At the point when ANWO became involved, the APSP investigators had already collected evidence from the victim, an indigenous woman, and the accused; and made a determination that resulted in Muambi Tangu being expelled from the African People’s Socialist Party and removed from his post in InPDUM.

ANWO stands in complete unity with the decision made by the Party.  While we will not go into the details of the incident, it was clear from the testimony of both parties that boundaries were crossed when the accused imposed his will on the victim.

The thoroughness of the investigation and the consideration given to all the facts, confirm that the African People’s Socialist Party is truly creating a new world dedicated to ending the oppression of African and other colonized people.

What we expect from leaders in the fight to end colonial domination is to destroy all traces of the colonizer in us.  This includes rejecting harmful tendencies that have been used as a method of control and oppression; particularly when it comes to the special oppression of African and other colonized women.  

As colonized African and indigenous women our experience under domestic colonialism is one wrought with sexual violence, hyper-sexualization, and sexual exploitation.

We serious are stamping out this colonial behavior. We must refuse to keep quiet, especially, when it involves someone who claims to be a leader in the fight for our liberation. Silence does not give us the opportunity to struggle against behaviors that threaten our ability to make the revolution.

As we fight for a world free from colonial terror, we expect that our efforts we will destroy the tendencies of the colonizer within the oppressed colonized masses.  It will be through these efforts that we will build a world where the special oppression of African women will be no more and the liberation of colonized people around the world will mean the complete and total eradication of the colonizer outside and inside of us. 

This was a real situation in one of the richest cities in the United States,  New York City, where the cost of living is skyrocketing and jobs that pay a living wage for poor and working class women are hard to come by. 

Fortunately for this mother, she approached a member of the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) who is the founder of the Watoto Freeschool in Brooklyn, NY and is in the midst of organizing ANWO’s Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective to complement the paid services she offers at her facility.  

Fortunately for the mother, an African centered therapist was at the facility and was able to help de-escalate the crisis.  Together these African women were able to work out a preliminary plan to help minimize the strain this mother was under, which included enlisting the support of the African father. 

This is just one incident of many that exposes the dire situation of African mothers, not just in the United States but in many places around the world.  

The splintering of African communities 

Gone are the days when the community contributed to the raising of our children.  It wasn’t just mother, it was aunt, uncle, cousin, neighbor, friend, grandparents, who came together to ensure that every African child could grow up supported by the community. 

In the United States, where 60 years ago the main employment for African women was private domestic labor as maids taking care of white women’s homes and children which often meant that mothers had to trust the oversight of their children with someone in their family or from their community.

Following desegregation and changes to laws following the Civil Rights wins of the 1960, different opportunities opened up for African people. As African people chased the resources that brought us out of the protection of African communities and into white neighborhoods and businesses that were previously closed off, we saw a fraying of our communities and a breakdown in the social structure that we created out of necessity. 

The State became the substitute for community. Don’t have enough money to survive in the City they gave it to African women, with requirements that made it nearly impossible for households with African men to be given enough resources.  

No community to help take care of your children? Child Welfare offices sprang up in poor and working class African communities to monitor and exploit situations where working single African mothers struggled to keep their family together. 

Decades later, as the rigors of surviving under a growing oppression spurred by the crisis of imperialism, we are suspicious of each other and fearful of the State.  In the absence of community, our children have had to fend for themselves.  

The Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective is the answer

As a dual power do-for- self institution, run by ANWO and our volunteers, the Uhuru Kijiji(Freedom Village) Childcare Collective (UKCC) takes the childcare and education of our children out of the hands of the State that colonize, oppress and kill us and our children and empowers the parents and our community to assume responsibility for the welfare of African children.

UKCC addresses a basic and fundamental need of, specifically, though not exclusively, poor and working-class African women, who, more often than not, are single mothers with the sole responsibility of caring for their children and for whom, the question of securing help with childcare is difficult and in most cases, non existent.

The UKCC in addition to helping organize a community response to childcare so that women can be freed up to take care of different needs, seeks to provide education and cultural enrichment teaching our kids their true culture. The UKCC allows our entire village to share in the dignity of knowing that we have resumed the responsibility for the welfare our own children.

Like the situation earlier in the article,  our aim is to help bridge the gap in community and bring all resources together in a holistic impactful way.   

We believe that if we don’t do this, then we are leaving our communities open to attacks from the state.  And we know all too well, that when African mothers are trapped in the clutches of the State, it is nearly impossible for us to be involved in the work for national liberation when we are fighting to get our children back or figuring out how we survive the next week.  

The African National Women’s Organization is currently in the process of helping to establish the Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective in New York City,  Maryland/DC, and North Carolina. 

Find out more about how you join the Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective as a member or volunteer and anwouhuru.org/uhuru-kijiji-childcare-collective.

Considering most women do not know they are pregnant until after 6 weeks, one thing is clear, these laws are going to have a devastating impact on women, more specifically African women; leading to a heightened rate of incarceration and death.

Capitalism forces black women into abortions

A 2015 report by the Kaiser Foundation, shows that the rate at which African women have abortions are high compared to our population in the U.S.

We recognize that these rates reflect our lives under capitalist colonialist domination. Often, the decisions we make about our bodies are not based on our inherit wants and needs, instead, we are forced by the demands that capitalism places on us; such as not having enough money to feed, house and clothe children; in addition to the cost of childcare, and the absence of a network of friends and family who might have been available for childcare, had they not also been a part of the African working poor.  

Many are viewing this as an attack against women “in general,” positioning it as a Republican vs. Democrat issue; with Republicans attempting to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that protects a woman’s right to choose whether or not to have an abortion.

We understand, however, that this part of the rising crisis of imperialism which has brought forth an attempt by the white ruling class to raise their birth rate.  

Despite the fact that African women comprise some of the highest percentages of abortion cases in specific states, white women still hold the lead nationally.  

Non-reproducing white population threatens the hegemony

Faced with an aging, slow-growing population the white ruling class is moving at a rapid pace to prevent the projections made by William H. Frey in his 2018 book, Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America,  which states that white people will become a minority in this country by the year 2045.

The impact of which will be a loss of political power and a dwindling white ruling class. This is why we see support for these anti-abortion legislations from both bourgeois political parties: Democrat and Republican, both men and women.

It is a contradiction that the white ruling class is trying to resolve amongst themselves.  

We, however, are not blind to the reality that crisis in the white oppressor nation, manifests itself 10 times over in African colony.

This is a point that white women won’t overlook as they prop up campaigns to defend their right to choose on the backs of black women. Unsuspecting black women will be dragged into this fight, aligning themselves with white women, under the pretext that we are fighting for our rights as women.

History tells us, however, that political alignment with women of the white oppressor nation, who sit on the pedestal of our oppression, will result in a loss for us and a gain for them.  We see evidence of this as recent as the white-woman-hijacked MeToo Movement and the Women’s March fiasco, where women associated with the group challenged, African woman, Tamika Mallory’s support for Louis Farrakhan.

This is not to say that African women shouldn’t struggle against anything that attempts to restrict our inherit right to do with our body as we wish.  Especially since these laws will lead to increased challenges amongst African women. We can and are addressing this through the African National Women’s Organization which recognizes the need for African women to be free of capitalist colonialist domination, which makes decisions based on white ruling class contradictions.  

Opportunism of white oppressor nation women

The opportunism of white women serves the white oppressor nation because its character is  to get in front of the emerging radicalization of African woman and bring them into the cold embrace of capitalist solutions.

In our resolution to the 2015 African Internationalist Conference on African we defined the different political interests of white women and black women:

“There is a difference between the women of the oppressor nation and women of the oppressed nation. The former often reconciles differences with the men of their nation as a way to further exploit the women and men of the oppressed nation. In many cases oppressor nation women use the contradictions present in the oppressed nation to deepen the colonial agenda by dividing the African nation up along gender and class lines.”

We can conclude from this, that any resolution made amongst the people of the white oppressor nation will always benefit their women,  while African women continue to face challenges to our right to reproduce that goes beyond our womb.

Black women reproductive rights extend beyond the womb

Under U.S. domestic colonialism, black mothers are more likely to die from complications due to pregnancy. Black babies are more likely to die in childbirth.  Black children are more likely to die as a result of State or horizontal violence. Black people are disproportionately represented in prisons when compared to our population. Black children are disproportionately taken from black mothers and kept as foster children – wards of the colonial state.

These statistics  prove that the reproductive rights of women includes more than our right to give birth, but also our right to raise our children into adulthood without trauma, death or violence. In some communities it is hardly expected that our children will live past the age of 18. If they do, the likelihood that they will have a life free from the terrors of colonial violence and oppression, is slim.  

Destroy Capitalism Increase birth outcomes

When the foundation of the  worldwide system of capitalism is rooted in the destruction of African life, the odds that our lives will be improved by our alignment with capitalism is illogical.  

We have experienced this terror since Africa was first attacked and the first child was ripped from the arms of his mother.

This is all a result of enslavement and colonialism. There is no law that a bourgeois political party, that upholds colonialism, could ever pass that ensures the production and reproduction of African life.  A vanguard Party led by African workers, united under one socialist government, in control of the state, will do that.

The African National Women’s Organization was created by the African People’s Socialist Party to raise up the contradictions that life under capitalist colonialism deepens for black women.  ANWO has created opportunities for us to center our voice in this discussion and organize for the destruction of the system that continually undermines our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  

For example,  ANWO’s ArrestCPS: Stop Kidnapping Black Children and Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective campaigns work hand in hand to directly address the reproductive rights of African women, while exposing the state and building a child welfare alternative all our own.

If we continue to lean on the whims of the white ruling class, we will continue to be trapped in their crisis. Let’s build and support our own.

Death to Imperialism! Forward the African Revolution!Forward the leadership of revolutionary African women!

Last week, various news and social media sites were circulating and exalting the story of Madonna’s theft of two (more) children from Malawi.

The outlets talked about the controversy around the length of adoption, the waiving of a residency requirement by the court–which state that children in Malawi cannot be adopted by non-citizens, and the motives behind the adoption. These issues, however, barely scratch the surface of centuries-long history of the kidnapping of African children by imperialist nations.

The kidnapping of African children is rooted in slavery and brigandage

The kidnapping of African children is rooted in the beginnings of capitalism itself. We cannot be blind to the fact that the attack on Africa, through the robbing of African labor and resources saved Europe from poverty and despair and subsequently created wealth for the white nation at the expense of African nation.

What became known as the transatlantic slave trade facilitated the kidnapping of human beings for the benefit of imperialist colonies in the “West”; and on the continent of Africa, we were turned into commodities.

The commodification of African bodies for the benefit of the white nation still continues today and manifests itself in the form of illegal international adoption and Child Protection Services (CPS) agencies that exist in imperialist countries. This point is central to the #ArrestCPS work of the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO).

Through illegal international adoption, the white nation continues to benefit from the African poverty and misery created by capitalist exploitation which range from bloody violence to rampant disease to torturous hunger.

These war-like conditions cripple our family structures, leaving African parents incapable of caring for our children, therefore, our children become spoils of war.

Madonna speaks for women’s rights while stealing African women’s children

Madonna, like so many other white people, willingly participate in African exploitation under the guise of being a savior. She is the case of the day but let’s not forget that she is a third offense African child kidnapper who previously stole two children from Malawi in 2006 and 2009.

This parasitic white-women-can-save-African-children plague is also spewed by the likes of Sandra Bullock, Angelina Jolie, Joely Fisher and Michelle Pfeiffer, just to name but a few of white celebrities turned “Messiah’s.”

It’s important to note these names because they are some of the white women celebrities who supported the January 21 women’s march where up to 1 million white women marched in Washington, D.C. to elevate “all women’s” rights wearing pink hats and highlighting slogans about “pussy grabbing back” all while sitting on the pedestal of imperialism, with African babies as their loot.

Madonna’s speech at the national women’s march, summed up the gathering of the pussy-hatted white women as a “rebellion, [a] refusal as women to accept this new age of tyranny. Where not just women are in danger, but all marginalized people.”

Hmm, Madonna, the tyranny didn’t start with Trump.

Madonna is a parasite

If we take a look at her body of work she has been exploiting black art and people her entire career. We can only promise that ushering in a black revolution will end her parasitic behavior as she herself is convinced that her kidnapping is “saving a child’s life.”

In an interview she gave in 2015, she said, “This [adopting African children] was an eye opening experience” and “a real low point in my life. I didn’t know that trying to adopt a child was going to land me in another shit storm.”

She continued, “I was accused of kidnapping, child trafficking, using my celebrity muscle to jump ahead in the line, bribing government officials, witchcraft, you name it…but trying to save a child’s life was not something I thought I would be punished for.”

Freedom for white women directly correlates to misery for African women

The “rebellious” white woman turns a blind eye now when the Samburu women of Kenya are still being raped by British soldiers in training camps based in Samburu. Maybe because they know that our African babies will soon be on the market.

But we know that white women march with white values.

Our liberation cannot be spearheaded or catalyzed by white women. In fact, these current events only underscore that history has not changed and that white women have sat and will gladly sit on the sidelines when it comes to the issues of African women.

White women will never uphold the struggles of the African woman. Madonna’s idea of retaining the identity of these children is letting them keep their African names and having a nannie from Malawi take care of them.

White women have long been the recipient of added benefits in addition to our children such as nannies, house helps, and nursing aids––all at the direct expense of theft, slavery and colonization of Africa.

ANWO exposing capitalist underpinnings of adoption and foster care

The African National Women’s Organization’s  #ArrestCPS campaign has highlighted the parasitic nature of the State and international adoption agencies. During the month of March––Women’s Month––we will continue to raise up the kidnapping of our children as an international crises, and bring the parasites to heel.

According to Childwelfare.gov, 24 percent of children in U.S. foster care are African. This statistic is shocking because African children only represent 3 percent of the U.S. population.

African children, as a result, languish in the U.S. foster care system after being removed from their homes; the system never bringing resolution to any issues that led to the removal.

Currently, we can only guess at the numbers of African children that are trafficked through international adoption agencies or religious charity organizations.

If we follow indicators like the 2010 attempted kidnapping of 33 African children in Haiti by a white church-based group or when a white French woman was caught smuggling a 4-year-old African child from Haiti into France via duffle bag in 2016; we can be sure that the amounts of African children kidnapped from our communities is 100 times greater than the few that are caught.

Support the work of ANWO, help us build the movement

It is our duty to defend the most precious resource of our Continent––our children. It is our duty to be aware of the magnitude of this theft not just through illegal international adoption but also through Child Protective Services (CPS) in imperialist States that intentionally target African mothers and unjustly take African children into their systems. It is our duty to expose this exploitation and parasitism of capitalist colonialism.

Join the African National Women’s Organization in championing an international campaign of African parents, especially mothers, to expose the continued kidnapping of African children by imperialist states. Join the ArrestCPS local or international committees. For more information, email us at info@anwouhuru.org or call (240) 326-3959.

These attacks run the gamut of social and economic assaults, meant to demoralize and cause crisis; such as revenge evictions, stoppages of social benefits , unannounced police visits, impromptu court appearances, and illegitimate Council tax levies, among other things.

From the outside, all of this could appear to be a string of bad situations or could even be summed up as something that is a result of Kushinda’s poor management; but hundreds of pages of correspondence to and from Brent Council says otherwise.

Over the course of 17 years Kushinda has been in constant battle with the state after initially filing a complaint against the school district for the treatment of her learning disabled son, Meshach Boland who was 12 years old at the time.

First, they cancelled her income benefits without explanation, then they denied her carer benefits and so on and so forth until the present day.

But all along Kushinda has fought for clarity. She has been in the courts, gone down to their offices, written extensive appeals, emailed and protested only to be met with silence or additional attacks.

The State retaliates after push back against police

In August 2015, everything started to escalate for Kushinda after Brent police sent a targeted letter to families following a stabbing in the African community.

The letter demanded that African youth attend a meeting to discuss the stabbing and warned that if the youth did not attend the meeting, Brent Police would heighten its efforts in the community.

Knowing the implications for black youth and even Kushinda’s learning disabled son, Meshach who is now 29- years old, the Uhuru Movement responded to the letter by writing our own letter which exposed the colonial nature of the police – the letter was published in a local paper; which elevated the issue.

The Uhuru Movement began organizing the community and building a resistance to the policy of police containment.

Only a few months later, in January, Meshach was involved in an altercation with a store owner – a result of his denied access to treatment for his learning and behavioral disabilities – which resulted in a warrant for his arrest and attempted criminal prosecution.

The African National Women’s Organization responded with the First they Fail Us! Then they Jail Us! Campaign which organized a mass call-in to Crown Prosecution Services (CPS) and a protest – led by Kushinda – in front of the Willesden Magistrate court on May 11th, the date of Meshach’s hearing].

This resulted in the court pushing back their attempts to incarcerate Meshach. It was a short-lived victory.

Economic Sanctions is State Violence

Brent retaliated against Kushinda with tax levies and eviction proceeding among other things; which temporarily prevented her from organizing.

We saw her become more isolated and depressed as the state’s agencies collaborated with each other to strengthen their attacks.

First Brent said she owed taxes on a business that never belonged to her, then they sent an eviction notice, next they levied her with additional Council taxes that came up to over two thousand pounds. Then they attempted to move her ailing mother from her home, then they tried to move Meshach’s hearing to an earlier date.

Kushinda and ANWO couldn’t respond fast enough to everything so we decided to go on the offensive. We decided to bring Brent Council’s dirty laundry to their front steps by organizing a daily protest during the month of August, to be held in front of their headquarters at Brent Civic Centre.

ANWO Takes the Offensive

There, Kushinda sat in front of their doors with her mouth taped and hands and feet bound surrounded by poster boards that read “Stop the Revenge Eviction of Kushinda Olanrenwaju”, “Black Lives Won’t Matter, Until we Get Black Power”, and “Stop Britain’s War on Oppressed People”. Everyday she was flanked by her sister Lorna and fellow comrade Antony, who served as agitators and security .

As soon as the protest started, Council representatives scurried to find a resolution so that they could move this “poor black woman” from in front of their shiny state-of-the-art building.

They came out to the street with her files in hand and tried to figure it out, right then and there. This was after Kushinda had been ignored for months. Within two weeks we had met with Council representatives and her eviction had been stopped.

We organized a committee who played pivotal roles in the demonstrations both locally and internationally. Nemequene Tundama and Awqa Colque, indigenous comrades who stand in opposition to colonialism and the oppression of African and indigenous people. We gathered support from Deepa Naik and her daughter Sunaya from This is Not a Gateway; Sister Steffney from London Campaign Against Police and State Violence (LCAPSV); and Sister Jacqui and Brother Cecil from the Pan African Community Society Forum (PACSF).

When we organize we win

By the end of the 20-day protest, we had collected 200 contacts, organized media coverage, recruited other African organizations and supporters to join the protest, held solidarity protests in Phoenix AZ and Washington D.C. and led a successful social media campaign with #DefendAfricanWomen.

We also saw CPS move to end their prosecution of Meshach and are currently working to throw out the case.

These are huge victories! However, we know that there is more to fight around Kushinda. Kushinda still does not have income or her carer benefits restored.

Meshach’s access to Brent Adult Social Care Services to meet his learning disability needs, is still being denied.

The Council does not want to consider their role in denying his access for 17 years. They want to start fresh in order to avoid the reparations they will have to give Meshach for the years of their neglect.

In the meeting we had with the council, in the first two weeks, the Adult Social Care Services Director, declared they did not have an Adult Social Care file on Meshach – which was a total lie since we have records.

So in response, on the last day of protest, we delivered a copy of the 515 page file to the Director of Operations for Adult Social Care – Ms. Helen Woodland.

This action served as an example of resistance for other African women who are currently suffering in silence. Kushinda was lifted out of isolation and empowered to action through organization. We encourage other African women who are struggling to join ANWO. Join a movement of African women who refuse to be isolated and targeted by the state. Let’s win it!

During the two hours, organizers passed out ANWO PHX’s branch  letter of support explaining the campaign.  There were many that attempted to avoid the side of the walk where the women sat, so the organizers moved swiftly and  strategically cut them off by splitting the protest so that it covered both sides of the walkway

We had a good response from Africans, who quickly came to take our information.

This protest was the second in many to come. We will continue to lift up the struggles of African women and expose the system of colonialism that isolates and oppress us.

#DefendAfricanWomen
#DefendKushinda

Tamara first came into contact with DHS approximately three years ago after her landlord of her building shut off her water, then called DHS.  Although her children were not removed for two years, DHS remained an ever-present overseer in her affairs.

After two years DHS’s Community Umbrealla Agency (CUA) escalated the case which resulted in Tamara’s chidren being removed from he rhome.  This decision came after  Tamara refused to submit to their ongoing tests and orders only to be told to do them again. Since she was never accused of abuse or harming her children, she refuses to go any testing that forces her to admit guiilt, namely  mental health evaluation and anger management classes.

She says she , “has a right to be angry, but under the circumstances  is handling it very well.”

Tamara has been struggling to expose the system but also to find support base so that she and other mothers will not be vulnerable to their attacks.

DHS first entered Nina’s life in retaliation for a lawsuit she brought against the Philadelphia School District. The suit charged the school district with not providing her learning disabled son the services and education he needed.

Her son received an Individualized Educational Plan (IEP) that Nina, believes actually helps the school district target families for DHS intervention.

ANWO call-to-action puts DHS worker on defensive

The community forum came on the heels of a few very emotional days. On July 20^th Tamara informed ANWO that DHS worker, Elisha Ramberan had threatened to recommend to the court that her parental rights be removed.

ANWO quickly organized an email-based call-to-action that  targeted  Elisha, so that she would know that Tamara had community support.

After receiving dozens of emails from our supporters, Ramberan  responded by sending her internet goons to ANWO’s facebook page to berate Tamara in the comments section of the post.

Tamara responded to each of the belligerent accusations– some of which came from DHS workers. She demanded that DHS produce any documentation to confirm their claims of abuse – which is what most of the comments insinuated.

The comments continued for a few days.  Finally, ANWO intervened by inviting everyone who commented on the post, to the community forum for an open discussion. Not one of them showed up.

Not one of them showed up.

Mothers expose DHS as a colonial tool of repression

During the forum, both Nina and Tamara produced packets of documents that proved their cases.

Tamara accused DHS of creating false reports, collaborating with doctors and other agencies to criminalize her and other parents, denying her human and parental rights, and forced medical treatment.

Nina also accused DHS of falsifying reports, terrorist threats, denying her the right to speak on her own behalf in court,  child abuse – her children have been harmed in care, making up laws, forced mental health evaluation, and denying her parental rights.

They both highlighted the ineptitude of their court-appointed attorneys who have done little to nothing to put up a defense during their hearings. They also shared the lack of support they have received from organizations like National Action Network (NAN) or the NAACP, who they’ve reached out to for help.

The forum ended with helpful discussions and the beginnings of a strategy.

The following day, on Sunday, July 24^th Parent’s Day; the mothers, along with their supporters, held a small but strong demonstration in downtown Philadelphia in the midst of the fanfare that was happening in preparation for the Democratic National Convention which was starting the next day.

We marched through the sea of white people,  chanting  “DHS you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide” and “Stop kidnapping black children, DHS out now.”  We marched to the DHS building and then set up in front of the family visiting center, where parents undergo supervised visits on Sundays.

Retaliatory hearing further isolates our mothers

The day after the protest, Tamara was ordered to appear in court for an impromptu hearing to address  threat allegations made by Ramberan and the status of her case.   She went but had support from Uhuru Movement. Philly organizer, Nana Yaw Grant stayed in the courts the entire day, ensuring that she had constant support.   The outcome of the hearing was that the Judge essentially issued Tamara a gag order preventing her from talking about the case at the risk of going to jail.

ANWO is committed to supporting Tamara, Nina and all other parents by building mass support around this issue. We want to make it impossible for the state to continue to carry out subjective policies, that isolate and criminalize mothers which facilitates the kidnapping of our children.

We call on you to organize with us around this issue.  It may not be called DHS, maybe it’s called CPS , NSPCC, DYFS. Whatever it’s called  we understand that  it is not there to help resolve contradictions in our communities, instead they are there to deepen the crisis. We encourage you to contact us so that we can raise this issue together making the case for the dismantling of these agencies in our community, and to  build the Black Community Control of Child Welfare.

We encourage African women to Join ANWO!
And African men to join the committee!

We are a group of black mothers, supporters and allies that charge the Department of Human Services (DHS), Child Protective Services (CPS), and the Family Court system with the act of genocide for the forced transfer of Black children from the safety of their parents to dangerous situations that have led to physical injury, emotional trauma, and death.

#ArrestCPS is a campaign of the African National Women’s Organization which elevates the voices of mothers and children who have been victimized by “family service” agencies. Our number one objective is to GET THE CHILDREN BACK.

We employ diverse strategies which provide community education about this issue, organize mothers and families to strike back and build support systems that help overturn serious contradictions.  We reclaim the narrative of poor and working class black mothers fighting for their children. Black mothers are not violent, uncaring and dangerous; instead, they are relentless fighters working to keep their families together.

We are here to turn the tables on these agencies, exposing them as the dangerous, violent and uncaring structures that traumatize black children – NOT the mothers.  They act as modern day slave catchers – targeting mostly poor black single-mother-headed household – kidnapping black children who are used as pawns in personal conflicts or leveraged for profit.

These agencies destroy black communities by removing our most precious resource – our children thereby disrupting the bond between child, family and community – essentially alienating our children increasing their chances of contact with the criminal justice system.

These agencies aggressively use divide and conquer tactics by spreading lies, character assassinations, and deepening of interpersonal conflicts. They work against families and spin bureaucratic webs which end up frustrating the process to regain custody and criminalizes mothers.

#ArrestCPS says the real criminals are not the mothers, but the so-called child protection agencies who do anything but protect our children.

Get daily updates about this campaign by following arrestdhs.tumblr.com

She made repeated phone calls to their offices only to be met with rude agents and dropped calls.

Frustrated and upset by the clear disregard for her desperate situation, Samantha posed the question, “What the fuck does it have to be, do I have to leave the baby in the house by herself to get you motherfuckers to realize I need help?”

This is a statement that Samantha has come to regret because it led to CPS coming to her home and removing her daughter that same day.

Samantha, since that time, has been through a series of struggles with the State that resulted in Samantha winning back custody of Tae’Lor and the State removing her twice more.

Tae’Lor now resides with Rochelle Brewer, her paternal grandmother.

Brewer, according to Samantha, does everything possible to keep her away from Tae’Lor.

Child Protective Services serves colonialism

Samantha is a product of the foster care system. She and her brother were removed from their mother’s custody when she was 7-years-old.

Her mother was addicted to crack cocaine and Samantha was told (she can’t remember) that she was a victim of sexual abuse from close male family members.

Drug use and sexual abuse are contradictions that colonialism imposes on African people.

Samantha was moved between different homes from Washington D.C. to Prince Georges County to Baltimore County while her brother remained in D.C.

This constant movement made it difficult for Samantha to stay close to her siblings or form personal connections with others.

She became a survivor, making her way through different obstacles until she became emancipated from foster care at age 21.

Samantha was then entirely on her own.

She had to figure out where she was going to live, how she was going to get a job and ultimately how to be a mother.

Like many of us subjected to colonial conditions, Samantha gets angry sometimes.

Samantha admits she felt disconnected from her child and lacked a full understanding of motherhood, acknowledging that it took years to really grow into the role.

Samantha, with tears in her eyes, remembers a time in the hospital after giving birth, when Tae’Lor started coughing.

She didn’t know what to do so she left Tae’Lor in the bed and went to find a nurse.

She returned to the room to find that the mother in the next bed soothed the baby and instructed her on what to do if that happened again.

Samantha thought that she “almost killed [Tae’Lor]” by leaving the room while the baby seemed to be in distress.

Samantha remembers a few more situations where she questions her own judgment, but insists, “I just wanted to protect and provide for [my] daughter…I would never hurt my child.”

All Samantha needed was guidance and support, which was robbed from her when the State separated her from her family and put her in the care of dozens of strangers.

The foster care system is a modern day slave auction

This is the reality for many African parents and their children, who languish inside a foster care system created under capitalist colonialism.

In 2014, African children, only three percent of the U.S. population, represented 24 percent of all children in foster care in the United States.

This is second to that of white children who are 11 percent of the population and make up 42 percent of children in foster care. The numbers don’t add up.

The foster care system—which provides financial incentives for each state—is only slightly more sophisticated in stealing children than the auction blocks of chattel slavery or the native schools of early U.S. settler colonialism.

It functions to deepen the crises in poor working class families and communities.

CPS has proven time and again that the rights of African parents to protect and care for their children comes second to the colonizer’s wish to have access to those children.

It doesn’t matter if you ask for medical help like Samantha or refuse medical recommendations like in the cases of Maryanne Godboldo and Ahmed and Kathy Giwa, who were charged with medical neglect and had their children taken—the State will always find a way to intervene.

The fight for Tae’Lor continues

Samantha has never given up on getting her daughter back. Over the past five years, she has gotten her Bachelor’s degree and gained intimate policy knowledge of CPS and the injustice system that protects it. She wants to be an advocate, not only for herself but for other parents who experience similar situations.

She has joined the African National Women’s Organization (ANWO) in D.C. and is currently working on a plan to organize African parents.

When asked her if Tae’Lor, now 7-years-old, wants to come back home, Samantha says, “I don’t know what my baby wants, I haven’t been able to speak to her, so I don’t know.” She continues, “I’m just going to keep fighting to get her back so I can have the opportunity to be a mother to my child.”

Join the fight against the oppressive CPS system!

I first want to thank the members of Decolonize Pregnancy Birth and Parenting Caucus for putting this fair together in order to raise awareness of the issue of infant and maternal mortality in Oakland and to connect that to the work of AAPDEP’s infant and maternal project in Sierra Leone.

Over the last few weeks we have been touring Nurse Midwife Mary Koroma, who is the Director of AAPDEP-SL.

She is a great organizer who has made a significant impact in transforming birth outcomes of African women and babies in her native Sierra Leone.

Sierra Leone is a country that has one of the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the world, with one in eight women at risk for dying in childbirth.

Due to the holistic approach of the work of AAPDEP-SL, these rates have decreased in the western part of the country where there are AAPDEP branches and AAPDEP trained traditional birth attendants.

During Koroma’s Oakland presentations at the Niebyl Proctor Marxist library on Wednesday, and here at the Uhuru House on Thursday, she reported on the significant mineral wealth of Sierra Leone and the major contradiction of having those minerals exported from the country, with the resources gained from the removal of these minerals benefitting foreign nations and corporations.

She went on to explain that because of this, it is understood that the poverty and poor conditions within Sierra Leone have been imposed and is a direct result of a capitalist system whose existence is based on continuing the colonial conditions that render African people powerless to defend our right to our resources.

It is in this vein that Nurse Midwife Koroma saw it fit to implement community programs with the main goal to inspire community self-reliance, thereby empowering the community and exposing that contradiction in the eyes of the people.

This allows the people to see that if they can build significant programs with little to no resources, why is it that their government or the NGO organizations who make millions, not use those resources to improve these conditions.

Koroma gave powerful presentations and I’m sorry that many of you in this room today were not able to experience them.

Connecting the plight of Africans in Sierra Leone to the plight of Africans all over the world

It is these stark contradictions, which is a result of colonialism, which allows us to connect the plight of African women and babies in Sierra Leone to the plight of African women and babies all over the world.

Even in the United States, one of the most developed countries in the world, African women and babies are more likely to die than any other group.

Black women make up 12 percent of U.S. population, however we are 50 percent of all maternal deaths.

In New York, African women are eight times more likely than white women to die in childbirth, which is equal to 79 in every 100,000.

In Milwaukee, 141 African babies will die per every 100,000 live births when compared to 54 out of 100,000 for white babies.

As a matter of fact, in a Milwaukee neighborhood, the rate at which African babies die is higher than in Botswana(1).

In California, 46.8 of every 100,000 live births ended in death to the mother or child when compared to 14.6 of every 100,000 live births of white women.

Why is this happening?

Some say that African women don’t have preterm care, or access to health care is limited. The fact is that we do get prenatal care.

Others say it’s because we don’t have money. However, even when individual African women enjoy a higher socioeconomic status, they still die at three times the rates of white women who haven’t graduated high school.

So what could it be if it’s not access or economics?

The answer is colonialism, overall, and its byproducts which equate to a compounded health assault, which results to stress from living as oppressed people within a colonial system.

African people were kidnapped from our homeland and forced to work in North America, the Caribbean, South and Central America and Europe for hundreds of years, and subjected to some of the worst conditions on the planet.

Even when we won freedom from slavery outright, our existence still went toward building white wealth.

Any attempt that was made to build our own wealth was destroyed by the white colonial oppressors.

African women were even used as wet (breastfeeding) nurses for their oppressor, ensuring the health of white babies, all the while experiencing extreme mortality rates within our own communities.

This lets us know that our value as African people in this system is to only be workers for the oppressor and ensuring their survival.

Outside of that, our presence is not welcomed.

Today, we see our communities underdeveloped, our access to economic development undermined and our communities under constant police containment.

This is what it means to be colonized in one of the richest countries in the world.

African people all over the world experience this even if we are the majority, because the systems of colonial oppression are a result of capitalism, which has its foundation in the enslavement of African people.

Colonization is when black women are subjected to low level care in these medical or natural birthing institutions, or when we have to be concerned that if we have a son, he could possibly be murdered before his 18th birthday.

Colonialism is when black mothers are forced to survive without their mates or sons because of a criminal injustice system that incarcerates black men at higher rates than any other group, and they do longer sentences for non-violent crimes.

Colonialism is when a mother is forced to go days without food because her government bids away her resources to parasitic entities, which could otherwise be used to ensure food is grown in every part of her country.

These are the colonial conditions that contribute to the stress and early death of our people.

Oftentimes, a solution that is given to combat these grave statistics is to return to traditional birth practices.

The fact is that in many places throughout the world, African babies and mothers have no other form of birthing care. They have already been engaged in traditional birth practices and the outcomes are still extreme, so this cannot be the solution.

<p>We must deal with the root cause of our problems, which is colonialism

We have to be practical about our approach and engage in a real political analysis that challenges the current social system, not just bits and pieces, but the whole thing, calling for its destruction.

Premature birth, low birth weight babies, excessive maternal bleeding, maternal hypertension, miscarriages, limited access to good food and gestational diabetes are some of the major problems we face.

These are all realities that will not go away until we deal with the root cause, which is colonialism.

Sure, the statistics can improve and have improved, however, even if our death rates drop in a certain area, it still remains higher than everyone else, wherever we are.

Colonialism is the common system that contributes to the dis-empowerment, impoverishment and marginalization of us as a people.

This system defines our lives as oppressed people and it is the oppressor group that upholds these systems.

The solutions to overturn these outcomes cannot be summed up to a singular approach to care.

We should improve the care but understand that the work we have to do is to eliminate the conditions Africans are subjected to as a colonized people.

Once we end this colonial relationship, then we will see birth outcomes equal to or surpass that of everyone else.

If the African continent is the richest on the planet and African women and children are dying at these high rates, what hope can we have for African women and babies in the United States?

So, as we watch the video that highlights the work of AAPDEP in Sierra Leone, I want you to understand that all of these projects being instituted are not only around the eradication of high infant and maternal death in the country, but to also ensure the future of African people as a whole