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| Affiliation | No Party Affiliation |
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| Name | Omali Yeshitela |
| Address |
St. Petersburg, Florida , United States |
| Email | None |
| Website | [Link] |
| Born |
October 09, 1941
(82 years)
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| Contributor | RBH |
| Last Modifed | Juan Croniqueur
Apr 21, 2023 03:20am |
| Tags |
Black -
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| Info | Omali Ye****ela (born Joseph Waller, October 9, 1941, St. Petersburg, Florida) is a Pan-Africanist (Afrocentrist) American civil rights activist, founder of the Uhuru Movement based in St. Petersburg, Florida.
Ye****ela participated in the American Civil Rights Movement in his youth during the 1950s and 1960s as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. At the height of the civil rights movement in St. Petersburg, Waller was jailed for an act of civil disobedience in 1966, when he tore a mural in City Hall depicting degrading caricatures of African Americans. Waller spent two and a half years in jail and prison. After his release, he was stripped of his right to vote for decades until Governor Jeb Bush and three members of Florida's Cabinet restored his voting rights in 2000.
In his civic activism in his native St. Petersburg, Ye****ela has stressed his view that political and economic development will bring peace to African American neighborhoods.
Ye****ela came under national attention in October-November 1996 when civil disturbances in predominantly African American South St. Petersburg were triggered by the police killing of Tyron Lewis, an 18-year-old unarmed African American motorist. Ye****ela condemned the killing as the culmination of a long pattern of repressive and racist measures by the St. Petersburg Police Department in African American neighborhoods, and rallied support for the victim's family in the black community. As a result of the community outcry, the city came under federal scrutiny, leading to a meeting between Ye****ela and HUD Secretary Henry Cisneros, who was sent to the city by President Bill Clinton in answer to the disturbances. After meeting with the veteran civil rights leader, Cisneros warned the city council that the African American community's problems with the police were deeply rooted and that the demands of the community must be heard and called Ye****ela one of the most "admirable leadership figures" he had ever encountered. According to the former HUD Secretary, Ye****ela is "a person who touches lives in a serious way." "I found him a thoughtful person who had some important things to say," said Cisneros.
Ye****ela served on St. Petersburg Mayor David Fischer's Challenge 2001 Steering Committee and on the St. Petersburg Housing Authority's Hope VI Advisory Committee, two projects dedicated to attracting jobs and investment to South St. Petersburg. He has also chaired the political action committee of the Coalition of African American Leadership, made up of a number of black churches and civil rights groups in the area, and served on the board of radio station WMNF community radio. Along with eight other candidates, Ye****ela made a run for mayorship in February 2001. Although he did not make it to the runoff, he won every African American and mixed precinct but one in the entire city.
Ye****ela is also the founder of Citizens United for a Shared Prosperity.
The Uhuru Movement refers to a group of organizations under the principle of "African internationalism," or the liberation of Africans in both the continent of Africa and in the African Diaspora. 'Uhuru' is a Swahili word for freedom. The Movement is led by Ye****ela's African People's Socialist Party (APSP).
The APSP has formed several organizations, each with specific tasks and purpose. Affiliated organizations include The International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, African Socialist International, African Advocates for the Return of Slavery, African People's Solidarity Committee, and Burning Spear Productions, as well as others.
In May 1972, after his release from prison, Ye****ela founded the St. Petersburg-based African People's Socialist Party (APSP), a political party founded on an ideology combining black nationalism and socialism called "African internationalism." [2] Ye****ela later set up an organization for white people to join in solidarity with the APSP's goals, the African People's Solidarity Committee.
Later, the APSP formed the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement to work under the guiding principle that the only way for Africans to achieve liberation and self-determination is to struggle for an all-African socialist government under the leadership of African workers and poor peasants.
Ye****ela has also established the African People's Education and Defense Fund, which seeks to address disparities in education and health faced by African Africans, and Burning Spear Productions, the publishing arm of the APSP.
The APSP is affiliated with the African Socialist International, an organization Ye****ela helped establish that seeks to unite African socialists and national liberation movements under a single revolutionary umbrella in opposition to imperialism and neocolonialism.
Ye****ela has set up a coalition promoting reparations for slavery, arguing that African people worldwide are due reparations for more than slavery, but also over 500 years of colonialism and neocolonialism.
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