BLACK ORGANISERS CRITICISE BLACK GOVERNANCE

More than 640 Black mayors govern US cities, home to 48 million people. That comes to about 14 per cent of the US population. Yet, for the 90 per cent of our people who are working class, these mayors amount to symbols at best and traitors at worst.

That's according to @mapinduzi organisers Dedan Wa Waciuri (@dedanwaciuri on Instagram, @waciuri_dedan on Twitter and @bigkfla600 on TikTok) and Askari wa Watu (@askariwawatu on TikTok and @asafoyusuf on Instagram). Their African Marxist-Leninist community organisation's name, Mapinduzi, is the Swahili word for 'revolution.'

What the men describe at the micro level in a city of 89,000 people like Greenville in the US state of North Carolina, where Black people make up half of the city council, can be seen on a large scale in New York City. There, Mayor Eric Adams, the city's second Black mayor, recently reintroduced stop-and-frisk policing that a court had ruled unconstitutional. On a global scale, the first Black president, Barack Obama, advocated in 2011 that the US invade Libya, kicking off a crisis of governance in that country as well as the creation of slave markets and an upsurge in terrorism in Africa's Sahel region.

The US Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 led to a surge in our people serving as elected and appointed government officials. Some have said this trend is akin to the Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) that sought to destroy revolutionary political organising in the United States.

Video credit: @bigkfla600