By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

We recognize that if there is to be any peace on earth, it is going to come as a consequence of our people uniting to defeat US imperialism once and for all… We are going to have to unite with the oppressed peoples of the world. That is the only way that we will ever know peace.

-Omali Yeshitela

The end of the old civilization has come… Let the present generation perish, let the old prevaricators die in the desert! The holy earth will not cover their bones.

-Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

You may have missed it between the subpoenas of the January 6 circus, but on the last Friday morning of July, the FBI redeclared war on the Black Power Movement in St. Louis, Missouri and St. Petersburgh, Florida. In a sweeping series of raids, several homes and offices belonging to the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and their sister organization, the Uhuru Movement, were blitzed by heavily armed gestapo in a highly publicized show of force.

Doors were kicked in, windows were smashed, and seven members including the Movement’s founder and leader Omali Yeshitela and his wife were dragged away in cuffs like common gangsters while their requests to see a warrant for this treatment went ignored. The Uhuru Solidarity Center, the Uhuru House, even the APSP’s tiny radio station, Black Power 96.3, were targeted in this highly choreographed assault on these two relatively marginal organizations.

Their crime? According to the Justice Department Indictment, these two organizations along with a couple others who remain nameless conspired with a Russian national named Aleksandr Ionov as part of a “foreign malign influence campaign” to spread Russian propaganda and sow general discord in the homeland. What little evidence that has been presented in this case is thin at best and relies largely on very broad accusations.

Ionov, the founder of an organization called the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russia, which both the APSP and Uhuru have maintained contact with, and the feds accuse of being a Kremlin front, is the only person actually charged with a crime in this operation and since he lives abroad, it is unlikely that he will ever stand trial to rebut the charges and by extension the APSP and Uhuru will never be granted the legal platform to exonerate themselves.

We’ve seen these tactics used before by the American Government to give credence to other spurious claims on Russian meddling in American elections. Russian nationals are indicted in absentia for Byzantinesque conspiracies to fuck with Hillary Clinton and our precious bodily fluids only to have the case go nowhere once the media loses interest. But this time the target is a pair of small but loud organizations in what remains of America’s Black Power Movement. A movement which seems set to make a greatly needed comeback on inner city streets still stained with George Floyd’s Blood.

Both the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement have been active in antiwar and anti-police state provocations for decades and they have been particularly vocal in their opposition to America’s uranium tipped proxy war in Ukraine. Unfortunately for the feds, the raids on the movement’s properties appear to have only succeeded in pissing these unapologetic firebreathers off. When confronted with the accusations regarding Comrade Ionov, they denied ever taking anyone’s rubles but also briskly responded ‘so the fuck what if we did?’

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