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By Any Means Necessary
The movement for national democratic human rights cannot be achieved within the framework of U.S. monopoly capitalist imperialism. The system cannot survive without race, national, class and gender oppression. Only a transformative overthrow of the capitalist class and state can achieve parity in human rights and selfdetermination. This means New Afrikan revolutionaries must master all forms of struggle, including mass legal struggle. Transitional political demands for proportional political representation for New Afrikans in the political system, unionization of New Afrikan workers, economic democracy, democratic rights at the workplace, nationalization of industry, and an Economic Bill of Rights for the Poor are key political demands to advance the struggle. Revolutionaries should be in the forefront of building independent political formations, possibly a people’s party, and registering the masses to vote. By breaking the allegiance of the New Afrikan nationality with the two capitalist political parties, the struggle for self-determination and reparations will advance. By forming political mass people’s formations, the question of reparations for war crimes committed against the New Afrikan nationality by the U.S. imperialist government can emerge inside the political and public communications process. In addition, the question of self-determination for the domestically oppressed nations, including the right of secession can be addressed. This, along with mass agitation for human rights, could lead to a mass New Afrikan national movement and another revolutionary period. This will be a long process. How will a tactical plan for reparations be implemented? In order to make reparations real for the masses of New Afrikans, tactics must go from defensive “fight-back” political action to offensive “revolutionary action” political action. Mass revolutionary action means taking the political offensive. It means agitating both inside and outside of the capitalistic political structure to isolate, expose, and oust (vote out of office) the racist conservative politicians and cause a political polarization/realignment of political forces inside the U.S. How do we proceed to do this? By having a people’s coalition inside the Democratic Party and developing a constitutional recall movement of conservative/racist politicians around their anti-people voting records. This could entail convening democratic people’s conventions, people’s courts, political tribunals and civil lawsuits. From below or outside the capitalist political structure, having political “reparations” demonstrations by the army of the unemployed with teach-ins concerning the use of voting records, deals, and conspiracies that politicians used to crush the people’s movement. Realistically, while many New Afrikan revolutionaries have remained outside the ranks of the capitalist parties, many need to take struggle inside the Democratic Party to galvanize a “progressive people’s bloc.” Their purpose would be to force the KKK, racists, and conservative politicians either out of the Democratic Party or to a political showdown, thereby impacting the local, regional and national arena. They would develop a broad infrastructure and run “Democratic Socialist” candidates with a base in the neighborhood movement. Methods of proceeding: Agitating the advanced sections of the New Afrikan proletariat is the accurate way to arouse the entire New Afrikan proletariat. The dissemination of socialist ideas and ideas of national race oppression and class struggle among urban workers will inevitably cause those ideas to flow to wider and wider areas. Essentially, it means these ideas taking deep root among the more “politically aware” elements and spreading throughout the consciously aware. Cadre need to comprehend the unique historical features of their local (base) situations and how they relate to the national movement.7 7. Cedric Johnson, 2007, Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of New Afrikan Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).