By Comrade Toussaint

August 27, 2020

UNITED STATES: As Minneapolis rises up again and the Kenosha incident has the “Left” grappling with the necessity to strengthen discipline and organization in light of the proliferation of reactionary lone wolves and militias seeing people’s demonstrations as target practice, several progressive and New Afrikan athletes have walked out on wildcat strike, refusing to play any games or participate in tournaments. The Milwaukee Bucks refused to play Wednesday night’s game against the Orlando Magic, who also walked off the court. Eventually, all playoffs games scheduled for Wednesday night were cancelled. New Afrikan athletes made it clear that their labor under nearly all white ownership will not go on as usual while their people are being murdered in the streets.

The majority of players are from working class/semi-proletarian background, much like George Floyd and Jacob Blake. Their national consciousness is not washed out by their celebrity status, except in extreme cases of capitulation and joining the comprador bourgeoisie class, such as Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. These athletes recognize that they are Black, first and foremost, and sports players second. This is extremely important because the NBA’s collective bargaining agreement forbids strikes, making this action technically illegal. What is words on paper when lives are consistently being stolen?

All thinking New Afrikan people, progressive and revolutionary alike, realize that there has been a war ongoing against us for 500 years. Many of us have diverging and different views about how to end this war. We have marched, sat-in, prayed, and abided by the enemy’s laws for long enough, and things have not gotten better, they have gotten worse, and will continue to do so until we collectively unite under the leadership of a revolutionary Maoist Party heading a strong United Front and People’s Army to exact people’s justice against our murderers, our exploiters, and those who make our lives a living hell. Only through revolutionary war can we end reactionary war. Every day, contradictions are shifting and changing.

This wave of wildcat strikes by some of the most famous New Afrikan celebrities in the country is only the beginning. Soon, undoubtedly, we will see the call for New Afrikan workers of all sorts to begin withholding their labor. Robert F. Williams wrote in Crusader that we as a people could bring this country to its knees, because we are situated at key junctures in the economy. We can’t do this alone, however, which is why unity based on class across oppressed nations is important. We must unite with Chicano, Puerto Rican, Hawaiian and other Indigenous workers along with diasporic communities such as overseas Filipinos to win our war and struggle always for the destruction of this imperialist nightmare.