Revolutionary National Democratic Program

The Revolutionary National Democratic Program (RNDP) is the practical program of the African Socialist International (ASI) North American Region.

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The RNDP responds to the colonial conditions experienced by African people inside the U.S. and throughout North America, and recognizes that African people in North America and throughout the world are part of a dispersed African nation that must reunite with Africans on the continent to liberate Africa.

This Revolutionary National Democratic Program recognizes that the U.S., Canada and Mexico constitute what is currently known as North America. We know that the U.S. is the reigning, though declining world imperialist power and that Canada is its imperial junior partner in North America while Mexico continues to exist as a semi-colony of the U.S. that forcibly annexed nearly half its territory in 1848. Recognizing that the three North American countries have distinctly different features, we call on African people in each country to recognize ourselves as part of the same struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.

The Revolutionary National Democratic Program understands that African people are colonized inside the borders of the U.S., and that this colonial status is the result of the historical attack on Africa. It was this attack that balkanized our African homeland and forcibly separated African people from each other and from our resources in Africa and abroad.

Reflecting the ever-escalating colonial attacks against African people in North America, the RNDP is in a continual state of development. The content of the Revolutionary National Democratic Program has been developed through struggles, meetings and collective discussions during conventions led by InPDUM, the mass organization through which the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) forwards the revolutionary national democratic struggles in North America and elsewhere.

The program has been deepened through mass input during African Liberation Day conferences organized by the African People’s Socialist Party in May of 2008 and 2009. The African Liberation Day conferences provided the opportunity for hundreds of Africans previously unaffiliated with the African People’s Socialist Party and/or the Uhuru Movement to participate in forging this program for the liberation of African people under the leadership of the revolutionary national democratic forces of the North American front of the African national liberation struggle.

The content of this Revolutionary National Democratic Program has also been influenced by the regional conferences to build the African Socialist International, a global organization of African revolutionaries. African Socialist International conferences have been held in Sierra Leone in West Africa and Kenya in East Africa.

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Working class Africans

The Revolutionary National Democratic Program is a program that distinguishes the interests of the vast majority of African People in North America from the interests of the U.S. North American ruling class and state, and from the interests of reactionaries and opportunists within the African nation itself.

The RNDP recognizes that the primary, most dynamic contradiction in the world today is the contradiction between oppressed and oppressor nations. It understands that the United States of North America and its citizens constitute an oppressor nation state that holds a substantial sector of the African population as part of a colonially oppressed nation. As a colonized people inside the U.S. since the time of enslavement, African people long for total liberation and the ability to join humanity as a free nation, equal among other free peoples of the world.

This Revolutionary National Democratic Program responds to the reality that all African people, those in Africa and those abroad in locations such as North America, constitute one people, one nation. None of us can achieve genuine freedom without the total liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.

Image result for neocolonialismThe program recognizes that neocolonialism, the indirect control of African people by white power in black face, by an opportunist, usually petty bourgeois traitor sector of the African nation, carries out the exploitation of Africa, African people and our resources today.

The Revolutionary National Democratic Program also shows that capitalism, born of the enslavement, colonization and division of Africa and African people, must be defeated and replaced with a just social system in which social production of the means of existence is accompanied by social ownership of the means of production.

In other words, this program understands that capitalism must be replaced by socialism. The laboring producers must collectively own and control the means of production, controlling the power necessary to guarantee social progress and protect and advance the interests of the workers and toiling masses.

We understand that the only social force capable of leading the struggle for the unification and liberation of Africa and African people to its conclusion; the only social force capable of leading the struggle for the total defeat of capitalism and its replacement by socialist democracy, is the African working class aligned with the poor peasantry.

This Revolutionary National Democratic Program speaks to the selfish interests of the oppressed African majority throughout North America and the world. It recognizes that all Africans in North America, like Africans worldwide, suffer direct or indirect national oppression, a reality that establishes the objective basis for cross-class, anti-colonial unity under the leadership of the revolutionary African working class that addresses this national oppression.

This is the program that speaks to the interests of that majority. The Revolutionary National Democratic Program calls out to the workers and other toiling masses as well as African students and revolutionary intellectuals. This is the program of the African national cultural workers and pro-independence democratic nationalists as well as African small business owners suffocating under the weight of disadvantageous colonial laws and monopoly capital.

This Revolutionary National Democratic Program speaks to the millions of Africans tied to the prison concentration camps of North America and to their families, friends, neighbors and organizations founded for their defense.

This program calls on all enlisted Africans and junior officers who are connected to any arm of the imperialist military organizations of the U.S. and North America – including the police departments – to unite with the legitimate interests of their oppressed people for national liberation, unification and socialism.

The program is a call to the exploited African farmers, struggling to regain their land, and to African schoolteachers who have been prevented by colonial law and tradition from bringing liberating education to African students.

The RNDP represents African people struggling throughout the U.S. against gentrification and the destruction of our communities and in the interest of the countless African people facing job cuts, foreclosures and chronic underemployment.

The Revolutionary National Democratic Program calls for an end to colonially-imposed divisions between African people inside the U.S. and North America and calls for all Africans to recognize that we are one colonized people, regardless of whether we speak Spanish, French Portuguese, have recently arrived from the Continent of Africa or are transplanted from the Caribbean islands.

This Revolutionary National Democratic Program is opposed to the programs of the Democratic and Republican parties and other organizations that represent the interests of other, hostile classes and oppressor-nation groups. It is opposed to all programs that would attempt to reconcile the interests of the revolutionary national democratic African masses with those of imperialism, no matter how liberal or radical.

With this program we shall wage furious struggle to thrust the genuine interests of African people into the political arena of North America. We call on all revolutionary national democratic African forces to embrace this program as their own. With this program we call on all allies of our struggle to unite. This is the program to win the dictatorship of the revolutionary national democratic power of the African people.

This is our program. We must win and implement it.

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Points 1-10 of the RNDP

  1. We demand all rights consistent with being a free people, rights which include self-determination and self-government as the highest expression of genuine democracy. We demand independence in our lifetime.
  2. As a colonized component of the dispersed African nation, we are compelled to say to Africans and the peoples of the world that the views and actions of U.S. President Barack Obama, are not representative of the views, interests and aspirations of the African working class and toiling masses of Africans within the U.S.
  3. As a serious component of the struggle to achieve state power, we call on Africans throughout the U.S. to unite with the Uhuru Movement-established tribunal, founded in 1982 as the first session of the International Tribunal on Reparations for African people in the U.S. The International Tribunal is the basis of our incipient revolutionary national democratic state power wherein Africans will conduct our own trials and hearings in the quest for justice within our colonized communities as well as the achievement of justice in issues between Africans and the U.S. colonial state and citizens.
  4. We call on the world community to support and recognize the legitimacy of the World Tribunal on Reparations for Africa and African People, established by African people ourselves, that puts imperial white power on trial for the offenses committed against African people.
  5. We demand the exemption of all African people within North America from paying taxes to the U.S. and Canada that use these taxes to further enable our colonial domination as well as the military domination of colonized and oppressed peoples around the world.
  6. We demand a plebiscite wherein only Africans will be allowed to participate to determine and implement the will of Africans who:
    1. Wish reparations and true democratic integration into a U.S. society that has come to a just resolution with the indigenous populations that still suffer U.S. settler colonialism;
    2. In democratic, anti-colonial unity with the indigenous peoples of the U.S., seek reparations and a land base within U.S. borders upon which to establish an independent African government and;
    3. Who, in possession of reparations for colonial slavery and subsequent exploitation and injustices, wish to return to Africa to contribute to its liberation, unification and development.
  7. We demand reparations for the hundreds of years of slavery, colonial oppression, exploitation, terror and deprivations that continue to be experienced by African people to this day.
  8. We call on Africans of the world and the international community at large to recognize the African population within the U.S. and North America as a colonized component of the dispersed African nation. Everywhere we are located we are still suffering from all the conditions of colonialism with which the world is familiar. We are a population that is due all the rights afforded a colonially oppressed nation by international laws and traditions, including those that recognize the legitimacy of insurgency by nationally oppressed peoples.
  9. We demand free, compulsory and comprehensive education for all Africans within the U.S. Such an education program must equip Africans for independent, self-reliant prosperity in this technologically driven era, and is based on our true history as African people who bring the totality of our own legitimate culture and experiences to the educational process.
  10. We demand free access to the educational opportunities offered to Africans by countries like Cuba, as well as U.S. recognition of the legitimacy of such education.

Points 11-20 of the RNDP

  1. We demand an end to the discriminatory, humiliating and expensive immigration laws and procedures that limit or prohibit African entry into the U.S., suggesting that slavery is the primary legal process permissible for entry into the U.S. by Africans from Africa and the rest of the African world.
  2. We demand free and uncomplicated entry by Africans into the U.S. from any part of the world. We demand travel rights comparable to the freedom of entry enjoyed by U.S. citizens traveling to Africa and other African-governed locations.
  3. We demand immediate reparations for African farmers and an end to the land theft and discriminatory laws and practices used against African farmers within the U.S. and North America that result in loss of land and livelihood and the eradication of farming as a viable choice for African people.
  4. We demand that the so-called “bailout” money given to U.S. auto corporations from public funds by the U.S. government be returned for just distribution to the exploited African auto workers of Detroit and Flint Michigan and other cities and communities where African workers have suffered because of the predatory, profit-driven mismanagement of the auto industry by the auto corporations.
  5. We commit ourselves to relentless struggle against the state and municipal budget adjustments in the U.S. of North America that attempt to respond to the economic crisis by cutting benefits and services to the African community while maintaining or increasing resources to occupying army police organizations and other institutions of state repression.
  6. We demand an end to the public policy of police containment of African people within the U.S. and its replacement with a public policy of economic development through massive capital infusion that would be used to uplift the entire community by supporting existing African businesses, establishing new African businesses, including cooperatives, and by contributing to the general self-reliance of the African community.
  7. We demand recognition of the legitimacy of African culture and denounce all acts and practices by the oppressor nation, government and other institutions that are used to justify the oppression and exploitation of African people and the African nation through cultural disparagement.
  8. We call on African artists and cultural workers to join in this struggle by demanding reparations that would contribute to a cultural revolution, promoting the liberation and unification of Africa and African people and the implementation of this Revolutionary National Democratic Program.
  9. We demand immediate, free healthcare for all Africans in the U.S. and North America to deal with the colonially-based plethora of illnesses and diseases that afflict our people subsequent to slavery, colonialism and the continued abrogation of our right to self-determination.
  10. We demand African community control of schools, police and all the institutions of coercive colonial state power that wreak perennial havoc within our colonized community.

Points 21-30 of the RNDP

  1. We demand freedom of religion, press and the right to free speech, assembly and political association with any group and/or organization, inside North America or elsewhere that has been determined by our people to be beneficial to our struggle for revolutionary national democracy.
  2. We commit ourselves to the relentless struggle for the rights and dignity of African women and the end of social and political oppression, and sexual and economic exploitation of African women by any sources, including our own colonized community. We demand the recognition of African women as equal partners and leaders in the struggle for the emancipation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
  3. We are opposed to and committed to struggle against any denial of rights and any oppression of Africans because of sexual orientation.
  4. We demand the right to return and reparations for all Africans who lost or were forced to leave their homes by the actions of the U.S. government leading up to, during and subsequent to Hurricane Katrina.
  5. We demand reparations for and/or reinstatement of homes lost by scores of thousands of African people who lost their homes due to foreclosure stemming from the U.S. government-supported subprime mortgage scam that targeted Africans and Mexicans as primary victims of predatory capitalist financial institutions.
  6. We recognize the Northern Command or Norcom, the thousands of battle-hardened troops stationed at Fort Stewart, Georgia, as counterinsurgent preemption to frustrate the efforts of Africans and others of the oppressed nations within current U.S. borders to win our liberation, and demand its immediate elimination.
  7. We claim the national right to self-defense and recognize that in our struggle for self-determination and national liberation any act of resistance is self-defense, whether initiated or responsive.
  8. We demand an apology to African people of the U.S. and the world for U.S. involvement in the harassment, overthrow, imprisonment and assassinations of African leaders including Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., Lawrence Mann, Kwame Nkrumah, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, all members of the Black Panther Party, as well as members of the Black Liberation Army and countless others within the U.S. and elsewhere.
  9. We also demand full disclosure of the direct or indirect role of the U.S. government in the assassinations of African leaders Patrice Lumumba of Congo Kinshasa, Robert Sobukwe of South Africa and Walter Rodney of Guyana.
  10. We demand the immediate removal of all U.S. intelligence and military forces from African territory, including the Africa Command or Africom, the newly-formed military command formed to prevent revolution and African unification and to oppose foreign competition, especially by China, to U.S. economic and strategic interests in Africa.

Points 31-40 of the RNDP

  1. We recognize that the U.S. justice system functions as a tool of colonial domination of African people and demand immediate transformation that includes:
    1. An immediate, transparent investigation of the court processes that have resulted in the highly disproportionate number of incarcerated African people, especially young African men;
    2. All trials of African people be heard by juries of our peers, African people from like communities and classes;
    3. The immediate abrogation of designer laws such as three strikes, stop and frisk, two-tiered drug charges, mandatory minimums and so-called anti-gang initiatives that target African people. We demand that reparations are paid to those imprisoned by these and other such discriminatory colonial laws;
    4. An immediate cessation of the practice of trying African juveniles as adults and imprisoning them in adult institutions;
    5. An immediate cessation of the massive imprisonment of African children in juvenile concentration camps, their release and an end to the capture of and trade in African children through the foster care system;
    6. Recognition of prisons in the U.S. as concentration camps for our colonized population, and that such colonial domination of our people makes all Africans imprisoned in the U.S. political prisoners, regardless of the charges against them;
    7. The immediate release of all conscious African political prisoners, including those who were arrested because of political actions or statements, or who were first arrested for violations of colonial laws, and subsequently became politically active in the cause of our liberation;
    8. Immediate cessation of use of the death penalty and a transparent, internationally supervised investigation of every conviction of an African sentenced to death;
    9. A transparent, internationally supervised investigation of every police killing of an African person within the last 10 years and every controversial police killing of an African regardless of the time that has passed since the killing, with police found to be guilty of murder to be duly punished within the full capacity of the law and reparations paid to their families.
  2. We demand the immediate and unconditional release of all African political prisoners and prisoners of conscience in Africa and throughout the world.
  3. We stand in complete unity with our brothers and sisters in Kenya in recognition of the heroic revolutionary stance of the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army or Mau Mau and its leader Dedan Kimathi who gave the African world the slogan demand of Uhuru in the struggle against British colonialism.
  4. We call for the immediate end to the economic embargo of Zimbabwe and for reparations to be paid by the U.S. and England to the people of Zimbabwe for the deprivations caused by the embargo.
  5. We call for Africans and our allies around the world to stand in solidarity with the masses in Zimbabwe in the struggle for power to the working class and land to the peasants.
  6. We demand the disclosure and return of all the art and cultural artifacts looted from Africa by colonial powers and imperialist nationals that are now housed in museums and private hands in Europe and North America.
  7. We demand full disclosure of all economic activity by the U.S. government and North American corporations throughout all of Africa.
  8. We call on all African engineers, scientists and health care workers to join with the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project to work for the revolutionary development of Africa and overcome the deprivations in economic development, healthcare and social progress stemming from imperialism and neocolonialism.
  9. We unite with building the African Socialist International as the revolutionary advanced detachment and general staff of the international African working class that is the essential requirement for the African working class, working in its own selfish interests, to lead the struggle for the liberation and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.
  10. We also offer our full support for the current efforts of our comrade brothers and sisters in Sierra Leone to build the African People’s Socialist Party-Sierra Leone as the legitimate representative of the African workers and poor peasants on that front of our struggle for the liberation, and unification of Africa and African people worldwide.

Points 41-50 of the RNDP

  1. We stand in unconditional solidarity with the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli white nationalist settler state that functions as a military outpost for U.S. and international white imperialist power.
  2. At the same time we denounce those Palestinians who emigrate to the U.S. and other areas of North America and in their business and commercial dealings treat African people in the same demeaning, disrespectful and dehumanizing manner that Palestinians are treated by Israeli settlers in Occupied Palestine.
  3. While the struggle of African people in North America is recognized as an important front of the international African revolution, we also understand that our struggle is part and parcel of the revolutionary impulse of the Americas.
  4. We stand in complete unity with the indigenous peoples of North America in their struggle to reclaim their land from the settler colonialists of the U.S. and Canada and the semi-colonial state and ruling class of Mexico.
  5. We unite with the revolutionary trajectory of South America that is exemplified by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Cuba.
  6. We demand an immediate end to the punitive, decades long counter-insurgent economic quarantine of Cuba by the U.S. government and its allies and lackeys.
  7. We demand the immediate release of the Cuban 5 from U.S. custody and call for the return to the Cuban government of Guantanamo Bay, upon which the U.S. government has established a Marine base and concentration camp.
  8. We call on Africans at home and abroad in Europe, North America, the Caribbean and elsewhere to support all genuine resistance by Africans worldwide and to struggle to help these resistance efforts achieve coherence and effectiveness by winning them to principles and organization of the African Socialist International.
  9. We call on all existing African governments to demand protection for and protest violations of the rights of African people living in European-dominated countries around the world.
  10. We demand that the U.S. government, corporations and financial institutions renounce any claims of debt from Africa, which has been responsible for the development of the U.S. economy and, through the enslavement of African people, centuries of free, near-free and underpaid labor for which reparations are due to Africans in the U.S., throughout North America and Africa.