Black Agenda Radio - 05.17.21

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: Much of the radical activist sector of Black America is gearing up for an international tribunal in October, that will indict the United States for its many crimes against humanity. The US puppet states Uganda and Rwanda have caused the deaths of at least six million Congolese in recent decades, but Washington blames Congo’s troubles on Islamic extremists. The problem with that rational is, very few Muslims live in the Congo. And, we’ll have a report on the systematic poisoning of a small Black town in Florida.

 

But first – The lop-sided war between Palestinians and their Zionist occupiers has spread to the streets of Israel, where Arab citizens have taken to the streets. For an overview of the fighting in Israel and the occupied territories, we spoke with Sara Flounders, a longtime activist with the International Action Center, in New York City.

In October, a commission of jurists from =around the world will convene in the United States for an International Tribunal on US Human Rights Abuses.  The organizing campaign leading up to October is called “In the Spirit of Mandela,” and was kicked off with a Webinar featuring Jihad Abdulmumit, a former Black Panther political prisoner and current co-chair of the Jericho Movement.

The United States is trying to blame the ongoing slaughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Islamic fundamentalist jihadists – despite the fact that hardly any Muslims live in that country. Kambale Musavuli spent years organizing in the United States. He’s now back in his native Congo, and working as an analyst for the Illinois-based Center for Research on Congo-Kinshasa. Musavuli says its not Muslims, but the US-backed governments of Rwanda and Uganda, that are to blame for the death of six million Congolese. 

The mostly Black town of Tallevast, Florida, was a poor but hard-working community where most of the families owned their homes and found ways to educate their children. But the water, land and people of Tallevast were poisoned by industrial polluters, including some of the biggest names in the military-industrial complex. James Manigault-Bryant is a descendant of one of Tallevast’s founding families. Dr. Manigault-Bryant is now a professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. He wrote a recent article for the Boston Review, titled “Poisoning Tallevast.”