20 January, 2010 — Black Agenda Report
Haiti, Katrina, and Why I Won’t Give To Haiti Through the Red Cross
At Katrina, the Red Cross used funds generously donated by millions of Americans to implement what many knew at the time was, and what has turned out to be the dispersal of much of black New Orleans to the four corners of the continental US. If the Red Cross didn’t respect the persons, the families, the communities of black US citizens, do we really imagine it will respect Haitians.
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Living a Black Fantasy: The Obama Delirium Effect by Glen Ford
Barack Obama’s presence in the White House is bad for Black people’s mental health. Even as the African American economic condition deteriorates by the day, Blacks perceive a world in which their prospects are improving. Something did change for the better for Black people in 2009. The problem is, it only happened in their minds.
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Haiti 2010: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux by Cynthia McKinney
The United States, having stolen so much from Haiti, now dictates what and when foreign aid will reach the Haitian people. Haitians know that their independence is their greatest treasure. “Haitians know, too, that the United States has installed its political proxies and even its own soldiers onto Haitian soil when the U.S. felt it was necessary.”
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US Humanitarian Aid Looks More Like US Invasion
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
If everything the United States does appears to be related to its imperial mission, that’s because it’s true. The “U.S. policy of putting the military in charge of, not only disaster relief, but foreign assistance in general, is an outgrowth of the collapse of the Soviet Union.” The attitude is, “If they want American aid, they’ll have to accept the U.S. military presence.”
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NAACP Sells Out “Civil Rights” to Net Neutrality
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Without the effective right to communicate with one’s fellow humans, all other rights disappear. In opposing internet neutrality in return for corporate telecom money, the NAACP and other so-called civil rights groups have committed an unforgivable “theft of the people’s trust.”
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Court Finds Deliberate Discrimination by NYC Fire Dept and Mayor
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
The civil rights movement may be moribund, but civil rights law still yields results. New York City, behaving like many of its citizens in claiming that it should not be found guilty of discrimination unless it can be proved that it intended to discriminate, loses the argument in federal court. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act lives.
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Why the U.S. owes Haiti billions: The briefest history by Bill Quigley
At every stage in Hait’s national existence, she has been drained, squeezed and violated by the United States. “The U.S. has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. This is not charity. This is justice. This is reparations.”
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No, Mister! You Cannot Share My Pain! by John Maxwell
French and Americans have conspired to humiliate and exploit Haiti throughout the history of the world’s first Black republic. Now, in this time of catastrophe, they claim special relationships based on shared history. What outrageous, profane nonsense – as if the victim and perpetrator of atrocity share some bond that should be treasured.
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Eshu’s blues: Pat Robertson, the U.S. Ruling Class and Haiti by michael hureaux perez
African Americans who want to help Haiti – and improve Black people’s condition worldwide – “need to reclaim our own independent black agency and move accordingly.” Our own unique perspective on the world should enable us “to see that what delays the rescue effort in Haiti is the same bloody business-centered indifference that was visited upon tens of thousands of our people in New Orleans five years ago.
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Untold Stories: Haiti, White Supremacy, US Foreign Policy and Corporate Media by Solomon Comissiong
The U.S. corporate media have a difficult time covering the Haiti catastrophe. “Haiti’s poverty and economic desolation were largely made-in-America,” an inconvenient fact to transmit to American audiences. Corporate media’s “job is to invoke pity, confusion, and ignorance, as well as to uphold the benevolence of white supremacy.”
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I first read Gramsci in English over 40 years ago. Moreover, my thesis on Theories of the Labour Movement—a Marxist critique of non-Marxist theories of industrial relations—used Gramsci’s concept of the “organic” working class intellectual to explain twentieth century rank and file movements in the British building industry.[1] This paper is based on the Gramsci section in my forthcoming book on The State and Local Government.[2]
