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Black August, a month-long period dedicated to Black freedom fighters and resistance against repression, comprises an opportunity to realize the revolution in day-to-day fashion. Originating as a practice founded by incarcerated Black folks in California--in remembrance of George Jackson and the many political prisoners who continue to struggle for self liberation--Black August has since spread across the country and across the globe. Observers are encouraged to study, fast, train, and fight, in preparation for struggle in all forms and facets; and time is spent in dialogue with and care of Black liberators.
Gabriel Johnson, an organizer with the All-African People's Revolutionary Party, Massachusetts Chapter, spent the month as a recent observer of the tradition and interviewed local Black Panther alum Ashanti Alston on the subjects of Black August, organizing with intention, and life-affirming praxis.
Ashanti Alston; image sourced from the Center for Place, Culture, and Politics at CUNY.
Gabriel Johnson: I’d like to start this interview, commemorating Black August, by asking: what does Black August mean to you?
Ashanti Alston: Well, the history of Black August starts with an acknowledgement that during the revolutionary periods of the sixties, revolutionary activism wasn’t just coming out of the black communities and the universities, but it was also coming out of the prisons. In the prisons, we had some amazing individuals who, for just the fact of being prisoners, were already written off by society. People had convinced themselves that incarcerated folks were there to be punished because they did something wrong. But because the revolutionary movements in the United States were growing so much, people began to question, “what function do any of these institutions serve?” So when it got to the prisons, it was becoming clear that prisons were being used to suppress and punish revolutionary movements.
The Black Panther Party also emphasized the role of the discarded peoples, the lumpen peoples, as having the potential to play a primary role in this revolutionary struggle; voices of people like George Jackson became more popular and more well-known, and gave hope to a lot of prisoners that they, too, can transform their lives like Malcolm inside, and come out of them prisons and join the revolutionary struggle. Out of all of that comes Black August.
A lot of significant events happened in August: Jonathan Jackson, George Jackson’s teenage younger brother, makes his attempt to help free his brother from prison [in August of 1970]. George Jackson's death a year later [in August of 1971], in his own escape attempt out of one of the California prisons [San Quentin]. Prisoners inside began to want to link those actions to other acts of resistance that happened during the month of August. And from that small effort, groups on the outside began to take that Black August idea on to make Black August a month of remembering that we always resisted, and that we must always continue to resist and fight back against systems of oppression. But it was also giving us the courage to envision the kind of societies that we want to live in. That was so contrary to the US Empire, the US Democratic way, because we began to see that this was bullshit. You know? So Black August became a growing movement in ways that anyone could take on, particularly in communities of color, to remind us that we're still an empire. We still gotta come out of empire, and we still gotta figure out how to resist. And in the very act of resisting, we are maintaining that belief that our best humanity can come forward and we can change this world on whatever level that we must carry the struggle. We must, we must maintain that kind of vision and belief.
GJ: What has Black August looked like in your circle of community?
AA: Because me and a lot of my comrades are out of the Black Panther Party and out of the Black Liberation Army, and many of us have done prison time, Black August becomes really important for us, because some of my community are still political prisoners. And at this point in 2024, many of those from the George Jackson days have transitioned. Many from the Panther days have transitioned. Many from the Black Liberation Army days have transitioned. But those of us who still are here, we participate in Black August at this point now as intergenerational participation, as the elders now; those of us who still survive, what ways do we give to those younger generations who still want to carry on the struggle? When Assata says to carry it on, to pick up the torch, then those of us who are still here, we want to honor our ancestors, who were our comrades, to pass on this torch to those younger generations who want to take this forward. It is important for us to feel like we are giving our best to these younger generations, to help them to develop a solid, invincible belief that we can win. Every generation, as Franz Fanon says, has to figure this out; every generation is on their own mission and must choose to accept or betray it.
We have to be convinced that we can win no matter how bad it looks. That's especially important for those of us from the Black Liberation Army, because in taking up arms and engaging in guerrilla warfare, it taught us some invaluable lessons. One of the most important lessons was to see that these systems of empire are still people carrying out imperialist functions, and they're not invincible. They're not gods; we don't need to fear them; the power of the people's struggle can bring them down. We can bring them to their knees, we can stop the operations of an empire. We can take this thing to its death bend so that we can be free. We can do what we set our minds to do. We can do what we mobilize our people to do.
GJ: I agree. Related to that last point on setting our minds and mobilizing, I wanted to mention the core practices of Black August: study, fast, train and fight. How do you engage or think about these intentional practices?
AA: I think with “study, fast, train, fight”... I get the point. Yeah. <laughs>, I get the point. I think that we need to not be so fixated on that, especially the training and the fasting part. What helps us is to use Black August as a consciousness raising thing, and to use these opportunities to begin to see each other more, to develop the kind of authentic relationships we need. Whether a person will actually fast or whether a person will actually train, for me it's neither here nor there. It can be good, but sometimes we can get fixated into that as a raw macho thing; and not everybody can do all these things like exercising and fasting, depending on their medical situation. If folks can't do it, let’s not get too caught up in it. Black August is a period where we say, “during this month we're going to connect for the purpose of liberation as remembrance and as visioning, we’re going to connect to break away from all the thoughts and behaviors that have held us back”. So that when we say we’re going to confront this monster, we know it's about confronting that monster. In this way, Black August can be every month, every day for the rest of our lives. Until we win. Until we win.
GJ: Until we win. I feel like I should share, because this was my first time participating in Black August with folks, we really focused on building relationships and on context. In thinking about the principle of fasting, for example, we had folks with us who had a hard time eating or who had specific medications or diets necessary for their health. So we reframed and thought more about intentionality than about dogma. The question for us became, how can we reorient so that our practices aren't so rigid that they leave people out–how do we make our practices adaptive to people's circumstances? While still practicing discipline–because if you're trying to practice things that are typically hard for you in service of struggle, to me that feels like you're getting to the core of black August. And we hoped the care and discipline reverberated out.
AA: I think what you just expressed are things I feel I have been learning over the years since being incarcerated. Because prison gave me a chance to reflect and to notice some of the things that were missing and the things that you're seeing now. The younger generation is picking up on some of the things that we could have done better, but you are already envisioning how to do them better, which is how it's supposed to go. We don't want to keep repeating the same thing. We don't want our best intentions to lead to us punishing each other, or making others feel bad if they're not doing a certain thing we think they should be doing.
Me being from the older generation, I can only look at this and say, “yes”. Wow. Our struggles, our efforts were not in vain. That's beautiful to hear, you know? Let's keep doing this. And you are choosing to include us. We've said in other spaces that we were so angry at the older generation in our time that we didn't even deal with 'em. We just discarded them. It was a mistake, but that's what happened. We are here now and, and we have these interactions where you're including us. So it is really a step forward.
We gotta keep reminding ourselves that we are people who were kidnapped from Africa, put into slave ships, brought over here, put into slavery. This is intergenerational trauma, and who we are got a lot of trauma in it. We can't just be as the books tell us to be, we can’t just do whatever they did in some other revolutionary struggle: our struggle has got to be really specific to our experience.
One of the things I liked about the Black Panther Party’s take on Marxism was that the Black Panther Party said it has to come through the black experience. That has to be how we use Marxism. That will help us to shape a struggle specific to ours. 'Cause no other struggle is like ours. And that'd be the same whether you're dealing with the Irish struggle in Ireland or the struggles going on in Africa. Everyone has to deal with their specifics.
GJ: What are lessons you’ve learned about organizing with intention that you would want folks to take with them?
AA: Maybe more than the intellectual analysis, focus on the practice. Sometimes we get caught up in the intellectual world, but the practices help to make the intellectual work valid, or real.
And: we have to bring everything that's life-affirming into the picture. The intentionality for me is: what are the little things that we do on the day-to-day, on the face-to-face, that is building authentic relationships that are liberatory.
I think the last thing is I want y'all to continue to teach me and to challenge me, to help me to be as much help I can be towards you in taking the struggle forward to the next level. I am not that ego-driven person that feels like because I'm the elder, because I done been through all this stuff, that I need to be your leader. I'm not your leader, <laughs> don't ask me to lead nothing. Don't put me on no fucking pedestal. I feel great when you take me as I am and realize that I am just like you. And we can make this happen. We can be free. Right on.
GJ: That's perfect. Well, thank you so very much for your time, Ashanti; I’m hoping for many more conversations and for staying in community together. For real. It's been a life-affirming conversation for me. I will say that.
AA: Right on. I feel the same. Thank you.
Ashanti Alston (he/him) was a member of the Black Panther Party (Plainsfield, NJ chapter) and the Black Liberation Army; he is now a Steering Committee member of the National Jericho Movement, a writer, and an anarchist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Support his transition to new housing via this crowdraiser.
Gabriel Johnson (he/him) is a 23-year-old in the belly of the beast, painting a clear portrait. He’s an organizer with the All African Peoples' Revolutionary Party, a public health worker, and a dedicated New Bedford, MA resident; he's fighting as hard as possible for sumn' holier than this.
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