By Hands Off Uhuru Coalition
On Wednesday, August 14, the Hands Off Uhuru Coalition is taking action to defend the rights of the Uhuru 3 and expose corporate media’s complicity in refusing to cover this important case, which threatens the First Amendment for everyone.
Joined by organizations including the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee, CEMOTAP (Committee to End Media Offensive to African People), the December 12th Movement, the Nationalist Party of Puerto Rico / NY Committee, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement and the African People’s Socialist Party, they will hold a press conference in front of the New York Times building at 620 8th Avenue in Manhattan.
The trial starts September 3, 2024 in Tampa, Florida, and three activists within the Uhuru Movement – Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel, are facing 10-15 years in prison for exercising their First Amendment right to criticize the United States government for its role in expanding NATO and provoking war in Ukraine, demanding reparations for the Black community, charging the U.S. with genocide for its treatment of Africans in the U.S. and participating in elections.
In 2022, Omali Yeshitela, the leader and founder of the Uhuru Movement, was one of the first people to publicly condemn the U.S. role in the Russia/Ukraine war, thus contradicting the narrative of the Biden/Harris administration. The U.S. responded with violent raids of seven Uhuru Movement homes and offices, false charges of working for the Russians, and with the real threat of long term imprisonment. They are being charged with acting on behalf of Russian agents in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
The United States government alleges that since 2015 the actions of Chairman Yeshitela, who is credited as one of the foremost theoreticians and activists in the Black Liberation Struggle today, and who has been on the front lines of socio political struggles against U.S. imperialism and oppression for the last 60 years, has been directed by the Russians.
The DOJ makes an empty case that the Africans Charge Genocide petition, launched by the International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement (InPDUM), which had gained 130,000 signatures before being forcibly removed from the internet, was launched at the direction of the Russians. The indictment also charges the Uhuru 3 with interfering with elections by running candidates on a reparations platform.
Organizer Lisa Davis declares, “These claims are outrageous on their face, considering that in 1982 Chairman Yeshitela and the Uhuru Movement held the first ever reparations tribunal in the United States, thus making reparations a household word, and that he was also a member of SNCC during the 1960s and risked his life, which included being firebombed and shot at, organizing for Black people to get the right to vote and to their freedom of speech rights to tell the truth about the realities of Black life in the U.S.”
Leonard Goodman, one of the attorneys for the Uhuru 3, argues that FARA is being used in ways the government never intended and that “this prosecution appears to be the first ever in which the government has attempted to use Section 951 to target speech. Every other Section 951 prosecution that we have found targets conduct such as espionage, fraud, bribery, extortion or illegal lobbying on behalf of foreign governments. . . The.defendants are being criminally prosecuted for making political speeches against U.S. policy . . .”
Davis says, “The U.S. Government has always been hostile to any individual or organization that challenges the status quo and it has a long history of suppressing the speech of those who are the victims of U.S. oppression and imperialism. Corporate media should resist complicity with this threat to the First Amendment, even if for its own self-interest as journalists. From the Black community, we are standing with Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel to ensure that none of us are silenced!”
The Hands Off Uhuru campaign is holding a national rally in St. Petersburg, Florida on August 31st, days before the start of the trial in Tampa Federal Court. More info at www.handsoffuhuru.org.
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