Now it’s vote BLM as protest leader helps set up party
A NEW political party inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement plans to contest seats at the next General Election, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Among those spearheading the Taking The Initiative Party (TTIP) is Sasha Johnson, who has been whipping crowds into a frenzy during recent protests.
Wearing camouflage trousers, a black beret and a stab-proof-style vest, she told supporters at last weekend’s Million People March in London that the TTIP ‘will be the first black-led political party in the UK. We want representation. This is what democracy looks like’.
Ms Johnson, who calls herself ‘Oxford’s Black Panther’, said that the group was ‘not just a party for black people’ and would also represent the working class.
She told a 400-strong crowd: ‘We are tired of being let down by Labour, Conservatives, Lib Dems and all of them. We want our own political party, one that reflects the multicultural nation that we have become. I want my black younger generation to exercise your civic rights. Look at the manifesto of TTIP because it’s the future.’
The party has been registered with the Electoral Commission and says it aims to ‘create real change in communities across the UK by setting the agenda in government’. In its constitution it says there will be no discrimination ‘with regard to sex, race, colour, creed, age, disability or sexual orientation’.
It is not yet clear what role Ms Johnson, who has been prominent during demonstrations in London and Oxford, will play within the party and an announcement on its leadership is expected later this month. But a spokesman said: ‘She has great potential and great talent. We do have plans for her.’
Ms Johnson, 26, has campaigned for statues to be removed and is part of the secretive group Forever Family Force. Footage on Instagram shows her parading with female FFF members in militarystyle garb during a march in Brixton last month for African Emancipation Day. Comparisons have been made with the Black Panthers, the radical far-Left protesters who wore similar uniforms as they campaigned against police brutality in 1960s America.
Ms Johnson, a youth worker and cafe owner, has called for the establishment of a ‘black militia’ in the UK. In a video posted in July, she compared the police to the Ku Klux Klan and dismissed ethnic minority politicians David Lammy, Priti Patel and Sadiq Khan as ‘tokenistic’.
Ms Johnson, a mother of two, also recently led chants of ‘f*** the police’ and ‘one solution, revolution’ in a fresh campaign to remove the statue of Cecil Rhodes from Oxford University.
Last night, Ms Johnson told the MoS: ‘I believe passionately in equality. I do what I do because racism is a plague that needs to be seared at the root. I feel that people need a new politics, where racism and race crime is dealt with swiftly and robustly, which is something among many things I believe will be found in the TTIP.’