In her amazing book, Black Power, Black Lawyer: My Audacious Quest for Justice, legendary reparations lawyer Nkechi Taifa writes,
“I also studied at the political feet of Imari Obadele. I heard Brother Imari speak so often for so many years that I sometimes don’t know where his words ended and where mine began. My political philosophy fused with his, and I often mimicked, quoted or paraphrased his words, tone and inflection. I learned the history, politics and New Afrikan political science from Brother Imari in his own words, and from his own strong, uncompromising voice.
I learned from him that freedom, independence, and self-determination, all aspects of Black nationalism, have been objectives sought by Black people ever since we were kidnapped and forced to come to this country. . . . Ever since our ancestors were snatched from our homeland of Africa, there have always been people who fought back and fashioned resistance movements to regain freedom and independence. Brother Imari taught that it was military forces nurtured in the hills of Santo Domingo that brought independence to Haiti. One-hundred seventy-five years before that, we revolted and established the legendary Palmares Republic, which lasted over 100 years, located in what is now Alagoas, Brazil, bordering Bahia. . . .
‘Sister Nkechi,’ Brother Imari would stress,
‘You must internalize the history of Black resistance to enslavement. . . . We did not come here voluntarily. . . . We came as the result of war. . . . Let us start with Article One, Section Nine [of the U.S. COnstitution]. This Article expressly guaranteed and sanctioned the continued importation of kidnapped African prisoners of war to every state that might desire enslaved people until the year 1808. We need to remember that the U.S. upheld in its Constitution in Article One, Section Two, Clause Three the further dehumanization of the African prisoner of war by relegating their status to that of 3/5 of a White man. . . . It was war conducted against the African nation in America under the authority of yet another constitutional provision – Article Four, Section Two, Clause Three, known as the fugitive slave provision. This Clause mandated that no African, even if he or she had reached a free state, was safe. And it was the duty, the legal obligation, and the constitutional responsibility, of every White person to track down runaway people and deliver them up to the government.'
Brother Imari analyzed that this right to self-determination would extend to the right to return home to Africa, since we had been in America as the result of a vicious kidnapping, unmatched in human history. He taught that the right to self-determination would extend to the right to general emigration, as our families had been cruelly fragmented and spread across the diaspora. The right to self-determination would also extend to the right to seek admission as citizens to the American community and strive to make a multi-racial democracy real.
He concluded forcefully, ‘and the right to self-determination would extend to the right to establish an independent separate territory of our own.’ This was justifiable because we had been illegally denied the rights and privileges afforded those in the American community. The Black Nation had legally been constructed outside of the American community, and as a consequence, we found ourselves in great numbers, enforced illiteracy, and severed homeland ties on soil claimed by the U.S. . . .
Brother Imari and the Republic of New Afrika taught me that international law prohibits Portugal from going to Angola and telling the Angolan people that they are Portuguese citizens. That same law prohibits France from making the Algerian people French citizens. Yet that is exactly what we have accepted from the U.S. government, without debate. They said the 14th amendment made us citizens, and we accepted that message, lock, stock and barrel – despite our rights under international law, and despite the repressive actions of the U.S. government and its White citizenry.
Brother Imari stressed, ‘It is not too strong to say that all this was and is, war,’ though not being declared with the usual solemnities. Despite this war by the stronger nation against the weaker, ‘Black nationalism,’ he declared, ‘survived and persisted to the present day.’
‘The problem,’ Brother Imari often stated, ‘is that White nationalism and fraud has left many otherwise fine African minds among us functionally unable to think of independence and land as a viable option for nationhood.’ He continued. ‘Some of us, however, feel that freedom cannot be amorphous and misty. It must be, as Brother Malcolm once stated, for land and sovereignty.’ Brother Imari further taught me that unless the struggle is for land and independence, ‘it is a domestic matter between citizens of a nation who are treated right and those who are treated wrong, and it is to be settled as a domestic matter between them.’
Unfortunately, we have suffered the tragic results of the lack of such a settlement process for over 100 years. . . .
Barely a year after the RNA’s move to Jackson, MS, as accounted earlier, eleven RNA workers including its now President, Brother Imari, were arrested and imprisoned on bogus murder and conspiracy charges, as well as ‘waging war against the state of Mississippi,’ a scurrilous charge later dropped. . . .
I recall hearing Brother Chokwe Lumumba speak at a gathering around the late 1970s. I was captivated by his fiery presentation. ‘We aren’t talking about a mere question of police brutality,’ he admonished. ‘We’re not talking about a question of civil rights,’ he stressed. ‘We’re talking about a question of war. You may not be at war, but you’re certainly in war!’ he argued. . . . He charged on. ‘We need a plebiscite and we need a military campaign because even if we don’t fight, we die. And people need to know the difference between a crook and a freedom fighter because if we leave it to CBS, we’ll never know!’ . . .
NAN-PPOW stressed that Prisoners of War (POWs) are a form of political prisoner. These people are members of oppressed nations who have been captured and imprisoned by forces of another nation in the course of warfare, declared or undeclared. POWs usually take the position, consistent with international law, that U.S. courts have no jurisdiction over them . . . .
There is a great deal of documented international law to support this position, including the Geneva Convention Protocols One and Two, and Resolutions 1514 and 3303 of the UN General Assembly, which state that colonialism is a crime against humanity and those captured fighting against it are prisoners of war. . . . .
I told the Student Committee Against Racism that the endless names of freedom fighters that began to resist and respond to the war the White nation had been waging against the Black nation on this soil should be common household parlance. I stressed that we must honor, respect and teach about them and their resistance to oppression.
Sundiata Acoli once said that the media rarely say where freedom fighters come from or why they appear. Assata Shakur has stated that the resistance movement calling itself the Black Liberation Army (BLA), rose during the 70s and continued the response to the war that had been waged against African people since the time of the slave trade.
‘The idea of a BLA,’ she said, ‘emerged from conditions in Black communities. Conditions of poverty, indecent housing, massive unemployment, poor medical care, and inferior education. The idea came about because Black people are not free or equal in this country.’ . . .
I emphasized, ‘Our movement is part of the same resistance movement the maroons waged against the slaveholders; the same resistance movement that built the Palmares Republic; the same resistance movement Vesey and Prosser attempted to organize; and the movement Nat Turner struggled for. It was the movement David Walker wrote about; the movement Sojourner Truth spoke about; and the movement Harriet Tubman lived.’ . . .
I remembered the teachings I learned from Brother President Imari Obadele and his persistence on the use of international law. One in particular was use of the international Geneva Conventions and their Protocols, as a defense to the incarceration of Black prisoners of war in the United States, along with various other international law instruments emphasizing the rights of colonial peoples to self-determination. . . .
My revolutionary legal arguments were not only inspired by the theoretical writings of President Imari Obadele, but also by the real life words of Sister Safiya Bukhari, who was arrested in 1975. I beamed when I heard how she bravely stood up in a U.S. courtroom along with her co-defendant Masai Ehehosi and challenged adamantly, ‘You cannot try me in your courts of law. I am a prisoner of war and a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika.’
Safiya and Masai boldly maintained that the State of Virginia had no jurisdiction over them because they were ‘descendants of persons kidnapped from Afrika for purposes of slavery, not allowed to return to Afrika after slavery.’ They demanded their release from custody from Virginia because they were ‘prisoners of war,’ captured while in active status as soldiers in the Black Liberation Army in the U.S., and as such, should be released to the authorities of their nation, the Republic of New Afrika, released to another friendly country, or held under circumstances provided for prisoners of war by customary usages of international law and the appropriate conventions to which the U.S. is a party.
Similarly, in his letter to President Jimmy Carter,64 dated July 16, 1978, President Imari admonished:
‘In United States prisons are such persons as Sister Safiya Bukhari and Brother Masai in state prison in Virginia; James Haskins at Terre Haute, Herman Bell at Atlanta, and others, all members of the Black Liberation Army and citizens, like all blacks, of the black nation, the Republic of New Afrika, who have declared in U.S. Courts that they are prisoners-of-war, having been taken in acts of belligerency against the United States, which is waging a war of genocide against the black nation. Despite the fact that the United States is a signatory to the Geneva Convention of 1949, not one of these persons, not one Indian or black in American jails, has been ex-tended the protections of the Treaty.’ . . .
Gilda Sherrod Ali concluded . . . ‘Our people are at war with the police in the U.S. We are at war on crack cocaine in the U.S. We have a lot of work to do.’
Through it all, Assata Shakur was liberated, the Brinks trial began, the MOVE compound was bombed,an Independent Black Foreign Policy was developed, and the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N’COBRA)57 was birthed.
It can never be overstated the influence of Obadele’s wisdom upon me, and it is my hope that one day he and his philosophies will be elevated to their rightful place in the annals of history. . . .”
A Matter of War: Imari Obadele, Our Enslavement in the 13 Colonies and the United States, the Republic of New Afrika and Reparations
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REVISITING THE BATTLE PLAN: THE STRATEGY OF THE REPUBLIC OF NEW AFRIKA TO LIBERATE BLACK AMERICANS
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REVISITING THE BLACK LIBERATION ARMY'S MESSAGE TO THE BLACK MOVEMENT IN RESPONSE TO THE KILLING OF GEORGE FLOYD
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Excerpt from CARICOM Reparatins Commission leader Prof Hilary Beckles' speech “The Age of Terror: Europe and the Trade in Africans in West Africa,” given 3-2-2023
"We also know that this military engagement in Africa began as a search for gold. And shifting from gold trade to the kidnapping of enchained labor. That was the enormity of this military complex that was unleashed upon the indigenous people of Africa . . . In Europe the royal families were the principle investors in these military operations. . . . The British Royal African Country had the full might of the British army and navy behind them. No West African government had the military capacity to withstand the military onslaught of these companies. These companies built forts along the coast of West Africa from Senne Gambia to Congo. . . . These corporations, and I have to emphasize this for people who have not been effectively exposed, there is a belief which you will find from observing movies and Hollywood type images, that slave traders were just a group of random individuals who took a small ships went out and randomly grabbed people and took them down the river and put them on a boat. You are looking at the most highly organized commercial military complex at this time. These corporations had dozens and dozens of ships, and thousands of soldiers in West Africa on the coast to protect the storage and the shipment. They were Highly militarized with the latest military technology with the guns and the cannons and they were able to penetrate deeply into Africa with this military capacity. The Wealth that they accumulated, which was in the first instance the monopoly wealth of the royal families, eventually tricked down to the private sector, when they were given free access and down to the banks. The Bank of England was established in 1694 to help to finance the slave trade. All of the wealth coming back into England, going to the royal family and aristocracies that money had to be converted into investment capital . And so the Bank Of England was created . . . ."
