24 September 2020 — Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Radio for Week of September 21, 2020
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
The New York Times and fellow corporate media discourage Americans from organizing against the rule of the rich by pretending that People Power is a fantasy.
Freedom Rider: The Democrats’ Supreme Failure
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The corporate Democrats refuse to back measures that appeal to huge majorities of their base, preferring instead to campaign against one evil man and his appointees.
Biden and the Democrats Have No Plan to Stop the Bleeding—at Home or Abroad
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The Democrats say they’re running against the most “dangerous president in modern American history,” but Joe Biden has no prescription for resolving any of the crises facing Black and working
Demilitarizing the NFL
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Nation Magazine sportswriter Dave Zirin, speaking to Ann Garrison, says that militarism is a founding feature of American football, not just a bug, but we don’t have to accept it in football.
Black Agenda Radio for Week of September 21, 2020
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Reparations and Anti-Police Torture Demands Produced Results in Chicago / Black Lesbian Intellectuals Shined Light on HIV/AIDS Epidemic / Blacks Should Aim for – and Seek to Understand — the Stars
OK to say the F-word?
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
P.O.E.T. are the only
letters behind my name—
So you scowl; scold; spank
my hands with rulers
Isabel Wilkerson’s Book “Caste” and the Discontent of a Ruling Class in Crisis
Anthony Monteiro
Oprah gushes that this book by the latest darling of the ruling classes might “save us,” but all it’s really trying to save is capitalism.
Still Missing and Murdered: Atlanta’s Lost Children Address Today’s Plague of Police Violence
Tryon P. Woods
The docu-series reveals not only the ongoing predation against the Black community, but that policing is about social control, not crime control.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
This week climate change, US foreign policy, and Mexico’s new government were on your minds.
BAR Book Forum: Joy White’s “Terraformed”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
This book locates the struggles, wins and losses of young Black lives in a structural, institutional and historical context.
BAR Book Forum: Minna Salami’s Book, “Sensuous Knowledge”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Sensuous Knowledge is an approach to knowledge production that can help you see reality clearly, wholly, with all your faculties.
Blacks Should Aim for – and Seek to Understand — the Stars
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
“We all have the right to know the universe,” said Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Theoretical Physicist and Feminist Theorist at the University of New Hampshire and author of the soon to be released book, “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.” Prescod-Weinstein does draw ethical lines in her scholarship. “I don’t particularly support people going off and doing weapons development. That’s not my ministry,” she said.
Black Lesbian Intellectuals Shined Light on HIV/AIDS Epidemic
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
In the wake of the HIV-AIDS epidemic of a generation ago, Black intellectuals argued that “until we eliminate structural inequalities, we’re not going to eliminate the health disparities in medicine, particularly for Black people,” said Darius Bost, a professor of Ethic Studies at the University of Utah. Bost authored an article titled, “Black Lesbian Feminist Intellectuals and the Struggle Against HIV/AIDS.” Just as Blacks are dying from Covid-19 at twice the rate of whites, Black mortality rates from HIV/AIDS soared amidst silence, ignorance, deep prejudice and government neglect. Black lesbians brought intellectual and political clarity to the fight against the epidemic and its underlying causes, said Bost.
Reparations and Anti-Police Torture Demands Produced Results in Chicago
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The young Black people that charged the US government with genocide at a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 2014 helped set the stage for local legislation “for some form of apology and reparations for the long legacy of police torture in Chicago,” said Toussaint Losier, professor of African American Studies at the University of Virginia. Losier is author of an article titled “A Human Right to Reparations: Black People and Police Torture and the Roots of the 2015 Chicago Reparations Ordinance,” a bill that granted some monetary compensation for victims of police torture and required public schools to include police torture in the curriculum.
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.
Expanding Monstrous US Drone War to Kenya is Bi-Partisan Madness
Netfa Freeman
The absence of a domestic backlash against US Africa policy is testament to the blind spots of our movement.
Whitewashing the Destruction of Libya: Douglas Murray’s Libya Whitewash
Nu’man Abd al-Wahid
The British, both left and right, simply do not want to acknowledge the role their government played in destroying Libya and the attendant migration crises.
White Women Were Avid Slaveowners
Parul Sehgal
The violence of slave-owning women especially could go unchecked, particularly when the victims were black children.
Top Trump Official Asks Feds to Charge Protesters with Sedition
Peoples Dispatch Staff
The rarely used statute could put protesters accused of using violence in prison for up to 20 years.
The Difference Between the US and China’s Response to COVID-19 is Staggering
Vijay Prashad and John Ross
While the US continues to suffer the devastating impacts of poor management of the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s people-centered approach serves as a model to follow.
Make Corporate Landlords Pay the Bills During the Pandemic
Sofia Lopez and Sara Myklebust
Elected officials and corporate landlords haven’t taken any meaningful action to prevent the crisis from hitting poor people of color hardest.