17 June 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Community Control of the Police – and a Whole Lot More

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Abolition of the police begins with community control, in which community representatives not only hire, fire and oversee the cops, but decide the nature of the policing that is necessary and acceptable.

Freedom Rider: Churchill, Columbus and Leopold Fall Down

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Millions of white people glorify mass murderers because their sense of identity and place in society is deeply tied to white supremacy.

The Rebellion Against Police Repression Must Guard Against ALL Enemies, Whether Red, Blue, or Green

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The terrain of struggle will need to expand for the movement to avoid a Democratic Party-induced slumber.

Building Power to Win is the Revolutionary Approach to Bourgeois Electoralism”

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
We must make clear that it is imperialism that degrades and destroys the earth, makes water a commodity, food a luxury, education an impossibility, and health care a distant dream.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of June 15, 2020

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Police Must Answer to the Community / Beware “Domestication” of Protest / Repaying the Movement for Her Freedom / Huge Teenage Linebackers Can Be Hurt by Racism and Abuse

How Che Guevara Taught Cuba to Confront COVID-19

Don Fitz
Cuba uses its decades of experience to create an example of how a country can confront the virus with a compassionate and competent plan.

The State (For Cam and B) and Mo’ Foul Play

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Papa’s proud of you, handsome
Grandsons, for hand-lettered
signs, for taking to the streets
during your generation’s 10
days that shook the world!

Say Its Name: Genocide!

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
Unless we identify genocide as the common underpinning to all of the brutality directed against Black people in the US, we are talking about the wrong thing.

Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
This week colonial genocides, white supremacy, and the Democratic Party’s role were on your minds.

BAR Book Forum: Samantha N. Sheppard’s “Sporting Blackness”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Black memory is a muscle trained, flexed, and disciplined by colonialism, enslavement, and racial terror, as well as collective Black struggle.

BAR Book Forum: Kristen R. Ghodsee’s “Second World, Second Sex”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Socialist ideas about the inextricable links between class, race, and gender predate the concept of intersectionality.

Re-Embracing Internationalism and Class Solidarity in the Time of #BlackLivesMatter

Berna Ellorin and Adrian Bonifacio
The struggle against systemic racism and the police state in the US is integral and linked to the struggle against US wars of aggression overseas.

Black-Outs, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and Black Power

Erica Caines
Community control of police and prison abolition have been completely removed from the conversations dictated by a mainstream and complacent narrative.

Police Must Answer to the Community

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The demand for community control of police ushers in a new stage of struggle, in which “young people are imagining a world where these tremendous institutions of imperialism and the police state are gone,’ said Max Rameau, an activist with Pan African Community Action (PACA), in Washington, DC. The PACA proposal would oversee police hiring, firing and operations by a board chosen from communities at random, like jurors.

Caribbean Workers and Capitalist Geography: An interview with Marion Werner

The Public Archive
Global Displacements is an examination of the impact of the global organization of capitalist accumulation and exploitation on the life and labor of Haitian and Dominican people.

Update on Charges Against the Venezuela Embassy Protectors

Ajamu Baraka and Bahman Azad
It was agreed that dropping the federal charges and seeking no jail time in return for pleading to a very low-level DC Code charge was an important victory.

Huge Teenage Linebackers Can Be Hurt by Racism and Abuse

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Black college athletes are emotionally and physically harmed in ways not widely recognized, said Dr. Gabby Yearwood, a socio-cultural anthropologist at the University of Pittsburgh. For example, “There is no student that would ever tolerate me speaking to them” the way athletes are harangued by coaches. Very few college athletes become professionals, but all carry the burden of physical and emotional injury, said Yearwood, who wrote an article titled “Playing Without Power: Black Male NCAA Student Athletes Living With Structural Racism.”

Political ABCs: Maybe the Difference between a “Cop” and a “Crook” is Just a Badge

T.P. Wilkinson
What has recently been condemned as corrupt and brutal policing is actually consistent with historical tradition of localized repression.

Stolen Breaths

Rachel R. Hardeman, Ph.D., M.P.H., Eduardo M. Medina, M.D., M.P.H., Rhea W. Boyd, M.D., M.P.H.
Demonstrators are laying bare the deep pain that persists for black people fighting to live under the crushing weight of injustice that has long been at our necks.

To Observe and Protect: Community Alert Patrol and the Fight Against Police Terror in the 1960s

Ron Wilkins
The Black Panther Party modeled their policing initiatives after Black citizens’ patrols in Los Angeles.