Black Agenda Radio

Black Agenda Radio - 05.18.20

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: What does genetic testing have to do with Reparations? A professor of anthropology makes the political connection. Hospital closings and endemic health problems have made rural America more vulnerable to the Coronavirus. And, Mumia Abu Jamal tells us what a pandemic looks like from behind the prison walls. 

 

But first – Black America’s most prolific political author, Dr. Gerald Horne, has watched capitalist structures crumble under the impact of Covid-19 and the systems own contradictions. The professor of History and African American Studies says the pandemic has shaken global capitalism to its core.

Dr. Carrie Hemming-Smith, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, is dismayed by the death toll from Coronavirus in rural America. She’s co-author of an article that shows rural counties with Black or indigenous majorities have the highest rates of premature death – and that was BEFORE the current epidemic.

Reparations for historical wrongs has emerged as a political issue, and genetic science now tells us more than we’ve ever known about our ancestors. But, can genetics become a useful tool for Reparations? We spoke with Dr. Jada Benn-Torres, of Vanderbilt University. She’s author of a recent paper, titled “Reparational’ Genetics: Genomic Data and the Case for Reparations in the Caribbean.”

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, has been experiencing the pandemic from behind bars in Pennsylvania. Prisons are hot spots of contagion, but Abu Jamal says it’s hard for individual prisoners to see the big picture.

Black Agenda Radio - 05.18.20

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: What does genetic testing have to do with Reparations? A professor of anthropology makes the political connection. Hospital closings and endemic health problems have made rural America more vulnerable to the Coronavirus. And, Mumia Abu Jamal tells us what a pandemic looks like from behind the prison walls. 

 

But first – Black America’s most prolific political author, Dr. Gerald Horne, has watched capitalist structures crumble under the impact of Covid-19 and the systems own contradictions. The professor of History and African American Studies says the pandemic has shaken global capitalism to its core.

Dr. Carrie Hemming-Smith, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, is dismayed by the death toll from Coronavirus in rural America. She’s co-author of an article that shows rural counties with Black or indigenous majorities have the highest rates of premature death – and that was BEFORE the current epidemic.

Reparations for historical wrongs has emerged as a political issue, and genetic science now tells us more than we’ve ever known about our ancestors. But, can genetics become a useful tool for Reparations? We spoke with Dr. Jada Benn-Torres, of Vanderbilt University. She’s author of a recent paper, titled “Reparational’ Genetics: Genomic Data and the Case for Reparations in the Caribbean.”

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, has been experiencing the pandemic from behind bars in Pennsylvania. Prisons are hot spots of contagion, but Abu Jamal says it’s hard for individual prisoners to see the big picture.

Black Agenda Radio - 05.11.20

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The United States is in the grips of a health crisis and an economic crisis, but is the ruling class in crisis? A Black scholar says the oligarchy may be losing its grip. And, How do you sell Africa on the world market? You name a perfume after the continent, and make the commercial in Rome.

Joe Biden has finally come up with a presidential campaign platform tailored to Black America. He calls it the “Lift Every Voice and Sing” Plan. But Ajamu Baraka, the 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate, doesn’t see anything to sing about in Biden’s plan.

Is the current crisis an economic collapse with a health component, or a health crisis that set off an economic meltdown? We put that question to Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar.

Half a century after most African nations emerged from colonialism, advertising agencies are busy marketing the continent and its people. Dr. Grace Adeniyi- Ogunyankin, a professor at Queens University, in Ontario, Canada, says Africa has been repackaged for the global market. She wrote an article that examined, among other things, a commercial hawking a perfume, called ‘Scent of Africa.” We asked Dr. Adeniyi- Ogunyankin why the perfume ad caught her attention.

 

Black Agenda Radio - 05.04.20

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: We’ll hear how upscale Black mothers from Detroit who move their families to the white suburbs are met with a barrage of micro-aggressions. And, Black former prison inmates have a hard time finding employment, or getting anybody to vouch for their trustworthiness.

In the last decade, “Black Lives Matter” grew from a hash-tag to a movement. But the question still remains: Whose lives – and deaths -- matter enough to make the evening news? Colgate University sociology professor Alicia Simmons did a study of corporate media to find out how newspaper and TV newsrooms treat police killings of unarmed Black people. 

The great Black activist and sociologist W.E.B. Dubois said Black life takes place behind a “veil” that serves as both a cloak and a shield against white attack. Professor Chasity Bailey-FAKhoury, at Grand Valley State University, in Michigan, did a study of Black families that moved from Detroit to the mostly white suburbs in search of better schools for their kids, but were met with a barrage of micro-aggressions by teachers and other parents.  Professor Fakhoury titled her study, “State of the Art: Living Within the Veil.”

It is well known that ex-prison inmates have a hard time finding work – especially if they’re Black. But sociology professor Sandra Susan Smith, of the University of California at Berkeley,  has done a study that found, even Black folks that have been to prison are sometimes reluctant to vouch for other ex-offenders who are looking for a job.

Black Agenda Radio - 04.27.20

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: a Black scholar says Blacks will remain a subservient people if they continue making REQUESTS, rather than DEMANDS, of power. And, we’ll take a look at a state that where whites, Hispanics and Native Americans are all acknowledged celebrated, but Black people are erased from history.

But first – the state of Louisiana incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than any other place in the world, most of them Black. That Black prison majority is now mortally endangered by the coronavirus epidemic. The Black Is Back Coalition held a national teleconference, featuring two activists battling to free Louisiana’s prisoners from the Covid-19 death-trap. Belinda Parter Brown spoke first. She’s head of Louisiana United International.

It has long been fashionable in some Black circles to speak of all the racial “progress” that has been made. But Professor Anthony Farley, of Boston College Law School, has written a paper that maintains the system of slavery is still with us in the United States, and that Black politics often amounts to nothing but Perfecting Slavery.

New Mexico is among the least Black states in the country. But Dr. Natasha Howard, a lecturer on Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico, says the reason Blacks are scarce is because the state was for a long time very hostile to ANY Black presence. Dr. Howard wrote on article that focused on a mural on display at the University, celebrating Anglo Whites, Spanish-speaking people, and Native Americans, but leaving out Black New Mexicans entirely.

Black Agenda Radio - 04.20.20

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: Public housing tenants have long suffered from poor services and ceaseless attempts to demolish their homes and scatter them to the winds. But the Coronavirus epidemic presents public housing dwellers with a whole new set of challenges. And, a South African journalist is doing what he can to make scientific concepts accessible in the languages spoken by Black Africans.

 

But first – the Black Is Back Coaliion held a national ZOOM conference on the COVID-19 epidemic, and how Black people can fight back. We’ll present two of the conference presenters. First up, Betty Davis, of New York City. Whether the challenge is public health, police violence or education, Black Power is the answer.

Philip McHarris is a PhD candidate at Yale Unversity who published an article in Essence Magazine titled “Public Housing Residents May Be Some Of The Hardest Hit by the COVID-19 Outbreak.” McHarris says life in the projects was hard enough, before the epidemic.

 

Centuries of colonization and white rule in South Africa left the Black majority behind in all areas of education. Today, under Black governments, the country’s African language groups remain largely shut out of discussions of science. SEE-boo-SI-so Bee-YAY-la is a South African communicator and journalist. He recently wrote article on decolonizing science so that it is accessible in the many language spoken by Black South Africans. Bee-YAY-la told of being assigned to write in the Zulu language about the discovery of a new species of dinosaur. The problem was, the vocabulary necessary didn’t exist in Zulu.

Black Agenda Radio - 04.13.20

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The coronavirus had caused people in authority to take measures they’ve never even considered before, like letting lots of folks out of prison. We’ll hear from a district attorney whose allowing 40 percent of his city’s prisoners to ride out the epidemic at home. A Black scholar says Black kids are kicked out of class in obscene numbers because slavery and Jim Crow are alive and well in the nation’s schools. And, we’ll hear how racism was behind the coup that ousted Bolivia’s first Native American president.

llinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has promised not to bring any more inmates into his state’s prison system due to the coronavirus epidemic. But Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, says the prisons are already infected, and the state needs to free many more inmates from being trapped in a cage with the disease.

Chesa Boudine, the leftish District Attorney for San Francisco, has a personal interest in dramatically reducing the US prison population. His father is a 75 year old prison inmate serving time for his role in the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery – a political heist by white radicals and members of the Black Liberation Army. District Attorney Boudine told National Public Radio’s Terry Gross that he’s reduced the San Francisco jail’s population by 40 percent -- both to fight the Covid-19 epidemic, and because this country puts too many people in jail.

Dr. Justin Coles is a professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Education with an emphasis on Urban Education and Critical Race Studies. Dr. Coles co-authored an article on mass suspensions of Black students, a long standing phenomenon that Cole says is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

Race was the main force behind last year’s coup that overthrew Evo Morales, the elected president of Bolivia, South America’s most heavily indigenous nation. That’s the assessment of Dr. TaTHAgatan RaVINdran, a professor of anthropology and sociology in Colombia who has done extensive research on Bolivia’s Native American majority. Dr. RaVINdran says the United States and multinational corporations also had it in for Morales, but racism is what brought Bolivia’s first Native president down.

 

Black Agenda Radio - 04.06.20

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The word “Strike!” is on the lips of activists in the United States and Europe, where capitalist austerity has shaped the government’s response to the coronavirus epidemic. We’ll talk with an American activist in Spain who’s an expert on rent strikes, and a student activist at the University of California who proposes a strike for the people’s social welfare.

Cooperation Jackson, the Black activist and workers cooperative organization headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi, is circulating a call for a general strike and a list of demands that would reorganize the economy to protect working people. The strike would begin on May first -- May Day. We asked Cooperation Jackson spokesman Kali Akuno: How to you launch a general strike when much of the country is under a general lockdown?

Peter Gelderloos is an American anarchist activist, now living in Spain. He’s author of many books and articles, including a recent study of rent strikes throughout history. Gelderloos says strikes are the best response to the capitalist-controlled government’s behavior in the epidemic.

Graduate student teaching assistants at the University of California have been engaged in a series of protests over wages and working conditions. Semassa Boko is a Phd candidate at the university’s Irvine campus. He’s using his experience to help launch a strike in response to the epidemic and social crisis. Boko wrote an article on the concept of a social welfare strike.

Black Agenda Radio - 03.30.20

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: a young activist and writer explains why Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism doesn’t measure up to the real thing. A call for change-makers to imagine the unimaginable. And, Mumia Abu Jamal says the system that put him in prison is coming apart at the seams.

 

But first – the superpower that wants to rule the world can’t even muster the resources to combat a virus, the lowest form of life on the planet. In Philadelphia, Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro says the American people have lost trust and belief in the system. We asked him if that fits the description of a crisis of legitimacy.

Joshua Briond is a North-Carolina-based activist and member of the Black Alliance for Peace who used to be an enthusiastic supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. But he sees the world differently, now. Briond recently wrote an article in which he related how he was finally introduced to authentic socialism with the words, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

If capitalism is in a late and fatal stage, after hundreds of years at the top, then what is to take its place? Minkah Makalani is an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, who wrote a recent article titled, “The Politically Unimaginable in Black Marxist Thought.”

 

Mumia Abu Jamal is a former Black Panther who became an award-winning reporter in Philadelphia – before he became the nation’s best known political prisoner. Abu Jamal filed this report for Prison Radio.

Black Agenda Radio - 03.23.20

This is the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Nellie Bailey, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: James Baldwin had a very long career, but never wrote an entire book about Africa. However, a Black scholar says Baldwin’s later works show a keen understanding of African liberation. And, should a female athlete be disqualified from competition if some people think she looks and performs too much like a man?

But first – Dr.Jared Ball has spent years disproving the proposition that the road to progress lies in harnessing Black consumers’ “buying power,” which supposedly exceeds a trillion dollars a year. Dr. Ball is a professor of Communications at Morgan State University and author of “The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power.”

The great writer James Baldwin is mostly known for his insights on race in the United States. But, according to Dag-Mah-Wee Woub-shet, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Baldwin displayed a growing understanding of the African liberation movement in his later works. Professor Woub-shet wrote an article on the subject for the Journal of Contemporary African Art.

Sociology professor Ah-NEE-ma Ah-jeh-PONG, of Simmons University, specializes in exploring questions of gender and sports. Dr. Ah-jeh-PONG published an article, recently, that focused on the 2012 Olympic Games, where South African women’s track star Caster Seh-MEN-yah won a silver medal but caused a huge controversy by looking too “mannish.”