9 September 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Sept 19: A Nationwide Day of Protest, and of Dialogue on Community Control of Police

Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor 
Community control puts us on the path to both defunding and abolishing the police – so why are many  Black Lives Matter chapters withholding support?

Freedom Rider: Losers, Suckers and War 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 
Democrats are up in arms over Trump’s latest mouth-burst, but the truth is that both corporate parties have made the people suckers for endless, “bipartisan” wars.

The NBA Strike Brings the Counterinsurgency War on Black Liberation Movement to Basketball 

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 
When NBA players threatened to disrupt business as usual the ruling class deployed perhaps its most effective weapon of counterinsurgency: Barack Obama.

It’s Time to Acknowledge Hutu Genocide and Rwandan Occupation of DR Congo 

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 
“Global power elites are silent about Hutu genocide and Rwanda’s ongoing occupation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),” writes Ann Garrison, “because it has served their interests for many years.”

Olympics of Lying: Lipsticking a pig 

BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner 
Red, white, blue burning crosses  light up Capitalist Hill, War House,  White Supreme Court sky. A 500 ft phallic symbol middle fingers poor

Kevin Zeese, the Passing of a Warrior for Peace and Justice 

Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist 
The human rights community mourns veteran activist Kevin Zeese, my friend and comrade.

Join the Black Peoples March on Trump’s White House — Just Like We Did Obama’s 

Black is Back Coalition 
The Black Power Matters March directs us to fight against colonialism, for Black Community Control of the Police, and for a Black Agenda for Self-Determination.

Letters from Our Readers 

Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor 
This week the Democratic Party presidential ticket was on your minds.

BAR Book Forum: R.A. Judy’s Book, “Sentient Flesh” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor 
The long tradition of radical black critique in popular forms of expression gives us material on which to model our re-imagining of the world.

BAR Book Forum: Jasmine Mitchell‘s “Imagining the Mulatta” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor 
The mulatta serves as a strategy of containment of Blackness through logics of racial management.

Arsenic and Agrarian Racial Capitalism 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford 
The highly toxic herbicide and multi-purpose poison arsenic was key to the production of cotton in the United States and Mexico, and in the process sickened and killed a multitude of Black and brown agricultural workers, said Jayson Porter, a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University. Arsenic “helped build the U.S. empire” and paved the way for the so-called ‘Green Revolution’ and large-scale cash crop farming, as well as the bioweapons used to decimate Vietnamese plant life and people, said Porter.

Asa Hilliard’s Concept of “Africanized” Education 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford 
Although famed educator Asa Hilliard died in 2007, his advocacy of “Africanized” teaching and thinking continues to gain adherents. De Reef Jamison, professor of African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, says Hilliard drew on the work of West African revolutionary Amilcar Cabral. “Both argued that Africans’ ability to maintain their unique cultural forms, which are based in the past, grows out of the people’s present struggles to advance their group.” Jamison wrote a recent article titled, “Asa Hilliard: Conceptualizing and Constructing an African-Centered Pedagogy.”

Black “Maternals” Yoked to the Wheel of Group Survival 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford 
Joy James, a professor of political, feminist and critical race theory at Williams College, believes the burden of day to day survival politics in Black American communities is borne largely by women that she describes as “captive maternals.” “A lot of the captive maternal function is to provide emotional labor and support while stabilizing the structure that you think is the only option,” said James, author of FULCRUM: The Captive Maternal Leverages Democracy.”

Black Agenda Report Presents: The Left Lens 

Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley

Kop-mala Harris for Vice-Warden

On this episode of The Left Lens, co-hosts Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley analyze the record of Kamala Harris and why she represents a negation of everything that the Black liberation movement and U.S. political prisoners currently fighting for freedom stand for.

 

Black Spartacus: The Epic Life of Toussaint Louverture 

David A Bell 
The fierce fighter against slavery defeated European armies but died in a cold French prison.

 

End the Injustice of Nonunanimous Juries 

Calvin Duncan 
Non-unanimous verdicts allow ten jurors to “simply ignore the views of their fellow panel members of a different race or class.”

 

The Stalinist Trial of Julian Assange 

John Pilger 
The collusion of powers wants to bury Julian alive in their war on the very principle of freedom of speech and freedom of thought, and democracy.

 

Decades-Old Gang Laws Are Being Used to Target Black Lives Matter Protesters 

Ali Winston 
By using gang laws, authorities can do an end run around First Amendment protections on freedom of association.

 

The Role of the Black Bourgeoisie in Coopting Our Movements 

Ahjamu Umi 
The Black bourgeoisie, including the next generation of them after Obama, will continue to derail us with their empty promises of inclusion.

 

Mexico: First the Poor 

Roger Stoll 
The country’s new leftist president struggles to honor his people’s “right to stay home” by fighting poverty and expanding access to education.