In the early morning of July 7, 2026, Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo, local Pan Afrikan activist and Elder, founder of the Baltimore-area Organization of All Afrikan Unity-Black Panther Cadre (OAAU-BPC) and a Veteran Black Panther himself, was attacked by six young men at a convenience store across Liberty Heights Avenue from Baltimore’s Mondawmin Mall. This location has been the scene of numerous acts of robbery and assault in the past, including the tragic murder of young activist Bro. Victorious Khan Swift in March of 2017.

Video of the July 7 attack shows Baba Ade, surrounded by the six young men, one of them brandishing a semiautomatic weapon and another with a machete or a samurai sword. Baba Ade held his ground and faced the young men as other members of the group shoved, kicked and threw objects at him in wave after wave for several minutes. Remarkably, after knocking him down numerous times, the young men abruptly retreated, leaving the scene without using either the sword or the semiautomatic weapon and apparently without taking his vehicle or his valuables. The staff of the convenience store, assuming the store was open at that early morning hour, were not shown in the video, apparently choosing not to intervene in the confrontation.

Baba Ade later drove himself to a hospital to have his injuries, which included at least one cracked rib, tended to. For the next couple of weeks, he recovered quietly at his home as news of the assault slowly began to spread. Initial social media accounts featured a video clip from an elevated street surveillance camera of approximately one minute in duration (longer clips would be posted later), and many of those who commented on social media were quick to make (often erroneous) assumptions about the perpetrators as well as the victim. Gun-rights activists and zealots insisted that had Baba Ade been armed the situation would have turned out differently (though not necessarily for the better), while some who either started or spread false rumors that this was Black-on-White crime sought to stir up racial animus based on that lie. However, as word spread in the Pan Afrikan activist community, all of whom know and have worked with Baba Ade in the cause of Pan Afrikan and Black Nationalist activism, calls increasingly were made to publicly respond to this assault and send a message of not only solidarity with that local community that has been in a state of low-intensity siege for years, but also of a resolve that this level of criminality in this community in particular cannot continue to be tolerated and the community must be healed.

An impromptu rally was held on Saturday, July 18 at the convenience store parking lot. At that rally, it was announced that a second, more extensive gathering would take place at this same spot eight days later in what was billed as a Clarion Call to Action. Thus, on Sunday, July 26 at 3:00 PM, that gathering took place, beginning at the Fridays restaurant in Mondawmin Mall and moving to the 7-Eleven across the 2500 block of Liberty Heights Avenue, the location of the assault on Baba Ade.
The Clarion Call Gathering, organized by Elders Queen Mother Victory Swift (mother of Bro. Victorious Swift and founder of Our Victorious City), Mama Gwen Levi and Mama Ujimma Masani (Working, Organizing, Making A Nation and Njia Ya Tayari Martial Arts School), was set as a call-to-action for the various Pan Afrikan, Black Nationalist and civil rights organizers in Baltimore City to put aside their relatively petty differences and come together around the shared state of emergency Black People face in Baltimore City as well as across the United States, specifically focusing on the criminal activities of a small but dangerous portion of our own community and the impact of those activities on the community as a whole. If a respected Elder of the community such as Baba Ade can be assaulted by some of the very people he and others like him are working to educate, organize and mobilize, then clearly no one is immune to the small element among our own people that seeks to vent their anger and alienation by preying on those they feel they can exploit. Thus, this rally was planned to spark a renewed effort to not only seek out his attackers, but also to try to reach them and turn them to a more positive, righteous path before their actions condemn them and their neighborhood to a place from which there will be no coming back.

The group adopted the somewhat impromptu name of “The We Community”, perhaps in part in response to questions posed by activists and citizens at coalition-building forums asking “Who is the We?” that unity-building efforts are trying to reach, bring together and organize around. While the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition (which is affiliated with this Web site) has offered an answer to that question, apparently the activists organizing this gathering have taken it upon themselves to provide the same answer in their own way: those who hear the Clarion Call and show up to come together are the “We”, and thus the name “The We Community” was coined, a name that was emphasized that day as the group walked from the Fridays restaurant to the 7-Eleven lot chanting “We Are The We”.

Mama Ujimma Masani and Mwalimu Locy Lumumba (leader of Working, Organizing, Making A Nation and the instructor of the Njia Ya Tayari Martial Arts School) served as primary emcees for the gathering, introducing other organizers and activists who spoke about this incident as well as the work they and their respective organizations are doing to change things in Baltimore for the better.
Among the organizers, activists and concerned citizens who attended the gathering or offered statements of support were Bro. Lawrence Grandpre (Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle); Bro. Elijah Miles (Tendea Family); Sis. Ertha Harris (Tight Knit Connect and the Local Organizing Committee of the Million Man March); Sis. K-Love The Poet; Sis. Harmonie (Our Victorious City); Baba Imhotep Fatiu and Baba Adisa Fatiu (Pan African Liberation Movement); Baba Charlie Dugger (longtime educator and activist and founder of Camp Harambee The People); radio host Tyrone Bost (who supported former States Attorney Marilyn Mosby in her legal battle and has also supported this effort); Dr. Dennis Ausar Winkler and his father Baba Ausar Winkler (Temple of New African Thought); Bro. Jabari Natur (Conscious Heads Solvivaz Nation); Baba David Murphy (The National Black Unity News); Baba Bill Goodin (BlackMen Unifying BlackMen); Sis. Lynn Pinder (Black Co-op Study Circle); Baba Sozufe Nnamdi, Baba Kaleb Tshamba, Baba Bill Curtis and Bro. Curtis Warren (Arch Social Club); Mama Earth, Bro. Tony Culcha and Bro. Fyah Fyah (UNIA-ACL Baltimore Division 106 Barca-Clarke); Bro. Isa (Black Running Organization); and numerous others, all of whom seek not only recompense for Baba Ade and security for the surrounding community but also healing for the young people whose feelings of alienation and disconnection likely motivated this and other acts of mayhem. Several of the attendees made statements in support of Baba Ade and called for organizations to step up to combat what many residents see, in spite of the official statistics, as a rising tide of violence and crime. Excerpts of some of those statements are presented below.

Of course, the main person who everyone present wanted to hear from was the victim of that July 7 assault, Baba Ade Oba Tokunbo himself. In his brief remarks, delivered slowly and patiently in part due to his continuing recovery from his injuries, he stated: “This gathering here is important because the community around us can see it, and they need to know that this is what needs to be done. … We are more than just a group of organizations. What I feel, because you have concern for me, and care for me, this is my family. When I look at the fact that UNIA is here, my paternal grandfather was a member of the UNIA, so I’m descended from the UNIA. And I’m a veteran of the Black Panther Party. And so, I stand by the slogan of the Black Panther Party: All power to the people, Black power to Black people, Panther power to the Vanguard.” He recalled the March 26, 2017 murder of Bro. Victorious Swift, his spiritual son and the biological son of Mama Victory Swift, near this very same lot at this very same convenience store, as he emphasized that the “hoodrat behavior” that motivated his attackers and their criminal activity in this neighborhood “cannot be tolerated.” He called for us to rededicate ourselves to organizing and mobilizing our people.

Mwalimu Locy Lumumba served as the main facilitator of this event, introducing other speakers and offering several important words of wisdom himself, starting with a statement of appreciation directly to Baba Ade: “I was inspired when I looked at the fact that you just kept getting up. You just kept getting up! If we take anything from that, it is what we must continue to do as a people. We’ve got to keep getting up! They talk about Black people hate each other, ‘Black people hate Black people’. But I have to say that you can’t get this if we hate each other. We have not ever, since slavery, taken a back step. It might have been a small step forward, but it was a forward step. So, we are calling to advance this, because we’ve seen this all our lives, y’all. We’ve always been able to do a gathering. We have just never been able to build on that gathering and create a movement. Because that’s the call. To create the movement of the people. I’m not asking for the ministers. I’m not asking for the politicians. I’m asking for the people. We’ve got to take the front. Politicians are our employees. … The middle class has turned their back on us. They turned their back on us. [But] the middle class has the skill level in any organization, and we need those skills. But we can win them back if we create a movement. See, this [gathering] here is a tactic, it’s not a strategy. This is a necessary tactic. … A strategy would be if these organizations decided that they want to move and operate together and every once a month we carry this to the community. And we pick something like the school board to attack, make them change. Because we have proven that we can start a movement. We have not proven that we can carry that movement for 30 years, so that the generations that come behind us can pick it up.”

“I was inspired when I looked at the fact that you just kept getting up. You just kept getting up! If we take anything from that, it is what we must continue to do as a people. We’ve got to keep getting up!”
— Mwalimu Locy Lumumba, on the inspiration he felt from Baba Ade’s resistance

Ms. Ashley Esposito serves on the school board and took the mic to express her solidarity with the gathering. She was attending simply as a concerned community member, but felt the need to respond as one of the politicians that, as she herself noted, often “don’t show up, and many of the politicians do not have the lived experience, and they get in the role and find it very difficult to bring their lived experience in. So, I wanted to serve in this role to focus on our foster care youth, to focus on our unhoused youth, or students with learning disabilities because those are the ones that constantly, every single year, fail. And those are the ones that are also, in high numbers, incarcerated. And as a former foster care youth, as someone that was formerly unhoused, who had survivor’s guilt because I was one of the few. Like my form of service is serving on the school board, making sure that nobody has the comfortability to forget about who needs us most. … The things that our students, our young people, are feeling are way different than previous generations. They have a right to be angry. They have a right to not be optimistic about the future. But if you see a young person that’s disconnected, connect them with a re-engagement center, connect them with me. I probably know of resources that can support them. I’m willing to show up anywhere, at any time. As a mom myself I really, really appreciate the moms that stood up to speak [today], because we are constantly holding the line. … But also, people need to run [for office], and people need to vote. So don’t let anybody tell you for one second that you need a certain credential, that you need to talk a certain way, look a certain way, have the right connections. We need to run in every single race, every single time, because that participation, more people connecting with people to get them to come to the polls, is how we hold folks accountable. Without challengers … we have no shot at really pushing our agenda. And I don’t shy away from the label ‘politician’ anymore, because I stepped up one time, on a whim, to push an agenda forward for my community to improve our conditions.” She encouraged people to contact her by email at espositoforboard@gmail.com.

Bro. Keith Scott, founder of the organization We The People Are Coming and vocal supporter of the independent Newsome Party, spoke about how they will run 17 candidates in 2028 for offices from the City Council to the Mayor “to remove the Republican and Democratic influence from Baltimore so this system will not affect us anymore.” He urged those who are interested in their effort to visit the Web site https://newsomeparty.com. “Black people need to be in these seats of power. We are lacking in the power; we’ve got the people. 16% voted in Maryland. That means 84% of us don’t want this system. We want to replace the system, and put in a system that works for us.”

Bro. Lawrence Grandpre is one of the founders and political commentator of the public policy activist think tank Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. He noted that “the village is under attack. When you talk about a $700 million police budget, that is a village under attack. A war on drugs, that is a village under attack. So, first actionable step, Baltimore City has control over funds that are supposed to go to repair the harm of the war on drugs. [Maryland state] Senator [Jill] Carter and us pushed for it in the cannabis legalization bill. There is a commission, a Baltimore City Reparations Commission. The decisions will be made by people appointed by your City Councilperson. So, go to info@lbsbaltimore.com, talk to us, we’ll help you figure out who the representative is from your district, so we can get some of the money they stole from us. It’s not about trusting politicians, it’s about finding the ones it’s easiest to lean on. Then leaning on them and ensuring that money doesn’t go to the White saviors that are hustling off of the suffering of our youth. Last thing, who benefits from the narrative speaking death over Baltimore City? We’ve had record murder drops, record crime drops, [which is] not enough, one life is one too many, but if you watch the news, you wouldn’t see that [crime drop]. I see people buying up real estate, using that narrative that Baltimore is dead, Baltimore is dangerous. Some of those people are affiliated with people like Fox 45, Sinclair Media. So we’re doing an event this Saturday [August 1], at the Real News Network, to talk about the people that own Fox 45, the interest they have in speaking death over our city, gentrifying our city. … We’re having a panel to talk about the impact of Sinclair Media and Fox 45.” Bro. Lawrence can be reached through the email address info@lbsbaltimore.com.

Mwalimu spoke about using the summer months to teach our children the things that the school system does not, from STREAM (science, technology, renewables, engineering, arts, mathematics) to manhood to Pan Afrikanism to martial arts. Several organizations, such as Working, Organizing, Making A Nation (WOMAN), Roots of Scouting and the Pan African Liberation Movement (PLM), run summer camps and programs for young people. Mwalimu noted the difficulty for individual organizations in raising money, even the matching amounts often required to qualify for grants, and suggested that organizations find ways to pool resources for large scale joint programs that can serve the entire community. A think tank was also announced that will bring a small number of community activists together to formulate strategy and tactics for the community to implement in a cooperative manner. “We’re going to call you when the time is right, and we’re going to say, this is the plan that we have. … And once we’re off and running, then you can come in and plan with us. But planning is only for those who have the political consciousness, the will, and the sacrifice to do. … Everybody can’t plan. … And you can’t fight without political ideology.”

“I used to tell some of the parents, ‘Lie for your child today and be scared of them tomorrow.’ Because some of them want to be in denial about their children.”
— Baba Charlie Dugger

Baba Charlie Dugger announced the upcoming Marcus Garvey Day on Saturday, August 15 from 12 noon to 7 pm at Harlem Park in West Baltimore, and spoke about the need to reach out to our young people so that the “home boys can grow up to be home man.” He decried the adulteration of our cultural traditions including our music, particularly hip hop and rap, and how we have gone from SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) to SLICK, “Some Like Ignorance and Cowardly Killing. … We’ve gone from the NAACP, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the UNIA, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, to ‘niggers pulling triggers’.” He spoke about some young people he had encountered years ago who had bragged about “banking” (assaulting) a rival one day at a recreation center only to have that rival come back a week later and kill one of them in retribution. “We’ve allowed all of this kind of behavior for too long. Demand that our children behave. I used to tell some of the parents, ‘Lie for your child today and be scared of them tomorrow.’ Because some of them want to be in denial about their children.” He concluded by singing a passage from a Bob Marley song, “Babylon System”.

We refuse to be
What you wanted us to be
We are what we are
That’s the way (way) it’s going to be you don’t know!
You can’t educate I
For no equal opportunity

(Talkin’ ’bout my freedom) Talkin’ ’bout my freedom
People freedom (freedom) and liberty!
Yeah, we’ve been treading on the wine press much too long
Rebel, rebel!
Yes, we’ve been treading on the wine press much too long
Rebel, rebel!
Babylon system is the vampire, yea! (vampire)
Suckin’ the children day by day, yeah!
Me say, de Babylon system is the vampire, falling empire
Suckin’ the blood of the sufferers, yeah!
Building church and university, whoa-ooh, yeah!
Deceiving the people continually, yeah!

Me say them graduatin’ thieves and murderers
Look out now they suckin’ the blood of the sufferers (sufferers)
Yeah! (sufferers)

Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth right now!

Come on and tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth
Tell the children the truth
Come on and tell the children the truth
‘Cause, ’cause we’ve been treading on ya wine press much too long
Rebel, rebel!
And we’ve been taken for granted much too long
Rebel, rebel now!

Queen Mother Victory Swift gave what amounted to a keynote speech in which she spoke about the assault on Baba Ade in the context of the murder of her son, Bro. Victorious Swift on March 26, 2027 as he left that same convenience store. “And when the brother met [Victorious], he walked with him for 20 feet, a witness said. So I know Victorious was trying to bring him in, because that’s what Victorious does. You will meet him and 10 minutes later, he will be your brother. But this brother was broken. And we’re going to talk about broken versus bent. He was broken. So after walking 20 feet with my son, he put not 1, not 2, not 3, not 4, but 5 bullets into his body. Over a cell phone. Because he was broken. Victorious fought for his life, and it was stolen from him.” She compared that incident to the assault on Baba Ade and how he also fought back, in the face of a young man with a sword and another with a semi-automatic rifle. “He fought for his life. When I turned that off, I said to myself, ‘If he can fight, we can fight.’ If he’s not afraid to fight even if he dies, we can fight until we’re not afraid to die. … They beat him, they kicked him, they knocked him, they tormented him for 10 minutes. Do you know what 10 minutes feel like when somebody is attacking you? It feels like forever. But he kept fighting back, and he kept fighting back until who gave up? They gave up. They gave up! And that’s how we have to fight. We have to fight until they give up! And we’re never going to stop fighting, because who doesn’t like battles? Bullies don’t like battles. … You know who those children are. That baby who had that sword? He was showing it off to somebody. I wish to God I could find the man who sold that baby that gun. You’re talking about a $1500 to a $3000 weapon. But he was bent. He wasn’t broken. You know how I know? Because I asked the Baba [Ade], ‘Did he try to click it [pull the trigger to fire the weapon] and it didn’t work? He said no. Was it real? Yes! That was a real weapon. That baby wasn’t playing, but he was bent. He wasn’t broken. That’s why he couldn’t pull that trigger. He couldn’t pull it because he had never killed anybody before. Understand, that brother who killed Victorious had killed many times. He was broken. That boy who pulled that sword, he could have run it through him … but he didn’t. He was bent, not broken. … We have to find them. No one else can find them. … But we’re not finding them so we can lock them up and throw away the key. … We’re finding them so we can follow them, hold them, love them. We’re taking whatever these demons have for them off the table. They can’t have our children anymore. They’re our children. As hard as it is to say with what we saw, they’re still ours. We’re going to find them, we’re going to walk with them every step of the way. … They have to be accountable for their behavior. But we will never let them go. We have to get them before they [the police and the streets] get them. That is up to us. And I know some of you say they deserve the worst, but they’re babies. We’re talking about 13- to 16-year-olds. … They didn’t have on masks. They didn’t care if he saw them. … Somebody raised them. Clarion Call. We called, you all came. We never expected this turnout today. We knew who was going to show up. There are some who show up no matter what, PLM, Solvivaz Nation … One of the flyers says, If not us then who? If not now then when?”

“We’re finding them so we can follow them, hold them, love them. We’re taking whatever these demons have for them off the table. They can’t have our children anymore. They’re our children. As hard as it is to say with what we saw, they’re still ours.”
— Queen Mother Victory Swift on the young men who assaulted Baba Ade

The group then walked to the convenience store and presented a statement along with five specific demands to the owners. Mama Ujimma Masani read the statement with the list of demands just before the group visited the convenience store.

“We write to you not as adversaries, but as neighbors who share this corner with you every day. This location has witnessed a brutal assault of a 74 year old man, Elder, an overnight break-in, and years of prior tragedy at this same address, including the loss of a young man’s life in March of 2017. We believe you want this corner to be safe as much as we do. It is in that spirit, cordial but firm, that we present the following list of demands:

1. We are giving you a 72-hour notice to post your hours of operation in lettering large enough to be read clearly from the street.

2. Cut down the overgrown bushes that create a hidden nook where perpetrators can wait and hide to attack unsuspecting customers and install brighter lighting throughout the parking lot.

3. We urge you to donate toward the community reward fund established to help apprehend the assailants and toward the medical costs of the 74-year-old elder who was attacked.

4. Invest in stronger security measures, including roll-down security grates when the store is closed to deter further break-ins.

5. Acquire off-duty police presence to enforce a no loitering policy and help ensure the safety of your customers and this community.

“This is not a request made lightly. And it is not one we intend to let go unanswered. We ask for a response and a plan of action within a reasonable time, and we will report back to The We. Until then we will continue to stand on this corner in agreement until this community is safe.

“Respectfully,
The We Community.”

The plan is to move forward from here, with this assault as a further rallying cry to bring greater urgency to unity and coalition building efforts already underway (Baba Bill Goodin’s Unity Discussions and annual March 8 Unity Day campaign; Mwalimu Locy Lumumba’s proposed Black Nationalist think tank; Baba David Murphy’s efforts that are connected to his newspaper, The National Black Unity News; the Town Hall Meetings by the Maryland Pan Afrikan Cooperative Coalition).  Sometimes it takes a trauma such as this to shake up the activists and the grassroots community and make them see what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once called “the fierce urgency of now”.  If the result is that the various organizations, activists and unity efforts come out of their respective silos and sit at the table together to build real unity and organization, then something positive just might come from this trauma, and it may yet be the catalyst for a serious movement for Afrikan People in Baltimore, Maryland and beyond.