24 November, 2010 — BAR

Congressman Bobby Rush, the Color of Change and the Color of Truth

by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
In the next Congress, Chicago’s Bobby Rush wants to the the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet. While there is much to like and admire about the congressman’s long career, Color of Change’s James Rucker points out, putting Bobby Rush in charge of safeguarding a free and open internet is putting a corporate-funded fox in charge of the people’s henhouse.

Freedom Rider: Obama Style Fascism

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
The germs of fascism infest both parties, thriving among Republican and Democratic hosts, alike. Barack Obama’s 2008 victory was also a new lease on life for George Bush’s foreign wars and strangulation of domestic civil liberties, most recently in the assault on travelers bodies at airports. The first Black president rules very much like the last white president, and “the absence of outrage directed in the right direction makes us more endangered now than in the days when Bush occupied the White House.”

If the Airport is a Police State, What is the Ghetto?

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
It is right to howl at the indignities inflicted on airline passengers – but hypocritical, if the howls come from folks who applaud or remain silent while police in big cities across the country subject hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino males to arbitrary stop and frisks. “As a Black male who is often perceived as Latino or Middle-Eastern, I expect to get stopped and questioned, pulled from the crowd and patted down.”

Black August and Crises of Hip-Hop as Euphemism

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR editor Jared A. Ball
Hip-hop has become a meaningless word – or worse, a word shellacked with so many saleable commercial and political meanings that it becomes a weapon against the very people that originated the genre. A new film is circulating, with clarifying impact. “The film forces a real conflict over who defines hip-hop, who uses it for what and what those of us who claim to know better are actually doing to address these and related concerns.”

Haiti Election: Theatrical Prelude to Colonization

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford
Sunday’s election is the last thing Haiti’s majority wants or needs. It is the United States that needs Sunday’s election in Haiti to provide “a veil of legality on the theft of Haiti’s sovereignty and independence by U.S. imperialism and its allies.” Haitians have been given a choice to validate their own re-enslavement. Most will choose No.

Media’s “Discovery” of the Scott Sisters

by Richard Prince
The case of the Scott Sisters cannot be said to have instantly captured the attention of the media, Black or white. The two Black Mississippi women have been in prison for 16 years, serving double-life sentences in an $11 armed robbery. The journey from incarcerated invisibility began with a small website, and may yet set the Scott Sisters free.

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Obama’s Deficit Commission “Shows the Hand” of Corporate Democrats and Their Republican Allies, says Nader
The recommendations put forward by the two co-chairs of President Obama’s deficit reduction commission are so “over the top,” says consumer advocate Ralph Nader, “if there’s anything that ought to get the liberal left going, it’s this monstrosity, which Obama has to take some responsibility for.” The former presidential candidate says the assault on social programs “shows the hand of the corporate Democrats and their Republican allies in a very distinct way.” What’s not in the co-chairs’ proposal is as glaring as what’s included. “They didn’t say we should have a speculation tax on derivatives and other transactions of Wall Street,” for example, “which economists have estimated could raise $400 billion a year.”
Black Is Back Rally in Washington, DC
Eugenia Charles reports on the cholera epidemic in Haiti, where international aid “is not being used to support the Haitian people”; People’s Organization for Progress director Larry Hamm calls for renewed grassroots organizing to “build a movement stronger than the one we had in the Sixties”; and Black is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela says Barack Obama represents “white power in a Black face.”