by Comrade Anjana
All my adult life I’ve wanted community, especially as a colonized person (person of color) who grew up in the u.s. with parents who did their best to assimilate. While I was able to go back to India every once in a while, back in amerikkka I wasn’t among people who looked like me. Rather I was surrounded by white people, people who didn’t understand me, my culture, people who could never say my name correctly.
All my adult life I’ve wanted to organize. I’ve always wanted to help others but I’d known enough insufferable activists to know that I didn’t want to be one of those people. I didn’t want to be special, all I wanted was to do the work of liberation. The only problem was I didn’t know how. That is, until I found Black Hammer.
I learnt about Black Hammer in early 2020 and followed them on Twitter. All was well. Until around May when Commander in Chief Gazi ruffled white leftist feathers with the #2BFrank campaign which pointed out that colonized people were taught about one white Jewish girl but weren’t taught about colonized girls who had suffered at the hand of colonialism. I could get behind that.
I wasn’t sure what to think. On the one hand I wasn’t Jewish so I thought I couldn’t have an opinion on what was “anti semitic”. And yet, I understood the point of the campaign. Still, I didn’t want to be labeled “problematic” by angry people on Twitter, so I shelved the idea of joining Black Hammer which I had been on the verge of doing. I didn’t “cancel” the organization, but I put it in the back of my head.
A few months later in September 2020. Chief Tea posts in a Facebook group I’m in about a Black Hammer rally. I bite and comment on the post. We talk via text and then later on the phone.
I bring up the Anne Frank thing and my questions. I am reassured that Black Hammer is anti-white power, not anti Jewish. I learn that their largest project, Hammer City centers Indigenous perspectives. When the chief tells me the four principles of unity (which includes equality based on religion) I wholeheartedly agree with them. At this point I figure why not check Black Hammer out?
Now it’s October – I’m writing this as a new Black Hammer member and I couldn’t be happier. In less than a month I have made connections with colonized comrades who have given their time and knowledge without question. I am in leadership roles despite being a new member. Most importantly, I believe in the work that I, no, we, are doing. While I still have contradictions to overturn, liberalism to counteract, I have had support the entire way.
Will Black Hammer mess up in the future somehow? Of course, it’s always possible, but what I do know is that this organization is by and for the poor and working class colonized people of the world. This organization makes me feel smart, capable and heard, things that most people and positions in my life haven’t done. And if Black Hammer does mess up then we will mess up, struggle and fix the issue together.
Ultimately I’ve realized that joining an organization such as Black Hammer will help all colonized people of the world, but it will also help me reconnect with my cultural history, and more especially, the history of anticolonial liberation. If you’re a colonized person and you, too, are looking to get involved with people like you who care about your struggles, don’t let anyone hold you back – join us!
Land Back!
photo credit: ascaf on
