Page 128 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Comparing the African American and Oromo Movements
Ethiopia. Fleeing from Ethiopian state terrorism, these internal refugees hide in the
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bush and in remote villages. Democratic discourse has been used by the government
and its international supporters to hide the state terrorism and the massive human
rights violations.The emergence of war between Ethiopia and Eritrea in May 1998
and the intensification of the guerrilla-armed struggle by the OLF and other libera-
tion organizations have created a very dangerous condition for the Oromo and other
colonized peoples.
Similarities and Differences Between the Two Movements
The specific interplay of several social, structural, and historical factors in the global
capitalist system affected the emergence and development of the two movements: the
inability of the slavers or colonizers to completely control or crush the human spirit,
individual and collective resistance to colonial or racial/ethnonational domination,the
immortality of certain cultural memories, economic and political changes, urbaniza-
tion and community formation, the emergence of an educated class, politicized col-
lective grievances, and the dissemination of social scientific and political knowledge
through global and local networks.The development of these movements cannot be
adequately understood without linking them to ideological formation and cultural re-
vitalization, institutional and organizational manifestations, and alternative knowledge
production and dissemination.
As slavery and racial segregation destroyed most African American cultural ele-
ments for almost two and a half centuries, Ethiopian settler colonialism and its insti-
tutions have facilitated systematic and organized cultural destruction and repression of
Oromo culture for more than a century. Cultural destruction and repression have oc-
curred in these two societies to deny free cultural spaces and political voices that are
essential to create and build institutions that can facilitate autonomous social develop-
ment.A free cultural space is an “environment in which people are able to learn a new
self-respect, a deeper and more assertive group identity, public skills, and values of co-
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operation and civic virtue.” The White slave owners and American institutions dur-
ing slavery and American society during racial segregation imposed White cultural
domination on African Americans.As a result,African Americans were denied access
to state power and prevented from having institutions during slavery, except for a few
freed Blacks in Northern cities.After slavery ended between 1863 and 1865,they were
also denied access to the American government and other public institutions as well
as private institutions until the 1960s. However, they were allowed to have separate re-
ligious, economic, cultural, and educational institutions during the American
apartheid.These institutions laid the foundation of African American nationalism.
Ethiopian colonialists and their institutions, with the support of the imperial inter-
state system, have attempted to destroy Oromo cultural identity by denying Oromos
the freedom of having their own cultural institutions and developing an authentic
Oromo culture.While dismantling Oromo cultural, religious, and governmental insti-
tutions, the Ethiopian colonizing structures established the nafxanya-gabbar system
(semislavery), garrison cities, a collaborative Oromo class, and colonial landholding. 79
Oromo economic resources were expropriated by the Ethiopian state and its agents;
Oromo institutions were destroyed or suppressed and lost their economic and politi-
cal significance.As a result, Oromos lost their decision-making capacity and were si-
lenced. They were prevented from organizing themselves on central, regional,