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.

What the South African media has been referring to as ‘gender-based violence” is another symptom of a broken society as a result of colonialism and the rise of capitalism. We can’t solely blame the perpetrators of these crimes without examining the underlying issues or causes of these social ills that are inherent in colonial domination. 

Yes, we are correct to be angry, shout and yell at the immediate perpetrators which are mostly men, for hurting, abusing, raping and mercilessly killing us. But we should also blame and attack the colonial capitalist system that created and maintains social conditions under which black people live. 

This writing emanates from the recent reports of “gender-based violence” and merciless killings of black women and children by black men in South Africa, especially now during the State imposed lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Day in and day out we hear horror stories of women and children being murdered; like the 3-year-old baby girl who went missing for a few days, only to be found killed, with stab wounds on her upper body and dumped in a plastic bin.  We heard about the 79-year-old woman who got attacked inside her home and the 25-year-old woman who was axed to death by her ex-boyfriend and the  28-year-old heavily pregnant woman who was stabbed and hanged on a tree, with an 8 months old unborn baby still inside her, taking two lives in one go. 

This is sickening! It has to stop! Enough is enough! I plead with you, to please protect and defend African women and children. If we don’t, who else will?

African women have been through a lot and we are still going through a lot. The African community must take a stand to defend African women; we have been subjected to all kinds of pain and violence. 

We are not only dealing with a colonial capitalist system’s exploitation as we generally experience it, we have an additional yoke on our shoulders as colonized women, which is our special oppression usually carried out within the African colony by other colonized people. 

PARASITIC CAPITALISM COLONIALISM IS RAPE CULTURE

The first attack African women suffered was colonialism (the foreign domination of an entire people for the material and spiritual benefit of the colonizer). Europeans are the ones who first killed, raped, and used African women and men as commodities. Over the course of centuries of subjugation, our brothers became indoctrinated with this nonsensical, immoral, and toxic white culture towards African women. 

Therefore, what I see happening today is the legacy of the colonial capitalist system. With the arrival of the colonial settlers, came the rise of capitalism from its primitive accumulation of our resources and labour.  They separated our families by taking our fathers, husbands and brothers to the mines to dig up our resources for white consumption, while they turned African women into baby-making machines to produce labourers for production.  We were turned into maids, demeaned as human beings, as you still see it today – white people make us walk their dogs or carry them around on our backs as babies.

Black men adopted the “rape culture” and violence from Europeans who brought the savagery, death and destruction from Europe to Africa. Now our condition has been exacerbated by the material want that our communities are subjected to with the theft of our resources.

When our colonizers attacked and occupied our land, they did that through the barrel of a gun. When they raped and killed African women, they also did it through the use of force and violence. Today, violence and “rape culture” is synonymous with black men. They are the face of every cruel and toxic behaviour that’s happening in the society, while the white men who introduced it are models of “good moral and behaviour.” 

Even today, white people still axe and kill each other, but the first suspect becomes black men. Both prominent white cases (S v Pistorius and S v Van Breda case) where white people were brutally killed by their own, the suspects or intruders were black men. These two cases explicitly show us that white men are not models of “good moral and behaviour” as the media has made many of us believe, this thing is embedded in their historical DNA, but they’ve always had a cover-up, called black men.

Just as they introduced their cold and cruel religion, that they call Christianity, Europeans used violence and instilled fear to black people, that they will go to hell if they don’t comply. Our fore-bearers, after years of resistance, were ultimately subdued and forced to adopt it. Down went our cultural values. Those who continued to resist this incursion were called pagans (amaqaba) while the converted ones were called “amagqobhoka”.

The settlers in Azania not only enjoy the fruit of our labour and resources, but they also brutalize and kill us as a form of therapy. That is also why they would even kill a 16-year-old teenage boy for allegedly “stealing” a sunflower. Unashamedly, shooting and killing black men in the farms and claiming that they mistook them for baboons. 

And exactly why they would violently and inhumanly put an alive black man in a coffin and also feed a black man to lions in 2005. Europeans have always been violent and black people learned from them. However, by saying all of this I am not justifying a black man’s behaviour, but I want to deal with the underlying causes first before we deal with the symptoms.

PATRIARCHY IS A SYMPTOM OF COLONIALISM

African women cannot breathe. The environment is not conducive and safe for us. For hundreds of years the system has been kneeling on our necks in more ways than our equally colonized male counterparts. Therefore, I call upon both African men and women to fist up and fight back and unite against the colonial capitalist system and it’s patriarchal underpinnings of masculinity over femininity. 

Yes, we need to dismantle patriarchy together because it came with colonialism. In pre-colonial Africa, black men and women were united and treated each other with love and respect, hence they never raped their women, despite walking around braless and wearing traditional mini-skirt called inkciyo. Black men were never discomforted by seeing naked breasts, until a colonial settler arrived. 

In Europe men treated women like property and upon their domination of Africa,  African men were positioned to be superior to African women. The European settlers reinforced backward notions such as men are the boss in the house, a woman must bow before them, she is weak and cannot do this and that. 

Before colonialism, black men and women were equally working together plowing the fields in order to produce food. Also, during harvest time both African men and women, boys and girls would go on the fields and work. That is why even subsequent to our dispossession, both boys and girls would go and herd the cows; for example, Mama Winnie Madikizela-Mandela grew up herding the cows. 

Europeans never had equal powers with their women, a woman was told her place is in the kitchen, so patriarchy is their thing, exclusion of women from power, it came with them. Our brothers learned this and adopted it. It is wrong African brothers, and we will help you unlearn through revolutionary struggle, so we can be together as one, fighting our oppressor together. 

WE NEED BLACK POWER! 

In conclusion, my African brothers and sisters, let’s unite and fight together to reclaim our Black Power so that our Black Lives will matter as we build a new world. Because if we don’t crush the capital colonial system which maintains patriarchy, we are going to continue with these numerous futile hashtags #MenAreTrash #NotInMyName #MenMustFall #AmINext and the rest of them. 

To you, African men in Occupied Azania (South Africa) in particular, you have to stop your petty-bourgeois inspired nonsensical “bro code” of loyalty; call each other out and expose the perpetrators, and stop protecting them because they are your friends, homies and colleagues. The entire African community must take a stance in defending African women from the violence perpetrated against us on a daily basis. 

Vuyo Nyeli is a Clinical Consultant, senior law (LLB) student at the University of South Africa (UNISA), and a member of the African National Women’s Organization. 

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!

From February 5th  to February 14th the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon was under a lockdown initiated by the Ambazonia interim government. The Republic of  Ambazonia (aka Amba Land) is a self-declared state consisting of the English speaking regions of Cameroon that want to separate from the dominant French speaking Cameroon.

For the past twenty-five years, sectors of the African petite bourgeoisie in the French and English speaking regions have been in contention with one another. The primary criticism from the English speaking sector being that they are denied access to the larger social and  political arena dominated by the French speaking Cameroonian government.

The contradiction came to a head in 2017 when neither sector of the petite bourgeoisie would concede to each others demands.

Since then, the country has been entangled in a ongoing crisis that has killed and displaced hundreds; mostly in the English speaking regions.

The Lockdown causes crisis for the African poor and working class

While the reason for the lockdown was not clearly stated,  we understand that the goal was to destabilize the government and its activities in specific areas of the country.

During the lockdown all sorts of activities were banned as a way to undermine National Youth Day on February 11th, which is also the anniversary of the United Nations sponsored 1961 plebiscite which forced the unification of the British ruled and French ruled regions of Cameroon,  locally referred to as La Republique.

The Ambazonian consortium of the English regions, have on several occasions, opposed celebrating this as a national day on the grounds that they were not well respected and acknowledged by the current government. Thus, the prerequisite was to put a halt on this day.

On Wednesday the 6^th of February, a mass arrest of citizens was carried out by the state defense forces whom are assumed to be the security of its citizens. Women  were molested and sexually violated and there was about fifty young men who were forcefully taken from their rooms. As of this writing, little is known about their status or the health condition of the abused women.

One can then conclude, without fear of contradiction, that though the reason behind the lockdown was not clearly stated, it endangered  the lives of the poor and working class population.

There is a cry for justice and the application of the international law throughout the cities which have gone unanswered by the United Nations and the African Union.

The Crisis in Cameroon is a crisis caused by imperialism

In the Uhuru Movement,  we understand that the basis of the current crisis is one rooted in imperialism.

We blame imperialism, for dividing up Africa; creating a false national consciousness and pitting Africans against one another.

It is the fault of Germany, England and France and their continued intervention in the African political landscape, which fosters the type of instability we are seeing now.   

France and England installed neo-colonial rulers (white power/black face) in its place, to make it look like Cameroon had independence in 1961.

They did this to avoid the emerging trend of armed struggle and African nationalism  sweeping throughout Africa in the 1950’s. Africans were fighting against European colonizers and inflicting high casualties in Algeria, Guinea Bissau & Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Belgian Congo, Kenya and in French speaking Cameroon.  

Europe didn’t have the man power to continue fighting these wars,  so in the mid to late 50’s it began to end direct colonialism in favor of indirect-colonial rule, by installing neo-colonial leaders throughout Africa.

Undermining the historic revolutionary resistance of Cameroon

Even after the so-called independence in 1961, France and Britain worked with their installed neo-colonial leaders to squash the indigenous nationalist movements of Cameroon, who sought complete independence and a socialist economy.

What is happening now is not a result of misleadership, it is a result of the attack on Africa that disbursed Africans around the globe and slicing up of Africa to facilitate the theft of our resources, for the benefit of Europe.

Dividing Cameroon further  does not solve any problems for Africans, it solves the problems of the colonizers and the African petit bourgeoisie.  Ambazonia, if they succeed in separating from Cameroon, will be a failed state, just like all of the other countries in Africa; infiltrated by the enemy and where the masses of our people continue to suffer under neo-colonialist regimes.

Neither the Ambazonia or Cameroon government is a revolutionary government with the interest of the poor and working class at the center. Both are led by the African petit bourgeoisie who have no vision for Africa beyond the violence and limitations of capitalism. Evidence of this is seen in the suffering of the people.

The call should be to unify Cameroon, but under one revolutionary government that brings together all of Cameroon for the betterment of all of its people and unite with the struggle for all Africa to be free under one socialist government led by the poor and working class.

Below is a video taken by members of the community on February 10, 2019. It shows bodies of young men killed by what the speaker identifies as “terrorists”. The speaker also calls on the United States and United Nations for their concern, however, we understand the United States and other imperialist forces are already in Cameroon. They are the real terrorists supplying arms to the proxy forces and instigating the crisis.

E. A. M. is the local President of the African National Women’s Organization in Cameroon.

Following this past April, a viral video of the brutal assault of an African woman flooded the internet, displaying the sexually connotative attack by three white male officers violently grabbing twenty-five-year-old Chikesia Clemons and aggressively forcing her to the ground where they proceeded to straddle her and expose her breast while attempting to detain her. The use of aggressive force was expressed in the video as the cop blatantly stated that he was “about to break your arm” after Chikesia asked what he was doing to her.

The widely circulated video was recorded by Chikesia’s friend Canita Adams, she witnessed the entire attack and stood in Chikesia’s defense against the vicious police. It was stated by a Waffle House spokesman that prior to the attack, there was an altercation between white Waitresses and Chikesia and her friends, thus justifying the call for police.

It was captured on the establishment’s surveillance camera that Chikesia and Canita Adams did indeed engage in this altercation after having been told to pay for plastic utensils that Chikesia requested from those employees. It was stated by both Canita Adams and Chikesia Clemons that the white women employees were very rude when first addressing them and throughout their stay continued to provoke them. After having been told to pay for the plastic utensils, Chikesia Clemons told the employee that she wasn’t familiar with any establishment requiring payment for plastic utensils.

She further requested for the district manager’s card so she could file a complaint on one of the waitresses. As Chikesia waited for the number, these white women instead called the police on both of the African women.

The vile molestation committed against Chikesia by the state officers is nothing new to the horrifying experience African women have historically faced by this colonialist State.

Our circumstance as a colonized African people results in a lack of power over our black lives; let alone our own black bodies, which are brutalized and abused in every way possible by the State.

African women’s bodies have been manipulated as a tool by the colonialist state and the colonial white population to further prove our lack of power and reinforce its grotesque imperialist force.

African women continue to be sexually assaulted by colonial cops in many more scenarios.

Daniel Holtzclaw was a police officer in Oklahoma City, who was convicted for targeting  poor and working class African women within their communities with the motive to rape and sexually assault them between 2013 and 2014.

There was also the recent case of Sherita Dixon-Cole, an African woman in Waxahachie, Texas who was raped by a cop after rejecting his request for sex in exchange for her release in detainment.

While African women continue to endure this colonial attack of sexual assault, white women remain quiet and align with the State, as they too are the oppressors of African people.

Just as it was showcased in the video at the Waffle House, it was white women who called the cops on the African women and as Chikesia was being molested, the white women sat aside and watched, thus proving their true stance as the oppressor alongside white men who committed the sexual assault.

This is why the African National Women’s Organization says there’s no such thing as “women in general”.

There are in fact women of the oppressor nation who live at the expense of oppressed women and owe reparations to women of oppressed nations.

The false narrative of “unifying all women” under feminism and against the fight of patriarchy is a hindrance to the fight for freedom of the African nation.

Focusing on the critical realities of African women to be a result of patriarchy, instead of addressing the historical political basis of colonialism, the violent assault on Africa and theft of African people by Europeans, is a waste of time.

The relationship between white women and African women is defined by the parasitic capitalist social system which can only be resolved through the complete demolishment of this colonial system and through reparations, So we say unity through reparations!

The African National Women’s Organization lifts up the resistance of African women.

We have been organizing since 2015 to bring African women into the African liberation fight that will free us from the shackles of colonial bondage.

We lift up the political theory of African Internationalism that puts revolutionary practical science into the hands of poor and working class Africans!

We unite with the Black is Back Coalition’s demand for Black Community Control of the Police!

Local members in D.C. held up signs outside of the British Embassy that read #DefendAfricanWomen , Stop Britain’s Attack on Oppressed People, and Black Lives Won’t Matter Until We Get Black Power.

Drivers passing by honked their horns in support of our messages and a few stopped to get more detail about the campaign.  One N. American man on a bicycle was surprised to hear about the case because he says “England is a welfare state” implying that issues like this shouldn’t exist because of their system is supposedly set up to ensure the most vulnerable are provided services.

We were there to bust up that assumption, as England and most of Europe is often looked at as leaders in progressive policies. But lift up the covers you’ll see that African and other oppressed people are suffering the worst as Councils throughout the country make up arbitrary rules that usually leave many without access and in crisis  – just like Kushinda. ‘

We are calling on others to join Kushinda in the last few days of protest especially if you are experiencing issues that are related to state maladministration of your cases.

ANWO PHX was joined by 10,000 Fearless Men and Women of Phoenix. They stood in solidarity with us and also provided additional security to support African women stepping into political life.

In the first hour, the group of 20 made presentations about their personal experiences with local law enforcement and their feelings surrounding the recent deaths by state sanctioned violence against African and Indigenous community members. Emotions were high as discussions turned to our youth, specifically affected by the shooting of Korryn Gaines and her 5-year-old son by Baltimore Police Department.

Comrade Adele led the discussion on seeing and exposing colonial oppression of African people in the city of Phoenix. She expressed concern over the growing petty bourgeoisie movements in and around Phoenix, spouting reformist rhetoric that misinforms working class Africans of their political identity. She stressed the importance of “African first” when it comes to dismantling colonial and neo-colonial domination and parasitic capitalism worldwide.

Comrade Mystic educated the group on why Africans in Arizona  stand in solidarity with indigenous people. The native population,  of what is now known as the Americas, were decimated by European colonialism which is also responsible for the enslavement and colonization  of Africa and African people. We need principled unity among the oppressed so that build toward overturning our relationship to our common enemy.

Just as native people are struggling to reclaim their land, so are Africans. Once we are successful the entire system of parasitic capitalism will crumble and open up a new world for all of the oppressed struggling masses. African liberation and the support of African liberation is the first step in revolutionary action.

Comrade Bri provided real world applications of African Internationalism including the inevitable unification of Africa.

After the murder, videos surfaced showing the last moments of her life – a talk she had with her son and the fully armed cop in her doorway pointing a gun at her. Other videos from her social media accounts surfaced as well, showing Korryn reciting spoken word poetry about state oppression, one where she is loading a gun, and a video of a traffic stop which happened just months before her death.

In the 20-minute long video of the traffic stop, Korryn is stopped by police because her car did not have Maryland state-issued license plates.  After refusing to identify herself until the cop identified himself, Korryn explained that the police removed her plates in retaliation for her lawsuit against Eastern Correctional Institution (ECI), however, her car’s insurance and registration were paid for and up to date, so there was no crime committed.

The cop then informed her that he would issue a citation – which Korryn flatly said she would not pay – and that they would be towing her car – to which Korryn said, “you’re not going to steal my car…there is no crime here.”   She understood that the police created the conditions for which she had been stopped and that they are an occupying army in the black community.

For the rest of the video, in between exchanging words with the cops, Korryn instructs her son to fight the police if they try to take him. She tells him to hold the phone and video all interactions when the police tries to fight her. She tells the cop, “if you put your hands on me I promise you, you will have to murder me”, she demanded her car keys back, and she demanded to be left alone.

With every breath that came from Korryn, she exuded resistance to a system that continues to kill black people with impunity. She understood that in almost all circumstances where African people try to assert our rights, we are brutalized or murdered.   We saw this, most recently with the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, killed by police in Louisiana and Minnesota – a day apart from one another.

The stigma of African Women Resisting State Violence

Unlike the murders of those two brothers, however, which incited protest from almost every sector of the community, Korryn’s resistance was stained by the fact that she was a resistant African woman and mother who taught her children to fight.

There is no mass protest and little admiration for her sacrifice. Instead, she is condemned for her non-compliant, mouthy behavior and unwillingness to compromise with a known enemy of African people – the colonial state.

Because she chose to resist, she has been called crazy, unstable, stupid, a bad mother and blamed for her  own death. This is a strategy to dismiss the righteous struggles of African women who are fighting their way out of colonial conditions.

When the police killed Alton Sterling after he refused to let two cops move him from a place he had permission to be, there was no public discussion about his need to comply.

When Philando Castile, chose to legally carry a firearm while in the presence of his child – no one called him a bad parent.

But when Sandra Bland shouted at a cop for his oppressive behavior, folks blamed her for being arrested. They said she should not have protested her treatment.

We understand that  being under colonial domination for the last 500 years contributes to backwards ideals that devalues and dismisses African women.

As African women and mothers, we are told that to resist, to participate in liberation struggles, makes us crazy. While it’s o.k. for African men to stand their ground when they are wronged, African women are encouraged to just let the state do what it wants to us.

When African women challenge the state-funded kidnapping of their children, as is the case with the African National Women (ANWO)’s #ArrestDHS campaign, where women are pressured to comply with all sorts of the ludicrous requirements that child welfare agencies put as a barrier to get their children back; they are labeled bad parents, crazy, and criminals – usually without any outrage from the African community.

When a Kushinda Olanrewaju, Vice President of ANWO and mother, refuses to let the state carry out all sorts of illegitimate charges against her and her family, she is assumed guilty and labeled paranoid.

When parents organize together to educate their children, independent of public school, as is the case with ANWO’s Uhuru Kijiji Childcare Collective, they are called separatist and are targeted for all sorts of interventions by the State.

Overturning the Special Oppression of African Women

When we say that African women are “specially” oppressed, we understand the nature of the state as an enemy of African people, but we also understand the many ways in which Africans work to deepen contradictions that exist for African women, which make us especially open to state attacks and without support.

This isolates African women so that our backs are up against the wall. Some of us are led into the clutches of feminism because it appears to challenge oppression. In reality, though, all feminism does is organize against patriarchy, which it identifies as the main contradiction -when it isn’t.

Colonialism, which results in African people not having power over our own lives, is the primary cause of African women’s oppression.

Under capitalism, a parasitic world-wide economic system that came into existence as result of the European attack on Africa and African people which generated wealth for the entire white world,  African people were turned into currency  and African women continue to be used as currency.

Our very existence is rooted in the capitalist means of production – the production of people, the maintenance of society, and being workers ourselves; therefore, by resisting the colonial conditions erected by capitalism, we are striking a blow against imperialism itself.

Korryn Gaines, was a deathblow to colonialism, just like Micah Xavier Johnson and Gavin Long were.  She and other women like her are significant to the oppressed African masses who are beaten down every day by this system.

Korryn was determined not to be anyone’s slave. She was determined to fight; to be an example for her young son and daughter who bore witness to their own mother’s commitment to freedom.  We don’t care if she allegedly had a gun, we don’t care if shot back – which is a natural reaction when someone is shooting at you.  We unite with her choice to be confrontational, non-compliant, and resistant.

She is a clear example of the revolutionary capacity of  African women who put it on the line to be free.

She is Harriet Tubman. She is Nanny. She is Queen Nzinga.  She is Assata.   She was an African woman committed to being free and ensuring that her children had a taste of that freedom.

Long Live Korryn Gaines!

You will live on in the struggle for African freedom!

Join ANWO! Organize African Women for Power!

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!

In retaliation for the 11th of May protest outside of Willesden Magistrates Court, Genesis Housing Association, Kushinda Olanrewaju’s (a.k.a Shirley Campbell) rogue landlord, obtained a scheduled hearing on Monday, 13 June 2016 at 11am for non-payment of rent.

On 11 May 2016, we were successful in pushing back the State’s aggression against Kushinda’s learning disabled son, Meshach,

The State postponed his trial to 1st of September pending an updated assessment.

The victory was possible only due to the community’s phone calls, emails, and direct participation at our protest which helped to elevate Kushinda and her family out of isolation. In response to this triumph, the State immediately moved on Kushinda with the threat of eviction.

ANWO is calling again for your support and vigilance of this latest attack which is a combined assault by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the London Borough of Brent, Genesis Housing Association and Willesden County Court.

DWP terminated her entitlement to Income Support in September 2011. Later her Carers Allowance and Child Benefit was terminated. To ensure her and her family’s housing needs, Kushinda made a Housing Benefit (HB) application to Brent Council which she received. Last year, on the advice of the DWP, the council suspended Kushinda’s HB payments on the pretext that her circumstances changed. Although Kushinda’s HB application was processed by the Council and not by the DWP she provided the Council with the requested information but received no acknowledgement or reinstatement of HB.

This is a clear assault on a family that is struggling for justice, not just for themselves, but for others.

How you can help?

1. Join our protest at 10am on Monday, 11th of June outside Willesden County Court
2. Call: Brent Council’s Revenue and Benefits Services on 020 0937 1800 or email: benefits@brent.gov.uk to demand the reinstatement of Shirley Campbell’s Housing benefits based on nil income
3. Donate to the campaign to support Kushinda at anwouhuru.org/donate select “London campaign”