10 June 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Time to Sharpen Our Weapons and Wits

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Having not yet won real power over the police, this is no time for a lull or a truce — it’s time to sharpen our political instruments and deepen the mass movement’s social penetration.

Freedom Rider: Rebellion, Confusion, Scoundrels and Kente Cloth

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Black rebellion brings insecurity to those in power, as editors, mayors and even long dead criminals are being called to account.

A Tale of Two Protests: Why the U.S. Ruling Class Loves Hong Kong Protests But Hates the Minneapolis-Led Rebellion

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The protests in Hong Kong are led by an assortment of US-backed proxies who have separation from China as their principle goal.

How Did Two Beloved Members of Louisville’s Black Community Die Under Police Fire?

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Without justification, Louisville cops snuffed out the lives of Breonna Taylor and David McAtee, drawing that city into the national vortex of protest.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of June 8, 2020

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The “Carceral State” is the Enemy / Blacks Will No Longer Be “Chumps” for the Democrats / Community Control of Police Vs Impunity / Abolitionists Drew Blood in Fighting Slavery

low Barr Limbo

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
He so wide you can’t go ‘round him
He so low you can’t go under him
He so low that when he go
High an ant can’t get under

Community Control Vs. Defunding the Police: A Critical Analysis

Max Rameau and Netfa Freeman
Defunding the police might end the armed and uniformed force as we know it, but the ruling class will then hire mercenaries to protect their wealth and enforce their will.

Africa’s Response to the George Floyd Murder

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
Outrage towards the US emanated from the Congo, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, all condemning the killing.

Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
This week police brutality and racism in the United States and Brazil were on your minds.

BAR Book Forum: Elizabeth R. Baer’s “The Genocidal Gaze”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
In Southwest Africa the Germans devised the methodology which they would re-use in the Holocaust thirty years later.

BAR Book Forum: Douglas Flowe’s “Uncontrollable Blackness”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Black men are besieged by an American crucible uniquely designed for them in the early twentieth century.

Community Control of Police Vs Impunity

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“Until our Black and brown communities get control of the police, they are going to continue to murder us with impunity,” said Frank Chapman, chair of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. “There’s a rebellion going on in this country,” said Chapman, “a rebellion led by Black people because it’s Black people who are catching the brunt of police repression.”

Blacks Will No Longer Be “Chumps” for the Democrats

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms showed her true colors when she berated protesters, said Trinity College sociologist Dr Johnny Williams. “She is part of that Black liberal politician wing that believes they can play with the system and get what they want, but everybody else is denied,” he said. “The Back community has been a loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, but we get nothing. This is the moment when we stop being chumps.

”The “Carceral State” is the Enemy

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The current wave of protest is correctly “targeting the commodification of Blackness by the state,” said Dr Brittany Friedman, a Rutgers University sociology professor at the Program in Criminal Justice. “We do not need the carceral state to save us, because the carceral state is the one that is killing us,” said Friedman.

White Images, Black Reality: How to Talk to the Accidental Apologists for Monsters

Earl Hazell
The author offers some thoughts on how to deal with white people that seek to dominate Black political discussion on social media.

Global Africa Must Defeat Global Imperialist Policing

Mark P. Fancher
Africans have flooded into the streets of Britain, Germany, Brazil, France and many other countries, not only in solidarity, but also as part of their own resistance.

Abolitionists Drew Blood in Fighting Slavery

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“It was fugitive slaves, who were violent in defending themselves against slave-catchers, who pushed abolitionists towards militant and sometimes violent tactics,” said Duke University historian Jesse Olavsky. The abolitionist movement was, at its core, quite radical, saidOlavsky, author of a recent article titled “Women, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Militant Abolitionism, 1835 – 1859.

Incandescent Whiteness: Dispatch from Portland, Oregon

Ethan Johnson
We are murdered, but there is no recourse because there is no crime. No death occurred because we are not human.

Ooh La La: Atlanta’s Mayor Keisha and Civil Rights Myths in the Black “Mecca”

K. Scott
Mayor Lance Bottoms brought in troops to occupy her city while claiming that protesters dishonored the memory of MLK.

Western Marxism Loves Purity and Martyrdom, But Not Real Revolution

Jones Manoel
It is impossible to speak seriously about Marxism in the West without incorporating the role of Christianity in each social formation.