The Vesey Republic Estate Parliamentary System

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Afrofuturism

02.26.2024

In April 2022, the New Black Nationalist Network (NBN) launched its project to create a governance model for a future majority-Black-led nation-state on North America's continental land mass.

As a self-contained guild of vision holders, NBN was formed in 2018, to provision the Black Nationalist movement with analytical and theoretical products. While NBN resources the Black diaspora writ large with news and thought documents, our circulating concern is supporting the founding of a sovereign Black nation-state within American Empire's metropole.

Today, New Black Nationalists are pleased to announce on June 19, 2024, our release of a novel parliamentary government model for a future Black nation-state. The release will be in conjunction with the 158th observance of the Juneteenth celebrations.

Named to honor Denmark Vesey, the former slave who planned the most extensive slave rebellion in American history in Charleston, South Carolina in 1822, NBN will propose the creation of the Vesey Republic's Estate Parliament system of government.

Vesey's Estate parliamentary model affects a radical departure from America's dysfunctional presidential-based constitutional republic system and a bold modification of the United Kingdom's Westminster system.

Vesey's Estate Parliament system creates a unicameral and unilateral parliamentary republic that fuses legislative, executive, and judicial functions in one governing body. The First Prime Minister as the leader of the majority party or majority governing coalition is both the head of state and head of government.

As such, the architecture of the Vesey's Estate Parliament is built on the foundation of parliamentary sovereignty as the supreme law of the republic. Simply put, Parliament can enact or repeal any law it chooses--it can make or unmake any law at any time.

No person, body, or court has the authority to override or set aside the legislation of Parliament except one: the voice of the Commons expressed in a national referendum on the seminal questions of the day.

If the Prime Minister's majority government cannot maintain the support of the people and the majority of Estate Parliament members, a vote of "No Confidence" can be called and the Prime Minister's government may be removed by a simple majority vote.

Thus, the Estate Parliament is politically supple enough to respond to contingency, while at the same time vibrating to the algorithms of its Commons who will be engaged participants and not mere spectators in the project of building a new society.

To establish a legal framework for its government, articulate the principles that will guide the creation of its institutions, establish the rules that will regulate the operation of its organs, allocate power to its different branches, provide mechanisms to resolve disputes, and create procedures to amend its administrative conventions, the Vesey Republic will be governed by an uncodified constitution.

Instead of one all-embracing single-source rigid document like the U.S. Constitution, an uncodified constitution will be comprised of multiple sources of law and authorities. These sources may include our Charter of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, written laws and statutes carried over from the British and American Empire's rule, traditional Black and African customary practices.

An uncodified constitution provides the Estate Parliament with the flexibility and fluidity to maintain an agile forward-leaning government that is intimately tethered to its citizens and responsive to their needs.

As proposed, the Vesey Republic is a unitary state, with a majority Women-Led Autonomous Region that will be imbued with extensive legislative and economic autonomous powers. Such are the general tenets of Vesey's governance Theory of Elasticity.

The proposed Vesey Republic governance model, its political project, and its theory of governance signal the arrival of the Fourth Wave of historical Black Nationalist movements. The molecular structure of Black Nationalism's genealogy identifies and builds on the organic cultural, and historic accomplishments of the following three waves.

1st Wave - 1850s-60s: Martin Delaney's praxis and articulation of Black self-determination in his publication of The Condition, Elevation, Emigration, and Destiny of the Colored People of the United States, Politically Considered (1852).

2nd Wave - 1919-1928: The post-First World War and Russian Revolution era. The African Blood Brotherhood and Harry Haywood's theory of the Black nation-state and designated homeland in the Black Belt South was adopted by the 6th Comintern in 1928 in Moscow.

3rd Wave - 1962-1969: The evolutionary collaboration of Max Stamford (Revolutionary Action Movement), Malcolm X, Imari and Gaidi Obadele, Queen Mother Moore, Betty Shabazz, and Robert Williams to form the Provisional Government-Republic of New Afrika in 1968 in Detroit.

The 4th Wave is marked by Black Nationalists' response to American Empire's precipitous decline and rising authoritarianism that threatens to collapse the federal government. The election of an authoritarian white nationalist president in 2016, and the subsequent armed January 6, Barristers Coup at the U.S. Capital to seize power ushered in a new pre-revolutionary period.

Black Nationalists are now operating in a three-dimensional battlespace where a compromised government and the social dislocation caused by attempts from various forces to seize political power may create political vacuums and ungoverned spaces we can convert into a nation-state, independent city-states, and autonomous regions of larger sovereign bodies.

A substantial minority of mostly white Americans and the Republican Party no longer consider elections as a reliable or legitimate means to democratically select the countries' political leadership. Indeed, elections are a nuisance in their view, as our laws.

The new order of the day is the partisan rejection of election results won by the adversary party, fomenting armed insurrection against the certified winners, and race-based replacement theory to substitute civil war and secession as legitimate remedies to resolve political differences.

Legally, America's "constitutional" republic is on the precipice of reverting to Europe's medieval "Trial by Battle," doctrine. The doctrine first introduced during the Norman's 1066 invasion of England asserts the outcome of war rather than the rule of law determines the legitimacy of state sovereignty. In the case of the Civil War, the Union's military victory proved secession was illegal.

Desperate to ensure the Union's battlefield victory wasn't the last word on the legitimacy of secession, Confederate President Jefferson Davis was charged with treason by federal authorities. He was never prosecuted. Presiding over the Texas v. White case in 1869, Supreme Court Chief Justice Salman Chase crafted a dubious ruling that held Texas never ceased being a state during the Civil War because secession was illegal. His theory of the "Indestructible Union" raised more questions than provided answers regarding the illegality of secession.

In today's threat environment marked by the Civil War's historical precedents, it would be irresponsible for Black Nationalists not to offer the Black Commons an alternative path to Democrat's corporately managed sham democracy and Donald Trump's attempt to impose an authoritarian American Apartheid system on the country by any means necessary.

Moreover, Black Nationalists are obligated to provide the Black Commons with analysis, recommendations, and theoretical tools to navigate the impending constitutional crises, a possible government collapse, and the breakup of the country into a concert of sovereign states. Not to do so rejects the historical precedents set by free and enslaved Blacks during the 1776 Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

During those existential conflicts, some cohorts of Blacks fought on the side of the U.S. Continentals. Others shouldered arms with the British Redcoats to win their freedom and safe passage to Canada, Trinidad, London, and Sierra Leone to establish free communities and nation-states.

For all these reasons, developing a plan for governing a future Black nation-state is both relevant and urgent. The elections are eight months away. Trump's MAGA forces have been planning and preparing for regime change the past three years.

The Vesey Republic's Estate Parliamentary model will spell out the essential elements of the new governing model.

-- The distribution of government powers

-- The relationship of government institutions to each other

-- The limit on the government's powers

-- The rights of citizens and residents of the Women-Led Autonomous Region

-- The role of ballot initiatives and referenda

On Juneteenth 2024, New Black Nationalists will present its final draft of four foundational documents to establish a government structure of a future Black nation-state. Rough drafts of these documents were previewed on the site over the past year. They have been withdrawn from the site for final preparation and will be reposted on Saturday, June 8, 2024, in advance of the Juneteenth 2024 observance.

--The Declaration of Independence

--The Charter (Bill) of Rights

--Vesey Estate Parliament Model

--Women-Led Autonomous Region

In the interim period, the following two documents will remain accessible on the site. We encourage our visitors to review them.

What New Black Nationalists Believe

Governance Theory of Elasticity

Beyond enumerating the articles comprising the fundamental law outlining the exercise of political power and the rights of its citizens, New Black Nationalists will drill down on its governance Theory of Elasticity.

What principles will guide the Vesey Republic and serve as the foundation to develop a sense of national purpose and identity? What social policies and public goods will be derived from Vesey's government for individuals, families, and communities? What considerations will factor into the Vesey Republic's national defense and national security portfolio?

From now until Juneteenth 2024 and beyond, New Black Nationalists will continue to provide essays and thought papers on the vital issues raised by our nation-building project to create the Vesey Republic. On March 1, 2024, we will begin posting all discussion and thought documents on these subjects on the Vesey Republic of Letters page.

These matters and others speak directly to our vision of who we are, what we aspire to be, where we want to travel, the path to get there and our rendezvous with destiny as the journey's terminus. The Black Commons are deserving of the most visionary, energetic, and serviceable program to build a new majority Black-led republic and non-heteropatriarchal nation-state.