Black Agenda Radio

Black Agenda Radio - 09/22/14

Obama Plans “Rebel” Assault on Damascus Under U.S. Air Cover

The “real objective” of President Obama’s latest mobilization in the Middle East is to deploy U.S. air power to support a renewed “rebel” assault on Damascus, the Syrian capital, from the south, said veteran human rights activist Ajamu Baraka. Washington’s plan remains “to engage in regime change in Syria,” which is why it gave ISIS and other jihadist groups “the green light” to ravage that nation for the last three years. The U.S. is “playing with forces that they think they can control, but history has already proven that those forces have agendas of their own” and are not controllable, said Baraka, an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report.

Ohio Students Press for Federal Intervention in Police Killing of John Crawford III

Twenty-three year-old John Crawford III was shopping at a local Wal-Mart in Green County, Ohio, examining a toy air rifle on display and talking on his cell phone, when police shot him dead, August 5. The Ohio Students Association and two other young people’s organizations, fearing a whitewash by an “old boys network,” have launched an extended campaign to compel the U.S. Justice Department to enter the case. The state attorney general was a prosecutor in Green County, as is his daughter, and the officer that shot Crawford killed another man in 2010, but was never indicted, said student organizer James Hayes. “Young people are coming of age at a time where this violence is so common, it’s predictable,” said Hayes. “We’re in this for the long haul; we’ve got our eyes on the prize.”

U.S. Prison Population on the Rise Again

The nation’s prison population increased slightly in 2013, after a three-year downward trend. Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, points out that the recent period of decline “only happened after nearly 40 years of record historic rises in the inmate population to more than two million people behind bars.” Three states – New Jersey, New York and California – were responsible for much of the previous decreases, with California under court order to reduce its prison population. Those who thought mass incarceration could be cured by “tinkering around the edges” of the system, were wrong, said Mauer. “This is the result of centuries of a racist history, particularly in the justice system.”

“Rwanda Day”: Propaganda Based on Lies

Thousands flocked to Atlanta to celebrate – or protest against – “Rwanda Day,” a yearly public relations event staged by the Rwandan government of dictator and warlord Paul Kagame. The minority, Tutsi-dominated regime and its western backers claim Kagame’s military stopped the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and then brought prosperity to the country. But the truth is far different, said Claude Gatebuke, a genocide survivor and executive director of the African Great Lakes Action Network. Rwanda’s relative prosperity is based on “billions of dollars in diamonds and coltan and other minerals stolen from” the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwandan and Ugandan troops uNaming, Shaming the Black Caucus, These Joes Ain't Loyal, ISIS, Wayne Pharrnleashed a genocide that has claimed six million lives.

Aristide Under House Arrest in Haiti

Former Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown by the U.S. in 2004, is under house arrest on orders of a judge allied with the U.S.-backed current president, Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly. The vague charges against Aristide – of stealing public funds while in office – are “completely bogus” and create a climate reminiscent of “the bad old days” under the Duvalier dictatorship, said Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee. Labossiere said it’s all part of a scheme to “smear Fanmi Lavalas,” Aristide’s political party, and once again “banish them from elections” – or to cancel elections altogether and allow Martelly to rule by decree.

Mumia: The Lures of War

The 2008 version of Barack Obama looked to many “like the antidote to the bellicosity of George W. Bush,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. But, once in office, “the lures of war have been almost impossible to resist.” The U.S. has reportedly launched 94,000 drone strikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia and Yemen. How many people have died? “We don’t know,” said Abu Jamal – and most Americans “don’t care.”

Black Agenda Radio - 09/15/14

“Shame on the Congressional Black Caucus” Rally

 

The Israeli bombing of Gaza “was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back,” said Asantawaa Nkrumuah Ture, an organizer of a “Shame on the CBC” rally set for September 24 in front of the Washington Convention Center, where the Black Caucus opens its annual legislative conference and gala. “It’s well past time for us to hold them accountable.” The protesters want to “start a conversation, nationally,” said Nkrumah Ture, “not only regarding the Black Caucus’ support of apartheid Israel, about also their position on Internet neutrality, their ties with corporate America,” and the CBC’s overwhelming vote, in June, to continue militarization of local police forces.

Motive: Black. Penalty: Death

 

When Duane Buck faced sentencing on a murder conviction in a Houston courtroom, the judge allowed “expert” testimony that Blacks were inherently more dangerous than whites. On August 29, a federal judge called the testimony “repugnant and dangerous,” but upheld the death sentence, anyway. “It is absolutely shocking, it is stunning, it is appalling and it sets a terrifying precedent,” said Christina Swarns, litigation director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is handling Buck’s appeal. “This is asking a jury to rely on race to impose a death sentence.”

New York City Needs Justice, Not More Police Training

 

Police Commissioner Bill Bratton defended his “Broken Windows” policing policies before the New York City Council, claiming there’s nothing wrong with the NYPD that $30 million in training and 1,000 more cops can’t cure. Josmar Trujillo, of New Yorkers Against Bratton, disagrees. “The police department is one of the most trained in the world,” said Trujillo. “Training isn’t the issue. The systemic culture of brutality, which is reinforced by institutional racism, is really the conversation we need to be having.”

Obama Targets Syria, Not ISIS

 

President Obama’s bombing offensive in Iraq and Syria “brings humanity closer to world war than we have been, maybe, in 80 years,” said scholar and activist Dr. Anthony Monteiro. Although purportedly aimed at ISIS, Washington is actually targeting the Syrian government, Iran and, ultimately, Russia. Obama’s arming of so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels is a farce, said Monteiro. “There is no ‘moderate’ opposition to the Assad government. It is all extreme, gangster, thuggish militants who are funded by some of the very nations that are part of the ‘coalition of the willing.’” Dr. Monterio is fighting his termination from the African American Studies department at Temple University, in Philadelphia.

U.S. Proxy Wars Empower Jihadists and Nazis

 

“The United States is essentially contracting out its wars” in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, said Eric Draitser, an independent political analyst and publisher of StopImperialism.com. “The proxy wars that the United States has begun all over the world are part and parcel of a larger imperial agenda” dating from U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Central America. The Islamic State “is a by-product of U.S. foreign policy, just as the Nazis in Ukraine are a by-product of U.S. foreign policy,” said Draitser.

September Surge in EEOC Case Dismissals

 

Every year about this time, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismisses tens of thousands of discrimination cases, citing “lack of evidence” and a perennial backlog. “There is no backlog,” said Ricardo Jones, a former chief investigator for the EEOC in New York. “There’s been 15 years of not paying overtime” to deal with legitimate complaints, while the money “has basically gone to managers.”

Black President Doesn’t Respect Black Culture or History

 

Dr. Donald Smith, a founder of the National Alliance of Black School Educators, will be honored at a conference on Education for Liberation in the African American Tradition, in New York, October 10. Dr. Smith said Black history and culture is disappearing from classrooms around the country. “The major challenge begins in the White House, with a president who does not believe in Black culture as being essential to the education, not only of children of African descent, but of all American children,” said Smith.

Black Agenda Radio - 09/08/14

Hundreds Arrested Demanding $15 and Hour and a Union

Darius Cephas, a McDonald’s worker from Boston, was one of more than 500 fast food employees arrested during strike and civil disobedience actions in 150 cities, last week. “It shows how strong and how powerful our voices are; the fact that everybody is trying to find out how folks are raising children on $8 an hour,” said Cephas, an activist with the Fast Food Campaign. “We are here and we’re not going away they until they raise the pay and let us form a union without retaliation.”

Mass Incarceration is Built into the System

Events in Ferguson, Missouri, “have changed the way that people all across the country look at mass incarceration, police terror and the criminalization of Black youth,” said Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, which has declared October a “month of resistance.” Simply adding more Black cops to the equation won’t solve the problem “because we’re dealing with something that is built into the fabric of this capitalist system.”

Draconian Sentences Rooted in Racist White Perceptions of Crime

A report by The Sentencing Project concludes that white people support harsh penalties for crime because they associate criminality with Blacks. “There are many instances where policymakers politicize crime and race in order to further their campaigns,” said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, co-author of the report, titled “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies.”

U.S. Political Prisoners Issue Passes UN Hurdle

A United Nations panel has instructed the United States to report, five years from now, on the status of its political prisoners, said international human rights advocate Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. The move is significant, since the U.S. denies it holds any political prisoners, said Nwangaza, who argued on behalf of Civil Rights and Cointelpro era prisoners in collaboration with the Jericho Movement. “We’ve been building a record which strengthens the case for release of political prisoners,” she said. “It also strengthens our call for formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

Black Agenda Radio - 09/01/14

Protesters Demand Dismantling of Militarized Police

A host of organizations presented a list of nine demands to the U.S. Justice Department, in Washington, including immediate release of “Black boys and men incinerated for minor crimes”; the imposition of “life sentences for law enforcement officials who murder unarmed boys and men”; and, “recall of all military equipment already given to cities and states.” Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, of the NO Fear Coalition, a top organizer of the rally, said events in Ferguson, Missouri, raise fundamental questions about the role of police in Black America. “Clearly, the occupying forces inside our communities are not protecting or serving the people,” she said. “They are occupying the people.”

The Enemy Within

“We’re looking at a two-prong attack” on the Black resistance in Ferguson, said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. “One is the obvious military organization” of the various police forces, and “the other – sometimes with their collars on backwards, sometimes not – are those who are there to pacify the people, to tamp down on militancy. They want it to go away.”

Black Youth in Struggle for the Duration

Young people in Ferguson are trying to build real structures of enduring resistance, said Erica Totten, an activist from Washington, DC, who has been working with HandsUpUnited.org. “They need mental health care professionals, they need attorneys, they need people to go down there and support these young men and women because they’re going to continue to make noise,” said Totten.

Mumia: Beware of Lawyers, Preachers and Politicians

“It is the job of the managerial class of lawyers, preachers and politicians to reduce tensions, to deradicalize movements, to make them more manageable” when crises arise in places like Ferguson, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. However, “the masses know the essential nature of the police, fro they see them daily. And they are anxious to oppose them.”

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Black Agenda Radio - 08/25/14

Obama and ISIS in Dance of Death

The growing U.S. bombing campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria serves no one but war profiteers, said veteran anti-war activist David Swanson. “I know that ISIS had to be aware that slitting throats on camera would result in more bombing, just as President Obama had to be aware that blowing men, women and children up with 500-pound bombs would result in slitting throats,” said Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.Org. “The beneficiaries of escalation, which is entirely predictable, are the weapons makers.”

Black Strategies Must Include Self-Defense

“First and foremost, it is right for our people to rebel,” said Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and co-author of the groundbreaking report “Operation Ghetto Storm,” which documented extrajudicial killings of Black Americans under color of law. “I think it boiled over in Ferguson as a result of a transformation in our people’s consciousness, especially our young folks,” said Akuno. “They’ve had enough of the brutality, of being systematically excluded.” Black community self-defense must be part of any organizing strategy. “This has been part and parcel of what we know we have to do in the face of white supremacy and in the face of the brutality that the capitalist system has reserved for us, in particular.”

Black Passivity is Mentally Unhealthy

Political protest is therapeutic for Black Americans, said Dr. Vernellia Randall, professor emeritus of law at the University of Dayton and author Dying While Black. “I want us to be less passive, I want us to engage in civil disobedience” – and not the kind of protest-like activities sanctioned by the authorities. “If they’re telling us, Here’s how you can protest, then that, to me, is not civil disobedience,” said Randall. “If you are coloring within the lines that the establishment establishes, then you are putting no pressure on the establishment.”

Cuba Should Join in Fight for Slavery Reparations

The young United States was a horrible example of democracy, but it did lead the way in the business of human trafficking. “After the establishment of the United States, it quickly became the leader in the African slave trade to Cuba,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston and author of Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow. “They also became the leader of the African slave trade to Brazil, helping to account for the fact that Brazil has more people of African descent than any other nation outside Nigeria,” said Horne, who hopes to enlist Cuba in “our journey to claim reparations for the enslavement of Africans in the Americas.”

Black Agenda Radio - 08/18/14

Police Brutality is Built into the System 

 

 

“Police brutality is not caused by a few aberrant, rogue cops. It is a systemic problem that arises from the system of social, economic and political oppression that we live under,” said Larry Hamm, chairman of the Newark, New Jersey-based Peoples Organization for Progress. Abuses persist, even in those cities that have community police review boards “because the use of violence against Black people has been necessary and condoned since the creation of the United States of America.” You can’t keep people in slavery, or commit genocide against Native Americans, without massive applications of violence, said Hamm, speaking at the annual conference of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, in Philadelphia.

Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House

 

The police response to Black protest in Ferguson, Missouri, has called attention to the massive militarization of U.S. police behavior and equipment. “They call it surplus military equipment that they have given to police departments, but that’s not surplus,” said Black Is Back Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. “The military budget includes the resources they are shooting into communities to control African people. It’s not surplus when you understand that the local police department is an extension of the same state apparatus that’s functioning today in places like Afghanistan. That’s colonialism,” said Yeshitela. The Coalition announced plans to march on the White House, on November 1, under the banner “Peace Through Revolution.”

Justice Department Should Review Every Police Killing of Unarmed Blacks

 

The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund called on the U.S. Justice Department to mount a “comprehensive review of all police-involved assaults and killings of all unarmed individuals, with a particular focus on the killings of unarmed African Americans,” said associate director Janai Nelson. The review is one of four recommendations outlined by the LDEF in a letter to the Justice Department. “There are concerns of over-policing in these communities, of ‘broken windows’ policing, of racial profiling, that has led to this disparate number of killings among African Americans,” said Nelson.

Mumia: “We are All Michael Brown”

 

The Black people of Ferguson, Missouri, “have resisted every attempt to sidetrack or silence their efforts to achieve the arrest, prosecution and conviction of the white cop who shot and killed Mike Brown,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, in a report for Prison Radio. “The face of sweet-talking politicians promising peace; police with dark faces promising protection; preachers praying for placidity,” did not deter the protesters. ”They kept on marching for justice.”

“Broken Windows” Policing Must Go

 

Robert Gangi, director of New York City’s Police Reform Organizing Project, has documented the racial bias inherent in the NYPD’s pursuit of so-called “quality of life” offenses. “Police in New York arrest people for occupying two seats on the subway, even though it’s 2 o’clock in the morning and there’s nobody else in the subway car,” said Gangi. “Far too much of the NYPD’s resources focuses on activities that are not criminal, that are not dangerous, that are not predatory; activities that are engaged in by people of color,” like selling loose cigarettes. “The senseless death of Eric Garner at the hands of the NYPD is a worst-case scenario of what can happen with the aggressive application of broken windows po licing.”

Black Agenda Radio - 08/11/14

Wall Street is Milking Detroit Dry

Mass water cutoffs are set to resume on August 25, a prelude to privatization of Detroit’s water and sewage department, while plans are afoot to put public parking up for auction. “The underlying agenda” of the state-imposed bankruptcy process is the “sell off of public assets; the destruction of the strength – to the extent it exists – of the labor movement; and the expropriation of public pension funds,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, of the Moratorium Now Coalition. A similar fate awaits other cities across the country, because “the crisis of the overall American capitalist system has worsened and, therefore, there’s more pressure being put on municipalities to extract more wealth for the benefit of Wall Street.”

Black Is Back Coalition to Gather in Philadelphia

The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, which has consistently opposed the corpora tist and warlike policies of the Obama administration since its founding in 2009, holds its annual conference in Philadelphia, August 16 and 17. “More and more people are being awakened to the catastrophe that the Obama regime has become, not only for the struggle and rights of African people here in the United States, but for people around the world,” said Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela. The Coalition plans to mount another march on the White House on November 1.

Black Liberation in the Age of Climate Change

ooperation Jackson, a campaign to bring cooperative economics to Jackson, Mississippi, is one of the legacies of the late Chokwe Lumumba’s brief tenure as mayor of the mostly Black city. The grassroots effort has joined forces with the Climate Justice Alliance, according to veteran organizer Kali Akuno. “We’re looking not only to control the means of production in Jackson – and eventually throughout Mississippi, and beyond – but we’re trying to make sure that we produce goods and services differently than the standard capitalist methods, which are over-reliant on petrochemicals and unhealthy products,” said Akuno.

Mumia: Immigrant-Bashing is Part of Americana

Resentment of new immigrant groups is “as old as the country, itself,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. “Every generation, anxious about their place in this turbulent society, gives new arrivals hell,” said Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. Anti-immigrant sentiment helped fuel a resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan. “It doesn’t take much to spark it back up again, as we see with the children of Central America.”

CIA Battles to Keep Its Torture Secrets

Congress adjourned without resolution of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s attempt to declassify a 6,000-page report on CIA torture programs. Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, said the agency “destroyed the evidence of its crimes – obstructing justice in the process – and then, when investigated by the Senate, hacked the Senate servers, infiltrated the Senate computer system, stole documents from the Senate, and then filed false allegations with the Justice Department seeking prosecution of Senate staffers.” Arguably, the CIA is “the world’s most successful terror organization,” said Buttar.

Black Agenda Radio - 08/04/14

The Chosen People – for Incarceration

“They’ve created a permanent caste from which people cannot escape,” said Larry Hamm, chairman of the Newark-based People’s Organization for Progress (POP), referring to America’s system of mass Black incarceration. POP supports the New Jersey Decarceration Act, aimed at drastically reducing prison populations. Historically, police forces and prisons have expanded to contain Black people, socially and geographically. “What they’re worried about now is there’s a potential for us to build alliances with other groups that have been economically disenfranchised in the last few decades, and that there could be an even wider societal response to the suffering that’s going on in this country,” said Hamm.

Challenge to Arbitrary Solitary Confinement

Prison inmate Lester Alford has hauled New Jersey into court, charging prison officials with arbitrarily locking him in solitary under appalling conditions. “They only gave him one set of clothing for three years, and didn’t let him clean his cell for three years,” said Jean Ross, a lawyer who has advised many state prisoners. The state accused Alford, now middle-aged, of being a gang leader. “There is no excuse, no defense to the fact that they placed him under isolated confinement without any kind of due process of law, and under conditions that we would not keep animals in,” said Ross, who is also an organizer with the People’s Organization for Progress.

Former Panther Blasts Huey Newton

Wayne Pharr, a former captain in the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, has just published a book titled Nine Lives of a Black Panther: A Story of Survival. “I don’t bash anybody but Huey Newton,” the Panther co-founder who, Pharr writes, set himself up as Supreme Commander and sent hit squads against members considered disloyal. “That’s what turned me off from the whole thing, because that spoke of ego and no humility,” said Pharr, who now makes his living in real estate. The FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO played a role in the party’s demise. “We knew were under surveillance with COINTELPRO,” said Pharr, “and COINTELPRO is still working, right now.”

U.S. Complicit in Israeli Crimes

“Not a minute of this war would be possible without complete and total U.S. funding, political support, and diplomatic support every step of the way,” said Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center. But, “the world has not been silent” to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, nearly 2,000 of whom – overwhelmingly civilians – have died at Israeli hands. What the Israeli’s want, said Flounders, “is the silence of the grave; that’s their only plan.” A huge demonstration is set for this Saturday, August 9, at the United Nations building in New York, said Flounders, who is also an organizer with UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition.

Mumia: Zionists Lust for Land

America’s best known political prisoner says “Israel intentionally targets civilians, which is a war crime.” Mumia Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio, called Israel “a settler colonialists state which has no use for the indigenous people of Palestine, yet lusts for its land.” President Obama claims Israel “has the right to defend itself. But, one wonders: doesn’t Palestine have that right, as well?”

Black Agenda Radio - 07/28/14

World Opinion Turns Against Israel – But Not in Congressional Black Caucus

 

Israelis “can no longer frame themselves as the victims” in the conflict with occupied Palestinians, said veteran human rights activist and BAR columnist Ajamu Baraka. However, “it now appears that Black leadership has lost its moral compass and are standing shoulder to shoulder with something as brutal and backward as the assault on Palestine,” said Baraka. Every member of the Congressional Black Caucus this month joined in a unanimous House resolution siding with Israel.

U.S. Academics Largely Silent on Israeli Crimes

 

American academics are largely mum on Israeli brutality in Gaza, said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. “They are scared to talk about the kinds of war crimes that are being committed with this unprovoked war by Israel,” he said. Except for Cornel West, Noam Chomsky “and a few others,” academics are “essentially folks who tell the stories of rich people and the people who have power.”

Kucinich: America Must Quit “Imperial Pretensions”

 

The U.S. is on the wrong side of history, said Dennis Kucinich, the former Ohio congressman, Cleveland mayor, and two-time presidential candidate. “Our policies of intervention, of regime change, of covert action, of linking up with groups that seek to destabilize and annihilate governments, are policies that are doomed to defeat,” said Kucinich, who fought unsuccessfully to halt U.S. bombing of Libya in 2011, before he was redistricted out of his seat. “We have to quit these imperial pretensions and take care of business at home.”

NYPD Reform Impossible Under Bratton

 

The choke-hold death of a Black New Yorker accused of selling loose cigarettes shows that Mayor Bill de Blasio should never have brought Bill Bratton back as police commissioner, said Josmar Trujillo, of New Yorkers Against Bratton. The group had warned that Bratton’s obsession with so-called “quality of life” offenses would lead to disaster. “Back then, we said that his history and his policies were the exact opposite of reform,” said Trujillo. “I think now people are starting to have the conversation, after the death of Eric Garner, about what’s going on with Bratton’s ‘Broken Windows’ policing.”

Prisoners Have Voting Rights, Too

 

Back in 2008, Rev. Kenneth Glascow won a lawsuit affirming the right of many incarcerated people to vote, in Alabama. Glascow and his Ordinary People Society have been making the rounds of county jails, to determine if they are in compliance with the law. “Anybody who is in jail in Alabama for a crime that is not a crime of moral turpitude – meaning, they caused harm or danger to some

Black Agenda Radio - 07/21/14

McKinney: West Condemns Whole Regions to Death

 

“What we are witnessing” in Syria and Iraq “is a process, a way to apply the death penalty to countries and make it appear to be a domestic, civil conflict,” said former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney. The same U.S. and Israeli-led process of undermining nations has already dismembered Sudan and destroyed Libya and “will spread to Jordan and Iran,” said McKinney, who served on the defense and foreign relations committees of the House before leaving Congress in 2007.

U.S. Founded in Slavery and Genocide – But Don’t Tell Obama

 

Gerald Horne’s recent book The Counter-Revolution of 1776 “shows how slavery is very much at the heart and core, the driving force behind the decision to break off” from Great Britain, said historian, author and political analyst Paul Street. Horne maintains the Founding Fathers feared Britain might abolish slavery and limit white settler land-grabs. Yet, President Obama maintains that racism is not endemic in the United States. “Nothing will stop Obama from trying to please white folks,” said Street, author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. “I don’t know if he believes this [American historical mythology] crap, or whether he’s being cynical – and I’m not sure it matters.”

Mumia: California Death Penalty Unconstitutional?

 

Death rows could begin to empty in California, where a federal district court has found the ultimate penalty is administered so arbitrarily it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. “I, like few reporters today, know a little something about death row,” said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, “since I spend almost 30 years on it.”

Banksters Demand Black Removal as a Condition of Urban Investment

 

“Katrina left no doubt about the intentions of the folks who run this country, the financial class,” said BAR executive editor Glen Ford, speaking at a Socialist Action forum in Hartford, Connecticut. “The goal is to drastically reduce the Black populations of the cities,” because “the very presence of large numbers of Black people depresses the value of urban assets.” The mayor of Hartford, a mostly Black and Latino city, wants to build a $60 million baseball stadium as a centerpiece of development. However, such schemes are ultimately intended to bring in whites and displace Blacks and browns, as a “prerequisite” for substantial corporation investment in the future, said Ford, at Urban Hope Refuge Church.