27 May 2020 — Black Agenda Report

The Blue Plague and Black Death

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
George Floyd’s death by Blue Plague in Minneapolis was widely condemned by the same parties that have encouraged and funded the spread of the fatal contagion.

Freedom Rider: Biden and the Low Point of Black Politics

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Black folks perform phenomenal feats of mental gymnastics and self-delusion to convince themselves that Joe Biden is on their side.

BAR Editors Receive Serena Shim Award

Shim Award Committee
Black Agenda Report editors Glen Ford, Margaret Kimberley, and Danny Haiphong are recipients of the Serena Shim Award for Uncompromising Integrity in Journalism.

Rwanda: “Victoire Ingabire Should Be Arrested at Least, Killed at Best”

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
The life of the woman who leads Rwanda’s most prominent opposition to Paul Kagame’s dictatorship is being publicly threatened in the wake of the killing of many of her supporters.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 25, 2020

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Black Is Back Coalition’s “Ballot and the Bulllet” Electoral School / Mumia: US Incapable of Protecting Its People / Another ALD, But Africa Still Not Free / Lasting Legacy of Combahee River Collective Statement

Michael Jordan’s “Last Dance:” A Celebration of the American Nightmare

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Michael Jordan embodies the kind of athlete and Black leader that the U.S. ruling class has gone to great lengths to cultivate.

For Breonna Taylor (And my Bry)

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
How I wish I could sing her name
like Brother Ray or ‘Ree—
‘Cause Breonna Taylor’s real close
to Bryana Turner to me

On African Liberation Day, the Black Alliance for Peace Demands U.S. Shut Down AFRICOM

Black Alliance For Peace
The US Military Command in Africa allows Washington and its European allies to dominate the continent and its resources.

Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
Recently, readers have been discussing democratic socialists, American exceptionalism, and identity politics.

BAR Book Forum: Vincent Brown’s “Tacky’s Revolt”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
The Jamaican slave revolt of 1760-1761 was one war within an interlinked network of other wars.

BAR Book Forum: Symposium on Sarah Haley’s “No Mercy Here”

Rhondda Robinson Thomas
In white patriarchy-ruled South Carolina at the turn of the 20th century, manhood sometimes created temporary yet tenuous bonds between Black and white men.

Another ALD, But Africa Still Not Free

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
More than a half century after most African states gained nominal independence, the continent is still economically and politically dependent on “external actors,” said Ndubuisi Christian Ani, a scholar at the Institute for Security Studies, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The African Union solicits US and European support for “peace-keeping” and other missions, which amounts to “re-inviting the erstwhile colonizers to come and perpetrate imperialism,” said Ani.

Mumia: US Incapable of Protecting Its People

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The nation’s best known political prisoner asks, “Who really believes that the US government can, or will, vaccinate over 300 million people – a government that can’t find the people it promised to give money to?” Mumia Abu Jamal, like most of the nation’s two million incarcerated people, has been on lockdown since the Covid-19 crisis began. With 100,00 dead, Abu Jamal said the US “is marching headlong into the abyss.”

Black Is Back Coalition’s “Ballot and the Bulllet” Electoral School

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Since the smashing of the Black Liberation Movement, “the electoral process has been monopolized by the petit-bourgeois sell-out sector,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition, which will hold its fourth yearly Electoral School, via ZOOM, on June 13 and 14. The Coalition only backs candidates that endorse the 19-point National Black Agenda for Self-Determination.

Haiti’s Revolutions and Revisions: An Interview with Charles Forsdick and Christian Høgsbjerg

The Public Archive
Toussaint stressed that freedom was something that had to be fought for and taken from below by the masses themselves.

The Spy Plane Over Baltimore is a Tool of Voter Suppression

Barbara Arnwine, Curtis Cooper and Adjoa A. Aiyetoro
The eye-in-the-sky tells residents of the majority Black city that they are enemies of the state — to be watched and, ultimately, crushed.

Lasting Legacy of Combahee River Collective Statement

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
In 1977 a group of Black feminists issued a statement that “has been a kind of touchstone over the decades for women who are thinking about women’s issues through the intersectional lens of racism,” said Suryia Nayak, a Black British feminist activist and senior lecturer in social work at the University of Salford, UK.

Once Dead, Thrice Killed

Rohn Kenyatta
The summary execution of my brothers, sisters, women, men and children is so commonplace that it becomes numbing ‘white’ noise in the minds of an entire continent.

The Black American Amputation Epidemic

Lizzie Presser
Black patients lose limbs at a rate triple that of others, despite the fact that diabetic amputations are, by some measures, the most preventable surgery in the country.

Getting a Covid-19 Education: From Race to the Top to a Plunge to the Bottom

Stan Karp
As bad as the Obama/Duncan era was for public education, the current administration is even more hostile.