Restoration Plaza was flying the Black Liberation Flag a week ago, as the Committee to Honor Black Heroes and the December 12th Movement hoisted a fundraiser for political prisoner Sekou Odinga. Prof. James McIntosh from CEMOTAP (the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive to African People), moderated the program that included speakers such as Philadelphia’s Pam Africa, Fred Hampton and M1 from Dead Prez.
Freedom Party gubernatorial candidate Charles Barron took to the mike and extolled the virtues and bravery of political prisoners who took up the call of the Black liberation struggle and have been incarcerated for close to 30 years. Odinga’s son Amoche listened to grassroots organizers demand the release of the former member of the Black Liberation Army, who was eventually hit with a consecutive 25-years-to-life state sentence and a forty-year federal sentence for a host of charges, including under Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), and participating in the liberation of political exile Assata Shakur.
Political prisoner advocate and MOVE member Pam Africa went hard urging vigilance for Mumia Abu Jamal, saying that authorities are focusing hard on ignoring the evidence and still going after the man on death row for a murder he did not commit. In the vein of liberation and justice, not far from the minds of the people in the audience was Barron’s latest effort for Black self-determination and progress. Asked about the latest leg of The Movement, Barron pressed the need to get out the vote.
After acquiring almost three times as many signatures required by the state of New York to be on the ballot for this Tuesday’s statewide election, members and supporters of the recently established Freedom Party are very confident that they will achieve their goal of garnering the 50,000 required votes in order to legally authenticate themselves as a political party.
“We’re excited because on November 2 we’re definitely going to get the minimum 50,000 votes to become the first Black- and Latino-led party in the history of this country to be recognized by a state,” optimistically predicted Barron.
“Secondly, with 300 to 400 thousand votes, we’ll have leverage over those sell-out Negro politicians that go behind doors and cut deals, and try to bring Black votes to the white oppressor based upon deals they cut in the room–that will be over with!” the Brooklyn councilman said. He then warned, “There are 3 million Black and Latino registered voters in New York State–half of that, and I’m the next governor of the state of New York! We can do this!”
Tirelessly grinding for many months in preparation for this election, the councilman explained the importance of utilizing a strategic game plan. “We have to come off the plantation. It’s time for liberation politics, but our people are conditioned and it’s time to free our minds. We’re using electoral politics as a tactic–it’s not a panacea. It’s an instrument for social change and transformation, and providing some pain relief for our brothers and sisters in the mean time”
By utilizing revolutionary concepts and implementing them within his political framework, the self-proclaimed “rebel with a cause” seeks to create unprecedented history in the electoral arena with this current campaign. “This is a great time to be African and revolutionary,” Barron said. “We have to say to our people, ‘There’s nothing wrong with being radical, nothing wrong with embracing your Blackness, and there’s nothing wrong with being progressive and radical on the issues.’”
Another elected activist, Jackson, Miss., Councilman Chokwe Lumumba paid a recent visit to New York, assessing, “You can’t just elect a Black man to a white house. … You have to have a house of your own, you got to have government of your own. African people in America have a problem, which is the same problem that Africans have around the world–they are colonized, and the answer to colonialism is nationalism, so in order to call shots, you need to govern territory. If you’re a nationalist in America, then you’re a revolutionary.”
He continued, “In Africa, our people sought freedom on the basis of liberation principles. Lumumba, Kwame Nkrumah and Sekou Ture came into power not because they hated anybody, but because they were fighting for liberty for themselves. The government that they call the U.S.A. is not for us, and the sooner that we find that out, the better off we’ll be–and we’ll stop being confused. Free the land, free Sekou Odinga and all political prisoners!”
Having already established himself in the People’s Republic of Brooklyn during the last decade-plus, Barron and his team are setting their sights higher. “The Freedom Party is here to stay! The Freedom Party is going to rock this state, rock this nation, we’re going to take this all over this country–and New York, America will never ever be the same again!”
Cited as once again relevant and poignant was Malcolm X from “The Ballot Or The Bullet” speech from April 3, 1964, Detroit: “The time when white people can come in our community and get us to vote for them so that they can be our political leaders and tell us what to do and what not to do is long gone! By the same token, the time when that same white man, knowing that your eyes are too far open, can send another negro into the community and get you and me to support him so he can use him to lead us astray… those days are long gone too!
“So the political philosophy of Black Nationalism only means that we will have to carry on a program, a political program, of re-education to open our people’s eyes, make us become more politically conscious, politically mature –and then we will, whenever we get ready to cast our ballot, that ballot will be cast for a man of the community who has the good of the community at heart!”