Freedom Rider: Why the Left Don’t Protest 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The worse the political and economic crisis becomes, the more lethargic the US left behaves – as if generations of collaboration with corporate Democrats has sucked the life out of the left.

The Left Lens: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and American Empire, with Ajamu Baraka 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is often celebrated without any regard for his radical political legacy.Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is often celebrated without any regard for his radical political legacy. Black Alliance for Peace national organizer Ajamu Baraka joins Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley to assess the ongoing relevance of MLK’s work and worldview.

Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead 

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does?

Uganda: Bob Wine Rocks the Vote but Museveni Claims Victory 

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Ugandan pop star turned presidential candidate Bobi Wine is not Sankara or Lumumba, but he has risked his life to mount a fierce challenge to the 36-year dictatorship of President Yoweri Museveni.

mashing the state— Kristallnacht-style 

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Kristallnacht came casting lead ballots, overthrowing Black elected officials and Massacring those that VOTED for them—

Casualties of the Old Cold War Should Inform Opposition to U.S.’ New Cold War against China 

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
The US share of the global economy has shrunk dramatically since 1960. On the other hand, China is on pace to surpass the U.S. in GOP terms in 2030.

New Documents Suggest J. Edgar Hoover Was Involved in Fred Hampton’s Murder 

Flint Taylor and Jeff Haas
Newly released FBI files provide direct documentation that the FBI chief and other high officials were involved in the raid and the coverup that followed.

Letters from Our Readers 

Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
This week the uprising in Washington and Du Bois’s writings on the Soviet Union were on your mind.

BAR Book Forum: L.H. Stallings’ “Funk the Erotic” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
We need a different relationship to and with time and temporality to imagine new worlds and to begin bringing those new worlds into being.

BAR Book Forum: John Murillo III’s “Impossible Stories” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
The author dissects Black time and space in order to better understand the nature and mechanics of Black life and death lived in the antiblack world.

Lumumba Assassination Changed Black American Politics 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
A panel of academics and activists marked the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo’s first elected prime minister, by agents of the US and Belgium. Texas A&M professor Ira Dworkin, author of “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State,” pointed out that it was Black women, led by singer Abbey Lincoln, who petitioned for Lumumba’s release from arrest, and later organized against US policy in Congo. These protests “did create a shift” in Black American politics towards confrontation with US policies in Africa and the world, Dworkin told the online seminar.

US Genocide Against Blacks, Now and in 1951 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The Black leftists that presented a petition to the United Nations, 70 years ago, charging the US with genocide against Black Americans, understood that “there is a linked fate between what’s happening to Black people in the US and what is going to happen” to other racialized and oppressed people around the world, said Dr Charisse Burden-Stelly, speaking at an online commemoration of the event. The “We Charge Genocide” campaign was led by entertainer-activist Paul Robeson and Black members of the Communist Party.

US Imperialism Was in Disarray in 2020 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Black Alliance for Peace national organizer Ajamu Baraka told a year-end conference of the Black Is Back Coalition that “the US settler state is facing the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economy” in the Great Depression. Betty Davis, of the Coalition’s Community Control of Schools Working Group, said: “The federal budget that comes down to New York City is the 23rd biggest budget in the world, but you don’t control that money and that’s why you are not having the same services as your white counterparts.”

Defund the Police is Not Abolition 

Greg Felton
In practice, defunding police leads to endless dickering with local politicians and allows reformists to present themselves as abolitionists.

The Crisis of White Squatters Rights 

Too Black
The white ruling class is evicting the squatter-in-chief (Trump) for violating the class collaborative agreement.

Police Shouldn’t Tag Students as Potential Criminals  

Priyam Madhukar
When cops create lists of kids “at risk” of falling into crime, it becomes a self-fulfilling indictment.

Activists Are Mobilizing to Create an Eviction-Free United States 

Eleanor J. Bader
Rent strikers are doing all they can to stop the violence of evictions and promote a vision of collective and community ownership of housing for everyone.

End SARS and Fanon’s Mission 

Kehinde Alonge
What is the direction of the mission that falls upon each generation of young Nigerians?

Venezuela Sends Oxygen Tanks to Brazilian Amazon State 

Peoples Dispatch Staff
Despite being deeply-sanctioned by the US, Venezuela is sharing medical resources with its neighbor.