2 November 2015 — Black Agenda Report
Garza vs. McKesson: The Great Debate Over How the Democratic Party Will Liberate Black People
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
One side wants the Democrats to sponsor a town hall meeting on racial justice, the other prefers that the Party hold a Black issues oriented debate. Both #BlackLivesMatter and Campaign Zero have earned semi-official status as Democratic Party affiliates. The question is: Who is taking care of the “movement”?
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Black urbanites are under siege “because the dictates of capitalism and racism demand that white people return to the cities they fled.” Landlords break every law in the book to rid themselves of Black tenants to make room for the newcomers. Once a neighborhood is penetrated, white settler entitlement goes into high gear to chase out the remainder of Black residents, who are expected “to keep quiet and disappear without complaint.”
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
Cops that think they’ve been abandoned by the Obama administration are out of their minds. “Obama is only seeking to put a smiling face on an even more intrusive, higher tech Mass Black Incarceration State.” His so-called “community policing” schemes would increase police penetration of Black America, while leaving police impunity essentially intact.
by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo
The tombstones of apartheid were laid at Sharpeville in 1960 and Soweto, 1976. History will record that the death knell for the African National Congress regime was sounded at Marikana, in 2012, where ANC honcho and mine stockholder Cyril Ramaphosa was in regular contact with the killers of striking miners. Rehad Desai’s film “has blown the whistle on the illicit, deadly relationship between multinational mining concerns and the Zuma government.”
A Black Agenda Radio Commentary by Bruce A. Dixon
In 1973 radioactive waste from Manhattan Project which built the world’s first nuclear weapons was secretly just outside St. Louis. An underground garbage fire raging for years in an adjacent landfill is now less than a quarter mile from that unprotected radioactive waste, potentially threatening millions with exposure to radiation.
by the Real News Network
White House pledges to reduce standardized testing are bogus, says Ford. Administration policy is to use standardized testing to “fail” public schools and replace them with charters.
by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner
in which the poet muses upon the landscapeve in which urban pioneers
thrive
by Julian Cola
Brazil, with the largest Black population outside of Africa, attempts to perpetuate the myth that it is a “racial democracy.” If so, it is an incredibly violent one. “Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Secretary General, stated that 50,000 people are killed in Brazil every year,” many by police, and most Black and brown. Columbia University neuroscientist Dr. Carl Hart traveled to Brazil to speak on the evils of racism – and, instead, became a witness.
Three Days of Protest Against Police Violence in New York City
The Stop Mass Incarceration Network’s Rise Up October campaign brought thousands into the streets of New York for three days of actions against police lawlessness. At a “Say Their Names” rally, Kadeem Williams, whose brother O’Shane was killed by San Francisco police, told the crowd: “It’s time to fight back, people. Quit asking your oppressor for something that you’re not gonna get. Quit putting your hands up and saying ‘Don’t shoot.’ Put that fist up and fight back.”
Internationalizing the Struggle
Family members of victims of police violence testified before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, agency of the Organization of American States, in Washington, DC. Martinez Sutton, the brother of Rekia Boyd, who was killed by a Chicago cop in 2012, said he is constantly harassed by police in retaliation for standing up for his sister. “At times I feel I am the next to die, and that it could happen to me at any moment,” said Sutton. “I’m still trying to find justice, but – what is justice? To me, it’s ‘just ice’ to numb the situation.”
Justin Hansford, a professor at St. Louis University School of Law, told the commission that racialized policing in the U.S. cannot be reformed, but must be abolished. “At some point, we will have to muster the courage as a society to demand more than simply asking to retrain the monster, or set up a review board for the monster, or put a body camera on the monster,” said Hansford. “Eventually, global civil society will have to defang this monster and put it to sleep once and for all.”
Black Is Back Coalition to March on the White House
On November 7, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will march on the White House to demand Black community control of the police. A conference will follow on the next day at Howard University, under the theme “Black Power Matters.” “It is about Black self-determination,” said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. “If we want people to stop killing us, then we have to have the power, ourselves, to stop it. We have to drive the movement in the direction of Black people accepting responsibility for our own future.”
Blacks Get No Protection from Obama
The National Black Church Initiative, a coalition of African American denominations, denounced the Obama Administration for appearing “impotent” in the face of seven church burnings in St. Louis and ongoing attacks against Blacks by racist police. “The Administration does not see a pattern, or launch a systematic investigation against this mentality,” said Initiative directorRev. Anthony Evans. “There has been absolutely no movement.” Obama and Attorney General Loretta Lynch “have failed consistently to protect the Black community from these white racist murderous thugs who are in our law enforcement.”
Faizan Syed, director of the St. Louis chapter of the Council on American-Israeli Relations, expressed solidarity with the Black Christian community. “As American Muslims, we recognize that our liberation is completely linked with the African American struggle for justice, fairness and equality in this country,” he said. “Until everybody is free from terror, then nobody can be free of it.”
Mumia and the Cuban Health Model
The nation’s best known political prisoner, like thousands of Pennsylvania prison inmates, has been denied effective treatment for hepatitis-c, the disease that brought Mumia Abu Jamal to the brink of death, earlier this year. This could not have happened in Cuba, according to Dr. Melissa Barber, who runs the Interreligious Foundation for Community Organization’s program that sends U.S. students to Cuba for free medical school. In Cuba, doctors learn not to treat patients “like a dollar bill,” said Barber. Sick or injured prisoners “wouldn’t have cracked jaws or be beaten up on the way to the hospital; they would be treated humanely by physicians that can see them when they need health care, in a country with little resources.” Free health care is a right in Cuba, which has been very successful in treating hepatitis-c.
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