30 July 2020 — Black Agenda Report

The Black Caucus and the Dictatorship of (White) Capital

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Black politics does not exist in the Democratic Party, because the duopoly system serves only the corporate rulers.

Freedom Rider: Let the Movement Be Radical

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Craven black misleaders jumped at the chance to side with white corporate power against radical white allies.

The Free Speech Fetish is American Exceptionalism on Steroids

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Harper’s “Letter” is little more than an exercise in white insecurity and opportunism among so-called liberal sections of the establishment.

No to the New Cold war with China

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
The African radical, anti-imperialist, internationalist movement, sees the Chinese state and the Chinese people much differently than the U.S. state and its ruling class.

The low Barr-Boss Tweet Rapid Response to COVID-19

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
“If they come for me in the morning, they will come for you in the night.” ― Angela Y. Davis

Tearing Down Black America

Brent Cebul
More than half the 1.2 million Americans displaced by “urban renewal” were Black.

Airbrushing Revolution for the Sake of Abolition

Joy James
“Interest convergence” and “pragmatic compromise” are euphemisms for what might better be called opportunism and truth-avoidance.

Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
This week cutting through the corporate media buzz on US fascism was on your minds.

BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”

Anima Adjepong
The lesson is to remain woke, because not all abolitionists share the goal of Black liberation.

BAR Book Forum: Erika Edwards’s “Hiding in Plain Sight”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Anti-blackness manifests as black invisibility in Argentina, a society that was determined to marginalize and discriminate against Black women.

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 27, 2020

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Has Covid-19 Initiated the Final, Fatal Crisis of Capitalism? / Political Prisoners are the Best of Humanity: Free Them All / Nurturing a “Pan African Diasporic Consciousness”

Has Covid-19 Initiated the Final, Fatal Crisis of Capitalism?

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The Covid-19-sparkd global economic depression is “a singular event in the history of world capitalism,” said Duboisian scholar Anthony Monteiro. “It might be the crisis that so disabled the world capitalist system that it will never be the same.” What’s different from previous crises is, this time, “there is no capitalist nation that can save capitalism the way the US did after World War Two,” said Monteiro. “This is like a crisis unto death.”

Political Prisoners are the Best of Humanity: Free Them All

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The Black Is Back Coalition’s upcoming national conference, August 15 and 16, will highlight the demand for freedom for all political prisoners, said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. “People have been rotting in US prisons, tortured for 50 years and more,” said Yeshitela. “When we look at these human beings who went up against the greatest power on Earth to fight for our freedom, you can’t find better human beings than that, and we have to get them out of there.”

Nurturing a “Pan African Diasporic Consciousness”

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The interchange of ideas and experiences among African-descended people around the world has fostered a “Pan African Diasporic Consciousness” that advances all Black struggles, said Jayne O. Ifekwunigwe, a senior research scholar at the Center on Genomics, Race, Identity, Difference (GRID) at Duke University. Historically, “the encounters and exchanges that Africans had in the diaspora facilitated their political activism when they went back home,” said Ifekwunigwe. For example, famed Nigerian musician Fela Kuti’s songs “became politicized” after a Black American girlfriend gave him a copy of “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.”

Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens

Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley
Danny Haiphong interviews NBA champion and activist David West on his political transformation and how this moment of crisis for the US power structure creates a need for NBA players and social movements alike to address the nature of U.S. society itself.

“This is the Scene of a Crime”: An African Artist/Activist Journey, Part II

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
An interview with Dr. Karen Wilson- Ama’Echefu.

Oh Boya: If It’s Goya, It Has To Be No Good

Will Guzman
Goya’s CEO thinks Trump is a “blessing,” so the brand has been cursed with a boycott.

The Poor People’s Economic and Human Right Campaign: a Case for How Change Works

Belinda Davis
With no well-financed publicity department and no links to the machinery
of big party politics, movements like PPEHRC can sometimes seem lost in
plain sight.

PetroCaribe and Haiti’s Lost Opportunities

Jean Jores Pierre
The US puppets that run Haiti have squandered an historic opportunity for economic and social development.

San Quentin Death Sentence

David Bacon
Prisoners’ supporters and loved ones demanded release of half the population and no transfers between prisons or to ICE.

A View from the Faultlines of National Oppression and Class Contradictions

Shaka Shakur
They try to kriminalize the righteous rage of the people.