SHUT DOWN AFRICOM
PACA is an active member organization of the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) which understands that the U.S Africa Command, aka AFRICOM is the counterpart to the U.S. domestic 1033 program that militarizes local police departments to repress Black and Brown communities in the U.S. Under the Obama administration there was a 2,400% increase in the value of military equipment transferred from the federal government to police forces across the country through the DoD 1033 program. Additionally under Obama there was a 1,900% increase in the U.S. military presence on continent.
Since we launched the U.S. Out of Africa!: Shut Down AFRICOM campaign on October 1, 2018 more than 1,700 people have signed our petition to shut down AFRICOM; our members have appeared in media interviews to discuss our grassroots effort to end the U.S. militarization of the continent of our ancestors that is connected to the state repression U.S. Black communities face; we co-organized successful panel discussions in Atlanta and New York City; and Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) members organized and participated in the Women’s March on the Pentagon, the only women’s march calling for an end to war, militarism and imperialism.
The BAP campaign to shut down AFRICOM and get the U.S. out of Africa, should be inseparable from PACA's campaign for Community Control Over Police. Please read and sign the petition, spread the petition far and wide, and join the broad based social justice movement needed for Black power and self-determination!
U.S. Out of Africa! Shut Down AFRICOM!
PACA
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BAP
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The principles of PACA include:
- Anti-exploitation (capitalism)
- Anti-race-based oppression (white supremacy
- Anti-sex-based oppression (patriarchy)
- Anti-gender-identity- and -sexual-orientation-based oppression (transphobia and queerphobia)
- Self-determination, under socialism, is the highest expression of democracy
- We want POWER, not reform or inclusion in an anti-human system
- Human rights and needs supersede the desire for profit or economic growth
- Ecological sustainability
PACA Tools of Analysis:
The PACA Tools of Analysis include:
- Pan-Africanism
○ The primacy of Africa ○ The liberation and unification of Africa under the economic system of scientific socialism ○ Until Africa is free, no African can be free
- Black communities in the U.S. are a domestic colony
○ Colonies serve the wants and needs of those in power ○ We must end colonial domination and replace it with self-determination
- The core issue is POWER, not racism
○ Power and self-determination ○ We want control, not inclusion or oversight
- Capitalism is inherently exploitative
○ The exploitation of one human by another for the purpose of profit ○ The destruction of the earth’s ecology for the purpose of profit
- Intersectionality
○ There are multiple and simultaneous forms of exploitation and oppression ■ Black women’s experiences are different from those of Black men or white women ■ LGBTQ issues intersect with other identities and class statuses ○ Ending white supremacy and patriarchy will not end capitalism ○ Ending capitalism will not end white supremacy and patriarchy
- Organization is imperative
○ Only way to end oppression and exploitation ○ Only way to build a new society ○ Organizing is a science
- Dialectical and Historical Materialism
○ History is a process, and that process can be understood and predicted ○ History is advanced by material conditions and can be significantly influenced by organized human activity
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BAP Points of Unity:
- RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE
- BAP is not a pacifist movement. While committed to peace, we understand there can be no peace without justice, and we will stand in solidarity with all peoples (and nations) who strive to liberate themselves from oppression.
- SELF-DETERMINATION
- BAP supports people’s struggles for national liberation and self-determination, with a special focus on the struggles of Black peoples and nation-states in the “Americas.”
- ANTI-IMPERIALISM
- BAP takes a resolute anti-colonial, anti-imperialist position that links the international role of the U.S. empire to the domestic war against poor people and working-class Black people in the United States.
- WORKING-CLASS FOUNDATION
- BAP identifies the Black working class as the main social force of any reconstituted Black Liberation project.
- INTERSECTIONALITY
- "People(s)-centered human rights" as defined as emanating from bottom-up mass struggle and informed by a Black, revolutionary, feminist intersectional framework will be the basis for analysis and actions.
- ANTI-PATRIARCHY
- All members, on an organizational and individual level, must be committed to ending patriarchy and all forms of male domination in either internal organizational practice or external/public political positions.
- DECOLONIZATION
- Members of this Alliance see the U.S. state as the ongoing institutional expression of settler-colonialism and are committed to an authentic process of decolonization in every sense of that term.
- PRISONER SUPPORT
- BAP is committed to working against all forms of state and domestic repression, including the issues of political prisoners and prisoners of war in the United States.
- BLACK UNITY
- BAP sees itself as one aspect of the effort to revitalize the broader Black Liberation Movement.
- SOUTHERN ROOTS
- The South is the base of U.S. military infrastructure. It’s also where 55 percent of Black people happen to live. BAP identifies this region as a priority for collective learning, organizing, and mobilizing the power and influence of Black workers and the poor to oppose militarism, war and imperialism.
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