Ashanti Alston

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Ashanti Alston

Ashanti Alston Omowali is an anarchist activist, speaker, and writer, and former member of the Black Panther Party. Even though the party no longer exists, Alston sometimes refers to himself as a Black Panther, and sometimes as "the @narchist Panther", a term he coined in his popular @narchist Panther Zine series. He was also member of the Black Liberation Army, and spent more than a decade in prison after government forces captured him and the official court system convicted him of armed robbery. Alston, like most anarchists, disputes the moral issues of property and terms his activity in the BLA "bank expropriation". Alston is the former northeast coordinator for Critical Resistance, a current co-chair of the National Jericho Movement (to free U.S. political prisoners), a member of pro-Zapatista people-of-color U.S.-based Estación Libre, and is on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies.

Since 1999, Alston has produced four issues of the zine, "@narchist Panther Zine" (the name being a reference to, again, his current affiliation as an anarchist, and his past membership in the Black Panther Party). Alston has identified himself as a black anarchist as well as a postmodern anarchist.

Alston rejects traditional anarchist dogma and says "Every time I hear someone talk about my people as if we are just some "working class" or "proletariat" I want to get as far away from that person or group as possible, anarchist, Marxist, whatever" (Beyond Nationalism, but Not Without It). Opponents of this perspective within the Anarchist People of Color camp insist that opposing authority yet placing the needs of people of color above others represents racism, and that black nationalism would mean using force to exclude people based on the color of their skin and is utterly incompatible with anarchism. Also pointed out is that one cannot deny a "white nationalism" if one is to have a "black nationalism" and thus it is best that neither exist. While Alston supported a nationalist position in the first issue of his publication, it was a far milder version of the position Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin has taken and Alston cannot be seen as totally supporting nationalism or trying to purge anarchism of "non black people".

Recently, Alston has adopted a supportive position towards the animal rights movement and has developed a friendship with animal rights political prisoner Andy Stepanian of the SHAC 7. Alston was the keynote speaker at the Grassroots Animal Rights Conference in March-April 2005 at the Holyrood Church in New York City, and was a contributor to the anthology Ignite the Revolution: Voices in Defense of Mother Earth, edited by Tony Nocella and Steven Best (AK Press) and at the 2nd annual Animal Liberation Philosophy and Policy Conference at Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY. (April 2005).