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Obi Egbuna Jnr Simunye
WHILE former US vice president and 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore continues his tireless masquerade, as a crusader for environmental rights and climate change, Mother Africa’s suffering and scattered children remain immersed in the struggle to change the social climate.

Because our former colonial and slave masters will never be sincerely invested in this aspect of climate change, they instinctively feel the need to work around the clock, to discredit our efforts regardless of the countless drops of blood we shed and lives we lose as a result of this process.

When African youth in Baltimore, the largest city in the state of Maryland, spearheaded an urban rebellion, in response to the murder of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old who died while in police custody, it does not take rocket science to see the condemnations of these actions would be not only be harsh but extremely and arrogantly dismissive. The last time Baltimore had a full-scale urban rebellion was in April of 1968 after Dr Martin Luther King Jnr was assassinated, that rebellion started on April 6, which ironically was the same day that the youngest member of the Black Panther party, Bobby Hutton, was gunned down by the Oakland Police Department.

For Zimbabweans who believe that the courageous acts of their national heroes at the height of the Second Chimurenga were inspired by the fighting spirit of Mbuya Nehanda and those who were her comrades-in-arms in 1896 will have no problem seeing the connection between Baltimore at one point serving as a granary for sugar-producing colonies in the Caribbean and today’s rebellion.

Since Baltimore in the past benefited from the forced free labour of our ancestors cutting sugar cane from sunrise up to sundown in countries like Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Haiti, we only hope those who were subjected to that level of exploitation and brutality are somewhere dancing in the heavens.

The most overwhelmingly positive aspects of both urban rebellions and protracted armed struggles is they force everyone on the outside looking in to make a thorough and honest analysis of the social conditions where the people’s resistance erupts like a volcano.

When the current Mayor of Baltimore, Stephanie Rawlings Blake, referred to the youth involved in the rebellions as thugs, this not only put her on a collision course with Africans in Baltimore who make up 63,7 percent of the city, but illustrated to the African world that her loyalty is to the US Democratic Party machine and not her constituents.

What appeared to anger Mayor Blake is that the rebellions occurred during her shining political moment, in addition to being the current Mayor of Baltimore, Mrs Blake is the secretary of the Democratic National Committee and the vice president of the US Conference of Mayors.

Since Mayor Blake was chosen by Vanity Fair magazine as the Best Dressed Mayor, it would not be farfetched, to feel she is already thinking about what she will be wearing when former First Lady, US Senator and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, comes parading through the streets of Baltimore seeking our people’s votes and adulation.

As our movement against police terrorism and brutality intensifies by the second, Africans living inside US borders, can no longer ignore the correlation between the fact that we have over 600 so-called African American mayors, and the study by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement which reveals we are gunned down by law enforcement every 28 hours.

This dynamic poses a serious threat to the agenda of not only the National Conference of Black Mayors who, due to their political capacity, are blatant apologists for state-sponsored terrorism, but also to the National Medical Association, Black Nurses Association and Association of Black Psychologists, who have been reluctant to lock horns with the National Fraternal Order of Police surrounding this question.

We as Africans must realise that Mayor Blake and every mayor who is a daughter and son of Africa, have the same relationship to the Police Department, that President Obama has to the US Armed Forces, simply meaning your mayors are the commanders- in-chief of these death squads who slaughter our people wholesale under the banner of serving and protecting.

Since the US police departments are a sub-cultural bi-product of the US military, the NFOP should be willing to verify that every officer who fought in military combat received medical clearance to become and officer and do not suffer from post-war trauma.

When it comes to building stronger ties with the African continent, the sister city model is the main vehicle that mayors who are products of the African community have used to bridge this gap. The purse strings are controlled by USAID. This is why after the 2008 Presidential elections in Zimbabwe, the Mayor of Cincinnati, Mark Mallory, terminated their sister city partnership with Zimbabwe.

The iconic freedom fighter, Frederick Douglass, who was born in Baltimore, once said: “I hope and trust all will come out right in the end, but the immediate future looks dark and troubled. I cannot shut my eyes to the ugly facts before me.” In the tradition of many of his day Douglass wasn’t an advocate of slave rebellions, he felt attacking federal property would enrage the US public.

After spending time with the abolitionist and freedom fighter John Brown who informed Douglass about his plans to ignite slave rebellions nationwide, Douglass left the US in fear of facing criminal charges due to guilt by association. What is ironic about this is Douglass along with his namesake, Frederick Jnr, were recruiters for the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry during the civil war, in which his eldest son Charles joined.

To the dismay of many Africans Douglass was in favour of the annexation of the Dominican Republic, which means he never grasped the concept, that the slave ship was the first form of public transportation and Africans enslaved in the US could not compromise the well-being of African slaves else where.

While the bulk of civil/human rights organisers embrace an account of history that glorifies the Civil War, however, at the same time diminishes the value of countless slave rebellions, and do not see urban rebellions as the extension of our original genuine home-grown resistance. We are eternally grateful to Dr WEB DuBois, for listing all the slave rebellions in his book “The World and Africa” on Page 61, that took place throughout the Western Hemisphere from 1522-1895.

This explains how former US Secretary of State and US Joint Chief of Staff Colin Powell can open a Civil War Museum in Washington, to commemorate our ancestors who fought in the Union yesterday, but bomb Panama and Grenada and impose US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe in more recent times.

As this year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm x, let Africans everywhere remember while the footprints of the FBI-CIA can never be hidden, the New York Police Department also played a prominent role.

 Obi Egbuna Jr is the US Correspondent To The Herald and A US based member of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association his email is [email protected].

When the Honourable Marcus Mosiah Garvey was deported from the US under the bogus of mail fraud, he was set up by a retired police officer Herbert Boulin who infiltrated the UNIA-ACL.

One of the most visible faces in the protests and rebellions in Baltimore is the Pastor of the Empowerment Temple Reverend Jamal Bryant, who at one time was the head of the NAACP Youth and College Division, Reverend Bryant dropped out of high school however graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta and attained a Masters in Divinity from Duke University.

We are sure Reverend Bryant remembers the NAACP’s decision not to publish their report on the 2002 elections in Zimbabwe, Reverend Bryant also describes his time in Africa as a Damascus experience, one wonders if he would be willing to visit Zimbabwe and see the impact of US-EU sanctions has on whom he considers children of God.

By lending his voice to the movement to lift US-EU sanctions on Zimbabwe and fighting police terrorism in Baltimore go hand in hand, Reverend Bryant will demonstrate what Dr King called breaking the silence has no geographical or historical boundaries.

Obi Egbuna Jr is the US Correspondent To The Herald and A US based member of the Zimbabwe-Cuba Friendship Association his email is [email protected].