12 August 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Backtracking on George Floyd Promises: The Minneapolis Police Name-Change Con

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
When Black Lives Matter chapters demand “abolition” and “defunding” of the police, rather than community control of the cops, they play into the hands of charlatans and misleaders on city councils and in the halls of Congress.

Freedom Rider: TikTok and the War on China

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Every charge that Trump and his minions make against Chinese companies is true for US corporations, which have been spying on Americans and the rest of the world for decades.

ESPN Tries to Draft NBA Players Into US Cold War Against China

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
NBA players and fans alike have many reasons to oppose US provocations, lies and threats.

NBA Game Changer? “Black Homes Matter”

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Nothing as meticulous and self-contained as the NBA Bubble could be constructed for the rest of us.

My Wise Country Cousin and Ol’ blak Schmo

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
I came in de room wit / mah head bent low / pretendin’ defrenz to Ol’ blak Schmo.

LA’s Gang-Infested Police are Deadly – and Costly

Alene Tchekmedyian
Uniformed thugs calling themselves Vikings, Regulators and Banditos prey on the city’s Black and brown civilians, and even brutalize their fellow cops.

“Racial Capitalism” is the Kind We’ve Got

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò and Liam Kofi Brigh
Theorists of racial capitalism are not interested in the characteristics capitalism could have had in some imagined world, but in the world as it exists.

Letters from Our Readers

Jahan Choudhry  Comments Editor
This week the New Cold War and political prisoners were on your mind.

BAR Book Forum: Richard Kent Evans’ “MOVE: An American Religion”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
MOVE’s history is a reminder why police and prison abolition remain so urgent.

BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”

Zaynab Shahar
Blackness is understood as always already criminal, and homonormative imagination is no different in this respect.

Insurance Industry Vital to US Slavery

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Insuring one’s slave “is actually a better financial decision than insuring other kinds of property,” said Dr Michael Ralph, director of Africana Studies at New York University, Human beings “are the only kind of property that accrues value over time based on skills learned in life,” said Ralph, who wrote an article on the insurance industry’s role in US slavery.

Black Brazilians Hit Hard by Covid-19

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Brazil and the US lead the world in coronavirus fatalities, with Blacks in both countries dying disproportionately, said Jaime Amparo Alves, an author and social anthropologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is raising funds through UneAfro Brazil to aid poverty favela-dwellers. “How can we have social distancing in a space that’s overcrowded and lacks everything?” said Amparo Alves, author of “The Anti-Black City: Police Terror and Black Urban Life in Brazil.”

“Black August” Honors Captives of Armed Struggle

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“Black August started in San Quentin to highlight the armed struggle,” said Jihad Abdulmumit, chairperson of the Jericho Movement, which advocates for political prisoners. “These struggle in the past are reflective of the conditions that protesters in the streets are still fighting,” said Abdulmumit, a former Black Panther who spent 23 years as a political prisoner.

Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens

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.

Dispatch from PDX (Portland, Oregon); Black Lives Matter in a White Utopia 

Kahlil M. Wall-Johnson
The temporal-spatial convergence of the largest white city in amerikka, with the most persistent “BLM” protests and exceedingly white subcultures should not be dismissed as coincidence.

Students of Color are Harmed Most by the “Broken Windows” Teaching

Victoria Theisen-Homer
“No excuses” teaching borrows from the “broken windows” theory of policing, which has been enacted in U.S. cities since the mid-1980s.

Midwives Could Help Stem Maternal and Infant Death Toll

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Dr Sasha Turner, professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, says more extensive use of midwives would reduce skyrocketing increases in maternal birth difficulties, worldwide. The problem is hostility to midwifery from professional doctors, nurses and medical corporations, said Turner, whose book is titled “Contested Bodies: Pregnancy, Childbearing, and Slavery in Jamaica.”

How a Popular Medical Device Encodes Racial Bias

Amy Moran-Thomas
Pulse oximeters give biased results for people with darker skin, and the consequences can be serious.

Bourgeoisie Cash is flowing in the Coffers of Black Lives Matter

African People’s Socialist Party
We must at every instance solve the question of how to fund the revolution without becoming subservient or dependent on our oppressors.

Green Party Presidential Candidate Howie Hawkins Says ‘Real Solutions Can’t Wait’

Barry Sheppard
The Green Party’s presidential pick discusses his foreign and domestic policy positions.