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Omali Yeshitela

AFRICAN REVOLUTIONARY • POLITICAL THEORETICIAN POWERFUL SPEAKER • "LAST MAN STANDING"

“You have the emergence in human society of
this thing called the State.
What is the State?
The State is organized bureaucracy.
It is the police department…the Army, the Navy
It is the prison system, the courts.
The State is a repressive organization.
The reality is
the State becomes necessary
only at that juncture in human society
where it is split between those who have and those who ain't got!”

From “Police State,” on let’s get free! by Dead Prez

• Built the African Socialist International, an organization made up of African people in Africa, the U.S., the Caribbean and around the world to liberate and unite Africa and all its resources as the birthright of African working people everywhere. Its founding congress is scheduled for March 2008 in West Africa.
• Made reparations for African people a household word after he launched the first International Tribunal on Reparations for African People in New York in 1982. The Tribunal ruled that African people are owed $4.1 trillion in reparations for stolen labor alone. Twelve subsequent sessions of the tribunal have been held in various cities around the country. The latest session of the Tribunal will be held in Berlin, Germany in June 2007.

• Freed Dessie Woods, sentenced to 22 years for defending herself against a white man who tried to rape her in 1975.
• African National Prison Organization, 1980.
• African National Reparations Organization, 1982.
• Measure O, the bold Community Control of Housing Initiative that won 22 percent of the vote in Oakland, CA in 1984.
• Acquitted in 1990 when brought to trial for defending African youth being harassed by the police;
• International Peoples’ Democratic Uhuru Movement in 1991 to defend the democratic rights of the African community.
• Led the community fight back after the police murder of 18 year old TyRon Lewis and the subsequent police attack on the Uhuru House in 1996. The Clinton administration was forced to send in his HUD chief and hold hearings by the Human Rights Commission.
• Ran for mayor of St. Petersburg in 2001, winning all the black and mixed precincts but one.
• Built the Florida Alliance for Peace and Social Justice in 2001, the only African-led anti-war organization.

• Umoja restaurant, St. Petersburg FL, 1970s
• African Connection Bookstore, Louisville, KY, 1980
• Florida Black Voice newspaper, Gainesville, FL, 1981
• Spear Graphics printing, Oakland CA, 1980s
• Uhuru Bakery Café, Oakland CA, 1987
• Uhuru Furniture Stores, Oakland, Philadelphia and St. Petersburg, since 1989
• Uhuru Foods concessions and catering, since 1987
• Uhuru holiday pies since 1981

• African Internationalism, Yeshitela’s political theory that proves that capitalism is parasitic, built on the enslavement, genocide and theft of the land, labor and resources of African and oppressed peoples.
• Proved that the whole white population sits on the pedestal of the oppression of African and other peoples.
• Analyzed that the U.S. government’s defeat of the Black Revolution of the 60s, along with the imposition of drugs into the African community, mass imprisonment of African people and police violence in the African community are part of the counterinsurgency against African people carried out by public policies of police containment.
• Proved that all black people wherever they are located around the world are African people and that Africa and all its resources are the birthright of African people everywhere.

• The Burning Spear newspaper, 1968-present
• "Tactics and Strategy for Black Liberation," pamphlet 1978
• The Struggle for Bread, Peace and Black Power, 1981
• Stolen Black Labor, 1982
• Reparations Now!, 1983
• A New Beginning, 1984
• Not One Step Backwards, 1984
• The Road to Socialism is Painted Black, 1987
• Izwe Lethu I Afrika, 1992
• The Politics of Black Revolution, first published 1989
• "Why I Became a Revolutionary," pamphlet, 1998
• Omali Yeshitela Speaks, 2005
• One Africa! One Nation!, 2006