The New Dark Age

10 December 2020 — Black Agenda Report

Freedom Rider: Black Demands for the Biden Administration 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist 
The Black Misleaders give the impression of exercising black empowerment when they are in fact only promoting themselves.

Cuomo Wins an Emmy for Being an Effective Weapon of Corporate Power 

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor 
While liberals celebrate Biden and Cuomo at brunch, the situation for the growing class of “have-nots” in the U.S. and around the world becomes more grim.

Notes Toward a National Defense Organization Against Racism and Political Repression, 1973 

Editors, The Black Agenda Review 
Few records survive of the birth of a national anti-police repression organization formed by supporters of Angela Davis – but government spies preserved Davis’ speech.

Coronavirus Protocols as Tools of Repression 

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor 
Covid-19 is a convenient excuse for governments to ban or restrict activities they don’t like.

$election postmortem  

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence 
It was the Latino Vote… No, it was the Latinix vote! No, it was Black Women! No, it was LGBTQ+ Black Women! No, it was Red State Soccer Moms!

The Assassination of Fred Hampton: A Short People’s History 

Flint Taylor 
Hampton’s body was dragged from the bloodstained bed to the hallway floor, to be displayed as the raiders’ trophy.

Silencing Black Radicalism Since the Cold War 

Denise Lynn 
Anti-communists used the full powers of the state to silence, imprison, or deport radical Black activists.

What Does the Esau Revolution Despise? 

Don Fitz 
The Democrats’ relentless suppression of the Green Party affected the mind-set of more voters than all the right-wing howls put together.

Letters from Our Readers 

BAR Comments Editor Jahan Choudhry 
This week the role of US elites in controlling resistance by Ugandans and Black Americans were on your minds.

BAR Book Forum: Shiloh Krupar’s “Hot Spotter’s Report” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor 
The U.S. military claims it is “green,” but what the Pentagon is really trying to prove is the planetary sustainability of war.

BAR Book Forum: B. Brian Foster’s “I Don’t Like the Blues”

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor 
What happens if we really pay attention to what black folks in the rural South are saying and doing in their everyday lives?

Black Masses Not Yet Sold on Defunding the Police 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford 
Lawrence Grandpre, research director for the Baltimore-based activist organization “Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle,” agrees in principle with the demand for defunding police but doesn’t think Black Lives Matter has been able to sell the concept in Black communities. “Working people need to see you on the ground every day, for years, pushing that alternative,” but that’s not yet happened, said Grandpre, speaking on Dr. Jared Ball’s acclaimed podcast “I Mix What I Like.”

Reparations Not Yet a “Mainstream” Demand 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford 
Reparations “hasn’t reached the point where there’s really a discussion among white politicians” on the merits of the issue, said Zuri Arman Kent-Smith, a writer and activist with a degree in Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Kent-Smith doesn’t forsee a “productive conversation” about reparations when politicians like president-elect Joe Biden not only refuse to endorse defunding of police, but “want to increase funding” for the cops.

Black Agenda Report Presents The Left Len: “Barack Obama’s Legacy of Lies”

This episode was Livestreamed on December 1st at 7:00 PM eastern time.
Left Lens Co-Hosts Margaret Kimberley and Danny Haiphong join you live to discuss the Obama legacy and its continued impact on the struggle for peace, justice, and liberation.

Lynchings By Law 

Aaron Greene 
The Trump administration plans to execute five people before there is a change of power.

Secret Amazon Reports Expose the Company’s Surveillance of Labor and Environmental Groups

Lauren Kaori Gurley
Dozens of leaked documents from Amazon reveal the company’s use of Pinkerton operatives to spy on warehouse workers, labor unions and social movements.

Beware Biden-Harris Neoliberalism 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford 
Corporate Democrats may be more dangerous than overt racists, because neoliberals “cloack themselves in the rhetoric of ‘racial uplift,’” said Rebecca Ann Wilcox, a community organizer and PhD candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. For example. celebrations of Kamala Harris elevation to first Black woman vice president “obscures the fac that she will helm genocidal wars in the Middle East…and the wars she already started with Black incarcerated children.”

The Right to Live in Health and Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution: A Review  

Kelly Urban 
Cuban medical professionals created a project to join science and statecraft and secure health as a fundamental right of citizenship.

Hierarchies of Modern Western Colonialism 

Dr. Kweli Nzito 
Imperialists continue to exercise control of former colonies from the comfort of their metropolises as their former subjects appear resigned to their post-colonial fates.

Reckoning With Slavery: What a Revolt’s Archives Tells Us About Who Owns the Past 

Marjoleine Kars 
Writing one’s own history is an act of emancipation.