Uhuru 3: Meet Black Liberation Leader Omali Yeshitela, 83. He Faces 5 Years in Prison on Dec. 16

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at another potential political prisoner, this time here in the United States: Omali Yeshitela, the longtime chair of the African People’s Socialist Party, leader of the Uhuru Movement.

In September, a federal jury in Florida found him and three others guilty of conspiring with an agent of the Russian government to, quote, “sow discord” and “interfere” in U.S. elections. But the jury acquitted the four on the most serious charge of acting as agents of a foreign government. Prosecutors had accused them of working on behalf of Russia in a multiyear foreign malign influence campaign here.

Omali Yeshitela and his co-defendants Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel have become known as the Uhuru 3. They’ll be sentenced next Monday, face up to five years in prison. A fourth person, Gazi Kodzo of the Black Hammer Party, has already been sentenced to five years’ probation. Yeshitela’s lawyers had argued the government was targeting the African People’s Socialist Party over its longtime criticism of U.S. policy at home and abroad.

Omali Yeshitela is 83 years old. He joined me this week from Tampa ahead of Monday’s sentencing. I asked him his response to the verdict and what he was charged with and acquitted of.

OMALI YESHITELA: We were charged, as you mentioned earlier, with being Russian agents. And it’s something that they determined — that is, the United States government — that began in 2014, or on or about 2014, and extended up until July 29, 2022, according to them. So, after 50 years or so, or more — 60 years, in my instance — of working for the liberation of African people, the U.S. government determined that, since 2014, I became an employee, an agent, under the direction and control of a foreign government, namely Russia. And then they charged me also, the three of us, Penny Hess, Jesse Nevel and I, with being — with conspiracy to work for a foreign government without registering with the Department of Justice, which was an extraordinary charge.

And so, after a weeklong trial or so, the jury examined things that came from more than 2.5 million books and equivalency, 13 terabytes of information that they stole from our devices. A jury determined that we were not Russian agents, and which meant, of course, that they agreed that the only thing we had ever done is work for the liberation of African people, on the one hand. On the other hand, they convicted us of a conspiracy to do something that never happened.

And the Russian agent charge carried with it a 10-year prison sentence. And the conspiracy charge carries — a conviction carries a possibility of a five-year prison sentence and a $250,000 fine. So, on December 16th, we’ll be going to Tampa, Florida — and we want everybody to come with us — to face sentencing for, as they said, conspiring to do something that never happened.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve long been known as an antiwar activist, from Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. In this case, they said that your activism against the U.S. being involved with Ukraine and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was working on behalf of Russia. Can you respond?

OMALI YESHITELA: Yeah, that’s a — it’s a ridiculous assumption. The fact is, our party has been against every notorious war that the United States government has been involved in. We concluded a long time ago the inability of the United States to engage in a just war. And we were opposed to what they were doing in Vietnam, the United States did in Vietnam. We were opposed to the aggression against Cuba, the aggression against peoples all around the world. And this notion that somehow the Russians had to tell us to be opposed to what’s happening in Ukraine is ridiculous for a number of reasons, and one of them being that, generally speaking, the Black liberation movement in this country has historically been opposed to those wars. And that’s been a strategic problem for the United States, that even Foreign Affairs, one of the journals of the leading thinking representatives of the ruling class in this country, has complained about affecting in a negative way U.S. foreign policy, because Black people have always been opposed to these wars. And that was true of us, too. So, the notion that somehow the Russians had to teach us to do this is ridiculous.

And I also think it’s important to say that we believe in free speech in a very serious way, that this was an assault on freedom of speech, the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights, and that Black people in this country have been in the vanguard of the struggle for the Bill of Rights, for free speech. And that’s been absolutely necessary, because when the First Amendment, the Bill of Rights was ratified by the United States Congress in 1791, Black people were property. We had no rights to speak or do anything like that. So, who else would fight harder for the right to free speech, the right for freedom of assembly, the Bill of Rights than Black people? And we’ve been in the vanguard, and so there’s nothing that is new about that.

And this assault that they’re making on the Uhuru Movement, the African People’s Socialist Party, is actually an assault on African people, our agency, our right to have freedom of thought, to convict us of thinking something. And what they say we think is up to their interpretation. So, we didn’t do anything. And that was the foundational charge. The jury said, “They didn’t work for Russia, but they conspired to do something that never happened.” So it’s a thought crime that they have convicted us for. And we have fought it all along, and we continue to fight that.

AMY GOODMAN: So, talk about your years of activism. When we last spoke, you said you have attended other international conferences, for example, in Spain, where your expenses were paid by a Spanish NGO. And explain the comparison you made with going to a conference in Russia, and talk about the issues you’ve raised.

OMALI YESHITELA: Well, in the indictment, or certainly the press release around the indictment, the United States government declared that we took this expense-paid trip to Moscow. And they made it sound as if somehow there was some lavish occurrence that was paid for by Moscow, when the truth is it was simple, that they paid for our travel to go to Moscow. They paid for housing while we were in Moscow. And when I say “they,” I’m talking about a nongovernmental organization in Moscow paid for that and to attend conferences, international conferences, one of which had to do with a situation of nations of people who were struggling for liberation, for self-determination. And that was in — that was in 2015. I took two trips to Moscow.

And then, you know, they overlooked the fact that I went to Spain in 2017. A nongovernmental organization, they paid our transportation. They paid for three of us to come. They paid a hefty honorarium for my being there. And it was an international conference with people from all around the world. It had participation from former members of the United Nations and from the Spanish government itself. But that didn’t matter. They wanted to take this Moscow thing and act like it was something peculiar.

I’ve traveled to more than 15, 16, 19 different countries, if I’m not mistaken, throughout the world, and as well as to Big Mountain, where the Diné, or Navajo, people were under assault. And I’ve done this partially because it’s my responsibility to do it, to end the isolation that had occurred of our movement. We were attacked in the 1960s, and we were alone, the African liberation movement. We were isolated. And I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. I wanted to win as many people around the world to recognize what our struggle is all about, and to have friends for our movement. And so, that’s part of what this was about.

Another aspect of it was about — was showing solidarity to other peoples who were oppressed, the Indigenous people. And even as we have this discussion now, it happens with recognition that Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous man, has been locked up for nearly 50 years for trying to defend the Indigenous people. And, you know, he’s a political prisoner.

So, we’ve been doing this kind of work, and the U.S. government, very selectively, determined that the trip to Moscow, the connection to a Russian nongovernmental organization represented working under direction and control of a foreign government without notifying the United States government’s Department of Justice that I was doing — attorney general, that I was working for a foreign agent, which is a ridiculous claim.

AMY GOODMAN: Omali, talk about how the African People’s Socialist organization got started, how the African People’s Socialist Party, the Uhuru Movement, got started.

OMALI YESHITELA: Well, yeah, the Uhuru Movement and the African People’s Socialist Party, we stem from the whole struggle for civil rights in the United States. I myself had been active working for voter education and registration in the 1960s. I traveled throughout the state of Florida doing that. And I joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, SNCC, and SNCC was that bridge between the antiracist movement for integration and the Black Power anti-colonial movement. And SNCC introduced the whole issue of Black power to the world. And I was a member of SNCC. And SNCC came under vicious assault, partially because of the Black power demand. And people were jailed, were arrested, came under attack, and what have you. You may remember at the time, Stokely Carmichael, as he was known, married Miriam Makeba, who was an extraordinary, internationally known artist.

AMY GOODMAN: Miriam Makeba, the great South African singer. That’s Omali Yeshitela, the chair of the African People’s Socialist Party and leader of the Uhuru Movement. He’s 83 years old. He’s due to be sentenced on Monday, after a Florida jury found him and his co-defendants Penny Hess and Jesse Nevel, known as the Uhuru 3, guilty of conspiring to act as Russian agents, but cleared them of actually doing so. That does it for our show. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.