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Activists Gather to Honor Imam Jamil Al-Amin on December 20 for “A Beautiful Struggle” Memorial Tribute

The Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Maryland on Eutaw Place in Baltimore was the gathering place for a number of activists, organizers and spiritual leaders from different parts of the United States as they paid tribute to Recent Ancestor Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (October 4, 1943 – November 23, 2025), once known to those of us who were “Sixties activists” as H. Rap Brown.

Organized by Sis. Tomiko of Aging People in Prison Human Rights Campaign (APP-HRC) and the Internet radio programs Africa 500 and The REvolution Is Black Love, the event drew attendees from Baltimore, Washington DC, South Carolina, Philadelphia PA, Atlanta GA, New York NY and Los Angeles CA.

Baba Mike Johnson, one of the co-founders (with Baba Bill Goodin and Baba David Murphy) of BlackMen Unifying BlackMen a decade ago, delivered the welcome and introductory remarks, reminiscing on his early days in the Civil Rights and Black Power marches and how Imam Jamil Al-Amin and other freedom fighters of the day had influenced his activism as well as his development as a Black Man.

Longtime educator and activist Baba Charlie Dugger, who sponsors the annual Garvey Day and Billie Holliday celebrations in Baltimore as well as numerous presentations during Kwanzaa, gave an invocation and libation to the Ancestors.

Guest speakers discussed the Imam’s commitment to activism as H. Rap Brown and his continued work for justice as he had become a devout Muslim Imam on the West End of Atlanta. 

Imam El-Hajj Mauri’ Saalakhan, a human rights advocate with The Aaria Foundation in the Washington, DC area, spoke about Imam Al-Amin’s transition from Black radical freedom fighter to respected Imam and how this did not mean the end of the repression he faced until his final days: “The opposition understood this as well.  H. Rap Brown became a bigger, more closely watched target after his spiritual transition.”  He noted Coretta Scott King’s request for a fair trial for the Imam and the vicious backlash that resulted, including predictions from the mass media that he “would die in prison, alone and forgotten. … While he did indeed die in prison, execution by medical neglect is what we call it, the other part of that prediction has proven to be false.  Our creator has revealed, in the final revelation for all humanity, the Qur’an, ‘Do not say of those who are slain in the way of Allah that they are dead.  They are alive receiving sustenance from their lord, though you do not perceive it.’  A Syrian poet wisely noted, ‘The blood of a martyr is not an ordinary blood.  It transfuses itself into the life of a people and energizes them.  We didn’t just bury a body on November 26, 2025 in South Florida.  We planted a seed, and the struggle continues.”  

Imam Ayman Nassar, founder of the Baltimore-based Islamic Leadership Institute of America (ILIA), who works in youth development and leadership, connected the Imam’s work with Qur’anic passages to show that the beautiful struggle: “Indeed, the believers are those who believe in Allah, in God, and his messenger, and they have no doubts, then they exert effort with their lives, their wealth, for the path of God.  These are the truthful ones.”  Our lives are a continuum of struggles, and the Imam’s struggle was a lifelong one, “to uphold truth and justice in the face of tyranny.”  Imam Al-Amin exemplified “the exertion of effort with no hesitation and no doubt.”  He stressed the importance of following the proper principles, the proper spiritual directives, and the proper means, “with no hesitation, with no doubt. … They believed, they walked the talk, and they had no hesitation.  They knew that they are on the straight path, and they are going to just keep plugging through. … understanding that it’s going to involve discomfort.  Sometimes pain.  Sometimes losses.  Losses of life, or wealth, or both. … and intentions are sincere …”  Imam Al-Amin was in constant transformation, learning, growing and becoming more focused on “what truly counts.”  One must be peaceful but must also know when to be strong in the face of oppression.  One must work on their personal growth so as to be able to lead through submission and not through domination of others.  Baba Nassar related all of this to what he referred to as the Seven Criteria for a Beautiful Struggle, focused on the divine revelation that is perfect, that has no impurities, that has mercy for mankind and follows in the footsteps of the best man who walked on this planet, the Prophet, it must involve discomfort, the exertion of effort, the investment of wealth, and must be sincere.

Baba Khalil Abdulkabbir came from New York to speak about his interaction and work with Imam Jamil Al-Amin.  Having been inspired in his teens by the man who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, he would come into Islam in his twenties in Brooklyn with the Dar al Islam Movement, a network of American Muslims in Brooklyn dedicated to raising the status of the community, build autonomy and establish places of worship, schools and governing bodies according to the tenets of Islam, and he began interacting with those who were incarcerated in New York state prisons.  He had met H. Rap Brown at that time (around 1972) and was impressed with his calmness, humility and perspective despite his having been targeted, prosecuted and incarcerated in Ossining, New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility at a young age, already branded as dangerous by the powers that be.  Imam Jamil was influenced by the Dar al Islam Movement, and “the amazing thing that Imam Jamil did … was 0hat he showed that people of faith can still hold on to and continue on the road to revolutionary change.  You don’t have to think that, because you are religious, that you just pray and that you just fast, but also there are also things that are within your faith practice that is about raising your status as an individual …”  Imam Jamil would found a number of masjids across the country modeled on the Dar al Islam Movement.  His work would help form the 1993 Islamic Shura Council that brought together the four major American Muslim organizations, including Imam Warith Deen Muhammad’s.  Imam Jamil Al-Amin was always engaged in helping others, always asking “What can I do for you?”, which is a lesson we can all learn from in seeking ways to work more effectively with each other.  He closed his remarks with a quote from one of Imam Jamil’s writings, “Truth is the cry of all but the discipline of the few.  There is no worse lie than truth misunderstood by those who say they know.  Truth is a trust; falsehood is a treason.  Truth is absolute.  Truth is never relative. … To speak the truth is a part of faith.  In a time of universal deceit, to speak the truth is a revolutionary act.”

Baba Waziri Mustafaa Taqwaa Waliuddin of the Jericho Movement-Atlanta spoke about the political prisoners as “the heartbeat of the struggle”.  Having always known him as the Imam he became rather than the SNCC revolutionary he had been in his youth, Baba Mustafa noted that Imam Jamil was always “there in real time … still doing grassroots work in the community” and not hiding in the church or mosque.  Having been raised never to compromise, even as he found himself facing a stint of incarceration of his own, he had learned not to talk to the police, not to romanticize the struggle, not to romanticize revolution and “not to live in a bubble either”; as he embraced the mantle of being a New Afrikan Muslim, he learned to embrace activism and Islam as a “culture of resistance”, he learned that “just because you lick the slave master’s boot, won’t liberate you, won’t stop him from coming and knocking at your door.”  Islam showed him that “the first revolution is inside yourself. … If we don’t liberate ourselves, we can’t liberate nobody. … We’ve got to be accountable for our actions. … We can no longer think we are safe from a diabolical system … that will show you no mercy.”  Imam Jamil Al-Amin, as well as all our political prisoners, are “the heartbeat of the struggle, and they need our assistance.”  Baba Mustafa challenged us to show up for our communities with the same commitment and enthusiasm that was shown in the recent No Kings Marches.  July 4, 2026 will see a mobilization to freedom against ongoing genocide and celebrating 250-plus years of resistance in Atlanta, Georgia.

Attorney Mama Efia Nwangaza began her remarks with excerpts of several freedom songs reminiscent of the marching songs that strengthened the people as they faced batons, rubber bullets, firehoses and police dogs during the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, followed by the greeting “Free The Land”.  Having been active in the freedom struggle during the Imam’s heyday as H. Rap Brown, she called us all to follow the Imam’s example by noting that “his mantra, ‘To be Black is necessary but not sufficient,’ challenged us all to struggle as did he. … November 23 is not the day he died; in fact it’s the day that he spoke loudest, for which he is echoed and multiplies.  It is our duty that we not allow him to be silenced or forgotten.”

Baba Tyronne Morton, longtime prison activist and psychologist, spoke about Tawhid, the Islamic principle of the Creator’s absolute oneness, and drew comparisons to Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s consistent struggle for truth.  “When you’re fighting for the truth, you’ve got to be constant. … you’ve got to have patience. … And … the most important thing is sincerity.”  He spoke of parables, “the way that Allah communicates with us to get us to understand. … If you’re conscious, you understand.  If you’re not conscious, you’re in trouble.”  He noted that in American culture, we operate on the lowest plane of existence, the material plane “because the devil has distracted us from [everything] but materiality. … And that was done purposely a long time ago.  Why?  Because when you’re distracted [to] materiality, you have no time for the remembrance of Allah.  You have no time because you’re out there hustling, doing what you’ve got to do to survive.  So, we live in a world right now where we are basically imprisoned based on somebody else’s way of thinking and doing.  If you don’t understand the culture that you are a part of, if you don’t understand American culture, you are an imprisoned person … because culture carries the values, culture carries the principles that give you your perspective on life, what reality is, what reality is not, what’s right, what’s wrong.  Culture does that.  So whoever set up the culture, set you up.  Set me up.”  Connecting this to Imam Jamil Al-Amin, he noticed that the system had set up Black men in particular into a certain way of thinking and behaving.  “He understood that the culture was set up with a certain message for Black people: ‘Nigger, you ain’t nothing.  Nigger, you ain’t about nothing, and we’re going to keep our foot on your neck as long as we can.’ … During the enslavement period, they did it through a system.  They locked us in.”  Nowadays, the culture does it in a more sophisticated manner, “locking us into a material universe, devoid of Tawhid.”  Imam Jamil Al-Amin was “trying to find another mode of thinking and behaving” that he did not find in the Panthers, SNCC, the Civil Rights Movement or the street organizations, that would equip him to discern those who were true from those who were false, and to fight those who practice evil.  The prison system tested him in ways that many of us are not prepared to be tested.  He understood that to deal with anything, one must deal with Tawhid.  “This Brother was true, true to the cause.”  We live in a system right now that forces us into a struggle between what is right and what is wrong, and most of us are lost.  Imam Jamil Al-Amin was a living parable of jihad, of struggle, and his faith helped see him through, even in prison, helping him leave the materialistic existence behind to live on the plane of spirituality with higher beings.  “Allah said when you don’t remember him, he won’t remember you.”

Imam Abdul Salaam Muhammad, Representative of the Honorable Louis Farrakhan in Baltimore from Muhammad Mosque No. 6, also spoke about Imam Jamil Al-Amin.  After giving all praise to Allah and thanking Him “for all of his messengers and all of His prophets” and giving thanks for The Honorable Elijah Muhammad and The Honorable Louis Farrakhan and the “second chance” to get to know Imam Al-Amin, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali and the Black Panther Party through the Nation of Islam and Afrikan American Muslims, he likewise thanked Sis. Tomiko and the organizers of this gathering for the remembrance and exaltation of Imam Al-Amin and the opportunity for all of us to participate in it.  Reflecting on his first meeting, at age 25, with Imam Al-Amin in Washington, DC at an event in support of Ancestor Kwame Ture as he was battling illness, he noted Imam Al-Amin’s comment that “the essence of love are the principles upon which life in the universe are based, and those principles are freedom, justice and equality.  And those who truly love struggle, the struggle for these principles, and since these principles are eternal, those who struggle for these eternal principles ultimately find eternal life.”   He connected this to Sheikh Saalakhan’s earlier remarks that we should “not speak of those who are slain or die in the way of Allah as being dead; nay, they are alive; we just can’t technically perceive it.”  Imam Al-Amin “lived his life for freedom, justice and equality, but he did it in the strongest of ways.”  This connects with the platforms of the Nation of Islam and other revolutionary organizations calling for freedom for our Political Prisoners and for the right of People of Afrikan Descent to determine our own path and destiny as a people, to live free from US and western oppression.  He urged us all to not “let his work or any other work of our Ancestors or leaders of the modern time die.  That is the proper use of social media, to use it to educate.  That’s the proper use of podcasts now, to indoctrinate the minds of young people that are binging on foolishness, and the filth and degeneracy and hot topics of the world where they’re destroying Black leaders and Black People at every turn.”  He closed with a prayer and an official letter from The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan to the family, friends and followers of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, “a great friend and a Brother. … the greatest revolutionary in the Civil Rights Movement. … He is among those who have been falsely accused of murdering a police officer, but he was never a criminal in our eyes, and he died a fierce, uncompromising Brother.  We in the Nation Of Islam will always revere him and keep him in our honor as an Ancestor inspiring us to continue in the struggle and until every one of our people and all of those unjustly imprisoned will be set free.  May Allah grant him protection and have mercy on him.  May the historians write the truth concerning this wonderful Brother.  May Allah’s peace surround his wife and his sons and grant peace to all who stand for justice and righteousness.”

Bro. Elijah Miles spoke on behalf of The Tendea Family.  In 2015, following the unrest of the Freddie Gray uprising in Baltimore, The Tendea Family was conceptualized by its Founder, Chairman Elijah Miles, who gathered like-minded individuals dedicated to the uplift of Baltimore City on the campus grounds of Morgan State University.  He expressed his gratitude to activists such as Imam Jamil Al-Amin as well as the veteran activists presently working in the community and the dedicated teachers who instilled in him a sense of justice and struggle for having “paved the way” for a younger man such as himself to take leadership for his people today.  Even though we don’t have a bunch of 20 year olds, 30 year olds, 16 or 14 year olds, it is my pledge, and Tendea’s pledge that, if it’s the last thing that we do, we’re going to keep this work going for a new generation.  Because the greatest thing we can do, even though we now offer words and memories, the greatest thing that we can do, for all of our freedom fighters and Ancestors, is to continue to work towards liberation.  And so, that’s my commitment, my pledge, and I want all of you to know … that your work hasn’t been in vain, that your work has produced Tendea Family and your work will continue to produce other young people that will study the efforts and strives that you’ve made, and that, when it’s all said and done, that we will reach liberation.” 

Dr. Umar Johnson traveled from Philadelphia to attend the event (“There’s a special energy in Baltimore, Maryland”), noted that he had not had the honor of meeting many of the freedom fighters of Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s time (“I stand on the shoulders of the departed ones”) and spoke at length about our need as a community to honor Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s work by remembering “what we owe ourselves” as well as what the oppressor owes us by becoming more committed to the internal reparations manifested by “teaching our children where they come from … who they are [and] what the struggle was before they were born”, important requirements that he sees lacking in our community as a trained school psychologist; committing to our community-building work; establishing our own schools, hospitals, grocery stores and other much-needed infrastructure that our community needs; and less enamored with consumerism among the general populace and empty self-promotion by those who seek to take the mantle of leadership in our community.  “Things will only get better when Black People make them better. … We need to get serious, we need to get focused, we need to get organized as a community. … Ancestors will come, ancestors will go, but we have to make sure that the work continues.  And the best way to make the work continue is to make sure we’re building institutions for our children in which they can be taught that legacy.  The reason that they don’t know H. Rap Brown is we don’t have enough schools that teach them H. Rap Brown.  The reason that they don’t know H. Rap Brown is we no longer have the study groups we used to have that teach them H. Rap Brown. … We’ve got to build Councils of Elders in every Black community.  The Elders have not done your work yet. … It is time for you to institutionalize your wisdom and give it back to the babies.”

Dr. Maulana Karenga, initiator of the annual Afrikan American Afrikan-centered commemoration we know as Kwanzaa, gave a keynote address online over Zoom.  “We must speak truth and justice, and walk in the way of light. … We are here to pay homage … to Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin.”  He wished health, peace and blessings to the Imam’s family, and he brought greetings from the Organization Us.  He thanked Sis. Tomiko for organizing this event.  As he gave homage to Imam Al-Amin’s work and legacy, he spoke of the meaning of Imam Al-Amin’s name.  “Jamil speaks to his beautifulness, inward and outward.  It’s the same as in Swahili, when we say Zuri, or in Zulu … or in Ancient Egyptian, Neter.  It’s not just beautiful on the outside, it’s goodness on the inside.  He was a good person, and therefore, he was what we would call in the community, “a beautiful Brother”.  Second, his name is Abdullah … servant of Allah … his commitment to give of himself to Allah, to offer his life … to submit to the will of Allah for good and justice … his commitment to live a righteous life to reflect God’s will.  His name Al-Amin, the sincere one, the genuine one, the trustworthy one, one who we can rely on, and count on in times of need, in times of testing and struggle, and always, and anywhere, at any time. … I will always see him as … a Sixties Soldier, conscious, courageous, committed to the Black freedom struggle … a fearless leader of a generation.”  He quoted a line from the Husia that instructs us that “we are all morally obligated to bear witness to the truth, and to set the scales of justice in their proper place among those who have no voice, and he did that.”  Imam Al-Amin “raised our people and challenged them to stand up, step forward and continue the liberation struggle. … a shield and a sword, a pillar of peace, and a constant call to righteous and relentless struggle.”  He recounted meetings at SNCC Headquarters in different parts of the country, where Imam Jamil Al-Amin did his work, “making sense, doing work as he was saying this … making a case for togetherness … a master rapper, skilled in the spoken word … and he lit fire to falsehood.”  Dr. Karenga recalled Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s words that we must not expect to be given justice by our enemy, and that “I can find only three places for a righteous man in an evil society: on the battlefield fighting his enemy, in a cell imprisoned by the enemy, or in his grave, free from his enemy.”  Dr. Karenga noted that “Imam Jamil committed himself to be both a Shahid and a Mujahid as he became a Muslim.  He wanted to be a witness … for good in the world, and he was.”  The consciousness for continued struggle is exemplified in the Qur’anic passage, “We are on the battlefield for something good … and for the weak and the oppressed upon men …”  Dr. Karenga noted three key and interrelated aspects of the righteous work that Imam Jamil Al-Amin had undertaken: “Mujahid, a righteous warrior; an Imam, a righteous guide; finally, a Shahid, that did not volunteer but was ready to offer, and did offer his life and his death, in witness … to his faith, in witness to his people, in witness to the will and work of Allah God for justice and good in the world.”  Dr. Karenga encouraged us all to ask ourselves, “How can we best honor him except by trying to learn the lessons of his life and legacy, and … live them in our own particular way?”  Dr. Karenga noted Imam Al-Amin is known and honored for his work as “a spiritual guide, a teacher, a counselor … who continued to work for the people, his religious community and the good of humanity … in work of peacemaking, peacekeeping, mediation, prevention and resolution of conflict, fostering conciliation, and building relationships of mutual respect, mutual commitment and mutual good … keeping of peace to bring good into the world.”  The commitment to Islam as a religion of peace reminded Dr. Karenga of passages from The Husia and the Qur’an: “You are committed to fight against those who would fight against you, but do not be aggressive, for Allah loves not the aggressor.”  The concept of struggle, often referred to in revolutionary circles as jihad, was also discussed, and the importance that the first level of struggle is within, “to strengthen ourselves, spiritually and ethically, so that we can weather all storms. … As a moral spiritual teaching, Imam Jamil teaches us that ultimately, we are confronted in our struggle for the good of society and the world, with certain questions, because we want a good soldier; we don’t want just any soldier.  We don’t want the soldier that we see on a live stream committing genocide, wiping out people without any sentiment except blood lust.  We don’t want that.  So, we have to ask ourselves, What do we bring in to being a good person?  How do we raise a people?  How do we [bring] consciousness and awareness among humanity that makes us strive for the best?  He concludes, It begins with us. … We have to struggle internally to make sure we’re strong enough to overcome hardship and suffering without compromising and walking away from the battle before the struggle is won.”  Imam Jamil Al-Amin exemplified jihad, struggle, as a young man, as an imam, and as a political prisoner, from Mujahid to Shahid, to make the world more humane, and this must be the goal of anyone who considers themselves a revolutionary.  As such, Dr. Karenga told us that Imam Jamil Al-Amin left us four key lessons: “The first is, we must be spiritually grounded, ethically grounded, in whatever faith we are, ground yourself in the best of what it means to be Afrikan and to remaking the world.  Speak that special truth to the world.  Make your own unique contribution to how we reconceive and reconstruct this world.  And at the heart of all of it is this … to speak truth, to do justice, to care for the poor and vulnerable among us, to have a rightful relationship with the environment, to constantly struggle against evil, injustice and oppression, and to always raise up, praise and pursue good. … Second, is the practice of the Afrikan ethical imperative to love and serve the people.  Service is an ethical imperative. … Serve God, so He can protect and provide for you; serve your Brothers and Sisters, so you can be respected for it, serve a wise person so they can teach you wisdom, serve anyone so you can benefit from it, and serve your mother and father so you can go forward and prosper. … All the great people you know is because they served.  They gave their lives and their deaths for the cause of good for all of us.  Third thing, is the beauty in diversity.  [This is what we called] unity in diversity.  And Imam Jamil taught this and practiced this, in his SNCC days, in his early days and in his latter days.  He brought us together, as he brings us here, today. … The fourth one, is struggle. … Be able to suffer and persevere without breaking, without compromising, without walking away from the battlefield before the struggle is won, without seeking a comfortable place in oppression while all of our people are suffering.  Struggle is part of nature. … We are born in struggle.  Struggle is one of the defining aspects of the human personality.  We struggle when we come into being; that’s called birth.  We struggle to make the most out of things; that’s called life.  And we struggle not to go out of being; that’s called quest for immortality.   And it is in our doing good in life and our quest for immortality that we are rewarded … in the afterlife. … Let me end by saying this: this is our duty, to know our past and honor it; to engage our present and improve it; and to imagine our own future and to forge it in the most ethical, effective and substantive way. … Our Honored Ancestors teach us, our sacred texts teach us: continue the struggle, keep the faith, hold the line, love and respect our people and each other.  Let us practice the Nguzo Saba, the Seven Principles.  Seek and speak truth, do and demand justice, in positive concern for the well-being of the world, and all that are in it. …” 

Several local community activists and grassroots community members also gave brief reflections on the Imam’s life and the importance of a real understanding of the concept of jihad as consistent struggle within oneself as well as within the greater society.  Among the local speakers were Nana Akua Akomfo Nyamekye, current Queen Mother of Baltimore City and advocate for political prisoners who had served with Marshall “Eddie” Conway in the Baltimore Black Panthers and the Soul School, and as such was an ally of Imam Jamil Al-Amin, and who reminded us that we must support activists like MOVE’s Mama Pam Africa and that “the work is never done”; Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo, also a member of the Black Panther Party from his days in New York and is the founder of the Baltimore-based Organization of All Afrikan Unity Black Panther Cadre (OAAUBPC); Baba Charlie Dugger, longtime Baltimore area educator, activist and sponsor of the annual Marcus Garvey Day an Billie Holliday celebrations; Baba Bill Curtis, local activist and vendor of Afrikan-centered paraphernalia including the red, Black and Green flags seen across the city; Mama Kilolo Watkins, member of the Maryland Council of Elders; Ras Tre Subira, community activist, educator and photographer who provided the photography and videography of the event through his company Black Mission Media; Bro. Vernon Streater, founder of Unity TV and provider of the livestream of the event; Baba King Teasdell of the Souls of Life Society; and several others, some of whom had known him as younger people.

 A special table that served as something of a shrine to Ancestor Jamil Al-Amin was arranged by the African Diaspora Ancestral Commemoration Institute (ADACI).  Security was provided by members of The Tendea Family, who have provided similar services for Pan Afrikan community events across Baltimore.  As mentioned above. videography and photography were provided by Ras Tre Subira of Black Mission Media, and the livestream was done by Bro. Vernon Streater, founder of Unity TV.

Much gratitude to the Most Worshipful Prince Hall Grand Lodge of Maryland, 1307 Eutaw Place in Baltimore that made this event possible by providing the space, and their representative, Baba Marc Rollins (pictured above, second from left), who was present to assist throughout the event.

Authoritarianism: “Hello America. These are my friends, Fascism and Martial Law.”

I don’t understand the reason why
You tellin’ us all that we need to unify
Rally round the flag
And beat the drums of war
Sing the same old songs
Ya know we heard ’em all before
You tellin’ me it’s unpatriotic
But I call it what I see it
When I see it’s idiotic
The tears of one mother
Are the same as any other
Drop food on the kids
While you’re murderin’ their fathers
But don’t bother to show it on CNN
Brothers and sisters don’t believe them
It’s not a war against evil
It’s really just revenge
Engaged against the poorest by the same rich men
Fight terrorists wherever they be found
But why you not bombing Tim McVeigh’s hometown?
You can say what you want propaganda television
But all bombing is terrorism

(chorus)
We can chase down all our enemies
Bring them to their knees
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace
Whoa we may even find a solution
To hunger and disease
We can bomb the world to pieces
But we can’t bomb it into peace

911
Fire in the skies
Many people died
And no one even really knows why
They tellin’ lies of division and fear
We yelled and cried
No one listened for years
But like, “who put us here?”
And who’s responsible?
Well, there’s no debatin’
Cause if they ask me I say
It’s big corporations
World Trade Organization
Tri-Lateral action
International sanctions, Satan
Seems like it’ll be an endless price tag
Of wars tremendous
And most disturbingly
The death toll is so horrendous
So I send this to those
Who say they defend us
Send us into harm’s way
We should all make a remembrance that
This is bigger than terrorism
Blood is blood is blood and um
Love is true vision
Who will listen?
How many songs it takes for you to see
You can bomb the world to pieces
You can’t bomb it into peace
– Michael Franti and Spearhead, “Bomb The World (Armageddon Version)”, Everyone Deserves Music, Track 11 (2003)

As if it weren’t enough that National Guard and military troops have already been deployed to cities such as Washington DC, Chicago Illinois, Memphis Tennessee and Los Angeles California, with threats to further invade cities such as Portland Oregon, Minneapolis Minnesota and New York City (if the people have the nerve to elect the “socialist” Zohran Mamdani as mayor), US President Donald Trump and “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth called a sudden, mandatory meeting of US military commanders, generals and admirals from around the world in Quantico, Virginia to “lay down the law” with their new plan to destroy perceived enemies of the US abroad without restraint and to quell insurgencies, crush dissent and implement the equivalent of martial law at home.

A recent Facebook post about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid in Chicago stated the following:

A shocking incident unfolded in Chicago when about 300 ICE agents descended from Blackhawk helicopters onto an apartment building, rounding up everyone living there. Many residents, according to witnesses, were pulled outside in zip ties, wearing little or no clothing, and children were among those caught up in this mass operation. With President Trump reportedly obtaining direct authority to deploy armed federal agents in Chicago, the move feels like an extension of what he has described as a war on blue states and cities, making the event feel as if it were ripped from a dystopian novel.

Across the country, these federal raids are being viewed as part of an escalating campaign to assert central power over communities that do not support the administration. The use of military tactics in domestic spaces looks less like a law enforcement effort and more like an outright attack on places that tend to vote Democratic. For many, the message is clear: cities that disagree with the current administration are being singled out for intimidation and collective punishment.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect is the deafening silence from major national media outlets. Instead of launching investigations or demanding accountability, mainstream networks have focused their energy on profit driven mergers and tax schemes to benefit their wealthy CEOS. That leaves local communities bearing the full weight of unchecked federal power and everyday people more vulnerable, as the role of the media as the public’s watchdog is abandoned.

It seems this administration is intent on securing its grip on power at the expense of their perceived enemies around the world and their invented enemies on the home front, in accordance with the Fascists’ Playbook. Purify the citizenry here through deportations of “illegals” (the definition of whom seems to be expanding) and detention of “insurgents” (anyone not sufficiently loyal to the Dear Leader) in internment camps, silence dissenters in the areas of news, analysis, commentary, entertainment and other mass media, cancel elections to ensure that the regime will never be replaced, militarize the cities to ensure against rebellion or even protest, while “taking the gloves off” the world’s deadliest military force to crush any potential resistance from outside (or possibly inside).

“Hi America, my name is Authoritarianism. Thanks for letting me into your house last November. These are my friends, Fascism and Martial Law. We’re here to keep you safe from the invaders, but also from your neighbors and yourselves, because enemies are everywhere. So just be compliant and let us handle everything.”

The recent assassination of right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk provoked calls for a “war on the left” before the identity of the shooter was even determined, and such calls have persisted even as the shooter was revealed to be another White right-winger and alleged follower of ultra-right-wing pundit Nick Fuentes who felt Kirk’s politics, as cruel as they were, did not go far enough. As a result, the “war on woke” continues despite the internecine violence on the right and the preponderance of mass shooters, terrorists and murderers over the years who have been determined to emanate from right-wing enclaves. Thus, Trump and Hegseth have been mobilizing military and paramilitary units to crack down almost exclusively on cities run by Black mayors or that have largely Black populations under the guise of “cleaning up crime”, despite the clear evidence that crime in these cities has decreased tremendously over the last several years, not because of over-policing or military intervention but because of investment in community and anti-violence efforts in communities and neighborhoods.

An increasing number of analysts, activists and “regular citizens” are becoming convinced that fascism and martial law are not coming; they are already here. In the interest of not exposing these activists to the potential retaliation of the emerging police state, we will not post their comments here, but if you are connected to Pan Afrikan organizations and concerned citizens, you probably already know some of them.

Check out social media for a few minutes and you will run across one or another Facebook or TikTok post describing last Tuesday’s meeting at Quantico as a call for martial law, and emphasizing that Black people in particular need to prepare for the time when the military invades your town or city, allegedly to support ICE raids but ultimately stopping, detaining and sometimes imprisoning citizens of the United States who happen to speak too much Spanish, “look Haitian” or “look Hispanic”, or have gone on record as members of the “woke (radical) left”.

Those who attempt to intervene on behalf of those who are wrongly accosted and “disappeared” also risk abuse at the hands of often-masked and heavily armed right wing militias and military personnel who have suddenly been tasked with policing duties for which they have not been qualified, trained or prepared and which they have nonetheless been empowered to carry out with impunity.

But this crisis is not just recognized by Pan Afrikanists, Black Nationalists and leftists for the xenophobic purge that it threatens to become. There are a number of White activists and commentators that have been sounding the alarm from the beginning and are increasing in frequency and intensity, especially since Trump has reiterated his “enemy from within” comments and held his meeting with US military commanders from around the world to reinforce that sentiment, made even clearer by Hegseth’s comments decrying the “stupid … politically correct and overbearing” rules of engagement (known to the rest of us as the Geneva Conventions and the Conventions Against Genocide) and calling on military commanders present to dispose of such inconvenient rules and “intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill” enemies on foreign soil as well as “quell civil disturbances” in US cities, attacking American civilians on American soil who have dared to speak out against Trump’s authoritarian aims which he is apparently willing to institute war on the streets to enforce. While these White critics may expose themselves to right-wing retaliation in time, they are somewhat insulated from the worst abuses (at least for now) by the fact of their Whiteness. Still, their commitment to sound the alarm for their followers and the larger White community are appreciated, as that is what Tim Wise, one of the most politically-aware public speakers, has done, and it is also what Ancestor Malcolm X stated in his autobiography that he would advise White activists that consider themselves allies of the Black Struggle to do.

A Facebook post from “Stuart H2O” speaks specifically about Trump and Hegseth’s meeting with the military commanders: https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1CSSCaye3p/

Robert Arnold, who also goes under the heading “Defiance 13”, provides regular video commentaries about US abuses at home and abroad, with particular emphasis on American racism, xenphobia and authoritarianism. His piece on the Trump-Hegseth meeting, titled “The Silence of Generals”, can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1Cw6UBrX6N/

The race is on. Many of us ignored the time for vigilance and thus have squandered much of the breathing room we thought we had. The time for building the resistance has come. People in the Pan Afrikan community are finally seeing the urgent need for organizing and building unity. White “mainstream” commentators are increasingly aware of the unhinged nature of their political leaders. And members of the grassroots Black community, watching the rants by right-wing pundits like Charlie Kirk and Nick Fuentes railing against everything from affirmative action to anti-discrimination to historical Black leaders to simple empathy as they fan the flames for the very violence that will also consume them, are listening and watching as their so-called leaders “rally round the flag and beat the drums of war.”

“The REvolution Is Black Love” Interviews Grandmother Walks On Water

On October 1, Sis. Tomiko spoke with recurring guest Grandmother Walks On Water. Also known as Mama Nataska Hasan and the mother of local Baltimore recording artist Maimouna “MuMu Fresh” Youssef, Grandmother Walks On Water regularly presents her analysis on issues of Afrikan centered health and spirituality. Their discussion, which always promises to be thought-provoking, can be found here as well as on our Media Page under Current Radio and Podcasts.

“The REvolution Is Black Love” Talks with ELife Founder Dr. Baruch

On September 24, show host Sis. Tomiko interviewed Washington, DC-based activist Dr. Baruch Ben-Yehudah, who is the proprietor of ELife Restaurant in Capitol Heights, Maryland, just outside of Washington DC.  ELife seeks to nourish the mind, body and spirit, offering a variety of healthy foods and products as well as regularly bringing in lecturers on Afrikan history and Pan Afrikan organizing such as historian Dr. Ashra Kwesi.  Her interview with him can be found here and on our Media Page under Current Radio and Podcasts.

Backing “Black MAGA” Instead of Real Pan Afrikan Organizing?

There has been a rather disturbing trend among Black political activists that seemed to accelerate after Donald Trump retook the White House in January of this year.  I have watched political activists who I had once regarded as intellectual pro-Black thinkers suddenly start acting as cheerleaders for practically every draconian, authoritarian and downright dictatorial policy enacted by Trump, in accordance with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf; https://www.factcheck.org/2024/09/a-guide-to-project-2025/), while demonstrating a surprising attitude of uncritical support and unabashed celebration. 

National and local Black celebrities, from Judge Joe Brown to Maryland Republican political candidate Kim Klacik, partied in the White House in February to celebrate Trump’s victory.  Activists who had once uncompromisingly opposed authoritarian overreach and right-wing dictatorship began cheering as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accosted people at court-mandated immigration hearings, at work on work visas, in college on student visas and on the street without warrants, uniforms or badges, in apparent blissful acceptance of the scattered cases of United States citizens being detained for their political activism as collateral damage, the price that must be paid to get the immigrants out of ‘Murica.  And now, I’ve seen Black people pointing to marginal “Black MAGA” groups as evidence that Black America as a whole really supports the Trump agenda.  This, for now at least, is my answer to them.

At the urging of a Sista who had posted on Facebook, I took some time away from my actual organizing work and watched the Angela Gets Answers (https://www.youtube.com/@AngelaGetsAnswers) YouTube video with Chicago Flips Red co-founder Danielle Carter-Walters (I’m a Black Woman Supporting Trump & Troops, which I’m sharing here just so you’ll know), as well as a Fox News video (Chicago resident goes after city’s ‘progressive Democratic gang’ for refusing Trump’s federal help on crime) featuring Zoe Leigh, the other co-founder of Chicago Flips Red (apparently more of an objective or a wish than an actual documented fact).

Chicago Flips Red is described by Angela Gets Answers host Angela Brown as “Black MAGA”, and she describes co-founder Danielle Carter-Walters as “an outlier, not one of the 92% of Black female voters who voted for Kamala Harris.”  It seems that independent Black political organizing is embodied these days by us eschewing classical “liberal” and “moderate” politics, rejecting Pan Afrikan (Black) organizing as “divisive” and zooming right past “traditional conservative” concepts to embrace hard-right-wing MAGA ideology.  This appears to be not inconsistent with the percentage of Black voters who backed Trump (some of whom I suspect have already FAFO’ed), either because of dissatisfaction with Democrats’ broken promises and weak leadership or because of Trump’s celebrity and shameless swagger which still seems to impress us for some reason.  Ms. Carter-Walters states in the video that she initially faced pushback and then tapped into the concerns of some of the more conservative Black constituents about “young Black thugs” and immigrants who White racists have often successfully turned us against. 

As often happens when someone pushes against the “political mainstream”, Chicago Flips Red’s Website (https://www.chicagoflipsred.com) has made claims that its members have been harassed and even threatened with violence.  While I personally decry such acts of intimidation against those who disagree politically and prefer to engage such people on the merits of their positions in the hope of showing them the error of their perspectives, I must also note that such acts of intimidation, against those on the so-called “far left” (which really does not exist in the United States) or the “far right” (which we used to think didn’t exist but seems to be making a comeback thanks to hard-right ideologues such as Stephen Miller) have apparently increased since Trump took office and the accepted mode of debate has turned increasingly superficial, anti-factual, aggressive, disrespectful, xenophobic, ugly and downright violent.

As so often seems to happen, the backlash against “Vote Blue No Matter Who” and the furor over sanctuary cities (“They’re getting free everything here”, a charge usually made without evidence) was followed not by truly independent Black-led political organizing (which I could support) but by Black folks running to support a political party that actively seeks to marginalize us (elimination of essential services, hypocritical imposition of federal power on local communities — “don’t tread on me” be damned — gerrymandering, voter suppression, criminalization and mass incarceration, anti-Black History in the name of “anti-wokeness”, and now militarizing policing in largely Black and Black-led cities up to and including unleashing the actual military in direct violation of Posse Comitatus). 

The efforts of mayors such as Los Angeles’s Karen Bass, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson and Baltimore’s Brandon Scott to find ways to decrease crime through empowering community and anti-violence groups (a plan which seems to be working, as crime is reported to have decreased in these cities to levels not seen in decades) stand in stark opposition to Trump’s plan to “send in the troops” in military gear brandishing automatic weapons to police the streets even though their primary training is to act in times of outright war.  It should also be noted that when Trump was last in the White House, he refused to “send in the troops” in accordance with the Insurrection Act when actual insurrectionists in support of Trump attacked the Capitol building (beating police with rails, breaking windows, carrying Confederate flags, defecating in the halls, chanting “Where’s Nancy” and calling for the hanging of his own vice president) on January 6, 2021.  Trump’s intended rebranding of the Department of Defense as the Department of War as he unleashes them on America’s Black-run and largely Black-populated cities seems to make his intentions clear.  But our Brothers and Sisters who have embraced the political hard right seem to be ignoring this, not too different from White citizens ignoring the racism and sexism of Trump and many in his party, as long as their specific “wish list” of eliminating crime, kicking out the immigrants and promoting “conservative values” (whatever that means) is addressed.  In any case, these Black activists are of the opinion that our freedom and uplift will come from uncritically embracing the Red, White and Blue instead of building up the Red, Black and Green.

Instead of leaving one (Democrat) political plantation and choosing real freedom and Black self-determination (independent Black political organizing) which apparently is too much like hard work (so much for MAGA calling Black people “lazy”), they run to another plantation (Republicans) where we will be treated worse.  Enough of this “Party of Lincoln” hogwash that so many MAGA folks love to push; the Republican Party abandoned that anti-slavery credo when southern racist Dixiecrats left Harry Truman because of his pro-civil rights policies in the 1950’s and joined the Republican Party en masse, turning what had been a mildly progressive political party into a right-wing reactionary one in support of White supremacy.  The Republican Party has effectively been our political enemy ever since.  Who used the “Southern Strategy” in 1968 to bring in even more White southern racists, empowered J. Edgar Hoover to launch COINTELPRO against Black organizations in the late 60’s, inundated our communities with marijuana when it was illegal in the 70’s and overthrew democratically-elected leaders like Chile’s Salvador Allende in 1973 (Richard Nixon, a Republican)?  Who dumped cocaine into South Central Los Angeles and supercharged the cocaine epidemic as well as mass incarceration in the 80’s (Ronald Reagan, a Republican)?  Who mismanaged the federal response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and used “weapons of mass destruction” and false media reports in 2003 to gin up support for the illegal war on Iraq, directly causing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths (George W. Bush, a Republican)?  Who ignored the COVID pandemic from 2020 to 2024 and called it a “hoax”, leading to the current estimates of over 1 million deaths in the US and over 7 million worldwide (Donald Trump, a Republican)?  Who inspired an insurrection on January 6, 2021 and did nothing to stop it (Trump again)?  Sure, Bill Clinton (a Democrat) signed the Crime Bill and the Effective Death Penalty Act, former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (a Democrat) had called young Black males “super predators”, Joe Biden (a Democrat) had backed several onerous bills as a Senator, and even Barack Obama (a Democrat) increased drone strikes in Afghanistan, prosecuted whistleblowers and bombed Libya leading to the assassination of Muamar Gaddafi, but that only underscores my point.  We keep bouncing from one oppressor to the other like a shooting gallery duck.  “The Democrats ignore us and break promises to stop ignoring us, so let’s run to the Republicans who beat us and at least keep their promises to continue beating us.”  Reject the Democrats because of transgender and immigrant support and run to the Republicans who strip agencies like FEMA, NOAA and the National Weather Service of critical personnel and infrastructure, wage “culture wars” against Black books, Black institutions and even the Public Broadcasting System (“Sesame Street”), invade our cities, take the regulatory chains off industrial polluters, close public services for poor people to give tax breaks to the filthy rich and eliminate inspectors general and community control boards to allow police brutality to once again run unchecked and unwatched throughout our communities.  I am not saying the Democrats are good (though there are at least progressive-minded legislators like Jasmine Crockett and others, the Democratic Party supports the genocide in Gaza and opposes reparations and independent Afrikan nations too), just that the Republicans are worse.  We continue to behave as though there are only two possible courses of action, so we keep running from one Massa to another.  We should be building our own independent, Black-led, grassroots-responsive, non-partisan political machine but Noooooo.  Apparently that would require too much reading (hence the Black book bans going unnoticed by “Black MAGA”), too much real research (as opposed to just watching Fox and a few counter-culture YouTube shows) and too much real work with real Black organizers, Black historians and Black activists, and we can’t have that, can we?  As for Angela Brown, she counters her interview with Ms. Carter-Walters with a White former MAGA member in her follow-up episode, her show’s tag line is “Decoding MAGA” and “Decoding Liberals”, and she clearly recognizes that Ms. Carter-Walters is “an outlier”.  So any implication that Black people are “begging” Trump to come in with the military, despite the propaganda from Fox News in their interview with Zoe Leigh, a self-described “suburb kid” originally from Albany, NY, egged on by the host (“please bring us help”, which does not mean bring in the military to turn the city into a war zone), is disingenuous at best.

I don’t know whether some people are just trying to gain political favor from whoever is in power, whether some are intoxicated by the notoriety that comes from taking a confrontational, controversial or counter-cultural position, whether some have had the bucks waved in front of their faces or whether they truly believe in what they are saying, but too many of us are apparently allured by the feeling of superiority that comes from finding an obscure position through shallow research and running with it for the likes and follows, and are addicted to political posturing and the attention and fame (however fleeting) it gives them.  If that is not their motivation, then why not work with anti-imperialist, anti-racist grassroots activists to truly build the “better place” we all claim to desire for ourselves, our families, our people and humanity?

“What To The Slave Is The Fourth of July?”

Every year at this time, as Americans break out the red, white and blue bunting, the American flags, the Uncle Sam outfits and the grill for some nice patriotic backyard barbecue, we feel the need to post this little reminder that the United States still has a lot of work to do if it is to, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “live out the meaning of its creed.” There is no better time than this to share the speech given by Ancestor Frederick Douglass on July 5, 1852 in Rochester, New York.

The Web site https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/frederick-douglass-what-to-the-slave-is-the-fourth-of-july-1852 describes Douglass’s speech thus:

Frederick Douglass’s speech, “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?”, delivered on July 5, 1852, addresses the stark contrast between the celebration of freedom on Independence Day and the ongoing oppression of enslaved people. Douglass states that for the American slave, the Fourth of July is a day that highlights the “gross injustice and cruelty” they endure, making it a painful reminder of their lack of freedom and rights. He critiques the hypocrisy of a nation that celebrates liberty while denying it to a significant portion of its population.

The Web site https://www.ushistory.org/Declaration/more/douglass.html offers its own introduction and a reasonably complete text of the essential points of Douglass’s speech:

Douglass delivered this speech before a crowd in Rochester, NY on July 5, 1852. The poem at the end was written by famed abolitionist and colleague William Lloyd Garrison, and published on March 17, 1845 in the Signal of Liberty an anti-slavery newspaper.

Fellow Citizens, I am not wanting in respect for the fathers of this republic. The signers of the Declaration of Independence were brave men. They were great men, too — great enough to give frame to a great age. It does not often happen to a nation to raise, at one time, such a number of truly great men. The point from which I am compelled to view them is not, certainly, the most favorable; and yet I cannot contemplate their great deeds with less than admiration. They were statesmen, patriots and heroes, and for the good they did, and the principles they contended for, I will unite with you to honor their memory.

Fellow Citizens, pardon me, allow me to ask, why am I called upon to speak here today? What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us? and am I, therefore, called upon to bring our humble offering to the national altar, and to confess the benefits and express devout gratitude for the blessings resulting from your independence to us?

Would to God, both for your sakes and ours, that an affirmative answer could be truthfully returned to these questions! Then would my task be light, and my burden easy and delightful. For who is there so cold, that a nation’s sympathy could not warm him? Who so obdurate and dead to the claims of gratitude, that would not thankfully acknowledge such priceless benefits? Who so stolid and selfish, that would not give his voice to swell the hallelujahs of a nation’s jubilee, when the chains of servitude had been torn from his limbs? I am not that man. In a case like that, the dumb might eloquently speak, and the “lame man leap as an hart.

But such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. — The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak today? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, towering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrevocable ruin! I can today take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea! we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there, they that carried us away captive, required of us a song; and they who wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.”

Fellow Citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions, whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, today, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, “may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!”

To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave’s point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery Ñ the great sin and shame of America! “I will not equivocate; I will not excuse”; I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just.

But I fancy I hear some one of my audience say, “It is just in this circumstance that you and your brother abolitionists fail to make a favorable impression on the public mind. Would you argue more, an denounce less; would you persuade more, and rebuke less; your cause would be much more likely to succeed.” But, I submit, where all is plain there is nothing to be argued. What point in the anti-slavery creed would you have me argue? On what branch of the subject do the people of this country need light? Must I undertake to prove that the slave is a man? That point is conceded already. Nobody doubts it. The slaveholders themselves acknowledge it in the enactment of laws for their government. They acknowledge it when they punish disobedience on the part of the slave. There are seventy-two crimes in the State of Virginia which, if committed by a black man (no matter how ignorant he be), subject him to the punishment of death; while only two of the same crimes will subject a white man to the like punishment. What is this but the acknowledgment that the slave is a moral, intellectual, and responsible being? The manhood of the slave is conceded. It is admitted in the fact that Southern statute books are covered with enactments forbidding, under severe fines and penalties, the teaching of the slave to read or to write. When you can point to any such laws in reference to the beasts of the field, then I may consent to argue the manhood of the slave. When the dogs in your streets, when the fowls of the air, when the cattle on your hills, when the fish of the sea, and the reptiles that crawl, shall be unable to distinguish the slave from a brute, then will I argue with you that the slave is a man!

For the present, it is enough to affirm the equal manhood of the Negro race. Is it not astonishing that, while we are ploughing, planting, and reaping, using all kinds of mechanical tools, erecting houses, constructing bridges, building ships, working in metals of brass, iron, copper, silver and gold; that, while we are reading, writing and ciphering, acting as clerks, merchants and secretaries, having among us lawyers, doctors, ministers, poets, authors, editors, orators and teachers; that, while we are engaged in all manner of enterprises common to other men, digging gold in California, capturing the whale in the Pacific, feeding sheep and cattle on the hill-side, living, moving, acting, thinking, planning, living in families as husbands, wives and children, and, above all, confessing and worshipping the Christian’s God, and looking hopefully for life and immortality beyond the grave, we are called upon to prove that we are men!

Would you have me argue that man is entitled to liberty? that he is the rightful owner of his own body? You have already declared it. Must I argue the wrongfulness of slavery? Is that a question for Republicans? Is it to be settled by the rules of logic and argumentation, as a matter beset with great difficulty, involving a doubtful application of the principle of justice, hard to be understood? How should I look today, in the presence of Amercans, dividing, and subdividing a discourse, to show that men have a natural right to freedom? speaking of it relatively and positively, negatively and affirmatively. To do so, would be to make myself ridiculous, and to offer an insult to your understanding. There is not a man beneath the canopy of heaven that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.

What, am I to argue that it is wrong to make men brutes, to rob them of their liberty, to work them without wages, to keep them ignorant of their relations to their fellow men, to beat them with sticks, to flay their flesh with the lash, to load their limbs with irons, to hunt them with dogs, to sell them at auction, to sunder their families, to knock out their teeth, to burn their flesh, to starve them into obedience and submission to their masters? Must I argue that a system thus marked with blood, and stained with pollution, is wrong? No! I will not. I have better employment for my time and strength than such arguments would imply.

What, then, remains to be argued? Is it that slavery is not divine; that God did not establish it; that our doctors of divinity are mistaken? There is blasphemy in the thought. That which is inhuman, cannot be divine! Who can reason on such a proposition? They that can, may; I cannot. The time for such argument is passed.

At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed; and its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival….

…Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented, of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation which must inevitably work the downfall of slavery. “The arm of the Lord is not shortened,” and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from “the Declaration of Independence,” the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. — Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are distinctly heard on the other.

The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, “Let there be Light,” has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment. “Ethiopia, shall, stretch. out her hand unto God.” In the fervent aspirations of William Lloyd Garrison, I say, and let every heart join in saying it:

God speed the year of jubilee
The wide world o’er!
When from their galling chains set free,
Th’ oppress’d shall vilely bend the knee,
And wear the yoke of tyranny
Like brutes no more.
That year will come, and freedom’s reign,
To man his plundered rights again
Restore.

God speed the day when human blood
Shall cease to flow!
In every clime be understood,
The claims of human brotherhood,
And each return for evil, good,
Not blow for blow;
That day will come all feuds to end,
And change into a faithful friend
Each foe.

God speed the hour, the glorious hour,
When none on earth
Shall exercise a lordly power,
Nor in a tyrant’s presence cower;
But to all manhood’s stature tower,
By equal birth!
That hour will come, to each, to all,
And from his Prison-house, to thrall
Go forth.

Until that year, day, hour, arrive,
With head, and heart, and hand I’ll strive,
To break the rod, and rend the gyve,
The spoiler of his prey deprive —
So witness Heaven!
And never from my chosen post,
Whate’er the peril or the cost,
Be driven.

“100 for 100” Bus Trip to Commemorate the Birthday of Malcolm X, Monday May 19, 2025

For decades, the birthday of El-Hajj Malik Al-Shabazz/Omowale/Malcolm X has been celebrated by Pan Afrikanists, Black Nationalists, freedom fighters, civil rights activists, Black Power organizers and the general public.  Many of us consider The Autobiography of Malcolm X to be the one book that truly inspired us to study or even embrace a life of Pan Afrikan activism.  His growth from street hustler to Nation of Islam national representative to champion of universal human rights, even as he maintained his commitment to Black People’s right to defend ourselves against right-wing White violence and oppression, continue to inspire many of us to follow his example of principled commitment to building and nourishing the Black Community while championing global human rights.

Every year, the Soul School Institute would sponsor a bus trip to New York City to commemorate Malcolm X’s birthday.  Babatunji Balogun, Soul School Institute’s leader, arranged for the bus, planned the itinerary and provided instruction as we would visit places such as the eateries where Ancestor Malcolm would eat and teach adherents and idle passersby, the Audubon Ballroom where assassins extinguished his shining light in a hail of gunfire, and the Ferncliff Cemetary where the remains of Ancestor Malcolm and his wife Dr. Betty Shabazz now lay in eternal rest.  The bus trip provided an opportunity for those of us who had studied him to see first-hand the world in which he lived, for those unfamiliar with him to learn more about his role in shaping the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, and for all of us to pay respects, however meager, to his memory and enduring legacy.

The bus trips to New York were sadly interrupted for several years, first by the COVID Pandemic, then by the untimely passing of Babatunji Balogun in 2021, reportedly from COVID.  Since that time, there has been a void in our consciousness as a community, once filled by the annual Malcolm X Birthday Bus Trip.  Now that void is being filled again.

Bro. Haki Ammi is the President of the Teaching Artist Institute (TAI) as well as a supporter of the Maryland Legislative Black Caucus, National Action Network and numerous other Civil Rights, Black Nationalist and Pan Afrikan organizations in Maryland, the United States and internationally.  On Monday, May 19, what would be Ancestor Malcolm X’s 100th Birthday, Bro. Haki is sponsoring the “100 For 100” Malcolm X Remembrance Tour,

“a transformative and educational journey as we celebrate the life and legacy Malcolm X on his 100th birthday.  This historic day trip, organized by the Global World Activists community, offers a unique opportunity to explore key landmarks in the fight for social justice and civil rights.” (from the announcement and flyer)

Scheduled trip details include visits to the Schomburg Center, the Shabazz Center, the Audubon Ballroom, Malcolm X’s Burial Site, the African Burial Grounds and an African Marketplace.

The bus departs from the Lot H Parking Lot (west on North Avenue to the 2500 block, then north to Warwick Avenue, to Loop Road, then to Lot H) at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland at 6:30 AM sharp.  Tickets are $145 per person and include breakfast, snacks and lunch.  It is recommended to carpool to the Lot H Parking Lot if possible.

The flyer is pictured above.  For tickets or more information, please contact Bro. Haki Ammi, (410) 209-9687.