by Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and one of the Uhuru 3 federal indictees
“Many of us like to ask ourselves, ‘What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?’ The answer is, you’re doing it. Right now.”
These were among the final words of Aaron Bushnell, the 25-year-old active duty member of the U.S. Air Force on the day he set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. as a courageous protest against the U.S.-backed Israeli state’s genocide in Occupied Palestine.
“I will no longer be complicit in genocide,” Aaron stated. “I am about to engage in an extreme act of protest. But compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal."
The Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM) honors the stance of Aaron Bushnell. USM is the organization formed and led by the African People’s Socialist Party to organize white people to turn our backs on our own ruling class and declare, as Aaron did, that we refuse to be complicit in genocide.
Aaron Bushnell was one of ours. We salute him. His profound act of moral outrage and resistance to the U.S.-backed colonial genocide in Gaza affirms the decades-long work by the African People’s Socialist Party to mobilize white people to refuse to cooperate with our government’s atrocities against the peoples of the world, to say “No More Genocide In Our Name,” a slogan of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and Uhuru Solidarity Movement going back to the 1970s.
We count Aaron among our ranks. We speak for the Aaron Bushnells of the world who cannot bear to be a cog in the killing machine of U.S. imperialism, who want to stand on the forward side of history.
Aaron Bushnell was moved by the African resistance following the police murder of George Floyd to become increasingly vocal in his objections to the U.S. military.
Aaron’s articulate statement reflects an understanding that the genocide being carried out by the U.S.-backed state of Israel in Gaza today is modeled upon and fueled by the centuries-long genocides by Europe and the U.S. against African and Indigenous people, whose stolen lives, labor and land form the blood-soaked pedestal of what Chairman Omali Yeshitela calls “the colonial mode of production.”
It is this colonial mode of production that is responsible for the wealth and resources that we as white people take for granted as the colonizers and settlers, whether in Israel, Canada, New Zealand, Australia or indeed, the world’s largest settler-colonial state, the U.S.
As the African People’s Socialist Party states, white people have the responsibility to break our allegiance to our own colonial ruling class and join the rest of humanity in fighting for a world without war, genocide and oppression. Our commitment is to organize the millions of white people like Aaron Bushnell who are overwhelmed with rage and horror in the face of the hideous slaughter in Occupied Palestine, to join and build the Uhuru Solidarity Movement and work under the leadership of the African Revolution. Fight for reparations to African people as a revolutionary demand. Refuse to be complicit with colonial genocide in Occupied Palestine and in the African and Indigenous communities colonized within U.S. borders.
If you are a white person in the U.S. military who wants to organize in solidarity with the colonized and oppose U.S. wars of occupation, the Uhuru Solidarity Movement is your organization.
The message of anti-colonial solidarity that shows the way forward for all white people is the one that the U.S. government is working to silence with their bogus indictments against Chairman Omali Yeshitela and the Uhuru 3, including Uhuru Solidarity leaders Penny Hess and myself, who are facing up to 15 years in prison for fighting for the liberation of African people.
In fact, Aaron Bushnell’s actions are clear evidence of the basis for the FBI’s desperate attacks on the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement who have fought for more than five decades to expose colonialism and win white people to end our complicity with the horrors of U.S. imperialism, including inside the borders of the U.S. which Bushnell admitted was the frame of reference for what he witnessed in Palestine.
These attacks don’t simply threaten the Uhuru 3’s rights to speak and advocate for the interests of African, colonized and oppressed peoples, they also threatens the right of the people to be able to hear this message, to hear the truth and to know that there’s a way they can contribute to the struggle to rid the world of parasitic, colonial white power. There are a lot more Aaron Bushnells out there who are looking for organization and the anti-colonial leadership of the African working class.
The stand of white solidarity with African and oppressed peoples represents the possibility for white people, like Aaron, who don’t want to be complicit, who don’t want to continue living in a world built on genocide, slavery, “apartheid and Jim Crow”, to join with the rest of humanity and struggle against colonialism.
Penny Hess, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee and also one of the Uhuru 3, has stated: “Aaron found himself facing the pain of the serious realization of what colonialism is and what the U.S. colonial state and military does to the oppressed peoples inside the U.S. and the world, in our name. He began to understand how the vicious U.S. government uses us, and expects our complicity or silence or apathy in the face of its atrocities around the world. We salute him, with the intention to deepen our commitment to organizing other white people under the leadership of the African People's Socialist Party, building solidarity with the African Revolution, and all Indigenous and oppressed peoples, for reparations, national liberation and self-determination, which is indeed in our true interest and the future of this planet.”
On March 9-10, 2024 the Uhuru Solidarity Movement will continue our mission to reach white people with this message by hosting our annual national convention titled, “No More Genocide In Our Name” in St. Louis, MO and online. Register at NoMoreGenocide.eventbee.com.
In every white person who joins the movement to end our complicity with colonial genocide, Aaron Bushnell lives!
Join the Uhuru Solidarity Movement! UhuruSolidarity.org/join
We Will No Longer Be Complicit in Genocide! No More Genocide In Our Name! Victory to Palestine! Victory to the African Revolution!
Unity through Reparations!
Uhuru!