Money Laundering With Settlers: Omali Yeshitela, the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), and Uhuru Movement
"The FBI is surveilling them so they must be revolutionary" and other lies (Part 3)
Part 3 of a 4 Part Series.
Although the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP) and the Uhuru Movement have cloaked themselves in the language of Black Liberation, in truth the entire operation is subordinate to a group of wealthy colonizers called the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC), loyal to leader Omali Yeshitela and not Afrikan peoples. False Nationalism, False Internationalism goes into an in-depth explanation about the relationship between Omali Yeshitela and Euro-Amerikan “allies” up to 1985. Before we delve deeper into how this alliance has played out, let us briefly examine several aspects of APSP’s orientation toward proletarian Black people in the u.s.a. and in Afrika.
Table of Contents:
Section I — Hating and Abusing One’s Own Nation As “Black Liberation”
Section 2 — Financials and Business Fronts
Section 3 — The Settler Profiteers
SECTION I—Hating and Abusing One’s Own Nation As “Black Liberation”
A part of Chapter 8 of False Nationalism, False Internationalism reads1:
Omali Yesitala was a leading Civil Rights activist in Florida during the 1960s. At the start of the Black Power period he led in forming JOMO—the Junta of Militant Organizations—which was repressed out of existence. Following that he formed the APSP in his hometown of St. Petersburg. It was one of the earliest Black socialist groups. Their program has evolved, and currently features a type of “Pan-Afrikanism” that denies any separate nationhood for New Afrikans in the “u.s.a.”
The following is a screenshot from a page on APSP’s website2 dedicated to the organization’s many commercial fronts. It demarcates APSP’s line that the Black diaspora in Amerika is entitled to “all the vast resources of Africa”.
There is a deep history of supposedly “revolutionary” organizations practicing false (inter)nationalism in the name of Marcus Garvey, who believed that Black Liberation required making peace with US imperialism and the Ku Klux Klan3 and fostered a deep chauvinism against continental Africans: “the blackman [in diaspora] who is thoughtful and serviceable, feels that God intended him to give his brothers still in darkness, the light of civilization.”4 A movement that denies a separate nationhood for Black people in the so-called u.s. and declares their entitlement to be the land and resources of Afrika is in the same spirit as the 19th-century American Colonization Society, its settler-colony project Liberia, and a “Pan-Afrikan” Zionism.
In an era where the head of US AFRICOM is “African-American”, the idea that Black people in Amerika have total claim to the resources of the African continent is Neo-colonialism to the highest degree. There is a class of Afrikans and New Afrikans bonded to the interests of imperialism and to the Dollar; those who have a class interest in maintaining imperialism will argue that “we are all African” to cover up their neo-colonial and false internationalist orientation.
Rather than building a movement with Africans, these individuals attempt to take control of liberation movements in order to benefit themselves. Members of the African Socialist Movement of Sierra Leone (ASM-SL) discussed this exact practice by Yeshitela in the late 2000’s5
All propaganda materials from the Uhuru Movement falsely apportioned our work to the supposed success of Omali Yeshitela. Because of this erroneous and misleading distortion that they put out in the world, the Uhuru Movement of Omali Yeshitela was unwilling to accept an organizational relationship with the Africanist Movement where both organizations will function on equal terms to promote the cause of African unity and liberation within a principled arrangement that was to ultimately result into the actual development of single, organic force on an international level. Instead they prefer not only to lord themselves over the Africanist Movement but embarked on a program to usurp our work.
Omali Yeshitela’s Garveyite misdirection is also used to exploit Black proletarians in the United States in a similar fashion. The operations of Black Star Industries are heavily dependent on volunteer (unpaid) labor from New Afrikans, including formerly incarcerated political prisoners.
One program is a kind of halfway house, “providing housing” for released prisoners, but requires residential applicants work for BSI enterprises. This claim of the importance of “giving them (New Africans) jobs” is the same line pushed by the occupation government.6 Despite a large amount of revenue coming from all these business fronts, the proceeds go not to the laborers who make the pies, furniture, t-shirts, etc. but to the salaries of APSP and APSC “leadership” and into the coffers of BSI, amassing more capital for the Uhuru Movement. To do what, exactly? Certainly not end the oppression of the Black Masses in the US or Afrika. This is Black Capitalism dressed up in the language of socialism.
False Nationalism, False Internationalism details that APSP fractured decades ago due to Yeshitela’s abuse of fellow Afrikans and his class-alliance with white backers:7
In 1980 the African People’s Socialist Party split. The split became a public controversy, with the majority of the Central Committee members led by Ajowa Ifateyo (Vicki Wells) and Aziza Ayoluwa expelling APSP Chairman Omali Yeshitela (Joseph Waller) on charges of alleged physical abuse of women. Yeshitela and his supporters, while not commenting on the specific events, counter-charged that the Ifateyo-Ayoluwa actions were part of a lesbian-FBICOINTELPRO repressive operation against Black people. We mention these issues only in passing, as background in a split in which the allegiance of Euro-Amerikan radical “allies” was very important.
The APSP had/has a Euro-Amerikan solidarity committee attached to it which played an all-important role inside the life of the organization. What that meant can be seen by the testimony of Ajowa Ifateyo. She has said in an interview that without the approval of this solidarity committee, which supported Chairman Yeshitela and withheld money from them, the majority of the APSP Central Committee was helpless, paralyzed:
“That was a real critical move at that time. The Party was heavily dependent on that money from the solidarity committee. The whole publication of the Party newspaper, The Burning Spear, depended on it. The solidarity committee also subsidized an entire African bookstore and the entire office rent and living space (the same building) of the national office. “When it really slapped us in the face, it was totally unbelievable. Here were these white women going to take all this money... the Party work came to a halt. There was nothing we could do. We had planned to publish a special issue of The Burning Spear to explain the whole struggle, but then we couldn’t.”
So the Afrikan People supposedly represented by an organization called the African People’s Socialist Party could not move without the blessing of a colonizer council loyal only to an abusive chairman. The APSP was consciously made dependent on the oppressor nation, in alliance with a petite-bourgeois opportunist representative of their own oppressed nation. This is the definition of False Nationalism. That this was a conscious decision on the part of Yeshitela and his collaborators deserves extra emphasis:
Intervention by Euro-Amerikans in the affairs of the New Afrikan Nation is not a trick, played by sly white people on innocent New Afrikan leaders. Intervention is not a trick, but rather a relationship, an alliance between similar class forces in oppressor and oppressed nations. Some leaders, as we can see, are not innocent at all. They look for intervention, argue and recruit for intervention, and defend their cherished intervention as “allies” and “solidarity.” Of course, when their schemes go wrong they simply blame it all on white folks. This has nothing to do with liking oppressors. After all, the drug addict may hate their addiction, but still find themselves going back to the Man for one more fix. This is not the fault of one leader or a hundred leaders as individuals. Defeatism and an attitude of dependence on others is an institutionalized condition throughout the colonial world, and can only be overcome by finally ending “the dark night of slavery” with proletarian class ideology.
Defeatism is colonial in that it is an oppressor nation view, an alien, imperialist view, rather than one that reflects the natural reality and interests of the oppressed nation. But it is simultaneously a class question. Defeatism represents the subjective and vacillating class nature of the neo-colonial petty-bourgeois, who are its social carriers. The neo-colonial petty-bourgeois are also drawn towards defeatism because of their own material reality as a class. They cannot overcome imperialism by themselves.
It is really striking to hear a New Afrikan activist say that without Euro-Amerikan approval they were unable to even communicate with their own Nation, much less maintain an organization! False internationalism worked to produce a dependent mentality. There is no doubt that Euro-Amerikan “allies” were the central consideration for the APSP. Chairman Yeshitela was unafraid to publicly say that. He has explained the APSP national offices move to San Francisco as motivated by the need to find Euro-Amerikan allies.
…
White folks are said to be the Mountain. White folks are said to be the rear base area for the Black Revolution. National offices were moved several 2.57 thousand miles, across the continent, in order to get closer to them. They are all-important. Once again, white people are said to be the answer to the problems of the New Afrikan Nation. And the thing is, that everyone who does this also adds that they are only carrying out Malcolm’s legacy. Is that what Malcolm did?
Yeshitela held the enablers of the oppressor nation in higher regard than women and children of his own and made this fact clear. He insisted that Afrikans’ attempts to hold him accountable in his organizing and as a parent were a government conspiracy against him.
In 1977 Joseph Waller (later name: Omali Yeshitela) of the Afrikan Peoples Socialist Party was taken into court by his ex-wife for not paying any child support for his three children. He was worried about adverse public reaction, especially since settler judges and newspapers in Florida liked to smear New Afrikan activists.
…
So his party issues a “Special Free Edition” of their newspaper, The Burning Spear, solely devoted to Waller’s argument that his wife was an unwitting tool of “FBI COINTELPRO”. (78) He said that the whole thing might have been “taken by the state on its own initiative...” Joseph Waller said that even if he had any child support money he wouldn’t use it for his own children, or any New Afrikan children, since his publishing activities as a New Afrikan leader took priority for him.
No one can build genuine nationalism while hating and abusing such a large and vital section of one’s nation as women and children. The reason Omali Yeshitela was able to continue abusing his own nation is because he was never accountable to the New Afrikan Nation. His movement was never a mass movement rooted in the New Afrikan people. While people from his nation tried to hold him accountable, they could not, because in the “African People’s Socialist Party” they had no power to. Yeshitela can (and will) always fall back onto the real base of his "movement": wealthy Euro-Amerikans.
If the Uhuru movement was not a class-alliance with these oppressor nation “organizers”, then it would not be his at all. Omali Yeshitela would be little more than a historical memory—kicked out decades ago when his many abuses were first exposed.
Had these abuses been exposed in the context of an organization practicing genuine nationalism, whose rear base was the oppressed-nation proletariat rather than moneyed oppressor-nation “allies”, the People would have long dealt with him appropriately. But because his “activism” was predicated on false nationalism and a class alliance with petite-bourgeois whites, he has been allowed and enabled to continue preying on New Afrikans in the name of Black Liberation for over forty years more.
From The Political Cult of Yeshitelism:
I declare that it is my position, based on my experience and observation of the Uhuru Movement from both the inside and outside that the APSP is at BEST a corrupt organization riddled with internal contradictions that systematically undermines its ability to resolve its own issues and that has been allowed by the state to exist so long not because of the resilience of the leadership or correctness of the theory but because it poses no real threat to the enemy and functions to attract and neutralize genuine forces with potential to become revolutionaries.
…
In the case of the APSP the cult leader is Chairman Omali Yeshitela and his hard core of mainly petty bourgeoisie careerist worship him like he is Jesus Christ. This political worship is most extreme among the members of its in house white solidarity organization; the African Peoples Solidarity Committee under the leadership of the wealthy lesbian Penny Hess. Hess and the APSC are the financial engine of the Uhuru Movement.
HoodCommunist (themselves now supportive of APSP) even once republished a piece about Omali Yeshitela’s abuses here.8
Anyone familiar with organizing inside the u.s. has seen this pattern before. It is time to understand this pattern. Properly contextualizing the class character of organizations like APSP exposes a threat far greater in scale than that posed by the interpersonal abuses of their leadership, as reprehensible and violent as it all is. Yeshitela’s interpersonal abuses are not the primary contradiction; they are symptomatic of his abusing the nation and the greater national liberation movement. We strongly encourage partisans to reject the anti-materialist analysis that reduces APSP to simply being "a cult" and Yeshitela to being an abuser (which he is)—this only serves to hide the root of the problem. The class dimension of these false internationalist organizations is regularly overlooked in favor of the particularities of individual abusive practices. However, the only defense against these organizations that sabotage our liberation movements and abuse our people is to investigate the material basis that props them up.
SECTION II —Financials and Business Fronts
This Section Contains evidence of the financial scheme which is the material basis of Yeshitela’s Uhuru Movement.
African People’s Education and Defense Fund
The non-profit front through which donations and some of their business fronts run is called the African People’s Education and Defense Fund. While the APSP/Uhuru scheme has a number of shell companies and trusts, the APEDF is the non-profit wing which allows them to evade taxes and acquire legitimacy as a “non-profit”. For-profit businesses are not obligated to report their financials, non-profit 501c3 organizations financials are always publicly available. We start here to examine the scope of this multi-million dollar operation. The most recent APEDF financial form is from 2019 and shows some unsettling things.9
1: Assets
This page shows the APEDF assets at the beginning of 2019 and the end of 2019.
Lines 1 and 2 show that, at the end of 2019 the APEDF had ~284 thousand dollars cash.
Line 10c shows that, at the end of 2019, they had property/land valued at ~1.2 million dollars.
Line 16 shows their total assets at $1.5 million dollars.
Consider this, the APEDF is routinely asking for donations for their so-called “empowerment projects” and some of those goals are far less than even the amount of cash that they have on hand. Instead of simply building their “community medical center” they continue to raise money endlessly for years under the pretense that they will eventually finish the project.
2: Revenue
This page shows the annual revenue of the APEDF and totals from 2015-2019. A breakdown:
Line 1 (green) shows that between 2015-2019 the APEDF received 1.7 million dollars in “gifts, grants, contributions, and membership fees”.
Line 2 (yellow) shows that between 2014-2019 APEDF received 4.8 million dollars in “Receipts” which would include sales and rental fees acquired from the various fronts that they run.
Line 6 (purple) shows the total of 6.5 million dollars.
Line 7a (red) shows that 1.2 million dollars was from (disqualified persons) which means individuals with personal stake/control of the organization. This suggests that the leadership is “donating” a large amount of money into the organization they run. How did the leadership get this large sum of money?
Remember that this non-profit represents only a portion of the total revenue that the Uhuru Movement makes on the backs of New Afrikans. This is truly a multi-million dollar operation. It would be commendable if they actually used this revenue for helping the people, but as we shall see, they do not.
3: Expenses
A few things of note for this financial document:
Lines 1 and 2 (yellow highlight) represent the amount of money an organization gives to domestic organizations and people in the form of grants. For an organization that claims to “transform the future for African people, providing genuine solutions to disparities and injustice in every aspect of life for African people” to give exactly zero money to folks who need it is very telling.
Line 3 (red highlight) shows that none of their money was sent to other international organizations either. It is baffling that a ‘movement’ that claims to be connected to “multiple countries in Africa” to give no money to any continental African organizations.
Lines 5 and 7 show they paid employees a total of ~440 thousand dollars.
11 (Blue) show that they paid salaries and ‘fees’ to non-employees in the total of ~197 thousand dollars in 2019.
Line 25 (purple) shows their expenses total to ~1.3 million dollars and the majority went to paying people involved in the APSP scheme. The rest went to business expenses. None of it went “back to the community” except for the community employed by (approved by) the APEDF. This means the APEDF is not about building the community but instead about building the Uhuru movement: specifically the Yeshitela enterprise.
4: Officers
Interestingly, for an organization that claims to be “By and for the African people”, two white women sit on the board of directors on this nonprofit: Kitty Reilly and Maureen Wagener. Both of these settlers play a crucial role in this scheme and Kitty Reilly was one of the settlers involved in covering up Omali Yeshitela’s abuses in the 70’s.
Shell companies
The APSP/Uhuru group runs dozens of front businesses. Most operate under the “Black Star Industries” or African People’s Education and Defense Fund. In a strategy similar to the previously examined Worker’s World Party, these allow the APSP to inflate their presence and the size of their events. An APSP event may have the support of “dozens of Pro-African organizations” that are all actually run by the Omali and Ona Yeshitela.
Additionally, as part of the money laundering process, this is also a method of layering. “Layering conceals the source of the money through a series of transactions and bookkeeping tricks.”10 This allows them to cover their tracks better in funneling money through the organizations.
Black Star Industries, LLC — APSP business front
Many of the Business fronts run underneath the name Black Star Industries, LLC. The Black Star Industries LLC works in tandem with their nonprofit organization to run a few businesses, most of which are functionally landlord rent collection.
Zenzelle Consignment markets “confident revolutionary style” which is just overpriced clothing and memorabilia plastered with the faces of revolutionary Black martyrs. As with most of these organizations, they request plaster requests for “volunteers” unpaid Black labor.
Akwaaba Halls which are basically conference centers marketed as a community service. Pricing document (below) shows that "the community" can rent it at a "very affordable" price of $300+ on weekends. APSP runs three such centers in Saint Louis, MO; St Petersburg, FL; and Oakland, CA. This is business scheme is functionally landlordism.
Black Power Blueprint which they market as “housing for the African Independence Workforce Program, creating jobs for those re-entering
our community from the prison system.” The APSP purchased a home in Saint Louis, renovated it with community donations and free labor from volunteers, and now use it as a means to extract more profit from vulnerable Black people.11 The African Independence Workforce program employs Black people to work for APSP businesses while marketing itself as a pathway to liberation. This again is an even more disturbing form of landlordism that targets vulnerable New Afrikans returning from prison. Black Power Blueprint’s primary accomplishment is building a Basketball Court in Saint Louis (also with unpaid Black labor). Underwhelming to say the least.
Uhuru Furniture which they operate in Philadelphia and Oakland collects donations of furniture and other kitsch that they then resell at incredibly high prices. The business itself is sustained by “volunteer” (see: unpaid) labor from New Afrikans and allies. Who is paying hundreds of dollars for a set of chairs with Pan-African colors? Certainly not the masses of impoverished and working class New Afrikans.
Uhuru Pies claims to facilitate commerce “by and between African People worldwide” but is selling food that is far out of the price range of the African masses. Who is paying $30 for a pie in the shape of the African continent? Which Africans are participating in this commerce?
The Unknowns
W & Associates, a for profit corporation co-owned by Omali and Ona Yeshitela, is not referenced in any of the APSP advertising literature. It has no website and its name is generic enough that any information about it is hidden in glut.
JW Foundation—another secret organization—is a trust run exclusively by the Yeshitela’s.12
These organizations likely represent the “integration” phase of money schemes. “After the money is transferred from legal businesses or investments, or the trail has become too difficult to follow, the money can then be placed into major investments. Integrated money laundered cash can be spent on luxury assets, real estate holdings, and long-term investment vehicles or in new business ventures.”13
In essence this allows the Yeshitela family to hide the real value of their wealth and assets from their community and the rest of the APSP/Uhuru movement. Any properties or assets owned by W & Associates would be near impossible to link back to the Yeshitela’s (except by the IRS).
This is not definitive proof of the Yeshitela money laundering scheme, but it does raise an enormous number of questions about what is actually happening with all the money that is moving through this enterprise.
SECTION III—The Settler Profiteers
Here is an incomplete list of the settler profiteers behind the Uhuru Movement working with Omali and Ona Yeshitela. These names are readily available on their websites and business filings for the front groups. Some of them have been around since the 70’s, which means they were directly involved in the silencing of Ajowa Ifateyo and Aziza Ayoluwa.
Penny Hess
Kitty Reilly
Janice Kant
One example of Janice’s participation in this money laundering was her “donation” of 10,000 dollars to the APSP front “Reparations Legacy Project” in June 2021.
Or when her son Adrian “donated” 5,000 dollars to the APEDF 4 months before that
and 5000 dollars again in may 2021
Maureen Wagener
Alison Hoehne
Jesse Nevel
Jesse Nevel is the President of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement Incorporated, another business tied into the scheme. He runs a lot of programs for the African People’s Solidarity Committee (APSC) and has positioned himself as a “super ally” of the Black people. He also ran for mayor in St. Petersburg with a ridiculous campaign representing the the APSP/Uhuru movement. Below is a campaign advertisement.
Again, we see the APSP believes white people and collaboration with the occupation governemt are the solution to Black genocide.
Conclusion
This article is not an exhaustive analysis of the functioning of the organization, but it demonstrates a few things:
No matter what they say, the APSP is oriented against Afrikans and functions as a Black capitalism “alternative” dressed up in Black liberation politics.
Omali Yeshitela, the nucleus of this scheme and the ideological core of APSP/Uhuru, has proven a disdain for most Afrikans, especially women and children.
The APSP runs dozens of false fronts that all lead right back to the Yeshitelas and their settler co-conspirators.
They use the for-profit businesses interchangeably with their non-profit in order to pull donations and volunteers while building the confidence of New Afrikans who they are fooling and exploiting.
Even if some of their programs do provide some benefits to a few Afrikans, the larger picture shows that the entire program is a kapitalist confidence and money-laundering scheme built on landlordism and free labor.
Much of the leadership of this scheme is actually settlers masquerading as saviors. These settlers would not be able to con New Afrikans if not for the Class-Alliance they have made with Omali and Ona Yeshitela.
False Nationalism False Internationalism Chapter 8; http://www.readmarxeveryday.org/fnfi/ch8.html
We also note the language here that they want to build a “self-reliant” capitalist economy “for Africans” https://apspuhuru.org/about/black-star-industries/
FNFI Chapter 4; “Early New Afrikan Communism”; http://www.readmarxeveryday.org/fnfi/ch4.html full quote:
The nationalist movement as a whole, however, was convinced that New Afrikans were too outnumbered and too weak to fight the settler Empire. This belief led Marcus Garvey to react conservatively to the growing political repression of the 1920s. His movement hoped for a friendly or at least a neutral relationship with the U.S. bourgeoisie. The U.N.I.A. attempted to buy time until their pioneers and resources from the Western Hemisphere could return to take over the nation of Liberia, giving them a sovereign land base from which to expand outward across the Afrikan continent. Garvey vainly tried to forestall repression by appearing to go along with U.S. imperialism, even to the point of trying to make peace with the resurgent Ku Klux Klan.
W. E. B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, and Pan-Africanism in Liberia, 1919-1924 by Tamba Mbayo 2004; page 42 ; source: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297875000_W_E_B_Du_Bois_Marcus_Garvey_and_Pan-Africanism_in_Liberia_1919-1924
Excerpt from one of many articles here: https://asmsupporters.wordpress.com/2012/06/08/smash-slander-and-sabotage-a-response-to-the-uhuru-movements-attack-on-the-african-socialist-movement-of-sierra-leone-by-chernoh-alpha-m-bah/
Part 4 will engage all of the testimony of the ASM-SL against the abuses of the Uhuru Movement and Omali Yeshitela.
See Section II
False Nationalism False Internationalism Chapter 8; http://www.readmarxeveryday.org/fnfi/ch8.html
While the timestamp for that post currently reads August 22, 2022, it first appeared on HoodCommunist.org on February 12, 2020. It was likely edited in light of recent events.
For further investigation, you can find many of the individual donations to APEDF programs here: https://www.flipcause.com/secure/all_campaign/NzcxMzI=/MzcyOQ==
Housing: https://blackpowerblueprint.org/projects/workforce-program-housing/
Employment
It was incorporated in 2001 under their old names Joseph Waller and Harriet Davis-Waller.