Biography
AFRICAN REVOLUTIONARY • POLITICAL THEORETICIAN
POWERFUL SPEAKER • "LAST MAN STANDING"
“You have the emergence in human society of
this thing called the State.
What is the State?
The State is organized bureaucracy.
It is the police department…the Army, the Navy
It is the prison system, the courts.
The State is a repressive organization.
The reality is
the State becomes necessary
only at that juncture in human society
where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got!”
From “Police State,” on let’s get free!
by Dead Prez
Fiery, uncompromising and courageous as the leader of
the movement for a liberated Africa, Omali Yeshitela has struggled for
black freedom for 40 years.
Leader of the Uhuru Movement, and Chairman and founder
of the African People’s Socialist Party, Yeshitela continues to be on
the frontlines of struggle, building African-worker controlled institutions,
developing ground-breaking political theory, writing countless books
and articles, speaking worldwide, fighting for reparations, galvanizing
allies, influencing the popular culture and bringing African people
together to liberate Africa and all its resources.
Omali Yeshitela has faced arrests, trials, imprisonment
and personal sacrifice in his struggle to complete the Black Revolution
of the Sixties. Chairman Omali never stopped building fighting organizations
in the interests of the African working community. He survived the U.S.
government's attack on the Black Power Movement of the 1960s that imprisoned,
assassinated or silenced most black revolutionaries by driving them
underground. For this he has been called "the last man standing.
Omali Yeshitela
-
Built the African Socialist
International, an organization made up of African people in Africa,
the U.S., the Caribbean and around the world to liberate and unite
Africa and all its resources as the birthright of African working
people everywhere. Its founding congress is scheduled for March 2008
in West Africa.
- Made reparations for African people a household word
after he launched the first International Tribunal on Reparations for
African People in New York in 1982. The Tribunal ruled that African
people are owed $4.1 trillion in reparations for stolen labor alone.
Twelve subsequent sessions of the tribunal have been held in various
cities around the country. The latest session of the Tribunal will be
held in Berlin, Germany in June 2007.
Campaigns and organizations:
-
Freed Dessie Woods, sentenced
to 22 years for defending herself against a white man who tried to
rape her in 1975.
-
African National Prison Organization,
1980.
-
African National Reparations
Organization, 1982.
-
Measure O, the bold Community
Control of Housing Initiative that won 22 percent of the vote in Oakland,
CA in 1984.
-
Acquitted in 1990 when brought
to trial for defending African youth being harassed by the police;
-
International Peoples’ Democratic
Uhuru Movement in 1991 to defend the democratic rights of the African
community.
-
Led the community fight back
after the police murder of 18 year old TyRon Lewis and the subsequent
police attack on the Uhuru House in 1996. The Clinton administration
was forced to send in his HUD chief and hold hearings by the Human
Rights Commission.
-
Ran for mayor of St. Petersburg
in 2001, winning all the black and mixed precincts but one.
-
Built the Florida Alliance
for Peace and Social Justice in 2001, the only African-led anti-war
organization.
Built African working class-led institutions
and businesses:
-
Umoja restaurant, St. Petersburg
FL, 1970s
-
African Connection Bookstore,
Louisville, KY, 1980
-
Florida Black Voice newspaper,
Gainesville, FL, 1981
-
Spear Graphics printing, Oakland
CA, 1980s
-
Uhuru Bakery Café, Oakland
CA, 1987
-
Uhuru Furniture Stores, Oakland,
Philadelphia and St. Petersburg, since 1989
-
Uhuru Foods concessions and
catering, since 1987
-
Uhuru holiday pies since 1981
Developed
groundbreaking political theory:
-
African Internationalism,
Yeshitela’s political theory that proves that capitalism is parasitic,
built on the enslavement, genocide and theft of the land, labor and
resources of African and oppressed peoples.
-
Proved that the whole white
population sits on the pedestal of the oppression of African and other
peoples.
-
Analyzed that the U.S. government’s
defeat of the Black Revolution of the 60s, along with the imposition
of drugs into the African community, mass imprisonment of African
people and police violence in the African community are part of the
counterinsurgency against African people carried out by public policies
of police containment.
-
Proved that all black people
wherever they are located around the world are African people and
that Africa and all its resources are the birthright of African people
everywhere.
-
The Burning Spear
newspaper, 1968-present
-
"Tactics and Strategy
for Black Liberation," pamphlet 1978
-
The Struggle for Bread,
Peace and Black Power, 1981
-
Stolen Black Labor,
1982
-
Reparations Now!,
1983
- A New Beginning, 1984
-
Not One Step Backwards,
1984
-
The Road to Socialism is
Painted Black, 1987
-
The Politics of Black Revolution,
first published 1989
-
Izwe Lethu I Afrika,
1992
-
"Why I Became a Revolutionary,"
pamphlet, 1998
- Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 2005
-
One Africa! One Nation!,
2006
|