1 April 2020 — Black Agenda Report

“The American Disease”: Only the Overthrow of the Oligarchy Will Cure It 

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Although the coronavirus provided the trigger for the current global shrinkage, the economic crisis was already looming when the pathogen made its physical appearance.

Freedom Rider: COVID-19 and Black Workers 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The gross inequalities and declining standards of life in the US are magnified by the corona crisis, pushing already marginalized populations to the brink.

Pentagon Orders All Installations to Stop Reporting COVID-19 Infections and Deaths 

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
This is going to become a problem for the Pentagon, whether it’s on Navy destroyers, submarines, and aircraft carriers or the 800+ bases.

China and Cuba’s Medical Internationalism is a Shining Example of Global Solidarity 

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
China sends medical equipment abroad, Cuba sends doctors and cutting-edge drugs, but the US fails to provide its people, doctors and nurses with basic tools and protection.

Black Agenda Radio for week of March 30, 2020 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
COVID-19 May Trigger a “Crisis of Legitimacy” / Bernie Sanders’ Socialism Isn’t the Real Thing / Can Black Marxists Imagine the Unimaginable? / Mumia: Things Fall Apart

Flattening the curve on Capitalism? 

BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
CEO from Boeing to CEO from Wells Fargo, heard by the flies on walls at Mar-a-Lago:

COVID-19: The Capitalist Emperor Has no Clothes 

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor
The systemic failure of the capitalist order triggered by the coronavirus has reinforced the growing awareness that extreme wealth inequality is a fundamental characteristic of the system.

Racial Profiling Disorder: the All-American Pandemic  

John G. Russell
RAPROD carriers are convinced that blacks disproportionately carry guns and other contraband.

Letters from Our Readers 

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
This week readers discussed the coronavirus’s relationship to NATO, sanctions, and the duopoly

BAR Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Mutual Aid Disaster Relief 

Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent, BAR Contributors
The system is a disaster and the victims can best determine their own needs — only the people save the people.

BAR Book Forum: Brenna Greer’s “Represented” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
This book demonstrates the challenges of pursuing rights or recognition through capitalism and the market.

Can Black Marxists Imagine the Unimaginable? 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“There’s always something new that we couldn’t anticipate,” said Minkah Makalani, professor of African and African American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The unimaginable suddenly becomes a problem or opportunity to the confronted. He compares that crossroads to the advent of “dub music, and how it emerged almost accidentally.” Makalani authored an article titled “The Politically Unimaginable in Black Marxist Thought.”

Bernie Sanders’ Socialism Isn’t the Real Thing 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
When North Carolina writer and activist Joshua Briond was introduced to the words, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” he knew that Bernie Sanders’ version of socialism did not measure up. “Angela Davis, Malcolm X and other radicals were talking about something much more than what Bernie Sanders was offering,” said Briond, who has concluded that Sanders “is a standard US ‘progressive’ who is very much interested in maintaining US imperialism.”

COVID-19 May Trigger a “Crisis of Legitimacy” 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Can the corporate state hold, “or will it collapse under the weight of mass opposition and mass ‘distancing’ from the authority of the state?” asks Duboisian scholar Dr Anthony Monteiro. “We might be approaching a crisis of that magnitude, a point at which the old cannot hold, but we are not certain what comes next.”

“I’m Detained at Rikers Island and I’m Sick With Coronavirus” 

Jojo Goldman
“The corrections officers think it’s a joke, and I be telling them, ‘This is serious, man.’”

The Roots of Organizing: The Young Lords’ Revolution 

Ed Morales
Historian Johanna Fernández makes the case for the Young Lords as profound thinkers as well as highly capable street activists.

Mumia: Things Fall Apart 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Citing the novel by Chinua Achebe, political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal notes: “We see outside our doors, our windows, a world we did not know, that now exists. A silent, unseen disease gives vent to massive unease and unleashes unprecedented fear… A pandemic came to visit the world’s richest country – and things fall apart.”

South African Police Unleash Water Cannons and Rubber Bullets During Virus Lockdown 

Global Information Network
The lockdown included bans on any sales of alcohol and cigarettes and even barred exercises outside the home.

IMF Conditions Emergency COVID-19 Loan to Venezuela on Regime Change 

Alan MacLeod
The IMF refused a COVID–19 emergency loan to Venezuela unless it agreed
to overthrow President Maduro and installs the Washington-backed Juan
Guaidó.

On Being Black, Southern And Rural In The Time Of COVID-19  

Ash-Lee Woodard Henderson
Elders and already sick folks are at risk down South, the Blackest region of the nation with the worst health care.