A panel of academics and activists marked the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first elected prime minister, by agents of the US and Belgium. Texas A&M professor Ira Dworkin, author of “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State,” pointed out that it was Black women, led by singer Abbey Lincoln, who petitioned for Lumumba’s release from arrest, and later organized against US policy in Congo. These protests “did create a shift” in Black American politics towards confrontation with US policies in Africa and the world, Dworkin told the online seminar.
“To seize control of the political economy of the Midwest is to seize control over the political economy of imperialist America.”
The victory of Somalia’s Northeast State over secessionist Somaliland gives Somalis hope of renewed unity and sovereignty, but Israel attacked that hope by recognizing Somaliland.
Many in the U.S. "Left" are actually liberal elements that pull socialism toward the Democratic Party. Black organizers must build independent power.
The Attica rebellion was not only about prison "reform." The prison is the most intense expression of a system of imperialist domination that operates at every scale.
"In the same boat?" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
