25 June 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Yes, Defund the Cops – And Put Them Under Community Control

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Community control of the police means empowering the people to shape and oversee the mechanisms of their own security and end forever the armed occupation of our communities by hostile forces.

Freedom Rider: Democrats Move Right and Towards Defeat

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Besides not being Trump, the Democrats offer nothing, but think they can win with a candidate who has no constituency, charisma or any platform positions that would attract more voters.

The Movement to Abolish the Police Must Place Politics in Command

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Community control of the police offers a concrete vision for what the beginnings of police abolition might look like.

The Responsibility to Protect? Bipartisan Crimes Against Humanity in the U.S.

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
The US committed crimes against humanity by creating the conditions that led to sickness and death for vulnerable sectors of the U.S. population.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of June 22, 2020

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
A New Generation, Same Struggle / “Zero Degree Rage” Focuses Black Minds / Elite Deploy Spy Hi-Tech Against the People / Will Blacks Oppose or Defend US Empire?

Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza, 1964—2020

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Burundi is Africa’s Syria and Venezuela, a developing nation that dared to defy US dictates under Nkurunziza’s leadership.

Notes on the Coloniality of Peace

Nelson Maldonado-Torres
The “peace” our enemies want is mounted on brutal war and in its continuation in modern/colonial law and order.

Who’s a Worker? (for Leo, Clarence, Jack, Trent and ILWU Local 10 Brothers and Sisters)

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
I’ve prepped produce; bagged bread;
stocked shelves; pulled products for-
ward on shelves of several stores.
So I bring nothing but love for frontline

Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
This week community control of police, rage in protests, and the black political class were on your minds.

BAR Book Forum: Nadine Ehlers and Shiloh Krupar’s “Deadly Biocultures”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Market logics, commodification, extraction, and exploitation condition our possibilities for life and expose many to ever-expanding forms of precarity.

BAR Book Forum: Lola Olufemi’s “Feminism, Interrupted”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
The political project we are invested in will require long term conviction and must be internationalist in its orientation.

Elite Deploy Spy Hi-Tech Against the People

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Recent reports show the US military spied on George Floyd protests in 15 cities with planes, helicopters and drones. But Baltimore has long been under aerial surveillance, according to Vanessa Beck, of the Black Alliance for Peace. “This militarized response to a virus and to the protests is being used by the neoliberal elite to increase their wealth and control,” said Beck.“

Zero Degree Rage” Focuses Black Minds

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Nicholas Brady, professor of Africana Studies at Bucknell University and author of an article titled “Zero Degree Rage,” sees massed popular emotion as a liberatory weapon. “Rage focuses the collective effort and widens its scope, so that suddenly the police, as an institution, becomes the problem, not individual police officers,” said Brady.

A New Generation, Same Struggle

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Despite an interim of more than 30 years, the current wave of protests shares similar goals to the 1989 student rebellion at Howard University, said Josh Myers, a professor of African Studies who wrote a book on the subject. “People are saying, ‘We want authority over ourselves,’ and I think that’s the same kind of thrust that we saw with the students in 1989.”

BAR 13th Anniversary

Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar, and most of the Black Agenda Report team spoke at the publication’s 13th anniversary celebration, Oct 26, at the People’s Forum in New York City. The event was dedicated to the memory of BAR co-founder Bruce Dixon, who died in June of last year.

Hold Prosecutors Accountable, Too

Kate Levine and Joanna Schwartz
Police violence is tied to other agents in criminal law enforcement, including and especially prosecutors.

A Moment or a Movement? The Blowback Will Tell

Wilmer J. Leon III
You cannot separate the racist police aggression in the streets of the US and the racist US aggression against Venezuela, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Zimbabwe, Yemen, Libya and Syria.

Will Blacks Oppose or Defend US Empire?

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Defense of Haitian independence was the first foreign policy focus of African Americans, said Brandon Byrd, professor of history at Vanderbilt University and author of “The Black Republic: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti.” With the US now an imperial superpower, Blacks must “question not only the US as a national project, but also question what role we as African Americans have in that national project.”

Ungentrifying International News Reporting from Brazil to Ecuador and Beyond

Julian Cola
So-called “racial democracy” has systematically excluded and kept black people at the dirt end of the socioeconomic totem pole in Brazil, as reflected in its media.

Food, Land and Power: Revisiting Black Cooperative Movements

Julian Agyeman and Kofi Boone
Land loss has plagued black America since emancipation – is it time to look again at ‘black commons’ and collective ownership?

Seize the Time or Face Fascism

Riva Enteen
Either we seize the time and bring power to the people, or we must be prepared to face overt fascism.