The Declaration of Interdependence

The Declaration of Interdependence

When a people has been scattered by design and denied the means to stand as one, and resolves at last to gather itself by its own hand, a decent respect for the judgment of the world requires that it declare plainly who it is, what it holds to be true, and why it acts. We declare it now because, for the first time in our history, the means exist to make it real: digital and decentralized networks that join a people across every city, artificial intelligence that can organize, teach and build at a scale no movement before us could reach, and open, tamper-proof records that no one can burn or erase. What our ancestors could only dream, we can now fully realize. We make that declaration here.

The United Black Network State is a human-focused, Black-centered network state, founded by Black people for the advancement, protection and unity of Black people in America and around the world.

By Black people, we mean all people with origins in any of the Black peoples of Africa who identify as Black: Black Americans, Black people of every nation, the Black peoples of Africa itself, and all Black people who share in the history, experience and struggle of the African diaspora.

What we mean by Black-centered is this: we begin with Black people, and from that center we extend outward, ring by ring, to help all who share our mission. Should the outer rings ever fall away, through lost support, upheaval or crisis in the world, the center holds. Black people are that center, and that center will never be traded away, diluted or abandoned. We are neither separatist nor isolationist; we are centered.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that every human being is born equal in dignity and worth; that every people has a right to its own culture and to the history of its ancestors, and that what was taken from us by design we have the right to restore; that a people has the right to unite, to organize, and to provide for its own; that no people can be free while it depends entirely upon others for its safety, its sustenance and its future; and that any lawful union among free people draws its authority from the consent of its members, freely given by oath and freely withdrawn by departure. We claim for our people, in full, the unalienable rights that the Declaration of Independence of the United States proclaimed for all, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, together with the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States and the basic human rights, cultural rights among them, recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These rights are not granted by any ruler and cannot be taken by any ruler. The Constitution of the United States, where we begin, and the laws of free nations everywhere protect the freedom to speak, to assemble and to associate, and we exercise those freedoms in full.

Our goal is twofold. First, to repair the culture and infrastructure of Black Americans, a people whose ancestral languages, nations and traditions were deliberately severed, and who, though rich in culture, have long been denied a cohesive and unified one. The United Black Network State gives us the structure to stand as one. Second, to build that foundation so strong that it inspires organization among every disenfranchised people of the world, giving rise to a multicultural alliance of network states. The end we seek is an interdependent, coexisting society that accounts for all who have gone unaccounted for.

It is founded in the United States of America, where our roots run deep and where we helped build the nation. Although we begin our mission at home, our intentions are global. Our mission continues the efforts for civil rights and human rights, and it stands with minorities and disenfranchised communities around the world, with open arms to all who share it and with Black people at its center.

What we build will be held securely, defended strategically, and safeguarded against anyone who would attempt to infiltrate it, sabotage it, or burn it down. This time, it is built to last.

The history of Black people in America is a history of repeated injury and of unity broken by design. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

We were taken from our homelands in chains, and our nations, our languages and our names were stripped from us.

We were forbidden by law to read and to write, and the drum that called us together was silenced.

Our families were sold apart, husband from wife and child from mother.

When we were freed, the savings we entrusted to a bank chartered by Congress were lost to its collapse.

The land we bought with our own sweat was taken from us by fraud, by force, by discrimination in the very programs meant to help us, and by the forced sale of what our families held in common.

Our towns were burned, our people killed, and no one was punished for it.

Our right to vote was denied by poll taxes, literacy tests and terror, long after it was written into the Constitution.

Our people were lynched by mobs while those sworn to protect them looked away.

Our neighborhoods were marked in red and refused the loans that built the American middle class, and then cut apart by highways.

Our organizations were spied upon, and a federal program was set in writing to prevent our unity and the rise of any leader who could unite us.

Our leaders were discredited and struck down, and evidence of the truth was hidden for generations.

Our bodies were used without our consent: men left untreated for disease for forty years, and women sterilized without their knowledge.

Our sons and fathers were drained into prisons by laws that fell with a heavier hand upon us, and the records that followed them closed the doors to work, to housing and to the ballot.

These facts are established in the public record, in the findings of courts, commissions and the Congress of the United States, and are set out with full citation in our founding white paper, Why We Were Scattered.

In every generation we petitioned for redress. We petitioned in the courts, in the streets, at the ballot box and in the halls of Congress. We won emancipation, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and many victories besides, and we honor every one. Yet laws can open doors; they cannot by themselves make a scattered people whole. The unity that was broken by design has never been restored by petition alone. It must now be rebuilt by our own hands, and so we build it.

We pick up where our heroes left off: Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells; Marcus Garvey, Fred Hampton, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.; and the freedom fighters of every oppressed people who stood up and refused to be erased. Too many to name, never to be forgotten. They carried us this far. We carry it forward.

Africa is our Motherland, the universe is our horizon, and the Earth is our turf, because every human family on it began in Africa. America is the Homeland where we begin, the home our people built. It is only right that we start where we have the greatest ability to create change. We take pride and ownership in the efforts of our ancestors, who gave their blood, sweat and tears to build the most powerful nation in the world. Black America is a people forged on this soil. We do not forget the atrocities, but we also do not forget the incredible progress made through the sheer will and resilience of our people. With voting rights inside the world's most powerful nation, more than a trillion dollars in spending power, a freedom movement that the world studied, and a culture the whole planet sings, this is where it starts, and it belongs to Black people everywhere. We stand with the entire African diaspora.

We claim what we built. The United Black Network State exists to lift what our people built and turn it into a fully realized state of self-reliance. In this new and permanent state of existence, we will benefit from what we build consistently, predictably, and free from an exclusive dependency on others.

We operate under the laws and protection of the nations in which we reside, never apart from them. The United Black Network State unites the mental, the spiritual and the physical: a shared consciousness and a digital infrastructure, applied to the practical needs of our communities through problem-solving, service and community development. It resides in the minds and spirits of Black people, operates on decentralized digital infrastructure in keeping with the direction of the modern world, and is made manifest in our neighborhoods. We shall grow city by city through local chapters, community help centers, real estate acquisition, mutual aid and crowdfunding and, in time, establish towns of our own, in the United States and abroad, in accordance with the laws of each nation where we build. Should the global climate one day permit, the Network State may seek formal recognition among the nations of the world. This provision is made in anticipation of a changing world, so that our people remain protected, prepared and competitive.

To reach that goal, our mission serves in three directions: Black-centered, minority-focused, and international.

Black-centered. At its heart, our mission is to end the loss of unity among Black people by creating structures and systems that are predictable, consistent and lasting, for the advancement, protection and sovereignty of our people.

Minority-focused. The nations we live in are diverse, and the world has long been shaped by migration and the mixing of peoples. The injustices inflicted upon minority, mixed and disenfranchised communities across the world are grave and ongoing. We stand as an ally and a support system to these communities, and we welcome them alongside us.

International. We accept our responsibility to the whole human family, which began in Africa. Across the world, deep disparities persist in wealth, opportunity and infrastructure, and war, famine, displacement and other preventable tragedies continue to claim innocent lives. The rise of artificial intelligence and new digital law threatens to intensify these issues, but it also holds the power to level the playing field as never before. We commit to harnessing these technologies and advancements, in collaboration with experts in every field, to close those gaps for people worldwide: to bring education, opportunity, infrastructure and a fair share of the new economy to communities long left behind. Wherever human suffering can be prevented, we will lend our voice, our organization and our resources to prevent it, to relieve those who endure it, and to protect innocent life. And we commit to a voice in where humanity is headed, on this planet and beyond it.

For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the strength of our ancestors and on the Creator, the universe, or whatever higher power each of us holds, we mutually pledge to each other our labor, our talents and our sacred honor.