Black Agenda Radio

Chicago Teachers First to Stand Up to Obama School Policies “This is the first time that a teachers union stood up to the privatization of the Obama administration, stood up to the Democrats as the purveyors of these policies,” said journalist Jaisal Noor, who covered this month’s teachers strike for the Real News Network and other outlets. “The reason that the union knew it could strike and that it could maintain public support is because they had spent the last couple of years working with communities. There was massive support from parents and from students.” Both Parties Ignore Poverty Democrats are even less likely than Republicans to talk about poverty this election season, as evidenced by the near-absence of the word at both parties’ national conventions, said Paul Street, author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. In Black inner cities, “we’re looking at unemployment and poverty rates that harken back to the Great Depression. And, of course, that’s something that Barack Obama is instructed never to talk about.” Oligarchs and Plutocrats Rule “Poverty in America is a national disgrace and a moral obscenity, which is rendered invisible by the system under which we live, run by oligarchs and plutocrats,” said Dr. Cornel West, of Union Theological Seminary, in New York. West and journalist Tavis Smiley recently completed their Poverty Tour 2.0, including stops in four so-called “battleground” states. “If we can get the Black Freedom Struggle off life support, we can really turn this country around.” Occupy the Debates Progressives will hold streaming analysis and discussion of the Obama-Romney debates, starting with the first event on October 3. “We’ll discuss the obvious crises the country faces, from housing to the environment to mass incarceration, the issues that are not being dealt with…by the corporate candidates,” said organizer Kevin Zeese. For information, go toOccupyTheDebates.org. Black Educator Faces Prison for Challenging Whitening of HBCUs Dr. Jahi Issa faces two years in prison on riot charges for supporting Black students protesting the “whitening” of historically Black Delaware State University, last March. “He was touching a very raw and sensitive nerve,” saidDr. Jeff Perry, biographer of Hubert Harrison, considered the father of Harlem radical politics. “Historically Black colleges and universities get substantial federal support,” said Perry. “Corporate interests want to take it over for both profit and social control.” To assist Dr. Issa’s legal defense, go tohbcuinstitute.org. Dr. Issa’s article “The Ethnic Cleansing of Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the Age of Obama” appeared in Black Agenda Report, September 6, 2011. The Mother of all Blowbacks In Libya and now Syria, as in Afghanistan beginning under President Jimmy Carter, “the West has once again empowered fundamentalist forces that will inevitably turn against Washington, the Greatest Infidel of all,” said BAR executive editor Glen Ford. Recent anti-U.S. protests in the Islamic world are “only a small foretaste of what is to come: a blowback of such intensity that the foundations of Empire will crack, and crumble.” Information as Weaponry Last year’s U.S.-NATO war against Libya “was not conducted just with bombing and with troops, but was an information war, and that’s the parallel with what’s going on in Syria, today,” said journalist Don Debar. “The bloodshed is conducted on behalf of, or directed by, the United States, France and Britain. Iran is public enemy number one for the West, “as it has been since 1979.” Jesus on Death Row “Jesus Christ spent his last days on death row and was murdered by the government at that time,” said Pam Africa, head of International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal, speaking at Riverside Church, in New York. “We cannot forget political prisoners. These brothers and sisters are in jail because they have a love for us, and understand that we must never give in.”

Preventive Detention Law Ruled Unconstitutional “I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Obama administration will appeal” a Federal District Court ruling that knocked down preventive detention legislation signed into law by the Obama administration, said Professor Marjorie Cohn, of the Thomas Jefferson School of Law, in San Diego, California. “Keep in mind that indefinite detention without charges” also “violates a treaty the United States ratified, called the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, does not seem to feel bound by these treaties,” said Cohn, author of United States of Torture. Stop Stop-and-Frisk Enters New Phase Young Black and brown people blew whistles across New York City on September 13, to call attention to police abuse of power. The “Blow the Whistle” campaign is “a way for the people who bear the brunt of the criminal injustice system…to get involved in the resistance” without “opening the door to further arrests,” said Carl Dix, who founded Stop Stop-and-Frisk along with Prof. Cornel West, last year. Huge proportions of Black and brown youth are already under some form of criminal justice system control. “They aren’t going to be the ones that will take up a civil disobedience campaign” – but they will blow the whistle when they see police misconduct, said Dix. Both Major Parties Run Racist Campaigns “At least since the Dixiecrats abandoned the Democratic Party to join the Republicans, everything they have done has been based on race,” said Kevin Alexander Gray, the South Carolina activist and author. This election season, “the Democrats have responded with a platform that aims at reaching out to white working class voters, which is what racist campaigns do.” That’s where former president Bill Clinton comes in. But, at least that’s “better than Obama doing what he usually does, playing ‘kick-a-nigger’ politics when he’s felt the need to do so,” said Gray. Poverty Pervasive in U.S. While U.S. Census Bureau figures for last year show poverty hovering slightly below 1965 levels, its long term reach is far deeper, said Stephen Pimpare, associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. Twenty-eight percent of Americans were poor at some point between 2008 and 2009. During the three years between 2004 and 2007, 46 percent, “experienced poverty.” That’s “very nearly a majority of Americans,” said Pimpare, author of A People’s History of Poverty in America. U.S. and Israel Isolated in World The recent unanimous vote by the 120-member Non-Aligned Movement, affirming Iran’s rights to nuclear power technology, “proves that Iran is not isolated, but in fact it is the United States, Israel and the NATO powers that are isolated” from the rest of the world, said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, professor of African American studies at Temple University, in Philadelphia. The Non-Aligned Movement comprises two-thirds of the United Nations General Assembly.

Arne Duncan an “Absolute Disaster” for Black Children

President Obama’s Race to the Top “has been an extension of, and even worse than,” President Bush’s public schools program, said veteran Black educator Dr. Donald Smith, an organizer of the upcoming Summit on Saving the African Child, October 11 and 12, in Chicago. “People will discuss charter schools, unions and corporations that have, in many instances, taken over the curriculum and instruction of schools of children of color and other children of poverty,” said Smith, who will keynote the conference. Education Secretary Arne Duncan “has been an absolute disaster” for Black students in public schools.

School Discipline Bias Pushes Black Kids into Prison

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, charging public schools in Okaloosa, Florida, with disciplining Black students far more harshly than whites. Forty-seven percent of students suspended by the district are Black, although African Americans make up only 12 percent of the student body. There is a link between racially biased school discipline and the so-called school-to-prison pipeline, said Atty. Stephanie Langer, of the SPLC’s Florida office. “Once these kids get into the system, it’s very hard to get out of the system.”

GOP and Dems Much Alike

The two major corporate parties agree on much more than they disagree, said journalist Arun Gupta, co-founder of The Occupied Wall Street Journal and The Indypendent. That’s one reason why “there’s been no discussion of regulating Wall Street and almost no discussion of the continuing home foreclosure crisis,” said Gupa. “Both parties are attacking public education, and neither party has any sort of plan to create more jobs” aside from “the mysteries and magic of the ‘free market.’”

U.S. Labor Movement Can’t Move

Harry Kelber, the 98 year-old labor organizer and publisher of LaborEducator.org, says American trade unions “are not fighting, they’re not organizing, and they don’t have a plan to organize.” Too many union officials, said Kelber, are simply “biding their time, waiting to retire with a fat pension.” Labor spends tens of millions electing Democrats, but “What are they getting out of it?”

Rwanda's Kagame Commits Genocide

Opposition parties from the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to charge Rwandan strongman Paul Kagame with genocide and crimes against humanity. Kagame’s regime is responsible for many of the six million deaths in neighboring Congo since the mid-Nineties, and for killing hundreds of thousands of Hutus in Rwanda, said Sixbert Musangamfura, a spokesman for the United Democratic Front of Rwanda, one of the complainants to the ICC. Rwanda is one of Washington’s closest allies in Africa.

Blow the Whistle on Stop-and-Frisk The police racial profiling practice known as stop-and-frisk is “wrong, it is immoral, it is racist and unconstitutional” said social activist Dr. Cornel West, announcing a “Blow the Whistle on Stop-and-Frisk” campaign starting September 13. “This struggle is going to intensify. We want to connect it to the military industrial complex,” the Wall Street complex, the prison industrial complex, and “we want to connect it to this election, where you see the farce between one oligarchic part and another.” Noche Diaz, an activist facing multiple trials for confronting stop-and-frisk, asked “By is that I have to look at 15 year-olds in the playgrounds of the Bronx, who tell me that if you’re not a white person in this world, you don’t matter?” Push for $10 Minimum Wage Democrats are “dialing for the same dollars” as Republicans, seeking corporate campaign contributions and “rejecting Franklin Roosevelt’s legacy,” said social activist Ralph Nader. “Polls show over 70 percent of the American people consistently want a minimum wage kept up with inflation.” Adjusted for inflation, the 1968 minimum wage would now be $10.35, rather than the current $7.25. The United States, said Nader, has “the lowest minimum wage in the western world.” Black Is Back Coalition Examines Electoral Strategies “We want to take this conversation beyond an examination of Obama, to an examination of the electoral process, itself,” said Ayesha Fleary, at the recent conference of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, in Newark, New Jersey. “Let us use the electoral process as one form of struggle,” said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. “Our future depends on our willingness to build a real capacity to utilize every form of struggle in the quest for liberation.” Black people were ill-served by the “misleadership class” that arose after the collapse of the Sixties mass movements, said Glen Ford. “The same class of Black opportunists who has risen to local power through the Blackening of America’s cities, presided over the demographic reversal of fortunes, later on,” with the mounting loss of Black urban majorities. “Corporate American and the banks have a death grip on Harlem, that will produce an even greater forced migration out of Harlem,” said Nellie Bailey, of the Harlem Tenants Council. U.S. rulers have placed Black and brown “neocolonialists” in positions of nominal power “to make it appear that people are making progress,” said Charles Barron, the Brooklyn city councilman. What’s needed are “African-conscious, radical, revolutionary people” elected to city councils, nationwide. “Do we want to participate” in elections “just to raise issues…or to actually get people elected?” asked Larry Hamm, leader of the Newark-based People’s Organization for Progress. “We’ve got to be able to come up with candidates, and when we put people in office, we’ve got to keep them accountable.”

Eric Holder’s Lack of Balls is Not the Problem The Justice Department’s failure to bring criminal charges against Goldman Sachs is not due to the fact that Attorney General Eric Holder “has no balls,” as Matt Taibbi recently wrote in Rolling Stone, said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Rather, Holder “isn’t going to do anything that President Obama doesn’t like. These guys all depend on money from very wealthy people to get President Obama re-elected.” Instead of personalizing the issue, said Dr. Williams, “we need to concentrate on the systemic nature of the problem: our system is basically corrupt.” Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Could Turn November Election “They know that the number of people that do not have photo ID is almost the same population by which the president lost the state” in 2008, said State Representative W. Curtis Thomas, Democrat from Philadelphia. The GOP-backed photo ID legislation, recently upheld by a Republican Commonwealth judge, has the potential to “make or break the election,” said Thomas. Voter Impersonation Fraud Virtually Non-Existent The fraudulent voter behavior that photo IDs are supposed to prevent hardly exists in the real world, according to an exhaustive study by the journalism research organization News21. The study found only 10 cases of voter impersonation in all of the country over the past ten years, said News 21’s Corbin Carson, a masters degree candidate at Arizona State University. That represents “roughly one out of every 15 million registered voters,” said Carson – an “infinitesimal” number. South African Government “Opportunism” Led to Massacre of Miners When Jacob Zuma succeeded Thabo Mbeki as head of the African National Congress and president of South Africa, many assumed it would mean “a shift to the left and redistributionist policies…but that hasn’t happened,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston. Meanwhile, Zuma’s extended family is “feasting” on government contracts, symptomatic of “opportunism” in the ANC. Hopefully, the ANC will conduct an “inventory” of its policies and do some “self-criticism” in the wake of the police massacre of 34 miners. American Christian Right Spreads Homophobia in Africa “Homosexuality has been part and parcel of African history,” said Dr. Kapya Kaoma, author of a report on the U.S. religious Right’s campaign to spread anti-gay hysteria throughout the African continent. “The laws against homosexuality in African came with western colonialism,” yet U.S.-based Christian groups try to tap into African anti-colonial sentiment by claiming that liberals in the West have exported homosexuality to the continent, said Dr. Kaoma, an Anglican priest from Zambia.

Texas Ten Percent Admissions Plan “Model for Country” Texas provides a “model for the rest of the country” for boosting the numbers of Black and Latino students in state colleges, said Shanta Driver, of BAMN, By Any Means Necessary. BAMN filed a friend of the court brief supporting Texas’ policy allowing admission to state colleges of the top ten percent of each high school graduating class. “You don’t need an elaborate maze of criteria” to integrate higher education, said Driver. The ten percent plan works because it eliminates “all of the common variables that are used to make it much more difficult for Black and Latino and poor white students to gain admission into their state’s flagship universities.” “Blow the Whistle” on Stop-and-Frisk On September 13, the Stop Stop-and-Frisk movement will blow the whistle on police abuse in New York City, “figuratively and literally,” said spokesman Carl Dix. “People will gather with their whistles and cameras and be on the lookout for cops violating someone’s rights, and when they see it, blow the whistle to draw a crowd,” said Dix. “We are no longer going to accept this kind of abuse in silence.” NAACP Called “Irrelevant” The national and state offices of the NAACP have “sold out” to the Whirlpool corporation’s attempts to turn mostly Black Benton Harbor, Michigan, over to developers, said Rev. Edward Pinkney, the longtime president of the local NAACP. Pinkney publicly burned his NAACP membership card, on Sunday. “We have given them a free pass because of what they did 40 years ago,” said Pinkney, who claims more than 800 others joined him in burning their NAACP cards. “They’re just a shell of what they used to be.” The Myth of “Progressive” Media Since the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement issued its groundbreaking Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People, earlier this summer, it has met a wall of silence from media outlets and personalities that are generally considered “progressive,” said Rosa Clemente, co-author of the report. “Whether it is MSNBC or Michael Eric Dyson, Rev. Sharpton or Mellissa Harris-Perry…Democracy Now, The Nation, In These Times – they haven’t covered it either,” said Clemente. “They don’t want to deal with the issue of race and systemic violence. They don’t want President Obama or his Justice Department put on blast” in this election year.” Conference on Black-Led Development The Uhuru Movement holds a conference to “Empower African Communities Through African-Led Development,” in Washington, DC, on October 13 and 14. The conference aims to “expand our knowledge base and skills base to the Caribbean, Africa and South America – wherever African people are,” said Ayesha Fleary, of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project. The project operates agriculture enterprises in Houston, Washington, and Oakland, California, and a nursing school in Sierra Leone, West Africa. “Whoever controls your food, controls your life,” said Fleary.

Elections and Black Power On August 18 and 19, the Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparation holds its national conference in Newark, New Jersey, under the theme: Obama, the Elections, and the Struggle for Peace, a Better Life, and Black Power. “We’re going to take it away from simply a discussion around Obama and place it in a context of elections in a capitalist system: What are they about, who funds them, and their role” under capitalism, said Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela. “This is something that the movement at-large hasn’t done since the Civil Rights era, when there was an assumption that elections were the way to gain power for Black people.” Prison for Poor People In a practical sense, debtors prisons are a reality in America, say two Birmingham, Alabama, lawyers who have defended hundreds of people thrown in jail by private companies for non-payment of fines and fees. Companies contracted by localities to handle probation “services” pile on fees that often “exceed the amount that the person can afford to make payments,” said Atty. Lisa Borden. In many cases, people who are jailed are charged additional fees to pay for their incarceration. Atty. William Dawson, who brought suit against many Alabama cities and towns, said: “The fact that this has gone on for six or eight years throughout the South and other parts of America is outrageous.” The Philadelphia Plan: Marginalize Blacks Philadelphia pubic school authorities want to close at least 40 schools and convert 40 percent of remaining classrooms to charter operations. The plan was financed by large corporate interests. “There’s big business in moving us out of the way,” said Rev. Alyn Waller, pastor of the city’s Enon Tabernacle Church. “We need to recognize that there is a larger strategy, here, to disenfranchise and marginalize people in the African American community. U.S. Persecutes Eritrea The northeast African nation of Eritrea, which fought a 30-year war for independence from Ethiopia, “is on America’s hit list,” said Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report executive editor. The U.S. pressured the UN Security Council to renew sanctions against Eritrea, even though a monitoring group found no evidence that the country had assisted Shabab resistance fighters in Somalia over the past year. Especially in Africa, said Ford, Washington’s policy is “to create chaos and horrific human suffering in those regions it cannot directly control.”

Don’t Depend on Obama “Whatever happens in November, our job doesn’t change,” said anti-racism activist Tim Wise, author of Dear White America: A Letter to a New Minority. “The symbolic value of a Black face in a high place does not necessarily translate into structural change.” A mass movement is necessary to force elected officials to address social issues, “because they are not going to do it in and of themselves.” COINTELPRO Never Ended The government’s Counter Intelligence Program of the Sixties were never shut down, said Larry Pinkney, former Black Panther and political prisoner. The Feds continue to plant provocateurs in activist ranks. “It’s the oldest trick in the book,” said Pinkney, “and the reason it has consistently worked ism we’ve got too man ‘sheeple’ out there who are about to find themselves in a situation where they have no Constitutional or human rights.” Offshore Trillions Measuring the global elite’s offshore cash stashes is “like estimating the size of a black hole,” said James Henry, author of Tax Justice Network-USA study titled “The Price of Offshore, Revisited.” Between $21 trillion to $32 trillion is hidden from tax collectors, said Henry, a former chief economist for the McKinsey consulting group. Developing nations are actually net lenders to First World countries, “to the tune of $11 trillion, which is exactly opposite the way global capital markets are supposed to function.” Africa at Crossroads “The African Union has proven itself incapable of resolving armed conflicts” in Libya, the Ivory Coast and Guinea-Bissau, said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston. South Africa, the sub-Saharan powerhouse, is key to continental security. “It’s either get South Africa off the sidelines or invite in the United States or some outside power – and, obviously, the latter is too ghastly to contemplate.”

New Report Blasts NYPD Repression of Occupy Movement New York City police used “aggressive, unnecessary and excessive force” in response to the Occupy Wall Street movement protests that began last September, said Sarah Knuckey, a New York University law professor and co-author of a new report that details 130 separate incidents of police abuse. Police violence was directed “not only at protesters, but also against bystanders, independent legal observers and, particularly, journalists.” The report asks Mayor Michael Bloomberg to initiate an independent review of police behavior over the last ten months, calls for creation of an independent inspector general’s office to oversee NYPD, and demands accountability for past abuses. If the city fails to respond in good faith, said Prof. Knuckey, the U.S. Justice Department will be asked to intervene. A consortium of law schools plans to issue additional reports on police treatment of Occupy demonstrators in other cities. Rich Hide $21 to $32 Trillion Offshore A study commissioned by the Tax Justice Network-USA shows the global financial elite have stashed between $23 trillion and $32 trillion in secret offshore accounts. “Governments are losing all of this potential revenue that could be used to provide basic services and to stop all the cutting of jobs all over the world,” said network executive director Nicole Tichon. “Conservatively,” tax revenues from the hidden funds “could range anywhere from $190 billion to $280 billion, which is a little more than twice the amount” that the world’s rich countries spend “on all overseas development aid.” Obama Fails Federal Workers of Color The Obama administration has “turned a deaf ear” to minority federal employee’s complaints of racist abuse, assaults, rapes and beatings in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said Lawrence C. Lucas, president of the USDA Coalition of Minority Employees. “This administration has failed, and failed miserably,” said Lucas, who was interviewed on William Jones III’s Internet radio program, Wake Up New Orleans. “How can people go to the polls and vote for people who, when you ask them for help, you’re talking to deaf ears.” Big Business Takeover of Philly Schools “It is very clear that businesses are beginning to have more to say about what happens in the schools than the parents” in communities of color in Philadelphia, said the city’s teachers union president, Jerry Jordan. The Philadelphia School Reform Commission has targeted at least 40 public schools for closure, and plans to turn 40 percent of classrooms over to charter schools, despite studies that have shown “the vast majority of charter schools” in Pennsylvania “are not doing as well as the neighborhood public schools.” The transition plan was drawn up by a corporate consultant firm from Boston, and paid for by the William Penn Foundation and the local United Way.“ Black Radio Has Gone Corporate “I think the term ‘Black radio’ no longer applies, except to say that there are Black people on the radio, and there are a couple of Black people who own some stations, but for the most part Black commercial radio acts pretty much the same” as general market media, said veteran broadcaster Davy D, host of the syndicated daily show Hard Knocks Radio. White listeners share the same complaints about constant repetition of “top ten” songs, as Blacks. Davy D and other media activists sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, requesting an investigation into Black-oriented radio’s accountability to the Black listening public. Boycott Hyatt Hotels Interfaith Worker Justice (IWJ) has joined the global boycott of the Hyatt hotel chain. “Hyatt has really taken a low-road path,” contracting out much of its work force as temporary employees, said IWJ executive director Kim Bobo. “These perma-temps are paid minimum wage or just a little above, they have no vacations, no sick days, no health care.” UNAC: U.S. Hands Off Syria The United States and its European allies are attempting to “get ahead” of the Arab Spring by destabilizing the regime in Syria. “To claim that this is a humanitarian intervention is thoroughly false,” said Chris Gauvreau, of the United National Anti-War Coalition. “The so-called humanitarian intervention in Libya was a disaster, leading not to democracy but to another elite regime characterized by odious policies including racism against Black Africans.”

CIA and U.S. Military Officials Sued in Targeted Killings The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) charge the United States violated international law and its own Constitution with the killing of three Americans citizens in Yemen, last year. “These deaths are connected to a broader program of targeted killing that, in our view, has no lawful basis,” said CCR lawyer Padiss Kebriaei. American-born cleric Anwar Aulaqi, his teenage son and an associate were never formally charged with any crime. No Compromise with Stop-and-Frisk New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is “trying to gather up Black politicians and Black ministers who will sit down and negotiate ‘reforms’ to stop-and-frisk,” said Carl Dix, a founder of Stop Stop-and-Frisk. “But, you can’t reform injustice – you have to get rid of it.” Dix took part in the final day of a family vigil for Ramarley Graham, the unarmed Black teenager killed by police in his Bronx home in front of his family. Half a Million to be Disenfranchised by Photo ID Laws At least 500,000 eligible voters will find they can’t vote on Election Day, due to photo ID laws passed in ten states, according to a report from the Brennan Justice Center. Keesha Gaskins, co-author of the report, said many of those affected “live more than 10 miles from an ID-issuing office” and “lack access to a vehicle.” The Black Belt South and Brown Belt areas bordering Mexico are “really graphic examples of where these problems” arise, said Gaskins. Black Radio Facing “Demise” With radio in general confronting a “dying revenue stream,” Black-oriented commercial broadcasting “may be entering an era in which there will be no concessions to culture” and to Black political and social development by the mega-chains that own the media, said Dr. Todd Burroughs, of Morgan State University, in Baltimore. Burroughs is among the signatories to a letter asking the Federal Communications Commission to investigate “the demise” of Black radio. Black Soldiers Crucial to American War of Independence Black soldiers “were the most experienced fighters” at Yorktown, comprising a quarter of the soldiers under General George Washington’s command in the decisive battle, said Alan Gilbert, author of Black Patriots and Loyalists: Fighting for Emancipation in the War for Independence. Gilbert disputes estimates that only 5,000 Blacks fought for American separation from Britain. However, far more Blacks served with the British, who promised freedom, while Washington’s Continental Army did not.