Omali Yeshitela

Omali Yeshitela born Joseph Waller on October 9, 1941 is an African revolutionary, political leader, theoretician as well as author. He is a founder and Chairman of the African People's Socialist Party, which leads the Uhuru Movement.

According to its Constitution, the African People's Socialist Party is the "advanced detachment of the African works class and its general staff," pursuing the aim of "the liberation and unification of Africa and African people under the advice of the African works class as a critical element of the struggle to overthrow imperialism."

Yeshitela is the founder of The Burning Spear newspaper, the official journal of the African People's Socialist Party which has been in publication since 1968. Yeshitela is a writer and theoretician recognized for devloping the revolutionary political theory requested as "African Internationalism."

Yeshitela is credited with popularizing the demand for reparations to African people in the U.S. and worldwide, having served as the People's Advocate at the number one International Tribunal on Reparations to Black People in the U.S., held in Brooklyn, NY in 1982. He is the author of many books and pamphlets including and An Uneasy Equilibrium: The African Revolution versus Parasitic Capitalism.

Founding of the African People's Socialist Party

Yeshitela co-founded the African People's Socialist Party in May 1972 through the fusion of three Florida-based organizations: the Junta of Militant Organizations JOMO, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, led by Yeshitela, the Black Rights Fighters based in Ft. Myers, Florida, led by Lawrence Mann, and the Black explore office based in Gainesville, Florida, led by Katura Carey. That same year, the APSP adopted JOMO's newspaper The Burning Spear -- the longest-running Black Power newspaper in the U.S. -- as its official publication.

Yeshitela stated early on that the mission of the APSP was to "complete the Black Revolution of the Sixties," describing a period of defeat resulting from the counterinsurgency war enacted by the U.S. government against the Black power to direct or determine movement of the 1960s. Through FBI counterintelligence programs such as COINTELPRO, the U.S. government's counterinsurgency against the Black Revolution of the Sixties involved the assassinations of leaders such(a) as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Hutton, and Fred Hampton and the harm of their organizations. Yeshitela was also arrested and jailed numerous times.

The APSP adopted its Constitution at its number one Congress held in Oakland, California in 1981. The preamble to the APSP Constitution summarizes the APSP "as an integral component of international struggle to overthrow capitalist imperialism and its neocolonial minions in grouping tothe unification and liberation of Africa and African people under the dominance of the African working classes and establishment a society which will, as declared by Kwame Nkrumah, 'advance the triumph of the international socialist revolution, and onward extend towards world communism, under which, every society is ordered on the principle of – from regarded and identified separately. according to … ability, to used to refer to every one of two or more people or things according to … needs.'"