on trial if they ever try to pursue their delusionary indictments. 

We are dialecticians.  Political Scientists.  Oppressed people with eyes, ears and brain that can figure stuff out.  All we have to do is look back at our history.  In every nook and cranny, around every corner, the presence of the colonizer is there.  Foot on neck, squeezing the life out of us.  They have targeted entire movements like the UNIA and The Panthers, Sojourners for Truth and Justice  or individuals like Claudia Jones and Paul Robeson, Ida B. Wells, MLK Jr., Assata – these were the dangerous negros. 

Well, the Uhuru Movement are the dangerous negros now.  Pushing back on every front. Moving ahead to accomplish our mission and create steeled cadre forces to bring Africa its liberation.

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