Black Agenda Radio - 07.31.17

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: Donald Trump’s enemies are happy that his administration seems to be falling apart at the seams, but Black political scholar
Anthony Monteiro says it’s not just Trump, but the whole capitalist imperial system that is in crisis; and, we’ll hear from an organizer with the New African Black Panther Party.

But first Four years ago, President Barack Obama gave the CIA authorization to arm and train Islamic jihadists to overthrow the government of Syria. Last month, President Donald Trump announced that that the covert CIA proxy war program in Syria has been cancelled. The Trump administration has also concluded agreements with Russia for ceasefires in several regions of Syria. We spoke with Ajamu Baraka, the veteran human rights activist and 2016 vice presidential candidate with the Green Party who has been busy pulling together a Black Alliance for Peace.

In recent years, and especially since the election of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party has equaled and often eclipsed the Republicans in their fervor for war. Few people would have predicted that the Democrats would become more warlike than a right wing Republican like President Trump. Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar based in Philadelphia, says the U.S. ruling class and its political system are in crises, and Donald Trump is just a system of the decline.

The original Black Panther Party for Self Defense has been defunct for decades, but its ideological children are still organizing, including within the U.S. prison system. The group called the New African Black Panther Party has established chapters in and outside the prisons. One of the party’s prison chapter co-founders, Kevin Rasheed Johnson, has been repeatedly transferred from penal facilities in Virginia, Oregon, and Texas, as the authorities try to curtail his organizing activities. Fellow party members recently lost track of Johnson, who seemed to have disappeared into the vast American prison gulag. Two weeks ago, Johnson’s comrades located him in a Florida prison, where was being held in solitary confinement. Black Agenda Radio producer Kyle Fraser spoke with Tito “Fist” Rivera, another co-founder of the prison chapter of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party. He says the Party has formed an interracial alliance.

And that it’s for this edition of Black Agenda Radio. Be sure to visit us at BlackAgendaReport.com, where you’ll find a new and provocative issue, each Wednesday. That’s www.BlackAgendaReport.com. It’s the place for news, commentary and analysis, from the Black Left.