DHORUBA AL-MUJAHID BIN-WAHAD

Dhoruba Bin Wahad, age sixty-three, is a former Black Panther Party leader from New York . Once a Black Political Prisoner in the USA for nineteen years Bin Wahad is a long time Pan-African activist, writer, and lecturer. Born to parents from the Caribbean and Southern United States, Bin Wahad was raised in the Southeast Bronx and Harlem. Once a South Bronx gang leader (Torch) and a fledgling creative artist, Bin Wahad's social and political consciousness developed during the cold war era in an America deeply polarized by institutional racism.

Characterizing himself as a “victim of public school education”, Bin Wahad is mostly self-taught, with only two years of college under his belt, he has always viewed academic pursuit as tool enabling social activism – not as end in itself. For Bin-Wahad, to pursue education is to train for the liberation of African people and humanity in general– for Bin-Wahad social practice is the criteria of a valid education. Refusing to be sucked into the standard western educational system, which he defines as an “elitist system of mental engineering which teaches people what to think rather how to be better people”, Bin Wahad has engaged scholars internationally on issues of racism, role of European history and culture in global underdevelopment, and the politics of modern nation-states for over two decades. His radical and often controversial analysis and essays has provided unique insights into white supremacy among Black and Third-World students and critical recognition of his unyielding revolutionary activist intellectualism and historical analysis has impressed Progressive intellectuals from Professors Howard Zinn to Dr. Cornel West, in fact Bin-Wahad's street activist history has informed his politics scoring begrudging recognition from less than revolutionary traditional Civil Rights and Black activist religious leaders of his “no snakes allowed” Pan-African analysis. Currently, Bin Wahad resides in West Africa where he is researching and writing his memoirs, as a freelance consultant, Bin-Wahad often coordinates expatriate Pan-African liaison work for the African Diaspora.

Bin Wahad on several occasions has appeared before United Nations commission on Human Rights and its commission on Decolonization as a non-governmental organization representative. He has participated in and help organize several International forums on Political Prisoners and American human rights violations. Bin Wahad, a Muslim, is also involved in conceptualization of a Pan-African Refugee and Relief Foundation , capable of channeling the talents and resources of the African Diaspora into an aid agency for refugees and displaced persons in Sub-Saharan Africa. Having worked with scores of civil war refugees in West and central Africa seeking asylum in the United States and elsewhere, Bin Wahad is now an advocate for the establishment of an all-African international relief agency under the auspices of the African Union.

As a writer Bin Wahad's writings have appeared in numerous publications from the “Covert Action Bulletin” to a number of anthologies featuring African-American activist writers. He has written in several editions of the ground breaking intellectual publication “Black Scholar”, collaborated with Mumia Abu Jamal, and Assata Shakur on the book, “Still Black Still Strong”. He continues to write for various Black publications and weekly newspapers. His writings have been published in African and Middle-Eastern newspapers. Bin Wahad's experiences were featured in two award winning documentaries “Framing the Panthers in Black & White” and “Passin' it On”. Both videos are available for viewing and are currently on file at the Schaumburg Museum of African History in his native, New York , PBS Archives and the W.E.B. Dubois Center for Pan-African Culture, in Ghana , West Africa . Bin Wahad is also a regular commentator on local West African talk shows and has extensively toured the UK and Europe speaking before Human Rights groups, anti-racist organizations, and at various progressive forums. As a contributing correspondent to Pacifica Radio station WBAI's African Kaleidoscope , Bin Wahad has provided timely insight into current affairs on the African continent from a Pan African perspective. In recent years, Bin Wahad has also acted as an unpaid consultant to various grass root Civil Rights campaigns in the United States.