The New Dark Age

CNN’s Chicagoland “documentary” is an 8 part wet kiss for Rahm Emanuel & neoliberalism by the same crew that made Brick City, a propaganda flick to boost the career of Newark’s Corey Booker prior to his re-election campaign.  Black Agenda Report talked to a few real Chicagoans about what it does and doesn’t show or tell, and why.Read this article on Black Agenda Report…

Charter schools are the inventions of rightwing corporations and foundations, and serve as profit centers for the filthy rich. Given that these are the people who run American society, it is no surprise that New York Mayor Bill de Blasio “got his head handed to him” when he clashed with charter school interests. “The mayor’s little nod to protecting public education was no match for big money.”

The fact that Al Sharpton is the administration’s “made man” tells us a great deal about what President Obama’s team really thinks about Black people. The White House seems drawn to Sharpton’s amorality and infinite capacity for corruption – his usefulness as pit bull and King Rat.

Georgia, which already leads the nation with 1 in 13 adults in prisons, jails, court & correctional supervision of all kinds, is poised to greatly expand the private probation industry, to shield it from revealing the amounts of money and number of cases it handles, and to saddle the families of offenders with its cost. Call GA Governor Nathan Deal at 404-656-1776 and ask him to veto HB 837 which is now on his desk. Do it today.

For sheer racist hatred, the young Venezuelan “protesters” championed by the U.S. government and corporate media could rival that found in the Ku Klux Klan or any other of the white supremacist formations that pepper U.S. history. “Racism is one of the main engines and expression of the counter-revolution.”

Is the U.S. a fascist society? It’s a classic fit – a country where “the relationship between the state and corporation becomes indiscernible,” militarism is the highest value, and demonization of the Other is the organizing principle of the ruling circles and state.

So-called “’progressive,’ post-racial collaboration with overt and/or covert racists only enables the acceleration of discrimination, exploitation, impoverishment and police state tactics.” This absolutely applies to those “progressives” who seek common cause with Ron and Rand Paul. Rand’s former campaign spokesman used to wish people “Happy Nigger Day” on MLK’s birthday, while father Ron called Dr. King’s holiday “our annual Hate Whitey Day.”

“They are closing our schools, they’re foreclosing our homes, closing our libraries, closing the factories, closing the post office,” said Larry Hamm, president of the Newark-based People’s Organization for Progress. “They continue to do it, because they have not yet met the countervailing force that can stop them from doing,” he told the Bethany Baptist Church crowd. Hamm then directed the question to the evening’s speaker, noted public intellectual Dr. Cornel West, of New York’s Union Theological Seminary. “How do we build this countervailing force?”

Organizing for liberation requires “three things,” said Dr. West. “Your vision, and the courage behind your vision. Your analysis; Do you really understand what you’re up against? And then, the organizing and mobilizing that has to take place.” Integrity is key. “When you confront a system that either buys off your leaders, lies on your leaders, or kills them, the freest persons are always those who have an absolute commitment to integrity and decency, and are willing to go under.”

Students and community organizations plan a series of actions to protest Temple University’s firing of African American Studies professor Dr. Anthony Monteiro. A student walkout is set for this Wednesday and, next week, Philadelphia community groups will march on the campus seeking justice for Monteiro, a fair contract for university employees, and against gentrification of the Black neighborhoods that surround Temple. People recognize that “injustice to the community has gone hand in hand with this injustice to me,” said Monteiro. African American Studies chairman Dr. Molefi Asante has resorted to red-baiting to defend his complicity in Monteiro’s firing. Asante argues “that I am a radical, that I’m a Marxist, that I’m a socialist and, therefore, I don’t fit into his view of African American Studies at Temple,” said Monteiro.