ADOS, reparations agenda

AT EVERY phase of our collective struggle for liberation and human dignity, Africans at home and abroad who have courageously and selflessly fought on the front line, all arrive at the conclusion that unity is undeniably the most invaluable weapon at our disposal. One of Mother Africa’s brightest sons Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah told us all, “The forces that unite us are intrinsic and greater than the superimposed influences that keep us apart”, in the heat of battle it becomes extremely necessary to remember the most fundamental lessons that benefit our genuine resistance collectively.

On the African continent specifically, one of our best test cases concerning unity in perpetual motion serves us well, is both Zimbabwe’s Second and Third Chimurenga primarily because on the Patriotic Front between ZANU and ZAPU, at the height of the protracted armed struggle and the Unity Accord seven years after independence in 1980.

As history moved forward the last three administrations of the US (Bush and Obama and Trump currently) let it be known to all who listen that while Zimbabwe is a small country it presents rather a peculiar problem concerning US interests in the region.

Whether the regime change agents in MDC, ZCTU or the 400 civil society groups whose blind loyalty is to US-EU Imperialism, ever acknowledge this publicly, it is Zimbabwe’s political culture that has always been driven by unity, that forced them to become part of the inclusive government with ZANU-PF between 2009 and 2013.

While the example of Zimbabwe takes place on our mother continent, it is as an example and inspiration, that frontline fighters and supporters of these efforts in the Diaspora cannot only learn from, but aggressively incorporate on the strategical and tactical level.

If there is any indifference or backlash, it will come from quarters who are not comfortable looking to the African continent for insight and direction, because in the final analysis an amputated narrative of the African experience serves as their political and intellectual blueprint.

This amputated narrative which draws a striking resemblance to diced onions or dandruff on our scalps, happens to be the engine behind a social media driven network, that goes by the name American Descendants of Slaves (ADOS).

The most visible and vocal proponents of the ADOS are a so called African American female and male tandem Ms Yvette Carnell and Mr Antonio Moore, Mr Moore is a graduate of both UCLA and Loyola Law School and Ms Carnell is a graduate of Howard University.

When articulating the ideological position of the ADOS, Mr Moore takes on the character of a lawyer in the courtroom, where on the other hand Ms Carnell who has a blog entitled Breaking Brown, has a more provocative and confrontational style of communication that appears to work for her.

At the forefront of the ADOS network’s political agenda is the age old question of reparations, similar to the manner that naked police terrorism defined Black Lives Matter and Imperialist corporate greed drove Occupy Wall Street movement.

Another characteristic that makes ADOS similar to both Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street, is what appears to be a deliberate choice to have political space, detached from the organised formations who developed and championed the very issue that steers their political efforts and programme.

We challenge any and everyone to go back and review the articles of Mr Moore and blogs of Ms Carnell and find them humbly recognising the tireless and selfless work of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, the New Afrikan People’s Organisation, NCOBRA (National Conference of Blacks For Reparations In America), Malcolm X Grass Roots Movement, December 12th Movement, and The National Black United Front. Even before these organised formations, the Nation of Islam and Africans who were in the Communist Party many moons ago, also pushed the question of reparations.

Because our political culture takes on a matrilineal character, the heart and soul of the reparations movement inside US borders was the larger than life Garveyite Queen Mother Moore, who took the red black and green flag of the UNIA-ACL and insisted it be the symbol of the reparations movement, that same flag is the symbol of what the internationally acclaimed hip hop group Dead Prez call RBG which stands for Revolutionary but Gangsta.

For whatever reason Mr Moore and Ms Carnell decided to yankee doodleise the Reparations question by not only dismissing the New Afrikan approach to reparations, but theoretically and figuratively draping themselves in the US flag.

When it comes to reactionary sentiments, we do have choices, you can either come out of the gate with plantation love like ADOS or wait until your twilight years like the NFL legend Jim Brown and scold Colin Kapernick for desecrating the red, white and blue or Kareem Abdul Jabber who boycotted the US Olympics in 1968 over the Vietnam War, but as a senior citizen became the cultural ambassador for the US State Department.

Another disturbing posture by Ms Carnell and the ADOS network was to give the pan-Africanist movement a eulogy, which metaphorically speaking would be the equivalent of burying a human being alive.

When their appetite for clarity and research increases, the ADOS will discover that the organisers who have pushed reparations in the streets beyond the comforts and confines of social media, gained crucial momentum when the reparations movement took on a Pan Africanist character.

Thanks to their contributions, reparations is a banner that has a home in the Caribbean thanks to the lawsuit by CARICOM and without question the efforts of our comrades in Namibia taking Germany to task for atrocities committed during the colonial era.

Cuba’s revolutionary demand for reparations stemming from the blockade is also part of the mix. Concerning relations between Africans at home and abroad a micro-nationalist approach is not consistent with Ms Carnell’s political origin. As a student at Howard University Ms Carnell was the chief financial officer of former HUSA president Neville Welch who was born in Guyana, whose chief of staff Elsie Aguele was born in Nigeria.

What Ms Carnell and Mr Moore must also recognise is that even though the New Afrikan movement never deviated from the programme of seeking five states in the south seeking five states in the South, at no pointing their history did they consider themselves politically exempt from fighting US-EU Imperialism’s Africa policy.

Since Mr Moore is a lawyer interested in reparations, he should know that the late freedom fighter Chokwe Lumumba through NAPO was at the forefront of breaking former US President Ronald Reagan’s travel ban on Libya in 1987. In 2009Comrade Lumumba persuaded both NAPO and the National Conference of Black Lawyers to sign an appeal to the Obama administration demanding US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe be lifted immediately lifted.

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