Black August: A Commitment to Anti-Colonial Resistance
THIS MONTH, THE NEW YORK YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE COMMEMORATES BLACK AUGUST.
During Black August, we not only commemorate our martyrs but also celebrate the millions of militants borne from their blood and cries for liberation. Black August was born to celebrate the courageous life of Jonathan Jackson. Jonathan was a boy who, at 17, gave his life not only to the liberation of his brother but to everybody kept prisoner under the colonial system. His act was out of revolutionary anger, love for his brother, and love for all the world’s oppressed. When George Jackson received word of his brother's murder at the hands of the pigs he said,
“I wanted to teach him how to fly; I’ll think of him now as Che Guevara.”
George himself would be murdered a year later, August 22nd, during his own flight for freedom.
The U.S. prison system remains a central pillar of capitalist and colonial exploitation. The 13th Amendment, in the settlers’ guileful nature, protected slavery in the prisons.
“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States...”
Black neighborhoods are systemically over policed by fascist thugs which carry out daily colonial brutalization. More than half of those exonerated between 1989 and 2022 are Black, despite the fact that Black people account for 13.6% of the U.S. population. Innocent Black people are 7 times more likely to be wrongly convicted of murder. They are more likely to be detained pretrial. It takes them 3 years longer to be exonerated in murder cases. They are over represented in prisons in general, especially in the South. Slavery persists. Wages are 13 to 52 cents an hour. In the south, almost all penal labor is unpaid. They do not have labor rights, including overtime pay, protection from discrimination, and the right to collective bargaining.
In the face of continuous colonialism, in the Jackson brothers’ example, we commit to embodying the militant spirit of the Haitian Revolution, Nat Turner’s Rebellion, and EVERY REVOLT OF THE ENSLAVED AGAINST THE COUNTER-REVOLUTIONARY SETTLER FORCES.
We commit to continuing the resistance fought by the Black Panthers, Malcolm X, Assata Shakur, the Black Liberation Army, Angela Davis, Kwame Ture, the Black union organizers who endured government and settler attacks, the numerous organic self-defense organizations that have sprouted throughout our history of struggle against state violence, and EVERY FREEDOM FIGHTER WHOSE SACRIFICES HAVE KEPT THE ANTI-COLONIAL MOVEMENT ALIVE TO THIS DAY.
This revolutionary legacy has long inspired the colonized peoples—the wretched and toiling masses—of the earth. It is honored by the Palestinian resistance in their constant struggle against the settler-colonialism of the Zionist entity and the imperial United States.
THE NY YOUNG COMMUNIST LEAGUE COMMITS TO PRESERVING, REINFORCING, AND ESCALATING THIS LEGACY TOWARD THE LIBERATION OF BLACK PEOPLE IN ALL COLONIZED LANDS.
Counter-revolution has not yet been eradicated. We survive today because of its defeats at the hands of Black militants.
Counter-revolution is a stubborn enemy, but with the masses of the world we will see its submission—revolution—in our lifetimes! It will be painful. it will be hard. but, as George Jackson once said,
“The People’s war is not polite or proper.”
We will bleed, we will cry, and we will fight—all in the name of freedom! Free our prisoners, free them all! Zionism, Fascism, and Colonialism will fall!
New York Young Communist League
The NY Young Communist League commemorates Black August as a commitment to anti-colonial struggle. Our martyrs are best honored through our struggle to abolish slavery, free our political prisoners, and liberate the Black masses of the world.
Black August was established to honor the deaths of the Jackson brothers but later expanded to pay nods to other events in the historical struggle for Black liberation such as the Haitian revolution, Debbie Sims Africa and Fred Hampton’s birthday, Safiya Bukhari’s death, Nelson Mandela’s imprisonment in 1962 and the settler lynching of Emmett Till in 1955.
We can see the fall of capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism in our lifetimes. It is our historical role to see this victory through. Free our prisoners, free them all! Every white state will fall.
