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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Forward Ever! Backward Never! 

¡Siempre Adelante!

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

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

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

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

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

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

May Assata Shakur rest in power.

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

Hands off Cuba!

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

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

Africans will have power by any means necessary.

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

Not yet uhuru! 

Hands Off Uhuru! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Colonized women endure heightened violence under colonialism 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stand your ground laws rooted in settler colonialism

Susan Lorincz appears in court after killing Ajike

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

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

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

Marissa Alexander during her trial

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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