Uhuru Solidarity Movement responds to Invisible Children’s “Kony 2012” Campaign.
“Kony 2012” an Imperialist Campaign
Anyone who has been on Facebook in the last few days has surely noticed the abundance of posts about Joseph Kony, leader of the “Lord’s Resistance Army,” a military group in Uganda that has recruited thousands of child soldiers for fighting in a proxy war against the Ugandan army, amongst other neighboring African armies. This is due to the new “Kony 2012″ Campaign & video.
The video has received over 40 million views in only 3 days. Africa is now rapidly becoming the topic du jour for bloggers, social media sharers, and would-be activists who sincerely want to do something to help African people. The only problem is, this campaign is not going to do that.
This video is by the “Invisible Children” organization, a charity group that is imperialist charity at its worst: white hipsters traveling to Africa to draw sympathy for African children while not doing anything constructive to help them. They are essentially calling for mass support of U.S. intervention in Uganda and other parts of Africa, and for the “International Criminal Court” to arrest Kony as a war criminal. The idea of the video is that if enough people know who Kony is, then it will be easier for the ICC to find and arrest him. This is clearly pro-imperialist, anti-African propaganda.
Even further, the Invisible Children organization is a charity, like all other charities, whose calls for resources are misleading. This article exposes facts about Invisible Children, including that only 32% of the money they take in goes to any kind of direct aid to the African people they say they’re supporting:
http://jezebel.com/5891269/think-twice-before-donating-to-kony-2012-the-meme-du-jour
But the fundamental problem with “Kony 2012” is the fact that, while posing as a call for peace and “saving” African people, it supports U.S. war against African people and exploitation of Africa to maintain control over African resources. The call of Invisible Children is not to unite with African people against imperialism, it is to support imperialism’s proxy – in this case the Ugandan government – against another sector of neocolonial African militants.
Kony is not revolutionary; the atrocities he is leading against African people are very real and very devastating. But Joseph Kony would have to work overtime and live thousands of years to exploit, murder, and destroy Africa and African people as much as the European and United States imperialist governments and armies have done.
So where is the call for the International Criminal Court to bring the imperialists to justice?
U.S. and European Imperialism the REAL War Criminals
As Comrade Nate Gilliam of the African People’s Socialist Party USA (APSP-USA) wrote:
“All the internal conflict in Africa is imposed proxy war with arms and funding coming from the US or former European colonial powers or Multinational corporations in an attempt to control African resources that power and feed the world. That is it!! If you want to lock a war criminal go get Bush 1 and 2, Clinton and Obama but this bullshit hitting the internet and people thinking it is true is nonsense. The International Criminal Court has never brought any imperial power to this court for their historical and ongoing crimes, so to raise the issue of this man is at best a crass campaign and at worst obscures people’s understanding of European and US Imperialism in Africa.”
Just a few months ago, U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama deployed 100 U.S. military “advisers” to Uganda and other parts of central Africa to find Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army forces. Many media reports correctly identify this move as one directly connected to AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s African Command base, and its efforts to secure control over Uganda and other neighboring African territories rich in oil.
Should we be surprised?
Imperialism has ALWAYS attacked Africa for its resources, using any number of bogus justifications to explain its intervention.
As Chairman Omali Yeshitela, the founder of the Uhuru Movement and Chairman of the African Socialist International explains, it was the European attack on Africa that built this entire parasitic capitalist system, stealing land, extracting resources, enslaving African human beings as commodities and building a whole social and economic system on the backs of African and indigenous people.
This is the same system we live in today, and the scramble for Africa has escalated due to the deepening crisis of imperialism.
In this era the imperialist attack on Africa have been thinly disguised as “humanitarian” missions – and Barack Obama, the very leadership of U.S. imperialism is a neocolonial puppet, or “white power in black face” – to cover over the fact that it is a desperate attempt to maintain control over the land, lives and resources of African people.
For a more complete understanding of the U.S. and European wars on Africa, watch this excellent video presentation by Luwezi Kinshasa from the Black is Back Conference, entitled “The Permanent War Against Africa”:
African Socialist International the Only Force Capable of Liberating Africa
But we in the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, as African Internationalists, understand the world as explained by Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the African People’s Socialist Party, and we support the rise of the African Socialist International – the worldwide movement of African revolutionaries uniting under one organization to liberate Africa and all her resources back into the hands of African people.
The brilliant organized resistance of Africans from Congo to Uganda to Sierra Leone and around the world will be the unified force that defeats imperialism and liberates Africa once and for all.
THESE are the forces that will liberate Africa & African people from war and oppression — not white hipster charities funding U.S. and neocolonial government intervention to maintain Western control over Africa’s resources through continued proxy wars.
It is white people who are responsible for the conditions of African people today – how are WE the leaders or authorities of how we can overturn those conditions? The only way we can participate in forging a future without war and exploitation is by joining the Uhuru Solidarity Movement – the organization for while people and other allies of African liberation created by the African People’s Socialist Party and working directly under its leadership.
We call on everyone who is moved by the images of starving Africans, of child soldiers, of African people on the continent of Africa without the basic needs to survive, as well as the realities faced by African people colonized in Europe, in the Caribbean AND the United States, kept in domestic colonies contained by the militaristic police forces and criminalized every single day, locked up in prison and terrorized – to take action to stop these conditions at their source (imperialism) and JOIN UHURU SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT!
CARRY THE CARD! Become a member today for $25 or $10 (student membership) by clicking HERE:
http://apscuhuru.org/usm/joinusm.xhtml
We are building a movement of white people and other allies who work in principled solidarity with the forces leading the African Socialist International and putting down programs on the ground all over the African world to unite and liberate African people and their resources.
Don’t donate to Invisible Children, it’s just going to fund white people’s salaries and more proxy wars for the U.S. to grab control over land and oil in Africa. Charity keeps African people in a position of powerlessness and keeps all the power and resources in the hands of the oppressor.
Join a movement that is truly designed to overturn this relationship of oppressor and oppressed, and build a future for a world based on justice, liberation and peace.
STOP IMPERIALISM 2012!
STOP AFRICOM!
U.S. and European Imperialism OUT OF AFRICA!
One Africa! One Nation!
Join Uhuru Solidarity Movement – CARRY THE CARD!
Build and attend the 2012 National Convention of Uhuru Solidarity Movement:
June 9-10, 2012 in Philadelphia, PA
UHURU!
