Black Agenda Radio - 02.24.20

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Bail has been abolished for some offenses in New York State, but people held on one dollar bail find it hard to get out of jail; A Black professor says Emmet Till and Trayvon Martin both died on the alter of white womanhood; and, Mumia Abu Jamal makes some comparisons between 21st century poverty and the Great Depression.

Most people think of environmental damage as having to do with pollution of the air and water. But Willie Wright, a professor of geography and African American Studies at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, says the landscape can also be damaged by using it to commit or conceal acts of violence against Black people. Professor Wright wrote an article for a radical journal on geography.

New York is one of several states that have abolished cash bail, which has been used to keep poor people locked up before they’ve even been convicted of a crime. But it’s often difficult to get out of jail, even if the bail is set at only one dollar. Amanda Lawson is a student at New York University and a co-founder of the Dollar Bail Brigade, whose volunteers have helped hundreds to navigate the jail bureaucracy.

Fifty seven years transpired between the murder of Emmet Till by white racists in Mississippi, and the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, in Florida. But Angela 

Own-WATCH-ee, a professor at Boston University School of Law, says both Black teenagers were killed for much the same reasons. Professor Own-WATCH-ee wrote a paper for the Dubois Review, titled “From Emmet Till to Trayvon Martin: The Persistence of White Womanhood and the Preservation of White Manhood.”

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, sees parallels between low paid workers today, and during the Great Depression. He files this report for Prison Radio.