MLK’s Televised Challenge to Obama by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been polluted by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. In focusing on King, the man of peace, Tavis Smiley’s PBS special corrects a history that has been distorted, sometimes beyond recognition not the least by the revisionist and poseur in the White House.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/mlk’s-televised-challenge-obama

Shirley Franklin and the Digital Divide: Fronting For Telecoms At TheRoot.Com
Posted Wed, 03/31/2010 – 02:31 by Bruce A. Dixon
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
A March 30 article at The Root lauded former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin for her alleged efforts to bridge the digital divide. But why did its author Kris Broughton fail to ask the former mayor and current corporate operative any informed questions? Why does he appeared not to know the Alliance For Digital Equality is a known PR front group for the powerful telecom industry?
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/shirley-franklin-and-digital-divide-fronting-telecoms-therootcom

Freedom Rider: Obama’s CIA by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Global public opinion has been called the second superpower second only to the United States in capacity to shape world events. But the premiere intelligence agency of the reigning state superpower routinely manipulates world opinion to suit U.S. purposes. The CIA distorts global realities in furtherance of President Obama’s war aims in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/freedom-rider-obama’s-cia

Cultural Genocide: The Drums Fall Silent in Chocolate City
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Jared A. Ball, Ph.D.
Culture is the expression of collective personhood. The culture of Africa’s descendants in the U.S. has been demonized, belittled and viewed as a threat ever since the days when slavemasters banned use of the drum. With the wholesale gentrification of urban America, a new wave of cultural ethnic cleansing is underway, as inner city entertainment venues are being closed, and owners of remaining night spots collude to squeeze original artists with substantial and established audiences out of commercial viability. Like coffee, some are too black, too strong.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/cultural-genocide-drums-fall-silent-chocolate-city

COMING MONDAY, April 5th www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/coming-monday-april-5th

Black Agenda Radio debuts on Progressive Radio Network
www.progressiveradionetwork.com/

Mondays at 5:pm ET
Dr. Peniel Joseph Peddles Slick Marketing Constructs As Black History By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
Carter G. Woodson once declared that Harvard had ruined more black minds than bad whiskey. While there might be some dispute about Woodson’s numbers, there is no doubt that the tradition still continues. Among Harvard’s latest victims to rise to prominence is Dr. Peniel Joseph, whose establishment-friendly narrative of black history legitimizes Barack Obama and similar black politicians as unforeseen consequences, and perhaps lineal descendants of the mid 20th century Freedom and Black Power Movements. In truth, they are no more descendants of these indigenous popular movements than lung or colon cancers are descendants of the people who contract them.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/dr-peniel-joseph-peddles-slick-marketing-constructs-”black-history”

NYC Spends Tens of Millions to Illegally Humiliate Prisoners
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
Degradation of captives is central to the culture of the American criminal justice system. The City of New York spares no expense to allow jail guards to routinely violate inmates rights and court orders through illegal strip searches a pattern and practice that has cost taxpayers at least $81 million.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/nyc-spends-tens-millions-illegally-humiliate-prisoners

Mob Rules: Tea Party’s High Noon by Sikivu Hutchinson
The unfortunately undead lurch out of Americas racial horror houses to reclaim the land for the White Man. Corporate media and the GOP confer respectability to the Old Confederacys second coming (did it ever leave?). The freshly evangelized macho racist right has ensured that its charge of a socialist government expansion is now viewed as a reasonable critique.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/mob-rules-tea-party’s-high-noon

BAMN: By Any Means Necessary. An Interview with Detroit’s Shanta Driver on April 10 March and Rally Against Obama School Privatization Agenda

A Black Agenda Radio Interview by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford
One of the Obama administration’s clear, if unstated objectives, is to demolish public education in the U.S., and replace it with privatized, often militarized charter schools that put the free market and wealthy corporations rather than parents, teachers and communities in charge of education. Converting entire cities to charter schools pits every parent against every other parent in competition for the limited number of spots in what are supposed to be the best schools, and eliminates the neighborhood school as an anchor point for cooperation and social cohesion. So neighborhood public schools across the nation are being starved of resources to ensure that they can be labeled failing and their facilities handed over to charter schools, condominium developers, or whatever the free market will bear.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/bamn-any-means-necessary-interview-detroits-shanta-driver-april-10-march-and-rally-against-o

Presidential Violence!
by C. Uzondu
Few imagined how dangerous a Black U.S. presidency could be for Black interests and the prospects for world peace. Barack Obama’s success as it will be judged by those powers with which he has aligned requires that we valorize capitalist imperialism, male supremacy, militarism, and white supremacy.
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/presidential-violence

Critiquing Min. Louis Farrakhan on Tavis Smiley’s All Stars: Dr. Jared Ball VS Derrick Muhammad

A Black Agenda Radio Discussion
Derrick Muhammad, our friend and colleague and Dr. Jared Ball explored their differences over the performance of Min. Louis Farrakhan on Tavis Smiley’s Black Agenda no relation to us CSPAN show. Does the NOI, and did Min. Farrakhan espouse a fundamentally conservative and individualist economic and political agenda? Does he embrace the decrepit shibboleth of salvation through the might of a trillion dollars in Black Buying Power?
www.blackagendareport.com/?q=content/critiquing-min-louis-farrakhan-tavis-smileys-”all-stars”-dr-jared-ball-vs-derrick-muhammed