Episodes
Tuesday Aug 28, 2012
Black Agenda Radio - Voter ID Law - 08/28/12
Tuesday Aug 28, 2012
Tuesday Aug 28, 2012
Eric Holder’s Lack of Balls is Not the Problem The Justice Department’s failure to bring criminal charges against Goldman Sachs is not due to the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder “has no balls,” as Matt Taibbi recently wrote in Rolling Stone, said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Rather, Holder “isn’t going to do anything that President Obama doesn’t like. These guys all depend on money from very wealthy people to get President Obama re-elected.” Instead of personalizing the issue, said Dr. Williams, “we need to concentrate on the systemic nature of the problem: our system is basically corrupt.” Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Could Turn November Election “They know that the number of people that do not have photo ID is almost the same population by which the president lost the state” in 2008, said State Representative W. Curtis Thomas, Democrat from Philadelphia. The GOP-backed photo ID legislation, recently upheld by a Republican Commonwealth judge, has the potential to “make or break the election,” said Thomas. Voter Impersonation Fraud Virtually Non-Existent The fraudulent voter behavior that photo IDs are supposed to prevent hardly exists in the real world, according to an exhaustive study by the journalism research organization News21. The study found only 10 cases of voter impersonation in all of the country over the past ten years, said News 21’s Corbin Carson, a masters degree candidate at Arizona State University. That represents “roughly one out of every 15 million registered voters,” said Carson – an “infinitesimal” number. South African Government “Opportunism” Led to Massacre of Miners When Jacob Zuma succeeded Thabo Mbeki as head of the African National Congress and president of South Africa, many assumed it would mean “a shift to the left and redistributionist policies…but that hasn’t happened,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston. Meanwhile, Zuma’s extended family is “feasting” on government contracts, symptomatic of “opportunism” in the ANC. Hopefully, the ANC will conduct an “inventory” of its policies and do some “self-criticism” in the wake of the police massacre of 34 miners. American Christian Right Spreads Homophobia in Africa “Homosexuality has been part and parcel of African history,” said Dr. Kapya Kaoma, author of a report on the U.S. religious Right’s campaign to spread anti-gay hysteria throughout the African continent. “The laws against homosexuality in African came with western colonialism,” yet U.S.-based Christian groups try to tap into African anti-colonial sentiment by claiming that liberals in the West have exported homosexuality to the continent, said Dr. Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia.
Tuesday Aug 21, 2012
Black Agenda Radio - By Any Means Necessary - 08/20/12
Tuesday Aug 21, 2012
Tuesday Aug 21, 2012
Texas Ten Percent Admissions Plan “Model for Country” Texas provides a “model for the rest of the country” for boosting the numbers of Black and Latino students in state colleges, said Shanta Driver, of BAMN, By Any Means Necessary. BAMN filed a friend of the court brief supporting Texas’ policy allowing admission to state colleges of the top ten percent of each high school graduating class. “You don’t need an elaborate maze of criteria” to integrate higher education, said Driver. The ten percent plan works because it eliminates “all of the common variables that are used to make it much more difficult for Black and Latino and poor white students to gain admission into their state’s flagship universities.” “Blow the Whistle” on Stop-and-Frisk On September 13, the Stop Stop-and-Frisk movement will blow the whistle on police abuse in New York City, “figuratively and literally,” said spokesman Carl Dix. “People will gather with their whistles and cameras and be on the lookout for cops violating someone’s rights, and when they see it, blow the whistle to draw a crowd,” said Dix. “We are no longer going to accept this kind of abuse in silence.” NAACP Called “Irrelevant” The national and state offices of the NAACP have “sold out” to the Whirlpool corporation’s attempts to turn mostly Black Benton Harbor, Michigan, over to developers, said Rev. Edward Pinkney, the longtime president of the local NAACP. Pinkney publicly burned his NAACP membership card, on Sunday. “We have given them a free pass because of what they did 40 years ago,” said Pinkney, who claims more than 800 others joined him in burning their NAACP cards. “They’re just a shell of what they used to be.” The Myth of “Progressive” Media Since the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement issued its groundbreaking Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People, earlier this summer, it has met a wall of silence from media outlets and personalities that are generally considered “progressive,” said Rosa Clemente, co-author of the report. “Whether it is MSNBC or Michael Eric Dyson, Rev. Sharpton or Mellissa Harris-Perry…Democracy Now, The Nation, In These Times – they haven’t covered it either,” said Clemente. “They don’t want to deal with the issue of race and systemic violence. They don’t want President Obama or his Justice Department put on blast” in this election year.” Conference on Black-Led Development The Uhuru Movement holds a conference to “Empower African Communities Through African-Led Development,” in Washington, DC, on October 13 and 14. The conference aims to “expand our knowledge base and skills base to the Caribbean, Africa and South America – wherever African people are,” said Ayesha Fleary, of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project. The project operates agriculture enterprises in Houston, Washington, and Oakland, California, and a nursing school in Sierra Leone, West Africa. “Whoever controls your food, controls your life,” said Fleary.
Tuesday Aug 14, 2012
Black Agenda Radio - Elections, Eritrea - 08/13/12
Tuesday Aug 14, 2012
Tuesday Aug 14, 2012
Elections and Black Power On August 18 and 19, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparation holds its national conference in Newark, New Jersey, under the theme: Obama, the Elections, and the Struggle for Peace, a Better Life, and Black Power. “We’re going to take it away from simply a discussion around Obama and place it in a context of elections in a capitalist system: What are they about, who funds them, and their role” under capitalism, said Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela. “This is something that the movement at-large hasn’t done since the Civil Rights era, when there was an assumption that elections were the way to gain power for Black people.” Prison for Poor People In a practical sense, debtors prisons are a reality in America, say two Birmingham, Alabama, lawyers who have defended hundreds of people thrown in jail by private companies for non-payment of fines and fees. Companies contracted by localities to handle probation “services” pile on fees that often “exceed the amount that the person can afford to make payments,” said Atty. Lisa Borden. In many cases, people who are jailed are charged additional fees to pay for their incarceration. Atty. William Dawson, who brought suit against many Alabama cities and towns, said: “The fact that this has gone on for six or eight years throughout the South and other parts of America is outrageous.” The Philadelphia Plan: Marginalize Blacks Philadelphia pubic school authorities want to close at least 40 schools and convert 40 percent of remaining classrooms to charter operations. The plan was financed by large corporate interests. “There’s big business in moving us out of the way,” said Rev. Alyn Waller, pastor of the city’s Enon Tabernacle Church. “We need to recognize that there is a larger strategy, here, to disenfranchise and marginalize people in the African American community. U.S. Persecutes Eritrea The northeast African nation of Eritrea, which fought a 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia, “is on America’s hit list,” said Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report executive editor. The U.S. pressured the UN Security Council to renew sanctions against Eritrea, even though a monitoring group found no evidence that the country had assisted Shabab resistance fighters in Somalia over the past year. Especially in Africa, said Ford, Washington’s policy is “to create chaos and horrific human suffering in those regions it cannot directly control.”
Tuesday Aug 07, 2012
Black Agenda Radio - Counterintelligence - 08/07/12
Tuesday Aug 07, 2012
Tuesday Aug 07, 2012
Don’t Depend on Obama “Whatever happens in November, our job doesn’t change,” said anti-racism activist Tim Wise, author of Dear White America: A Letter to a New Minority. “The symbolic value of a Black face in a high place does not necessarily translate into structural change.” A mass movement is necessary to force elected officials to address social issues, “because they are not going to do it in and of themselves.” COINTELPRO Never Ended The government’s Counter Intelligence Program of the Sixties were never shut down, said Larry Pinkney, former Black Panther and political prisoner. The Feds continue to plant provocateurs in activist ranks. “It’s the oldest trick in the book,” said Pinkney, “and the reason it has consistently worked ism we’ve got too man ‘sheeple’ out there who are about to find themselves in a situation where they have no Constitutional or human rights.” Offshore Trillions Measuring the global elite’s offshore cash stashes is “like estimating the size of a black hole,” said James Henry, author of Tax Justice Network-USA study titled “The Price of Offshore, Revisited.” Between $21 trillion to $32 trillion is hidden from tax collectors, said Henry, a former chief economist for the McKinsey consulting group. Developing nations are actually net lenders to First World countries, “to the tune of $11 trillion, which is exactly opposite the way global capital markets are supposed to function.” Africa at Crossroads “The African Union has proven itself incapable of resolving armed conflicts” in Libya, the Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau, said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. South Africa, the sub-Saharan powerhouse, is key to continental security. “It’s either get South Africa off the sidelines or invite in the United States or some outside power – and, obviously, the latter is too ghastly to contemplate.”
Tuesday Jul 31, 2012
Black Agenda Radio - 07/31/12
Tuesday Jul 31, 2012
Tuesday Jul 31, 2012
New Report Blasts NYPD Repression of Occupy Movement New York City police used “aggressive, unnecessary and excessive force” in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement protests that began last September, said Sarah Knuckey, a New York University law professor and co-author of a new report that details 130 separate incidents of police abuse. Police violence was directed “not only at protesters, but also against bystanders, independent legal observers and, particularly, journalists.” The report asks Mayor Michael Bloomberg to initiate an independent review of police behavior over the last ten months, calls for creation of an independent inspector general’s office to oversee NYPD, and demands accountability for past abuses. If the city fails to respond in good faith, said Prof. Knuckey, the U.S. Justice Department will be asked to intervene. A consortium of law schools plans to issue additional reports on police treatment of Occupy demonstrators in other cities. Rich Hide $21 to $32 Trillion Offshore A study commissioned by the Tax Justice Network-USA shows the global financial elite have stashed between $23 trillion and $32 trillion in secret offshore accounts. “Governments are losing all of this potential revenue that could be used to provide basic services and to stop all the cutting of jobs all over the world,” said network executive director Nicole Tichon. “Conservatively,” tax revenues from the hidden funds “could range anywhere from $190 billion to $280 billion, which is a little more than twice the amount” that the world’s rich countries spend “on all overseas development aid.” Obama Fails Federal Workers of Color The Obama administration has “turned a deaf ear” to minority federal employee’s complaints of racist abuse, assaults, rapes and beatings in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Lawrence C. Lucas, president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees. “This administration has failed, and failed miserably,” said Lucas, who was interviewed on William Jones III’s Internet radio program, Wake Up New Orleans. “How can people go to the polls and vote for people who, when you ask them for help, you’re talking to deaf ears.” Big Business Takeover of Philly Schools “It is very clear that businesses are beginning to have more to say about what happens in the schools than the parents” in communities of color in Philadelphia, said the city’s teachers union president, Jerry Jordan. The Philadelphia School Reform Commission has targeted at least 40 public schools for closure, and plans to turn 40 percent of classrooms over to charter schools, despite studies that have shown “the vast majority of charter schools” in Pennsylvania “are not doing as well as the neighborhood public schools.” The transition plan was drawn up by a corporate consultant firm from Boston, and paid for by the William Penn Foundation and the local United Way.“ Black Radio Has Gone Corporate “I think the term ‘Black radio’ no longer applies, except to say that there are Black people on the radio, and there are a couple of Black people who own some stations, but for the most part Black commercial radio acts pretty much the same” as general market media, said veteran broadcaster Davy D, host of the syndicated daily show Hard Knocks Radio. White listeners share the same complaints about constant repetition of “top ten” songs, as Blacks. Davy D and other media activists sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, requesting an investigation into Black-oriented radio’s accountability to the Black listening public. Boycott Hyatt Hotels Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) has joined the global boycott of the Hyatt hotel chain. “Hyatt has really taken a low-road path,” contracting out much of its work force as temporary employees, said IWJ executive director Kim Bobo. “These perma-temps are paid minimum wage or just a little above, they have no vacations, no sick days, no health care.” UNAC: U.S. Hands Off Syria The United States and its European allies are attempting to “get ahead” of the Arab Spring by destabilizing the regime in Syria. “To claim that this is a humanitarian intervention is thoroughly false,” said Chris Gauvreau, of the United National Anti-War Coalition. “The so-called humanitarian intervention in Libya was a disaster, leading not to democracy but to another elite regime characterized by odious policies including racism against Black Africans.”