Black Agenda Radio - 04.29.19

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: Mumia Abu Jamal speaks on the U.S. war against fellow political prisoner Julian Assange; a noted writer and anthropologist ponders why so many people that claim to be leftists can’t help bad-mouthing the Wikeleaks founder; and, a Black doctor in Canada says her profession is in denial about racism.

Black women are the fastest-growing part of the U.S. prison population, which gives new meaning to Mothers Day in Black America. In Greenville, South Carolina, the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination is part of a coalition that is raising bail money for Black women and girls facing incarceration. Malcolm X Center director Efia Nwangaza explains.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is locked away in a British jail, as he prepares to fight extradition to the United States. Assange was recently evicted from his sanctuary in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he had spent seven years. Black American political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal has spent 37 years incarcerated in Pennsylvania. He files this report for Prison Radio, titled “The Wars Against Assange.”

Maximilion Forte is a professor of anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. In a recent article, Professor Forte wrote that the U.S. campaign against Julian Assange is really a war against free speech. In addition to the U.S government’s vendetta against Assange, lots of Americans that claim to be part of the Left can’t seem to resist expressing their personal disdain for the whistleblower.

Recently on Black Agenda Radio, Black Canadian journalist Eternity Martis said a “health crisis” exists among Black people in Toronto, Canada, and that anti-Black bias in the medical profession is a big part of the problem. One of the doctors quoted in Martis’s article is Onye Nnorom, a community health specialist on the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto. Dr. Nnorom says the problem with Canadian health care is that doctors are in denial about racism.