Table of Contents
Welcome Back to Revolutionary
African Women Website
by Mzuri Pambeli
Organizer and Pan-Africanist, Mzuri Pambeli.
I’m a long time organizer for African people. I’m a mother, grandmother, worker and a world wide activist for more than 30 years.
Why RAW? Where else can you find information on our Pan African world by and about Revolutionary women and men if we do not create the space for it ourselves?
Our work of unity and organization, mentoring the youth and developing spaces for our elders inspires us everyday to continue this journey and develop it beyond where we are today. Something for tomorrow.
That is what this space called the Revolutionary African Women’s website if for. Its for tomorrow’s African woman and man, youth and elder, activist and curious soul who want to know more about themselves, about their people and about the journey ahead.
We want to inspire our people to find solutions to our many problems by dedicating themselves to our worldwide African community and for us, we know that Balance is at the core of our work. We as women and girls especially, need to share our aspirations, struggles, victories and set backs with each other and inspire all of us towards the light…the light of liberating energy that will give us that boost to write another inspiring work; teach another enlightening class or workshop; lift up another soul longing to do something positive for her and his people. This is part of the journey of liberation and how I and others envision RAW playing its part.
Where there is areas of weakness, there is the need for organization. We want to bring organizations and individuals together who are about or want to be about the work of liberating our minds, hearts and spirits towards the manifestation of the physical liberation of Africa, our motherland!. What could be a greater cause than uniting our people, educating and inspiring our youth?! Where can you find a place that brings our community together by sharing events and the conditions of our African people in various corners of our Pan African world? Here at RAW, that’s where!
Well in truth there may be other sites, but there is only one RAW network. It’s here and we welcome you! Read full story…
Special Tribute to President Hugo Chávez
by Mzuri Pambeli
We salute President Hugo Chávez.
Champion of the People, Champion for the Women of Venezuela
We salute our commandante President Hugo Chávez who was a valiant and fearless revolutionary and defender of socialism and for the masses of the people, not just in Venezuela but also worldwide.
The significance of this leader to not only Venezuela but to all of what is called Latin America, the Caribbean , to Africa and to the world is underestimated today but will be better understood and appreciated in years to come.
While many criticise him today as does those with 20-20 hindsight, it is clear why President Chávez was so very popular with the masses of the people in Venezuela and worldwide. For all the criticism today that his government receives, especially during the elections post his transition, with claims of mismanagement of the economy, it was clear to the masses on the very bottom of the economic ladder in central and south America and especially to those in Venezuela that there was a noticeable reduction in poverty.
This reduction of poverty was due to the Chávez government not just talking about poverty and campaigning on the reduction of poverty but actually reducing poverty by taking back control of the national petroleum company PDVSA. And the revenues of the oil production were largely spent not on cronies in government or the elite, like is done in capitalist societies. The profits where spent on development of social programs and improvements of the badly needed infrastructure of the society! Government spending increased 60.6%, a whooping $772 billion dollars of the last 10 years.
And this Venezuela is a democratic society despite what the press tell us. They practice a different participatory democracy than America.
In their democracy, you don’t have to be a millionaire to run for office! You don’t need a million dollars to run a campaign and you aren’t expected to pay cronies and lobbyist to gain popularity of certain issues of a certain constituency. This participatory democracy allows a bus driver, who just ran and won office to become President! That is democracy, of the people, for the people.
And why have the women of Venezuela, of all of Latin America embraced Hugo Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution?
It is because the Bolivarian Revolution has become a social and Cultural Revolution that has required the poor and that means the majority of its women to become full partners in the transformation of the society! This is what socialism means to all societies, that the entire mass of the society participate in its development, its advancement and the benefits of its success! Read full story…
Poetry
THE TRADITION
Carry it on now.
Carry it on.
Carry it on now.
Carry it on.
Carry on the tradition.
There were Black People
since the childhood of time
Who carried it on.
In Ghana and Mali and Timbuktu
We carried it on.
Carried on the tradition.
We hid in the bush
When the slavemasters came holding spears.
And when the moment was ripe,
leaped out and lanced the lifeblood
Of would be masters.
We carried it on.
On slave ships, hurling ourselves into oceans.
Slitting the throats of our captors.
We took their ships.
And their ships. Blood flowed in the Atlantic-
And its wasn’t all ours.
We carried it on.
Fed Missy arsenic apple pies.
Stole the axes from the shed.
Went and chopped off master’s head.
We ran. We fought.
We organized a railroad.
An underground.
We carried it on.
In newspapers. In meetings.
In arguments and streetfights.
We carried it on.
In tales told to children.
In chants and cantatas.
In poems and blues songs
and saxophone screams.
We carried it on.
In classrooms. In churches.
In courtrooms. In prisons.
We carried it on.
On soapboxes and picket lines.
Welfare lines, unemployment lines.
Our lives on the line,
We carried it on.
In sit-ins and pray-ins
And march-ins and die-ins,
We carried it on.
On cold Missouri midnights
Pitting shotguns against lynch mobs.
On burning Brooklyn streets.
Pitting rocks against rifles.
We carried it on.
Against water hoses and bulldogs.
Against nightsticks and bullets.
Against tanks and tear gas.
Needles and nooses.
Bombs and birth control.
We carried it on.
In Selma and San Juan.
Mozambique , Mississippi.
In Brazil and in Boston.
We carried it on.
Through the lies and the sell outs.
The mistakes and the madness.
Through pain and hunger and frustration,
We carried it on.
Carried on the tradition.
Carried a strong tradition.
Carried a proud tradition.
Carried a Black Tradition.
Carry it on.
Pass it down to the children.
Pass it down.
Carry it on
Carry on now.
Carry it on
TO FREEDOM!
Assata Shakur
To read the rest of this poem, click the “More Poem” button below.
