Black Agenda Report Editor and Columnist, Ajamu Baraka, recently gave a presentation at the 4th International Conference “Palestine: The Nation’s Central Cause.”
Text From Video Presentation by Ajamu Baraka, Black Alliance for Peace’s North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights
March 11- 14, 2026 in Sana, Yemen
For those of us from the Black Alliance of Peace, we are honored to be able to participate in this gathering of fighters, of organizers on behalf of Palestine, but on behalf of the peoples of the world.
But let us provide a context and understanding of this historical moment, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the imperialist Armada holds the rain more terror on Venezuela, the ice gestapo, terrorizing citizens and non-citizens in the streets of the United States of America has finally stripped away the mass of US and Western civilizational superiority revealing the rotten core of a civilization that never was.
They are and never were western values beyond their commitment to dominance, violence and plunder.
Today, for the people of the world, there is no confusion.
We are clear. This world is not governed by law but by power, not by justice, but by empire, not by the equal worth of human life, but by the permanent hierarchy of lives.
With Gaza, what we see is not the breakdown of the liberal order, but the order as it is, naked, unashamed and violent, an order built on conquest, on slavery, on genocide, an order built on theft, theft of land, theft of labor, theft of life, and now that order has spoken clearly, some lives matter, some lives do not. Some deaths are crimes, some deaths are policy.
And those who claim the right to decide are the same forces that have always ruled - the colonial powers, the settler states, the managers of global plunder, now calling themselves the guardians of civilization.
But let us be clear, fascism, which is a concern in the West, is not new, it is not a deviation. It is not an accident. Fascism is colonialism turned inward.
Fascism is capitalism where it can no longer lie. Fascism is empire without manners. It was practiced for centuries on the bodies of the colonized in Africa, in the Americas, in Asia, in Palestine.
As it did in the 1930s in Italy and in Germany, it returns back to the Metropole wearing new uniforms, waving new flags, but carrying the same logic, dominate or destroy.
And today it governs the world. It governs through bombs instead of ballots, through sanctions instead of laws, through starvation, instead of diplomacy, through fear, instead of consent, the Security Council has been captured not by chaos, but by intention, not by a project of permanent war, permanent domination, permanent Inequality, permanent death.
These are the values that have captured the Security Council, and we are told to call this order. But the peoples of the world feel it in their bones that this order is dying. This order is exhausted. This order is dangerous, and from its ruins a question arises, who will shape what comes next, not states, not empires, not corporations, not anyone, but the people themselves organize with the vision of a new world.
The peoples, the dispossessed, the exploited, the colonized, the surplus, the unwanted, those whose lives have been treated as expendable must now stand at the center of history, and that is why Palestine and Venezuela are not Just places.
Palestine is a mirror. Venezuela is a line in the sand. Both are verdicts on Western Civilization. In Palestine we see the old world clearly. Its racism, its violence, its lies, its terror, its moral bankruptcy. And in Palestine we see the new world struggling to be born, carried by people who refuse to disappear, the children who go to school under drones, the medics who will still run toward the bombs, the mothers who will still love in the face of annihilation, the fighters who still resist.
When the world tells them to surrender, they are not only fighting for land, they are fighting for meaning. They are fighting for dignity. They are fighting for the future. And so must we.
We must tear down the lies. We must break the silence. We must refuse the normal, we must reject the terms of this dying world order. We must build a politics, not of fear but of solidarity, not of Imperial nations, but of liberated peoples, not of profit, but of life.
And let us say, without apologies, Palestine will be free. Venezuela will maintain its self-determination, not because history is kind, but the people are brave, not because power will allow it, but because resistance will force it.
Transformation of ourselves and the world will come when we face and we free ourselves from Empire, from white supremacy, from capitalism, from the long nightmare that began in 1492.
This is not a moment for neutrality. This is not a moment for comfort. This is not a moment for caution. This is a moment for alignment, a moment for courage, a moment for choosing sides. We choose life, we choose liberation, we choose the peoples, and we will not stop.
No compromise
No retreat
Palestine will be free.
Ajamu Baraka is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report. He is the Director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights and serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the U.S.-based United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC).
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