The New Dark Age

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Supporters of U.S. political prisoners, most of them former Black Panthers and all of them senior citizens, faced off against the assembled bureaucracy of the United States, at a meeting of the UN Committee Against Torture, in Geneva, Switzerland, last week. The U.S. Human Rights Network spoke truth to power, while the official Washington delegation “engaged in non-stop obfuscation, semantic contortions, and bald denials of fact.”

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Those who seek justice for Michael Brown should ignore Reverends Jackson and Sharpton, who serve only themselves and Power. One man can order a federal prosecution of officer Darren Wilson. It’s not Eric Holder, but the attorney general’s boss. “If there is no federal prosecution of Darren Wilson, the political disaster of the Obama presidency will be made crystal clear.”

by Michelle Renee Matisons

The modern history of militarized U.S. policing begins with the Black Panther Party’s stand against state repression in Oakland, California, where “Lil’ Bobby” Hutton became one of its first martyrs. When today’s cops “preemptively” brutalize and kill young Black people, “they are warning the next generation of Bobby Huttons to stay home and be afraid.”

by Danny Haiphong

The Democrats are, at least temporarily, in the toilet, and it’s up to a rejuvenated left to flush them. “The people are not yet ready to pull the plug on imperialism, but at the same time expect nothing from it.” That means there is a fertile environment for those willing to fight for transformational social change. “The demise of the Democratic Party is an opportunity to change the dominant narrative.”

The “Whitening” of Black Colleges

Court decisions combined with state and federal policies have led to the “whitening” of HBCUs – Historically Black Colleges and Universities – including Delaware State University, where Dr. Jahi Issa taught until his arrest at a student demonstration in 2012. “We’re looking at over two decades of strategic removal of African American faculty and students,” said Issa, whose multi-part articles titled “How Black Colleges are Turning White: The Ethnic Cleansing of HBCUs in the Age of Obama” are published in Black Agenda Report. This trend, along with falling Black enrollment in historically white institutions and assaults on African American Studies programs, poses an existential threat to Black higher education in the United States. HBCUs will likely continue to exist, but “there just probably won’t be too many Black people there,” said Issa.

Reparations “Enforcement” is Key

In recent decades, the struggle for reparations for Africans and their descendants has moved from simple advocacy to “a mode of activism called reparations enforcement,” in which Blacks in various localities target businesses and institutions that have profited from slavery and Jim Crow and present bills for the criminal damages that have been inflicted on Black people, said Kamm Howard, of NCOBRA, the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America. The reparations movement needs a revolutionary language that speaks in terms of criminal acts historically committed against Blacks – acts for which there is no statute of limitations, said Howard, speaking at a Black Is Back Coalition teach-in at Howard University, in Washington.

Defining and Defending U.S. Political Prisoners

The scores of political activists still languishing in prison are testament to U.S. violation of international law and treaties prohibiting racial discrimination, said Efia Nwangaza, of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. Nwanga has just returned from a United Nations forum in Geneva, Switzerland, at which the U.S. claimed, as always, that it holds no political prisoners. Since the term “political prisoners” is also not part of UN terminology, Nwangaza’s Malcolm X Center and the Jericho Movement speak, instead, on behalf of “Cointelpro and civil rights era political activists and human rights defenders.” In arguing before the UN, Nwangaza maintains that “the focus of Cointelpro” – the FBI’s campaign to neutralize political dissidents – “had a significant racial component and, as a result, a significant impact on the Black liberation struggle.”

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. Click here to download the show.