Special to The Weekly Challenger
By Roger K. Clendening
The Uhuru 3 are Omali Yeshitela, Chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP); and two organizers with the Uhuru Movement’s white reparations component: Penny Hess, Chair of the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC); and Jesse Nevel, Chair of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement (USM).
The Uhuru 3 were found not guilty on federal charges of acting as agents of Russia but were convicted on a contradictory charge of conspiracy to act as agents of Russia. They are appealing the conspiracy conviction.
While they were found not guilty of the most serious charge – acting as agents of Russia – the government still seeks a sentence of 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on the conspiracy conviction.
First Amendment attorneys warn that this case set a new precedent in case law, being the first time the DOJ ever used the foreign agent statutes against pure speech and opinion.
Chairman Omali asserts that “the U.S. constitution and its First Amendment declaration that ‘Congress shall make no law …. abridging the freedom of speech…’, was not written for Black people. We were enslaved when these laws were adopted.”
He is not the first Black leader to be accused of acting as an agent of Russia. W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson and Martin Luther King, Jr. faced the same bogus slander.
Even artists like Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and James Baldwin were targeted by the FBI for their support of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements of the 1960s.
The government charged that the Uhuru Movement’s work to run local candidates was done at the direction of the Russian government, yet Uhuru 3 trial transcripts show prosecution witnesses admitted there was no evidence of this.
Some see this as evidence of the Biden administration’s policy to discourage independent Black participation in the electoral process, a policy that backfired, resulting in many Black people turning their backs on the Democratic Party.
This recent attempt to imprison Chairman Yeshitela and financially hamper the Uhuru Movement has also been seen as an attempt to stop progress on the group’s Black community and economic self-determination programs, including a workforce training and housing program for former prisoners, a state-of-the-art basketball court, farmers markets, a women’s health clinic, and Uhuru House community centers in St. Petersburg, Florida, St. Louis, Missouri and Oakland, California.
Chairman Omali: “The U.S. government is punishing us because we criticize them, because we organize for reparations, create black community economic development programs, oppose gentrification, call for a U.N. investigation into the violation of the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide for its treatment of Africans in the U.S., travel to win international support for the struggle of Black people in the U.S., use our newspaper to carry stories about Russia and Ukraine that other U.S. news organs refuse to publish. And now the U.S. is firing missiles from Ukraine deep into Russia, threatening WWIII and nuclear war.”
In St. Petersburg, Pinellas County Commissioners blocked $100,000 in federal funding for which Black Power 96.3 FM radio station, housed at the Uhuru House, had qualified.
Yeshitela says, “As we continue to lose independent African voices on the radio throughout the country, the government attacks this popular noncommercial radio station because they don’t agree with the Black opinions expressed on it.”
The “Hands Off Uhuru! Hands Off Africa!” counteroffensive is calling on people everywhere and particularly in the St. Petersburg Tampa Bay area to pack the Federal Courthouse at 801 North Florida Avenue in Tampa for the sentencing of Chairman Omali Yeshitela, and solidarity workers Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel on Monday, December 16, 2024, starting at 9:00 am.
Hands Off Uhuru Counter Offensive is confident that filling the courthouse will impact the sentence so that the Uhuru 3 will be free to continue the work for the self-determination of the African community worldwide.
For more information call (727) 914-3617 or you can email the Uhuru Movement at chimurenga@yahoo.com.
The ‘Chairman’ is an intelligent, well educated man. He would never ever put his freedom in jeopardy again. I am not able to attend the hearing, but hope all that can will support them. They are not guilty, nor are they stupid. I am not a member of the movement but understand what they try to do.