Many of our organizations stress the necessity and tout the benefits of establishing Pan-Afrikan Unity, but too few actually do anything to bring that unity about. Perhaps the reason for this is that we have become jaded and cynical after having seen so many attempts to build this unity fall apart.

Honorable and laudable organizations from the National Black Independent Political Party (NBIPP) to the Umoja Party, from the US Organization to Kawaida, from the Organization of Afro-American Unity of Ancestor Malcolm X to the Black Panther Party and so many others, have made heroic efforts to bring people of Afrikan descent together in something akin to a Pan-Afrikan United Front. I have personally watched efforts in recent years to build alliances such as these start strong but then ultimately fail in places such as Baltimore, Maryland where I live.

Perhaps the problem is that we enter into these types of alliances and coalitions with an impractical understanding of what unity would look like in a truly grassroots-democratic setting. We all agree that people of Afrikan descent need to be unified, but we often seem to believe that we, and we alone, are the best leaders for such an alliance or coalition. Thus we begin with ideas of “unity” that are based more on competition than on cooperation. This approach almost ensures that someone’s viewpoint will be ignored, marginalized or discarded, and thus compromises efforts at building unity.

What we need is a type of structure that would help ensure the inclusion of multiple perspectives and thus would facilitate the creation of a true Cooperative Coalition. This is where the “Spokes of the Wheel” concept comes from.

We’ve developed a video, based on an automated PowerPoint presentation, that discusses how the “Spokes of the Wheel” concept works.  That video is currently being re-edited and re-worked to incorporate some new ideas (at least new to me).  When the video is completed, we will include it on this page.  In the meantime, we invite you to check out our written description of the “Spokes of the Wheel” concept.