Nangwaya offers a rejoinder to Tennyson’s blueprint for Pan Africanism in Pambazuka’s Issue 899 and provides grassroots dynamics that should inform people-based Pan Afrikanism.

In spite of the positive elements of economic Garveyism, it is not appropriate for African liberation in the 21^st century. Garvey’s economic development approach was based on reproducing the exploitative system of capitalism, which would continue to oppress the Afrikan working-class.

From chattel slavery to the current period of neocolonial flag independence, the Caribbean labouring classes have yet to exercise substantive power over the political institutions that govern their lives. A system of popular assemblies with the capacity to challenge the authoritarian liberal capitalist democracies for power would be one of the best expressions of reparatory justice in the Caribbean.

March 21 is International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. A notable cultural icon in the struggle against racism is Jamaican reggae artiste Peter Tosh. He was an internationalist and linked the fight of Africans against racism, settler-colonialism and apartheid in Southern Africa with the struggle of the Palestinians against Zionism and Israeli apartheid.

The Black Panthers made clear the need for organized collective action by way of the formation of political organizations of and by the oppressed. The BPP became the vehicle through which the cop watch patrols and the necessary resources were mobilized to collectively fight police terrorism.

With respect to the Grenadian Revolution, authoritarian means could not have given birth to the desired end, namely, the self-emancipation of the people. Effective control, initiative and power must be in the hands of the working-class in order for it to carry out the tasks associated with the development of a socialist society.

Walter Rodney has demonstrated through thought and action that it is not inevitable for intellectuals to join the systems of oppression and use their knowledge and skills to perpetuate exploitation. They have the option of committing “class suicide.” Rodney called on the intelligentsia to use their knowledge and skills to challenge and undermine oppression.

Black August is inseparably linked to the legacy of the assassinated prison leader, revolutionary, Marxist and Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson. Black August is very important to the global African struggle for liberation. It is positively affirming the necessity of a politics that is all about ending oppressive relations in society and the use of all available means, including armed struggle, to create a just society.

Emancipation Day sends a clear message to the labouring classes that capitalism exploited their ancestors’ labour under chattel slavery and is doing the same to theirs under wage slavery. It is the responsibility of the revolutionary organizers to use Emancipation Day to strengthen the class consciousness, feminist commitments and anti-racist opposition of the labouring classes.

Jamaica has one of the highest rates of police killings in the world. Physical assaults, arbitrary detention and arrests, torture, humiliation, sexual assaults, extortion, robbery, intimidation of witnesses and fabrication of evidence are also common. The working-class communities that bear the weight of this brutality need to collectively and systematically organize in order to combat it.

The racialized and queer groups that are interested in creating coalitions to fight police violence should give priority attention to the experiences of racialized and queer folks from the working-class. Homeless individuals, psychiatric survivors, sex workers, youth/young people, individuals in the criminal (in)justice system, and other groups that fall within Fanon’s “wretched of the earth” should be at the centre of the organizing work against police violence.

The BPP’s revolutionary legacy offers many useful lessons in organizing work to create a just and emancipated world. But radical organizations and organizers should be wary of the BPP’s top-down leadership approach. Moreover, the party was ill-advised in believing that the lumpen, especially the criminal elements, could serve as a revolutionary force.

There are numerous women in the African Diaspora who have worked for the liberation of Africans under the banner of Pan-Africanism. They must be rescued from political obscurity. Pan-Africanism as a revolutionary ideology must firmly embrace feminism.

Claudia Jones' Pan-Africanism led to her advocacy for freedom of Caribbean and African peoples from colonialism. She used the organizational space of the Communist Party to advance the cause of anti-racism, world peace, decolonization and the class struggle.

Politically aware members of the Afrikan Canadians should not be embarrassed by the alleged behaviour of a man who supports a capitalist system and the exploitation of the natural resources of Afrika by imperialist foreign interests.

After years of suffering under the carding regime, the Afrikan-Canadian community and other affected peoples should initiate a mass campaign aimed at refusing to share their personal information with the cops when they are stopped in non-criminal encounters.

Carding is . It must end through the mass refusal of the people of Toronto, especially Afrikan Canadians, other racialized peoples and the white working-class, to share their personal information with the cops.

The Yonge Street Uprising has made it clear that the oppressed might have to resort to violence in order to occupy the stage of history as the principal actors in the drama of emancipation.

The only supreme quality of Tory that was left unexpressed by these endorsers-cum-cheerleaders is his ability to walk on water or raise Bob Marley or Claudia Jones from the realm of the ancestors.

In spite of communities such as Jane-Finch being in the low-to-medium range for violence-related requests for law enforcement’s intervention, they are targeted and over-policed by the cops, especially the Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy police division, an occupation army-like formation.