Black Agenda Radio

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.

Black Agenda Radio - 07/14/14

Global Capitalist Champion Barack ‘Insane’ Obama

 

“If African people are going to be free, it’s going to be because we’ve made a revolution,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party (APSP), at its headquarters in St. Petersburg, Florida. The APSP kicked off a month-long period of intensive study for party cadre from around the Diaspora. “Finance capital presides over a world economy where 80 percent of human beings on Earth are trying to exist on far less than ten U.S. dollars a day,” said Yeshitela. “This is the relationship that Barack Hussein Obama – we ought to call him Barack ‘Insane’ Obama – is protecting” with his drone strikes, military aggressions and sanctions campaigns.

Marissa Alexander Supporters to Hold “Stand Our Ground Week”

 

Supporters of Marissa Alexander, the Black mother sentenced to a long prison term for using a firearm to warn off an attack by her estranged husband, will hold a “Stand Our Ground Week” in Jacksonville, Florida, July 25 through August 1. Alisa Bierria, one of the organizers, said the issues at stake go beyond the injustice done to one Black woman. “Her case reflects many different kinds of urgent issues,” she said, “including the need to end domestic violence and to take a serious look at the impact of mass incarceration and mandatory minimums in Black communities.”

Beyond Innocence: Excessive Sentencing

 

The Beyond Innocence Project – not to be confused with Barry Scheck’s Innocence Project – is a national coalition of family members of imprisoned people. Organizer Carolyn Esparza, in El Paso, Texas, said the group’s main concern isn’t guilt or innocence, but sentences that far outweigh the crime. “Families are frightened to speak out,” said Esparza, “because when we speak out against the system there’s retaliation against our loved ones in prison.

Millions Press for Internet Neutrality

 

“It’s the plutocrats versus the people,” said Kevin Zeese, of Popular Resistance, assessing the battle to keep the Federal Communications Commission from turning the Internet over to huge corporations. Millions of people have registered their outrage and demanded that the FCC treat the Internet as a “common carrier,” like a public utility. “We have to get mobilized in the streets and show them that we’re going to stop government if they destroy th e Internet,” said Zeese.

Mumia: Palestinian “David” versus Israeli Goliath

 

The story of David and Goliath depicted the biblical Jews as underdogs, but the opposite is true in today’s Middle East, said Mumia Abu Jamal, America’s best known political prisoner. “Israel has the most powerful military in the region, and Palestine – an occupied people, a captive people – is David,” said Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. “David has little more than a stone and a prayer.”

Obam a Lets Mass Killers of Africans Off Hook

 

The Obama administration claims it will sanction all those guilty of destabilizing the Democratic Republic of Congo, where at least six million people have died since 1996. However, Kambale Musavuli, of Friends of Congo, said the administration is only going after “small time players” and giving immunity to high officials of Rwanda and Uganda, the U.S. allies most culpable in the slaughter. Obama’s Africa policy, said Musavuli, “is even worse than the Republicans, bringing AFRICOM onto the continent, supporting ‘strong men’ and inviting dictators to  the White House.”

Black Agenda Radio - 07/07/14

The White Settler “Patriots” Pro-Slavery Revolt

Contrary to popular mythology, the white settler rebellion of 1776 was staged, not to establish democracy, but to forestall the abolition of slavery in Britain’s American colonies, according to a new book by Dr. Gerald Horne, a University of Houston professor of history and African American Studies. In The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America, Horne said the American rebels’ motivations were much like those of Ian Smith, the white Rhodesian leader who declared unilateral independence from Britain in 1965 to “forestall decolonization” and an end to white rule. Smith himself said he was “walking in the footsteps of 1776.”

“Killing Trayvons”

“Trayvon Martin’s murder wasn’t an anomaly; it’s something that happens all the time, all day, every day,” said South Carolina political activist Kevin Alexander Gray, co-author of the soon to be released book, Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence. The volume features a wide range of authors, including Robin D.G. Kelly, Cornel West, Vijay Prashad, bell hooks and many others. “We wanted to cover, not just the trial, but the epidemic of killings by police and the fact that Black women are also killed,” said Gray. “We even went so far as having some people who may even agree with the jury’s verdict because they thought the prosecution put on such a weak case.”

Race Casts “Long Shadow” on Education and Employment Prospects

A longitudinal study of 790 low-income young people in Baltimore found that only 4 percent of Blacks earned a four-year college degree by age 28, far fewer than whites from similar family backgrounds. According to Johns Hopkins University sociologist Dr. Karl Alexander, co-author of the report on the 23-year study, titled “The Long Shadow,” about 15 percent of Blacks in the study group attended four-year college programs, and another 15 to 20 percent spent time in two-year programs, but “the vast majority were unable to see it through” to a bachelors degree for various reasons. “Where race most clearly comes into play is in employment opportunities in the high-skill, high pay employment sector in the construction crafts and skilled trades,” said Alexander. By age 28, 45 percent of white males in the Baltimore study were working in that sector, compared to only 15 percent of Blacks, with whites earning twice as much pay.

Mumia: Corporate Media “Learned Nothing” from Iraq War

The U.S. corporate media is once again showing “not even the pretense of objectivity” in its war-mongering coverage of Syria and Iraq, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, in a report for Prison Radio. “They have become heralds of hell” who have “learned nothing” since 2003, when they sold the public on the Iraq invasion.

Black Agenda Radio - 06/30/14

Detroit Financial Dictator Uses Water as Weapon

 

The water cut-offs that could soon affect 30,000 Detroit households are “an effort on the part of the Emergency Financial Manager to intimidate people, to drive even more people out of the city – but, moreover, it is aimed at privatizing and breaking up the Detroit Water and Sewage Department,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, an organizer for the Moratorium Now Coalition and editor of the Pan African News Wire. A United Nations panel of experts called the shut-offs “an affront to human rights.”

Empower the Urban Renting Majority  

 

A new report on housing calls for a change in government policies that favor homeowners over renters. Titled “Renter Nation: Solutions to the Housing Affordability Crisis,” the report outlines “models of cooperative housing that allow for people to build wealth and also maintain an investment in the community they live in, and to maintain the housing that they live in as affordable for the people who come after them,” said Rachel LeForest, executive director of the Right to the City Alliance.

Socialist Takes on Washington State Speaker of House

 

“What’s lacking in state houses across the country are unambiguous fighters for working people and others who are disenfranchised,” said Jess Spear, the Socialist Alternative candidate for Washington House Speaker Frank Chopp’s seat. In 2012, Chopp won 70 percent of the vote against Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant, who went on to win a seat on the Seattle City Council and passage of a $15 an hour municipal minimum wage. Spear said Chopp has failed to move a $12 an hour state minimum wage out of committee. “It really exposes him and the rest of the Democratic Party as just grandstanding and paying lip service to what working people need and    deserve,” she said.

Mass Conspiracy Charges in Harlem

 

Residents of two Harlem housing projects remain outraged over a 400-officer police raid that resulted in attempted murder, weapons and conspiracy charges against more than 100 young people. “They’re charging everybody with the crimes of a couple of people. It’s like you’re guilty by association,” said Angela Dunmore, at a press conference called by the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. New York City authorities “feel threatened by two or more Black men together – and that is not fair.”

H. Rap Brown/Jamil al-Amin Seriously Ill in Super-Max

 

The former chairman of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Minister of Justice of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and revolutionary icon formerly known as H. Rap Brown, is seriously ill with a gum infection that has spread through his body. Jamil al-Amin’s “outspoken defense of self-defense earned him the eternal enmity of the government,” said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. Al-Amin is serving a life sentence at the federal super-max prison in Florence, Colorado, in the shooting of two Atlanta policemen.

Why “Freedom Summer” Activists Chose Voter Registration over Direct Action

 

Fifty years ago, organizers with SNCC and other civil rights organizations brought 1,000 mostly white students to Mississippi to assist in registering Black voters. On The Real News Network, former SNCC field director Bob Moses told host Paul Jay that activists considered mounting a direct action civil disobedience campaign instead of voter registration. “They were faced with whether they wanted to do the Nelson Mandela,” said Moses. “If they were going to do direct action, then they’ve got to stay in jail for a long time.”

Black Agenda Radio - 06/23/14

“Broad Social Movement” Confronts Philadelphia’s Temple University

 

Protests against the firing of Temple University African American Studies professor Anthony Monteiro have evolved into a “broad united front” of students, grassroots community forces, organized labor and elected officials. “Black Philadelphia, in particular, understands that Temple University is not only gentrifying the community, but is hyper-policing the community,” creating “an island of privilege in a city of poverty,” said Dr. Monteiro. “All that was necessary was for someone to stand up and say that this powerful institution must be made answerable to the community.”

CIA Plays Both Sides in Iraq

 

“The CIA has a long history of being on both sides of conflicts that we later sacrifice a great deal to address,” said Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. The jihadist fighters of ISIS, currently on the offensive in Iraq, have benefited from U.S. and allied support for regime change in Syria. In the past, the CIA “trained the precursor of al Qaida in Afghanistan” and supported Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq. Buttar, a constitutional lawyer, has produced a video titled “NSA vs USA,” a “hip hop history lesson set to music.”

Massachusetts to Have Highest State Minimum Wage

 

The Massachusetts state legislature has passed, and the governor is certain to sign, a bill to raise the minimum wage from $8 to $11 over three years – the highest state minimum in the country. Lew Finfer, director of the Massachusetts Community Action Network, credits the victory to a “broad coalition” of faith-based, community and labor organizations that collected over 200,000 signatures to put the wage hike on the ballot, this fall. The threat of a referendum worked. “Had we not gotten the signatures,” the legislature “would not have passed a bill or would have passed much less of a wage increase,” said Finfer.

Petition to Block Ugandan from UN Post

 

Sam Kutesa, Uganda’s Foreign Minister, is unfit to assume the presidency of the United Nations General Assembly, according to a petition circulating on Change.org. Kutesa is engaged in massive corruption and theft of public funds, war-profiteering in South Sudan, and is complicit in Uganda’s genocidal crimes against the Democratic Republic of Congo, said Milton Allimadi, publisher of the New York-based Black Star News. “He diminishes the legacy and the name of other Africans who have served as president of the UN General Assembly, and should resign.” Kutesa was elected to the UN post without opposition.

Syrian Election Shows People’s Determination

 

The recent elections in war-torn Syria, which President Bashar al-Assad won handily, were a demonstration of the Syrian people’s determination to prevail against western and jihadist “terror,” said Paul Larudee, part of an international team of election observers. The U.S. and Israel are intent on sowing “eternal conflict and death and destruction” in the region. However, “I don’t think [the Syrians] are going to lose this war,” said Larudee, a member of the International Palestine Solidarity Network. “They’re absolutely determined.”