Episodes
Monday Feb 29, 2016
Black Agenda Radio – 02.29.16
Monday Feb 29, 2016
Monday Feb 29, 2016
Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and
analysis from a Black Left perspective with host Glen Ford and his
co-host, Nellie Bailey.
– There is turmoil this presidential primacy season, in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Dubois Scholar and veteran activist who helped put together a national conference on the Black Radical Tradition, this January, in Philadelphia, says the Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump campaigns reveal a crisis in the duopoly political system.
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Students, teachers, parents and community members in Detroit are gearing
up for a city-wide strike to defend the public schools, which have been
pushed to the brink of bankruptcy after 17 years of management by the
state. Among the leaders of the protests is Steven Conn, the elected
president of the Detroit teachers’ union, who was deprived of his seat
by the union’s national leadership. Conn says Michigan Governor Rick
Snyder and his appointed emergency financial managers are hell-bent on
destroying public education. Their current plan is to divide the Detroit
school system in two.
- A new study shows that Teach for America, or TFA, which has been a leading force in the charterization of the nation’s public schools, enjoys a special relationship with school systems in Atlanta, Chicago, New Orleans and New York. The lead researcher for the study is Jameson Brewer. He says Teach for America collects finders fees to provide school systems with novice teachers, and protects them against lay-offs, while traditional teachers are pushed out of the profession.
- The Alliance for a Just Society has released a new report titled “Jobs After Jail.” The problem is, there AREN’T many employment opportunities for ex-offenders, partly because former prison inmates are prohibited by law from working at literally hundreds of jobs. Allyson Fredericksen was one of the authors of the report.
- As a lifelong activist, and a veteran journalist and educator, Dr. Charles Simmons takes the long view. Simmons spoke last week to a meeting on Black Men in Unions, at the Institute for Labor and Community Studies, in Detroit.