Greetings,

We invite you to be a part of “Freedom in Our Own Hands – Tour 2005”, featuring Omali Yeshitela. You may have already heard his voice on “The Wolf” and “Police State” from Dead Prez’ first release. You won’t want to miss hearing him in person as he returns from international engagements in London, Amsterdam, Surinam and throughout South Africa. This year he will be traveling around the U.S. to speak to students and communities about the growing movement of African people for freedom, self-determination and the return of our stolen resources and labor.

We have enclosed some background materials on Omali Yeshitela, who has been enthusiastically received as he brings the analysis and strategic vision of African Internationalism to audiences hungry for genuine change in our society. A dynamic and powerful speaker organizing for black rights from the grassroots for over 40 years, he embodies the courage and confidence of the age-old African cultures that brought civilization, science, language and art to the world.

Yeshitela’s political roots are in the Civil Rights movement of the sixties. He has fought in the trenches side-by-side with such leaders of the African freedom struggle as Mukassa Ricks (who coined the “Black Power” demand), the late Kwame Toure (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and more recently Winnie Mandela. He has kept the Black Power movement alive in the U.S. by initiating successful campaigns tackling the pressing issues facing the African community today, including unjust imprisonment, police brutality, substandard housing and discriminatory education.

Yeshitela represented Africans in the U.S. in 1980 at the first Nicaraguan solidarity conference on invitation of the FSLN. He organized the first Black Reparations Tribunal in NYC in 1982, at which Professor Leonard Jeffries delivered his historic testimony on the effects of colonialism and slavery in destroying the magnificent civilizations of Africa. He spoke at the United Nations on the anniversary of the Sharpeville massacre on invitation of the Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and recently delivered the keynote address to the 8th Congress of the PAC in Durban, South Africa.
Yeshitela rejects the calls by many African-American national leaders who look to inclusion in the Democratic or Republican Party as the primary means to advancement. He contends that African and other oppressed peoples, whose labor and resources form the pedestal upon which the wealth of the western world rests, are now in a strategic position to lead the way out of today’s economic and social crisis.

Following in the footsteps of Malcolm X in his insistence on African independence on the terms of the working class and poor peasants, Yeshitela built the African People’s Socialist Party and the Uhuru Movement to win power for African working people over our own communities and land. Continuing the legacy of Marcus Garvey’s UNIA, he has built economic institutions of self-reliance in black communities around the U.S. He has advanced the work of Nkrumah and Lumumba towards a united Africa by initiated the drive to build the African Socialist International, under the theme, “Touch One, Touch All”.

If you are interested in bringing Omali Yeshitela to your campus, contact the 2005 Tour committee today. If you need additional materials to present to your organization or school funders, we will be happy to send you a video or audio speech by Omali Yeshitela, news clippings or other background information.