13 May 2021 — Black Agenda Report

Freedom Rider: The End of Low Wage Work 

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
The combination of unemployment and additional stimulus support has made staying home a better economic decision than working for peanuts under stressful conditions.

Democrats Give an “A” Grade to Joe Biden’s Brand of Corporate Rule. Should the Left? 

Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Biden’s policies thus far represent the bare minimum response of a social order mired in total decay.

The Mother’s Day Massacre:  Mumia Abu-Jamal, 1985

Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Four years into his own ordeal as a political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal charged Philadelphia’s government with premeditated mass murder in the slaughter of MOVE men, women and children.

Open Letter to Superstar Rapper J. Cole about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo 

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
I’m no rap or hip hop aficionado, so I contacted my fellow Pacifica Radio producer and Hard Knock Radio host Davey D. Cook to see what he could tell me about you as soon as I saw that you’ll be suiting up to play for the Rwandan Patriots at the debut of the Basketball Africa League in Kigali, Rwanda, from May 16 to May 30.

From Palestine to Colombia: The End of the White World Colonial/Capitalist Project? 

Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Despite the quickening decline of the “West,” the US and its junior partners in imperialism are determined to hold humanity hostage to terminal capitalist greed and violence.

The acrobats are back…(gimme a bleepin’ break!) 

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
The acrobats are back—riding bareback and backwards on Donkeys! They’re back juggling hocus-pocus focus groups;

The USA – Immoral, Illegal, Irredeemable, and Irrelevantto Global Africa’s Liberation Struggle 

Mark P. Fancher
The U.S. can never be reformed to render justice to its African residents.

Police and the License to Kill 

Matthew D. Lassiter
Detroit’s wanton killing of hundreds of Blacks in the civil right era shows why most of today’s proposals to make police more accountable are bound

BAR Book Forum: Short Meditations on Christina Sharpe’s “In the Wake” 

Tiana Reid
There was no way to make light of this daunting book and its effects on me, no matter how much I thought I knew it.

BAR Book Forum: Stefanie K. Dunning’s “Black to Nature” 

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
The author explores various social, political, and cultural sites that explore and highlight the Black pastoral experience.

Massive Resistance to Austerity Regime in Colombia 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Broad sectors of Colombian society continue a national strike against the US-backed regime’s attempt to impose harsh austerity measures. “What we have seen is a very strong unification between the many sectors – health, labor, women, indigenous, African descendants. All of them are protesting this criminal government,” said Charo Mina-Rojas, of the Black Communities Process organization, speaking from a roadblock outside the largely Black city of Cali. Police and paramilitaries have killed scores of young Black protesters in the coastal cities.

Latinos and the Shrinking White Majority 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The Census Bureau predicts that Anglo whites will become a minority in the US by 2145 — but, what if significant numbers of Latinos embrace whiteness, and Anglo whites welcome them into the fold? “We see that happening already with the Ted Cruzes and Marco Rubios of the world,” said Dr Shantee Rosado, a professor of Afro-Latinx Studies at Rutgers University, whose book project is titled “Latinxs and the Emotional Politics of Race and Blackness in the U.S.” At the same time, however, “there is a push to say that race matters, mainly among indigenous and Black Latinos,” said Shantee.

Who Cleans the Country? 

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
The Covid-19 pandemic has wrought vast changes in US lifestyles, but one aspect remains unchanged: housework is still a mostly a female domain and minorities and immigrants clean up the country, said Nicole Froio, a Colombian-Brazilian journalist researcher and author of the recent article, “The Pandemic Housework Dilemma Whitewashed.”  “Housework is not seen as productive work – it’s seen as maintenance,” said Froio. The people that do the cleaning are devalued.

Left Lens Live: Justice Not Served by Verdict in George Floyd’s Murder

Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges in the murder of George Floyd last year. Just two hours before the verdict, Ohio police killed Ma’Khia Bryant. Margaret and Danny discuss why justice has not been served as liberals and Democrats have so enthusiastically proclaimed.

The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition 

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
In the past year or two, the proposition of defunding or abolishing police and prisons has travelled from incarcerated-activist networks into mains

We Must Break the Duopoly Or Biden Will Deliver Something Much Worse Than Trump 

The Peoples Party
Biden promises popular progressive policies, then quietly reneges while the corporate press turns a blind eye and falls silent.

If Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case Is a ‘Non-Issue,’ Why Have Media Gone to Such Lengths to Silence Him? 

Janine Jackson
The corporate media is second only to the police in spreading falsehoods about the nation’s best known political prisoner.

Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror 1817-2020

Joshua Moufawad-Paul
“Disease poetics” has been part of global capitalism since its emergence.

A Curious Tale of an Iceberg with a Hacked Tip 

Dr. Kweli Nzito
Practitioners of the dark art of bigotry find a perfect camouflage behind impenetrable walls of denial to mask their wicked ways.

Biden is Full of Crap on Helping Working People 

Riva Enteen
If Biden wants to help workers, he can fully implement the National Labor Relations Act, which hasn’t been enforced in 86 years.