Photo: Omali Yeshitela speaks at an anti-NATO demonstration on March 18, 2023. Credit: Vince Tsai.
This week, the trial began for three members of the Uhuru Movement falsely charged by federal prosecutors pushing the bogus “Russian interference” narrative. Omali Yeshitela, Penny Hess, and Jesse Nevel were indicted last year in a brazen attack on the right to speak out against imperialist U.S. foreign policy and racist injustice. The trial is taking place in Tampa, Florida and is expected to last several weeks.
This sham trial is unfolding just as the Justice Department, State Department, and intelligence agencies — working with obedient corporate media outlets — are launching an obviously coordinated campaign to build up the false narrative that Russia, China and Iran are carrying out a massive plot to influence the outcome of the election. These lies serve to justify an aggressive U.S. foreign policy intent on deepening the new Cold War.
The arguments being presented in court would be laughable if they were not attached to such vicious persecution. Prosecutors are using an old trick employed every time there’s a witch hunt against people fighting for change. They are citing long-standing beliefs held by the targeted organization, arguing that those views coincide with the interests of a foreign power, and then drawing the baseless conclusion that the targeted group is advocating for their positions because theyi were told to do so by that foreign power.
In the case of this trial, the Justice Department is citing protests held in 2016 against the genocidal policies of the U.S. government towards Black people and the organization’s opposition to the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. The government and the corporate media wants us to believe these activities were the result of a Russian influence operation, even though they are reflective of political positions the Uhuru Movement has held for decades!
The logic here is absurd. Prosecutors said that this was a plot to “turn neighbor against neighbor”. By this reasoning, every time Black people protest against racist oppression, that means they are contributing to “divisions” and therefore doing the bidding of Moscow! Or take the war in Ukraine for instance. If being opposed to a conflict the U.S. government is starting with another country means that you are automatically suspected of being an agent of that country, then it becomes effectively impossible to criticize U.S. foreign policy at all.
This is part of a decades-old racist trope that assumes that Black people standing up for their rights must in fact be puppets of a foreign power. The Civil Rights Movement, for instance, was constantly being smeared as an invention of the Soviet Union. This bogus allegation was the basis for government surveillance and other acts of repression against the movement.
We demand that all charges against the Uhuru 3 be dropped immediately. No to the new McCarthyism!
