Jackson Free Press

March 23, 2005

Quietly the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) has spent a year re-establishing its presence in Jackson, Mississippi. In this historic area Black people have won important victories over historic racism and injustice. But the battle to create not just a better Mississippi but to do our part in the creation of a better society and a better world is far from over.

We still must win the individual and group battles to restore within our people the pride, courage, and self-respect that have made possible our victories of the past 60 years. The genius and courage exemplified in our past by Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Medgar Evers, Bill Miller and others is present today in numerous young people and in elders such as Ineva Mae-Pittman, Charles Tisdale, Hannibal Afrik, and the mid-aged warriors such as Chokwe Lumumba, Kenneth Stokes, Alice Tisdale, and Ivory Phillips. The RNA Provisional Government is here to help in winning this present important level of struggle.

Founded in March 1968 by followers of Malcolm X – Brother Omowale, aka Al Hajj Malik Al Shabazz – the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (PG-RNA) remains the single nation-wide movement in the United States seeking independence from a country, the United States, which held our people in merciless slavery and then, for 100 years more after slavery, inflicted intense racial discrimination against us supported by United States law. Neither during slavery nor after the Thirteenth Amendment, which ended slavery, has the United States government asked us individually or in our many associations whether We wished to go to Afrika or to some other place, or become U.S. citizens or create our own independent country.

Descendants of persons kidnapped from Afrika, We have been held here and never been asked our consent. The United States and the State of Mississippi are intent upon denying us the right to make these crucial political choices, which belong to us even at this late date. But the RNA Provisional Government is even more intent upon assuring that We as a people exercise our right to choose – to vote in a plebiscite – as to whether We, individually or collectively, want to have our own independent, Black-majority country here in Mississippi and Louisiana and elsewhere. Recall that Canada, an independent country north of the United States, refused to become a part of the United States during the United States Revolutionary War against England. Yet today Canada has peaceful diplomatic and trade relations with the United States and other countries throughout the world. The RNA Provisional Government intends to create a similarly independent and wealthy nation in Mississippi and Louisiana and elsewhere where our people are in the majority – when our people decide by a free vote, a plebiscite, to bring about this result.

This weekend – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday morning, March 25, 26, and 27 – the RNA President Ukali Mwendo and Ms Iyaluua Ferguson, Chairperson of the RNA's People's Center Council, the governing body of the Provisional Government, will be at a conference in the Wellness Center at Tougaloo College. This celebrates New Afrikan Nation Day. The workshops and seminars – planned by PCC Second Vice Chair Sekou Owusu as an Institute – will openly discuss and apply critical analyses to the ways in which the Provisional Government is working to achieve the goal of building of a New Society. Community participation in this process is solicited.

Open to the public, Conference registration begins at 8 AM each day. (There is a registration fee.) Discussions will include self-improvement in areas of health and personal and organizational finance and planning. Attendees will also be able to comment on a strategy being unveiled to speed the winning of reparations to be used not simply for personal needs but for the building of New Communities, a project led by First

Vice PCC Chair Alvin Brown, and for building industry owned cooperatively by our people. Councilman Kenneth Stokes will lead a late afternoon Saturday workshop on establishing a Truth And Reparations Commission to identify companies which have profited from slavery and racial discrimination and insist that these companies make reparation. Dr. Ivory Phillips and Atty. Imhotep Akkebu-lan will participate.

A number of lawyers and other workers will join RNA Minister of Defense Herman Ferguson, Attorneys Chokwe Lumumba, Efia Nwangaza, Imhotep Alkebu-lan, and Imam Bilal Sunni-Ali in discussion of release of unjustly jailed prisoners, and a reparation and self-determination suit being prepared for the International Court of Justice. This conference is a splendid opportunity for persons who attend to gain rich insights and make contributions in a dynamic movement which has the rich potential for making a better life for us all.