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Register for The Ballot and the Bullet: Electoral Campaign School: Beyond the colonizers’ coup to African self-determination

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April 9-10, 2022

This is a Call to join the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations in our sixth annual Electoral Campaign School, scheduled for April 9-10, 2022.

Never in the five years we have conducted this school has the theme been more fitting than now. The U.S. and all the colonial powers in the world are arrayed against Russia in an attempt to finalize their efforts to destroy Russia as a self-determining contending power in Europe and the world.

Using the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), created in 1949 to contain and destroy what was then characterized as “Soviet” Russia, the U.S.-led colonial powers have positioned Ukraine as a dagger in the heart of Russia, especially over the last 8 years after having put a puppet regime in place for that purpose.

Our school is occurring in the wake of the defensive war being waged by Russia in Ukraine and the global colonial anti-Russia propaganda assault manufacturing a colonial interpretation of reality.

As the chief hegemon of a faltering world system of oppression that was founded on and is sustained by African subjugation, the U.S. is attempting to use its Ukrainian war against Russia as a means of uniting the politically fractured colonial population of the U.S. in support of a broken U.S. presidency. 

Within the U.S. the war is also an attempt to confer legitimacy upon a system that has experienced a near-coup on January 19, 2021. Indeed, a majority of the white, that is to say, colonizer, population actually believe the current U.S. head of state is illegitimate.

Rumors of a likely coup within the U.S. depending on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election are being floated by retired generals and unidentified sources within the U.S. security apparatus.

Moreover, there is a near subterranean movement by whites organizing to win electoral power in cities and counties that can make the difference in close elections by affecting voting rules regarding registration legitimacy and polling locations to the disadvantage of African people.

Additionally, legislatures are changing laws in several U.S. states to prevent full participation by African people in elections and the U.S. Supreme Court is refusing to uphold features of the voting rights act of 1965 that claimed to guarantee participation by Africans in the electoral process.

This is the scenario that contextualizes and informs the Black is Back Coalition’s April 9-10 Electoral Campaign school.

All the political activity within the electoral political arena in the U.S. — locally and nationally, directly, or indirectly — will reflect this political reality.  

Both sectors of the ruling class and their ruling parties arrogantly assume that the electoral future of the people is in their hands. We know differently. This is why the Black is Back Coalition decided several years ago to provide leadership for our people who engage in electoral politics. This allows the people to advance our struggle against the entire colonial-capitalist system while electoral politics are still an option.

We will teach ordinary African people – workers, activists, women, and youth – how to run for office. The Black is Back Electoral School will also address the age-old question of whether or not there are any legitimate gains to be won by Africans participating in elections in a colonial-capitalist system.

In 2016, the Black is Back Coalition laid the foundation for participation in any election by initiating a successful year-long popular process to create a National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination as a general guide to political work throughout the U.S.

In April of 2017, we held our first Electoral Campaign School in St. Petersburg, Florida, attended by Africans from several states within the U.S. In addition to teaching African people the steps for running for office, we were intent on arming activists with a platform for self-determination as the basis for their electoral campaigns.

The Coalition has seized custody of an electoral process that has historically been separated from and used against our people and struggle. We now have a tool that we can use to positively affect the lives of our community.

Our National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination provides us with a program that is both historical and timely. The call for reparations, black community control of police, and education represent part of a historical continuum, bringing key demands from the revolutionary period of the 1960s into today’s crisis-ridden electoral arena.

Our platform also addresses the issues of African women and the black family as well as the vicious population displacement known as gentrification.

Activists who attend the Coalition’s Electoral Campaign School will be expected to address these issues and others like the genocidal incarceration of our people, political prisoners, joblessness, healthcare, and the host of other planks from our National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination for use in their electoral campaigns.

Our electoral campaign school will arm the school attendees with analysis and a real capacity to advance our liberation struggle through principled, anti-colonial intervention in the electoral arena.

The BiBC campaign school will also enable the people to challenge the insipid and duplicitous program of Biden and the Democratic Party. The people will be able to fight the whole family of canines, wolf and fox alike.

Those who are interested in running for office or knowing how the electoral process works will be there.

Everyone with an interest in extending the struggle for African liberation must attend this important school.

The school will not only instruct attendees on how to run for office, but they will also learn how to get issues like reparations and community control of police and education on local ballots. There will also be instructions on how to initiate recalls to remove opponents of our freedom from office. Black, white, or otherwise.

Join the scores of activists who will attend this school. Take this opportunity to extend the recognized parameters of our struggle to include all fronts.

In the past, the methods of struggle for liberation of our people have been posed as either the ballot or the bullet.

This period demands we be able to redefine the struggle as one using every method – the ballot and the bullet. The school will help to advance our struggle and to move beyond the presumption of the colonizers’ coup to African Self-determination!

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