The New Dark Age

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Choose your head-chopper. Obama favors the Saudis, the world’s leading beheaders, and rails against ISIS, the wayward spawn of decades of U.S.-Saudi collaboration. The U.S. would prefer that ISIS confine itself to chopping off Syrian heads, but “ISIS has even bigger plans for regime change in the Arab world.”

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America has escalated to Code Black, signifying “the occupier’s terror campaign against blacks and browns.” Legally speaking, the tripwires to genocide have already been sprung. We demand that this president “declare a permanent cease-fire in all hostilities toward African-American communities including the withdrawal of all military personnel and equipment from urban centers.

If you believe our black political class, low voter turnout that killed Michael Brown. But then it’s past Labor Day, and an even numbered year, a time when the only discussion, the only question, the only answer our black political class entertains is how to ratify their privileged status with a big black vote. Do their concerns match our needs, or do they meet only their own?

by BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner

Ahm prowd ob Fightin’ Furgasun’s po, wurkin peeples, heroic youf Dey de wonz we can count on wen we’s fightin fo’ Justus, an’ Troof—

A noted law professor argues that the U.S. government engaged in terror in its suppression of the Black Panther Party. The Panthers, on the other hand, sought to safeguard the public from the police. “Years removed, we still find ourselves in need of such intermediaries. If their work had not been cut short, would we find ourselves better off?” 

A speech by Jodi Dean

How do “democratic” social media capture our communication and turn it into the private property of billionaires? How do social media reinforce neoliberal capiltalsm by de-politicizing us, by convincing us that our online entertainment practices are really political activism? Why is too much dependence on hashtag activism a dead end? Revolution? Is there really an app for that? Should there be?

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Good news: Assata Shakur’s autobiography has been republished. The former Black Panther and escaped political prisoner with a $2 million bounty on her head speaks to us from exile in Cuba. “The first thing the enemy tries to do is isolate revolutionaries from the masses of people, making us horrible and hideous monsters so that our people will hate us.”

by Mel Reeves

Why did Ferguson, Missouri, rebel? For the same reason that Watts rebelled, 50 years earlier. An “old soldier” knows the answer: “Too many Black folks were being sent to prison for too long, too much policing in its neighborhood, too much racism, substandard housing, poor healthcare options and a sense of second-class status.”

A people’s movement is stirring. Ferguson sets the bar higher for Black protest, fast food employees engage in civil disobedience, home health care workers come out of the shadows, and “families in Newark, New Jersey, reject the crappy segregationist McEducation plan.”

America’s rulers propagate the lie that the United States and its corporations lead the world in selfless generosity. If you believe that, you’ve probably got your head in an ice bucket. In reality, “the rich usually invest the most dollars in things like education privatization (Gates and Walton Foundation), war (National Endowment for Democracy), and right-wing think-tanks (Heritage Foundation).”

Week of 9/8/14

Hundreds Arrested Demanding $15 and Hour and a Union

Darius Cephas, a McDonald’s worker from Boston, was one of more than 500 fast food employees arrested during strike and civil disobedience actions in 150 cities, last week. “It shows how strong and how powerful our voices are; the fact that everybody is trying to find out how folks are raising children on $8 an hour,” said Cephas, an activist with the Fast Food Campaign. “We are here and we’re not going away they until they raise the pay and let us form a union without retaliation.”

Mass Incarceration is Built into the System

Events in Ferguson, Missouri, “have changed the way that people all across the country look at mass incarceration, police terror and the criminalization of Black youth,” said Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, which has declared October a “month of resistance.” Simply adding more Black cops to the equation won’t solve the problem “because we’re dealing with something that is built into the fabric of this capitalist system.”

Draconian Sentences Rooted in Racist White Perceptions of Crime

A report by The Sentencing Project concludes that white people support harsh penalties for crime because they associate criminality with Blacks. “There are many instances where policymakers politicize crime and race in order to further their campaigns,” said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, co-author of the report, titled “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies.”

U.S. Political Prisoners Issue Passes UN Hurdle

A United Nations panel has instructed the United States to report, five years from now, on the status of its political prisoners, said international human rights advocate Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. The move is significant, since the U.S. denies it holds any political prisoners, said Nwangaza, who argued on behalf of Civil Rights and Cointelpro era prisoners in collaboration with the Jericho Movement. “We’ve been building a record which strengthens the case for release of political prisoners,” she said. “It also strengthens our call for formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

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Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.