Black Agenda Radio

Black Agenda Radio - 12.01.14

Ferguson Creates Crisis for U.S. Rulers

“This government is on edge,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. “This government has an incredible quandary in dealing with the re-emergence of Black people in this ‘post-racial’ situation that’s supposed to be defined by the presidency of Barack Obama.” White people are on edge, too. “There’s no editorials being written about the fact that white people are arming themselves to the teeth in the whole Missouri area,” said Yeshitela. “It’s a crisis of great magnitude and they have no idea how to deal with it.”

Black America Must Appeal to International Allies

“At the end of the day, if this epidemic of police killings is” to be halted, “we are going to have to appeal to the international community,” as did Blacks of past generations, said Dr. Gerald Horne, historian and professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston. “It’s no accident that RT in Moscow, CCTV in China, Telesur in Venezuela, Prensa Latina of Cuba, and Press TV of Iran have been much more incisive” on Ferguson “than many of our local and domestic outlets.” Horne was interviewed on the Real News Network, as was Kevin Alexander Gray, the Columbia, South Carolina activist and author. “What needs to change is the ability of police on the street to invoke the death penalty without due process,” said Gray. Ferguson cop Darren Wilson “got a lot of due process; Michael Brown got none. What’s gonna happen is, people are going to have to rethink what self-defense means in this country, in light of giving the police such unfettered power.”

Mumia: Ferguson Enters Pantheon of Black Pain

“The name Ferguson joins an ancient line of place names of pain, loss and Black death – places like Birmingham, Philadelphia and, now, Ferguson,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. In a report for Prison Radio, Abu Jamal said that some Blacks will seal away the memory of Ferguson, while “others will grow in radicalism, convinced that this case is the very epitome of racist injustice.”

Rev. Pinkney Promises “Breaking News” Before His Sentencing

Facing 25 years in prison following his conviction on charges of tampering with an election recall petition, Rev. Edward Pinkney “promises” to have “breaking news” before he is sentenced on December 15. The Benton Harbor, Michigan, community leader said he was “shocked” that he could be found guilty by an all-white jury “with absolutely no witnesses.” Police officer Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri, “murdered a boy with witnesses. Here, they’re about to send me to jail for the rest of my life with no witnesses, with no evidence at all,” said Pinkney, age 65. He promised revelations that will blow the case out of the water.

Obama’s Secret Afghan War Extension

Weeks before the November elections, President Obama secretly extended the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan through the end of 2015. The president’s conduct holds no surprises for author and anti-war activist David Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.Org. “Obama has been given credit for six years for ending a war that he tripled in size,” said Swanson. “This is his war, far more than George W. Bush’s, in terms of death, destruction, injuries, refugees, money spent, time spent – and he’s gonna keep it going.”

Black Agenda Radio - 11.24.14

Cornel West and Bob Avakian Dialogue at Riverside Church

The nation’s foremost Black public intellectual shared the stage with the head of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) at New York’s historic Riverside Church. RCP leader Bob Avakian, an atheist “to the bone,” said: “The movement I envision is one in which people like Cornel and myself can walk together on the road of revolution and emancipation, uniting in struggle to bring about a world in which there will no longer be a wretched of the earth.” His “Christian revolutionary” interlocutor, Dr. Cornel West, of Union Theological Seminary, told the crowd: “This is a unique historical moment. Why? Because, historically, Black rage has always been the central threat to the status quo – not because Black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or beauty, but because when Black folks wake up, all people who are subordinated and dominated can get in and wake up.”

Roadblocks to Community Control of Police

Activists have been trying to set up civilian boards to oversee police for almost 50 years, with only limited success, according to Larry Hamm, chairman of northern New Jersey’s People’s Organization for Progress (POP). “States must confer power on such boards, such as subpoena powers,” said Hamm. Would effective controls on police get through the state legislature in New Jersey and elsewhere? “I would dare say it would not. It’s gonna be a bumpy road.”

Who Keeps Track of Killer Cops?

The Black community lacks even the capacity to keep track of abuses committed against it by police departments across the nation, said author and activist Kevin Alexander Gray, of Columbia, South Carolina. “In the past, the NAACP in local areas was the place to report police abuse,” said Gray, an editor of the new book Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence. “Some organization needs to take on that role again. The way things are now, if a person has a complaint against the police department they’ve got to take it to – the police.”

Haitians Protest Life Under Occupation

Thousands demonstrated in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, last week, fueled by a variety of grievances, said Ezili Danto, of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. “They were asking for an end to the U.S. occupation, behind UN guns and private military subcontractors; they were asking that the militarized, Ferguson-like police stop killing the people; and they were asking for mock elections not to continue in Haiti, but for real elections to be held.”

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Black Agenda Radio - 11/03/14

Black Agenda Report Celebrates Its 8th Anniversary

The internal struggle over political direction is a “primary struggle” for Black America, said Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford, at BAR’s anniversary celebration at New York City’s historic Riverside Church. Many activists understand the threat posed by “the capitalist state,” but are unclear about “how we deal with a Black Misleadership Class which acts in collaboration with the powers-that-be,” said Ford. “For example, four out of five members of the Congressional Black Caucus this summer voted to continue Pentagon transfers of weapons and military gear to local police departments.”

U.S. Wages War on Blacks

“I’m a revolutionary because I came to the conclusion a long time ago that America and capitalism and imperialism have no redeeming qualities at all,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations and an honored guest at the BAR affair. “Twice a week a white policeman kills an African in this country,” according to the FBI’s own data, said Yeshitela. Yet, “somebody wants to convince us that Barack Hussein Obama represents some kind of progress in the struggle of our people. It is nonsense.”

Free All Political Prisoners!

Lynne Stewart, the people’s lawyer who served 28 months in federal prison for the crime of zealously defending her client, was an honored guest and speaker at BAR’s anniversary. “Is the ice beginning to crack” under the pressures of a growing movement against the U.S criminal justice system? “I sure hope so, because I dedicated the rest of my life to fighting for prisoners, and particularly, for political prisoners,” said Stewart, who was incarcerated at Carswell federal prison, in Texas, until her release for treatment of breast cancer, last New Year’s Eve. “I told the women at Carswell, never give up. Fight, fight, fight!”

Obama and Holder Uphold Status Quo

“The first Black president and attorney general hold their positions precisely because they have no intention of rocking the boat or changing the status quo,” said BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley. The corporate media are spreading Justice Department “leaks” that a grand jury does not have enough evidence to indict the Ferguson, Missouri, cop that killed Michael Brown. “The narrative has changed from ‘hands up, don’t shoot’ to ‘Brown had it coming, he deserved it,’” said Kimberley. “Their hope is to poison the well of public opinion and dampen expectations of Black people that anything resembling justice will come about.”

Eject the Police from Black Communities

Whistleblower, author and BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman Adebayo said U.S. police forces are direct descendants of pre-Civil War slave patrols, and Black people should view them as such. “Would it really be a surprise that 92 percent of all arrests in Ferguson and 83 percent of all arrests in Washington, DC, are of Black folks, carried out by 21st century slave patrols,” asked Adebayo? “When will we begin to demand that these communities come under some kind of receivership until they can develop their own system of civilian protection? Because, we need to get rid of the police in these communities, immediately.”

Sellouts, Old and New

“Our Black political class has made an historic deal with the devil,” said Bruce Dixon, BAR managing editor. Booker T. Washington and his ilk “agreed that there would be no disturbing of the economic and social peace for at least a generation or two” – a betrayal that elevated them to Black leadership at the turn of the 20th century. “The current Black leadership class has a deal that they will not challenge capitalism, they will not acknowledge apartheid in Israel, they will not question America’s imperial wars,” said Dixon. “They put all their eggs in the basket of electing Black faces to high places.” Does Ferguson represent a new movement? It depends on whether young activists are able to organize alternatives to the current Black political class.

The 500-Year Continuum of White Supremacist Violence

“It was the conjoining of race and violence that resulted in the hegemony of the West,” said Ajamu Baraka, a BAR editor and columnist and former director of the U.S. Human Rights Network. “So, for us, Ferguson is not something that is unique. What makes Ferguson different is that, for the first time in 15 or 20 years, we had an effective fight-back. When they did that, the rest of us stood up, also,” said Baraka. The “end-game” is, “we’ve got to believe in the possibility of us winning. Revolutionary change is still on the table.”

We Charge Genocide

Dr. Anthony Monteiro, a frequent BAR contributor who was fired from his position at Temple University’s Department of African American Studies because of his activism, hopes that “Ferguson will be the beginning of what W.E.B. Dubois called ‘the dusk of dawn,’ the end of the dawn and the beginning of the full daylight of resistance and struggle.” The U.S. should be charged with genocide under international law, as was advocated by Black left activists more than 60 years ago. “Extreme poverty, lack of education, imprisonment, murder in the streets and gentrification...when you put all of this together, what we’re looking at is genocide against African American,” said Monteiro.

Poetic Justice

BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner threw down lines of struggle:
“Drawing unemployment is like drawing straws
We came up short under rich folks laws
Living on nothing while hunger works full time
No wonder some brothers stumble into crime
And the rich cry crime, crime, CRIME every day
While cocaine is being trafficked by the CIA.”

Black Agenda Radio - 10/27/14

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Pennsylvania Enacts Bill to Silence Prisoners – Especially Mumia Abu Jamal

A new law would curtail the speech of prisoners held by the State of Pennsylvania on the grounds that their utterances and writings might cause “mental anguish” to crime victims. “It’s a backlash, it’s a repressive law,” said Dr. Johanna Fernandez, professor of history at Baruch College and a supporter of Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. “It suggests that authorities are feeling the heat of emerging movements against police brutality and mass incarceration.”

Speaking from Frackville State Prison, Mumia Abu Jamal said the legislation proves Pennsylvania’s government “doesn’t give a white about their own Constitution, nor about the United States Constitution. I welcome that, because it proves that they are the outlaws.” Police organizations were outraged that Abu Jamal was allowed to give a commencement speech at Vermont’s Goddard College.

Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration

 

Police and FBI personnel have reverted to throwing around the old term “outside agitators” to describe activists that have journeyed to Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the U.S. criminal justice system. “They’re picking up the terminology of George Wallace, Bull Connor and the like,” said Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, who was arrested along with fellow co-founder Dr. Cornel West, in Ferguson, last week. The point “is to divide the movement to transform the status quo.” Nationwide actions to resist police brutality, mass incarceration and criminalization of Black people are set for October 22.

Prop 47 Would Dramatically Reduce Incarceration in California

The online activist outfit Color of Change has thrown its weight behind passage of Proposition 47, a ballot initiative that would reclassify some nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and redirect prison funding to programs for transition to life on the outside. “It would impact up to 10,000 people who are currently incarcerated” and spare thousands more from being “overcharged” for offenses, said Matt Nelson, organizing director for Color of Change. Moreover, said Nelson, passage would go far to “make it unacceptable to have such high rates of incarceration, which really start in a racially biased culture.”

Next Round: Rev. Pinkney vs. Whirlpool in Benton Harbor

Community activist Rev. Edward Pinkney goes on trial October 27 on charges of altering signatures on petitions to recall the mayor of Benton Harbor, Michigan, a mostly Black town long dominated by the giant Whirlpool Corporation. “They’re counting on an all-white jury that is motivated by something other than the truth,” said Pinkney, leader of the fight to recall Mayor James Hightower. Whirlpool and county police authorities “would do anything – I believe they would even kill – to keep him in office, because he is the corporate puppet,” said Pinkney.

Temple University Students Supplement “Africology” with DuBois

Students at Philadelphia’s Temple University are holding their own W.E.B. Dubois lecture series to make up for what’s missing from the new “Africology” courses instituted by Dr. Molefi Asante, chairman of the recently renamed African American Studies department. Asante refused to renew the contract of Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro. “We feel a critical analysis, historically, politically and economically, through the vantage of African American struggle, is lacking” under the Africology regime, said student organizer Sabrina Sample. Asante’s agenda has been to “eliminate any competition with Afro-centric ideology within the department.”

Black Agenda Radio - 10/13/14

“Baby Doc” is Dead, But Duvalierism Lives On in Haiti Regime

Haiti’s elite flocked to the funeral of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier who, along with father “Papa Doc” killed probably 20,000 people, terrorized the entire population and stole half a billion dollars over a period of two generations. Duvalier died of a heart attack at age 63, “but there are many others who were involved in the actual torture and arrests and stealing who supported that brutal system,” said Brian Concannon, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. “The Duvalierist system has in many ways comes back” with the current government of Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, who was closing associated with “Baby Doc’s” terror network.

BBC Film Implicates Rwanda’s Kagame in Assassination of Two Presidents

A recently release BBC documentary shows that Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame’s rebel forces shot down the airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, in 1994, setting the stage for mass killings. “Kagame’s complicity has been known for many years by the U.S. and the UN,” said Peter Erlinder, an international lawyer who has defended Kagame’s opponents and was himself jailed by the regime for questioning the prevailing narrative, that Kagame halted the Rwandan genocide. Once in power, Kagame’s forces invaded neighboring Congo, igniting yet another genocide that has killed six million people.

Mumia Addresses Goddard College Grads

In 1996, while still on Pennsylvania’s death row, Mumia Abu Jamal earned his bachelor’s degree from Vermont’s Goddard College. “Goddard allowed me to really study what interested and moved me: revolutionary movements,” the nation’s best known political prisoner told the college’s graduating class. Police organizations across the country fought furiously to prevent Abu Jamal from making the commencement speech, in which he advised students to “take what you know and apply it in the real world. Help be the change you’re seeking to make.”

New Film on 1898 Wilmington Massacre

The last vestiges of post-Civil War Reconstruction died in the flames and carnage of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, when white supremacists mounted a military assault on the city’s alliance of Black Republicans and white Populists. Hundreds of Blacks may have died, half the Black population left the city, and the last Black Reconstruction congressman fled the state. Christopher Everett hopes to complete Wilmington on Fire, his new film on these historical events, by December. He said racist Democrats carried out the massacre “to put out a signal to the rest of North Carolina that, if they can take over Wilmington, the whole state will follow.”

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Click here to download the show. Length: One hour.

Black Agenda Radio - 10/06/14

New Youth Party Demands West Finance Ebola Fight

Events in Ferguson, Missouri, have inspired formation of “an alternative party of young people of color” in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. In its first major demonstration, set for October 16, the Young people’s Freedom and Justice Party is “demanding that the U.S. government and the western world provide the funding for drugs for treatment” of Ebola “and that they move with all deliberate speed,” said Sara Osman, one of the organizers. The party is comprised of college and high school students as well as youths who are not in school.

Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House November 1

In November, 2009, President Obama’s first year in office, the newly formed Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held its first rally and march on the White House. “I think, five years later, even the most die-hard Obamites would have a serious problem trying to ignore the criminality of this regime, or to separate what the United States government is doing under Obama from anything it’s done under George W. Bush or any of the other criminals who have occupied that office,” said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. The Coalition holds a rally and march on the White House on November 1, followed by a teach-in at Howard University the next day under the theme “Peace Through Revolution.”

U.S. Intelligence Agencies Were Aware of ISIS’s Plans

Far from being in the dark about ISIS’s capabilities and goals, the CIA was well aware of the jihadist’s plans to attack the Iraqi city of Mosul and seize much of the country, according to journalist Nafeez Ahmed, author of the Guardian newspaper article “How the West Created the Islamic State.” The U.S., Britain and the Gulf oil monarchies were plotting regime change in Syria even before the outbreak of demonstrations against the government, in 2011. The same countries that have been “supporting and financing and manipulating” Islamist militants are now “being mobilized to fight the very enemy they created,” said Ahmed, author of Zero Point, a novel that actually predicted the events now unfolding in Iraq.

Washington’s Incessant Lies

U.S. foreign policy seems full of contradictions because “they are at war with the world and have to constantly hide their aims and their goals, and can turn on the very forces that they create,” said Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center. But, said Flounders, “what they’re telling the people of the world is always a lie. Always.”

Rally Makes Connection Between African American and Palestinian Struggles

On October 11, hundreds will gather at the Malcolm X and Betty Shabbaz Center, in Harlem, to affirm their solidarity with Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime. “The World Stands with Palestine” rally will highlight parallels in the plight of Blacks in the U.S. and Palestinians under occupation. The Center is housed on the site of Malcolm X’s assassination, in 1965. “Malcolm would have been an African internationalist,” said hip hop artist and activist M-1. “To have the rally in the former Audubon Ballroom completes the cycle.”

Black Politicians Silent and Ineffectual: Throw Them Out

One looks at the images from Ferguson “and sees in an instant that there is a war against Black people,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. What are Black politicians doing? “Many, if not most, have been silent,” said Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. “A new, militant, responsive politics must arise, built by the young who are clear-eyed and committed.”

Detroit: Water Cut-Offs Lead to Evictions

Pastor Ray Anderson, of the House of Help church and community center, joined with the grassroots Water Brigade to halt the water cut-offs that have affected hundreds of thousands. Before long, the city cut off the House of Help’s water, too. “A lot of people are losing their homes when their house goes into foreclosure because of the water bill,” said Pastor Anderson. “I believe it’s a God-given right for us to have water,” especially since Detroit sits on the Great Lakes, the greatest reservoir of fresh water in the world.

Black Agenda Radio - 09/29/14

No Indictment in Cop Killing of John Crawford III at Wal-Mart

Student leaders in Ohio plan further mobilizations in the wake of the failure of a Green County, Ohio, grand jury to indict the police who shot 22-year-old John Crawford III, on August 5. Crawford was killed while talking on his cell phone and handling a toy air rifle on display at the store. “I’m a direct reflection of John Crawford,” said Jovan Webster, of the Ohio Student Association. “I’m around the same age, same color, same culture. Me holding a candy bar is threatening in America.”

Change of Mayor in New York, but No Change in Police Behavior

Statistics show that New York City police arrested virtually the same number of Black and brown people on petty “quality of life” charges in 2014 as during the previous year, despite the intervening election of “liberal” mayor Bill de Blasio. “The current NYPD is continuing the same harsh, aggressive ‘broken windows’ type of policing that characterized the [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg years,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Police Reform Organizing Project.

Bias Against Black Women and Girls Not a Priority

A new study released by the National Women’s Law Center and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund says more attention needs to be paid to specific bias against Black females. The report is titled “Unlocking Opportunity for African American Girls: A Call to Action for Educational Equity.” According to the law center’s Fatima Goss Graves, “the suspension rate for African American girls is around 12 percent, which is far higher than any other group of girls and higher than most groups of boys.” Black women are the only major group for whom joblessness has not declined, and 43 percent of Black women without a high school diploma live in poverty.

Palestine and Ferguson: The Parallels of Oppression

The Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Center, formerly the Audubon Ballroom, hosts “The World Stands with Palestine” rally on October 11, in New York’s Harlem. “There are so many parallels” between the plight of the Palestinian people and the oppression of Blacks in the U.S., said Dr. Robyn Spencer, professor of history at Lehman College and an organizer of the rally. “The reality of occupation; economic underdevelopment of Palestinian territories; the ways in which daily life is militarized; the cultural appropriation – the parallels are really strong,” said Dr. Spencer. The lineup includes Mumia Abu Jamal, Rebel Diaz and a host of other speakers and cultural icons.

Don’t Cheer Obama Just Because You Hate ISIS

Speaking to a teleconference of UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition, activist academic Dr. Vijay Prashad said peace forces must challenge those who think “imperialism is a hammer that can be used for the purposes of the Left.” The same argument was made in 2011, 

 

when the U.S. and its allies bombed the government of Muammar Gaddafi out of existence, resulting in disaster for the people of Libya, said Prashad, a professor of history and international relations at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Obama Displays Phenomenal “Chutzpah” at UN

Paul Street, the author and activist who has followed Barack Obama’s career since the early days in Chicago, says the president reached new heights of hypocrisy and “chutzpah” at the United Nations, last week. Obama claims to be “outraged at the brutality of ISIS,” said Street, but the U.S. “killed 500,000 Iraqi children through economic sanctions in the 1990s.” The president cites ISIS’s “Network of Death,” but “the U.S. maintains more than 1,000 military installations across more than 100 sovereign nations. Is that not a ‘Network of Death?’” Street is author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power.

Mumia: The U.S. is the Architect of Destruction

Everything Washington touches turns to chaos and death, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. Libya and Iraq “are horrific examples of U.S. interventions that have plunged both societies into deadly hell-scapes,” said Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. Obama’s war in Syria promises more suffering for the country’s people, who Washington treats as “collateral damage.”

Atlanta Hosts Celebration of Rwanda’s Criminal Regime

“Rwanda Day” – a public relations event showcasing an economy fueled by the systematic plundering of neighboring Congo’s resources and the slaughter of six million Congolese – was nevertheless a popular destination for some Black American notables, who registered their approval of Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame. The warlord’s regime has amassed lots of loot, said Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon, and the Black political class “wants a cut.”