By Editor-in-Chief Mase
Land Back, My name is Chief Mase. Editor-in-Chief of the Black Hammer Times & we are here with Secretary-General Anco. Can you tell us a little about yourself and Black Hammer Organization as a whole?
Hello everyone, I am the Secretary-General of the Black Hammer Organization. My name is Anco, and I represent the Mapuche people. Black Hammer is an anti-colonial international revolutionary organization. That is around the world, and we’re dedicated to building dual power for colonized people as well as returning land back to all the Indigenous people.
Black Hammer’s largest project is building a dual contending power. Can you tell us how Hammer City fits into this, and who Hammer City will be governed by?
Absolutely, so Hammer City, I think there’s a lot of misunderstandings about it. Hammer City is going to be a means to an end to build a dual power, but it’s important for us to realize that colonized people need their own land, their own space, their own modes of production in order to advance an anti-colonial struggle any higher.
And so the people that would be governing Hammer City would be most notably our land liberators, which I am a part of, and is an Indigenous stewardship that would oversee the land, the use of the land, the treatment of the land, and what could be built onto the land.
Black Hammer is all about returning the land to Indigenous people. And this is one of the very first material steps that we can actually make. We need our own center of control in order to advance an anti-colonial struggle to that next level. And I think there’s some common misunderstandings like it’s just Hammer City and that’s it, which is definitely not the case.
Can you discuss how Hammer City isn’t some leftist commune but colonized people building a micro-nation?
Yeah, absolutely. So, colonized people do not have the luxury of escaping colonialism or have the ability to actually isolate themselves away from colonialism. It’s that just being a colonized person you’re already looted. You’re already part of that colonial system; that’s something that you can’t remove yourself from by simply, you know, going off into the woods and isolating yourself from the rest of the world.
That’s certainly not what Black Hammer is. It’s about building a micronation, building a dual contending power, a spot where colonized people can have dictatorship over their lives, labor, and their resources and have some semblance of control to, again, advance an anti-colonial struggle to that higher level, where we can return all of the land back. At this point in time, it is not correct for us to say that Hammer City is Hammer City, and that’s it. It is simply a step into advancing that anti-colonial struggle to that next level.
I know this hits close to home Secretary-General Anco, but can you take a moment to discuss how the level of Colonized Unity shown by a project like Hammer City would have made a material difference not only in the lives of countless Colonized people but your own life as well?
I’m from Mapuche land in southern Chile. And my people have been in a consistent struggle for our land for hundreds of years, whether that was from the Inca Empire, Spanish Inquisition, the Chilean state, or the amerikkkan empire. It’s been a consistent struggle, and it’s just been the Mapuche fighting for the Mapuche.
But having and knowing now what colonized unity can actually bring, a strength that, you know, an individual people can’t have by themselves. We’re still colonized, and we’re still under oppression, and we tried fighting just for us, for our land. Now, I think it’s so important to actually build that unity, to bring everyone together, and to link all of our struggles. The Empire is in crisis right now, and there’s all these little fires starting to pop up right now. And if we just leave them as little fires, with just the people who are being affected by them being the only ones who are aware and the only ones who know, you will lose again. It’s so important now to build unity with the entire world’s struggle and advance anti-colonialism in that way. Had that been the case for my people, my people would have had dictatorship over their lives, land, labor, and their resources.
Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. And because that didn’t happen, I was stolen from my people, brought here to the empire in the form of what is called, you know, international adoption, which I argue is now a form of international human trafficking; you can’t remove Indigenous peoples, strip them of their name, their language, their spirituality, and most importantly, of their land, and not call it anything else.
So again, like having a project of Hammer City, a spot where all Colonized people can link all of their struggles, and have some semblance of control, to help advance anti-colonial struggle around the world; that is powerful. There has been nothing like that around the world. Never has there been the ability for all of us to link all of our struggles so intimately together and to recognize that this is a global problem, that the boot of colonialism on my neck is the same boot of colonialism on the people of Africa, is the same boot on the people of Asia, the same boot on South America and Turtle Island. It is the same boot. It was the same historical event of Colonialism that had caused us all of this pain. And because that is the root, all Colonized people must unite against Colonialism.
There have been accusations from the white left of Black Hammer being a cult or a Black nationalist organization. Can you answer these accusations? Is Black Hammer a Cult? Is Black Hammer a Black nationalist organization?
No, no, no, no. All of those are no. Black Hammer is not a cult, and Black Hammer is not a Black nationalist organization, although shout out to the Black nationalists of the world; however, that is not how our organization moves. We are an anti-colonial mass organization for Colonized people all around the world. If you’re a Colonized person, you can be a part of this organization. What these white leftists are seeing is unity in action and democratic centralism, and the revolutionary science of socialism, and what they fail to understand is that we have four principles of unity that guide everything that we do. That’s how we remain unified. That’s how we get things accomplished.
These heinous accusations of Colonized poor working-class people coming together as a cult is absolutely absurd, and this claim often gets thrown at our Commander, Gazi. However, Commander Gazi is not the only elected leader within this organization and does not have unilateral control over the organization. We have seven other elected officials and underneath them are other appointed leaders that run committees and ensure that the work gets done. The Commander-in-Chief does not have unilateral control over this organization, and we do not worship or believe in anything other than our own liberation and our own freedom. So no, we are not a cult, and we are not Black nationalists.
Lastly, why is building a dual contending power for Colonized people so powerful & what does that look like?
Building a dual contending power is very important for Colonized people. As we’re seeing right now, between the virus, climate change, the economic depression, things are collapsing quickly as the Empire’s crumbling. It’s important for colonized people to start building things. Things are going to get violent very soon. I cannot sugarcoat that. We’re already seeing the violence all across the country. And this isn’t our fight to fight. These are settlers fighting for a settler state and settlers fighting for a more settler state. That’s not a battle for Colonized people.
What building a dual contending power looks like in action is our own education systems, our own health care systems, our own defense, our own food, all of that in the control of Colonized people, under the control of Indigenous people of this land and of other lands all around the world. It’s so important now for us to have some semblance of control; right now, there are massive evictions, mass death, mass violence, there’s nowhere for Colonized people to go. During this whole process, Black Hammer takes a lot of inspiration from the Haitian Revolution of taking a step back and letting the settlers fight it out while we’re taking care of our own people, while we’re building up our own defenses, while we’re building up our own strengths. Right now, climate change is going to devastate large swaths of land throughout the country, and this empire is going to be in a crisis that it’s never seen before.
We can’t rely on what is currently built right now to save us in any meaningful way. And so many revolutionaries before Black Hammer and the Black Hammer Organization have talked about this. The need to build our own systems. The Black Panthers had their own breakfast program as a way to take care of their own people, their own program of sickle cell testing to take care of their own people.
That is the same thing that we want to do, but on an international level, and to learn from our ancestors that did not succeed.
We’re still oppressed, we’re still under colonialism, and we have to be real about that. But we have to try again. And that’s why we want to build a dual contending power. This empire is crumbling and is weakening; we’re on the cusp of a world war, Civil War, climate collapse, all of this. And right now, it’s so important for Colonized people to look inward and build for ourselves, not for the plantation.
Closing: Thank you for your time today Secretary-General Anco,
Land Back!
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