Ajamu Baraka, the 2016 Green Party vice-presidential candidate, will be one of the speakers at the Black is Back Electoral School. Other Greens currently scheduled to participate are Betty Davis and Ralph Poynter from New York and the Rev. Edward Pickney from Benton Harbor, Michigan.

The event will be on April 6 & 7 at Akwaaba Hall, Uhuru House in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Support Black Self-determination

Infusing Black Power Politics in U.S. Electoral Process

In April of 2017, we held our first Electoral Campaign School in St. Petersburg, Florida, attended by Africans from several states within the U.S.

In addition to teaching African people the steps for running for office, we were intent on arming activists with a platform for self-determination as the basis for their electoral campaigns.

The Coalition has turned over custody of an electoral process that has historically been separated from and used against our people and struggle. We now have a tool that we can use to positively affect the lives of our community.

Our National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination provides us with a program that is both historical and timely.

The demands for reparations, black community control of police, and education represent part of a historical continuum, bringing key demands from the revolutionary period of the 1960s into today’s electoral arena.

Our platform also addresses the issues of African women and the black family as well as the vicious population displacement known as gentrification.

Activists who attend the Coalition’s Electoral Campaign School will be expected to address these issues and others like the genocidal incarceration of our people, political prisoners, joblessness, healthcare and the host of other planks from our National Black Political Agenda for Self-determination for use in their electoral campaigns.

The Black is Back Electoral School has already won commitments from some of the same presenters that spoke in 2018.

Lisa Davis, Glen Ford, Zaki Baruti, Kamm Howard, Diop Olugbala, New York State Assemblyman Charles Barron, Chairman Omali Yeshitela and Khalid Raheem are among those who will be returning this year.

These presenters will be joined by Akile Anai, 2017 candidate for City Council in St. Petersburg, FL, Nellie Bailey from Harlem, New York, Betty Davis and Ralph Poynter from New York, Rev. Edward Pinkney from Benton Harbor, Michigan and 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate, Ajamu Baraka.

There will also be others.

Those of you who are interested in running for office or knowing how the electoral process works should be there.

Everyone with an interest in extending the struggle for African liberation should attend this important school.

The school will not only instruct attendees on how to run for office, but they will also learn how to get issues like reparations and community control of police and education on local ballots where legal.

Not only will the school teach attendees how to get candidates on ballots and win elections, but there will also be instructions on how to initiate recalls to remove opponents of our freedom from office.

Join the scores of activists who will attend this school.

Take this opportunity to extend the recognized parameters of our struggle to include all fronts.

In the past, the methods of struggle for liberation of our people have been posed as either the ballot or the bullet. Today we must be able to redefine the struggle as one using every method – the ballot and the bullet.

Forward to St. Petersburg!

Black is Back Coalition