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Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide

Tue, 04/02/2013 - 13:34 — Carl Dix

by Carl Dix

Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow takes us in the right direction to understanding mass incarceration – but it doesn’t go far enough. “It is essential to not fall into seeing the necessary resistance movement being a rerun of the movement that broke the back of Jim Crow.”

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of August 20, 2012

Tue, 08/21/2012 - 07:36 — Glen Ford

 

Texas Ten Percent Admissions Plan “Model for Country”

Texas provides a “model for the rest of the country” for boosting the numbers of Black and Latino students in state colleges, said Shanta Driver, of BAMN, By Any Means Necessary. BAMN filed a friend of the court brief supporting Texas’ policy allowing admission to state colleges of the top ten percent of each high school graduating class. “You don’t need an elaborate maze of criteria” to integrate higher education, said Driver. The ten percent plan works because it eliminates “all of the common variables that are used to make it much more difficult for Black and Latino and poor white students to gain admission into their state’s flagship universities.”

“Blow the Whistle” on Stop-and-Frisk

On September 13, the Stop Stop-and-Frisk movement will blow the whistle on police abuse in New York City, “figuratively and literally,” said spokesman Carl Dix. “People will gather with their whistles and cameras and be on the lookout for cops violating someone’s rights, and when they see it, blow the whistle to draw a crowd,” said Dix. “We are no longer going to accept this kind of abuse in silence.”

NAACP Called “Irrelevant”

The national and state offices of the NAACP have “sold out” to the Whirlpool corporation’s attempts to turn mostly Black Benton Harbor, Michigan, over to developers, said Rev. Edward Pinkney, the longtime president of the local NAACP. Pinkney publicly burned his NAACP membership card, on Sunday. “We have given them a free pass because of what they did 40 years ago,” said Pinkney, who claims more than 800 others joined him in burning their NAACP cards. “They’re just a shell of what they used to be.”

The Myth of “Progressive” Media

Since the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement issued its groundbreaking Report on the Extrajudicial Killing of 120 Black People, earlier this summer, it has met a wall of silence from media outlets and personalities that are generally considered “progressive,” said Rosa Clemente, co-author of the report. “Whether it is MSNBC or Michael Eric Dyson, Rev. Sharpton or Mellissa Harris-Perry…Democracy Now, The Nation, In These Times – they haven’t covered it either,” said Clemente. “They don’t want to deal with the issue of race and systemic violence. They don’t want President Obama or his Justice Department put on blast” in this election year.”

Conference on Black-Led Development

The Uhuru Movement holds a conference to “Empower African Communities Through African-Led Development,” in Washington, DC, on October 13 and 14. The conference aims to “expand our knowledge base and skills base to the Caribbean, Africa and South America – wherever African people are,” said Ayesha Fleary, of the All African People’s Development and Empowerment Project. The project operates agriculture enterprises in Houston, Washington, and Oakland, California, and a nursing school in Sierra Leone, West Africa. “Whoever controls your food, controls your life,” said Fleary.

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Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of February 27, 2012

Mon, 02/27/2012 - 21:49 — Glen Ford

 

Mass Incarceration + Silence = Genocide

“The conditions that are being forced on the Black masses today come down to a slow genocide that could easily become a fast one,” organizer Carl Dix told an audience at New York’s Riverside Church. Dix is a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party and a leader of the Stop Stop-and-Frisk campaign. The logic of global capitalism, he said, “can not only take things further in a genocidal direction, but it could greatly accelerate the pace of the direction if it isn’t stopped.”

UNAC Peace and Social Justice Conference in CT

“If we are going to meet the challenge of confronting the new war budget of the Obama administration and the strategic plans of Washington, we have to organize to confront drone war, special ops and preparations for war in most of the theaters of the world,” said Chris Gavreau, of the United National Anti-War Coalition. UNAC holds a National Anti-War and Social Justice conference in Stamford, Connecticut, March 23-25. The organization’s action program supports “compensation and reparations to people of the world whose countries the U.S. has attacked, destroyed, occupied and impoverished” and “to the victims of the trans-Atlantic slave trade.” Gavreau said “mass incarceration, stop and frisk other attacks all have been designed to demobilize the Black community, to rip them out of the struggle for social change in the U.S.”

Left-Right Unity Over Preventive Detention?

“Our Bill of Rights liberties are being stripped away,” by the recently passed preventive detention law, said Christina Tobin, of Free and Equal. She believes imprisonment without charge or trial can be rolled back by “uniting grassroots Occupy Wall Street, grassroots Tea Party, and grassroots media across the spectrum, for electoral reform. We need to kick Republicans and Democrats out of office, and we the people need to run for office.”

U.S. Attempting a Replay of Libya Regime Change in Syria

“What is going on here, is an organized attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of Syria, that is being coordinated by the United States, France, Turkey, Qatar – a dictatorship – and Saudi Arabia – another dictatorship,” said Francis Boyle, renowned professor of international law. “They have no intention of finding a peaceful resolution of this dispute,” said Boyle. “Who gives Obama the right to say that the government of Syria should step down.”

Day 247 for Marathon Newark Demonstrations

In 134 days, the People’s Organization for Progress (POP) will have kept its vow to match the duration of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott. POP’s daily demonstrations are an extension of the struggle that has been going on in Newark, New Jersey, “since the Sixties, really,” said Dr. Akil Khalfani, director of Africana Studies at Essex County College. “I think this is an awareness campaign, trying to get different factions within the larger community active – to get students active, to get unions active, but to realize that their activity is most effective when they are working together.” Nearly 200 organizations have endorsed or joined in POP’s protests.

Dictatorship Reigns in Michigan

Activists hope they have gathered enough petition signatures to force a referendum on Michigan’s Public Act 4, which allows the governor to replace elected officials with Emergency Managers. The mostly Black town of Benton Harbor is one of the disenfranchised municipalities run by a state appointee. “If you ever saw a dictator, he’s one,” said community activist Rev. Edward Pinkney. “Every job that city employees worked on has been outsourced. Nothing is left. We are in worse shape than when he came.”

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of January 23, 2012

Tue, 01/24/2012 - 06:50 — Nellie Bailey a...

 

Hundreds Protest Obama in Harlem

About 400 people gathered in Harlem to protest President Obama’s foreign and domestic policies. “We’re here to send a clear message to President Obama that he cannot come to Harlem without receiving a scathing message about his service to the 1%,” said Nellie Bailey, of Occupy Harlem, which called for the demonstration. Preventive detention was high on the list of grievances. “Without a doubt, it’s the rise of a police state,” said Bailey. Occupy Wall Street, MoveOn, and Stop Stop-and-Frisk sent delegations to the protest outside of the Apollo Theater, where the President held a fundraiser. “I never thought he would sell out like this,” said Jose LaSalle, of Stop Stop-and-Frisk,” to the point he would sign a bill like this and know how it affects minorities and people who are fighting for justice.”

Mothers Against Stop-and-Frisk

Mary Black’s teenage son was stopped five times in five months for no good reason by New York City police – all within a two-block radius of his family’s Harlem apartment. Ms. Black and other mothers have joined with Stop Stop-and-Frisk to protest a policy that saw 700,000 New Yorkers accosted by police, last year, most of them young Black and brown men. “People don’t deserve for their children to be treated this way,” said Ms. Black.

Preventive Detention Suit

Journalist and author Chris Hedges and other plaintiffs sued President Obama for his New Year’s Eve signing of a preventive detention bill. “The way this law is written is really terrifying,” said Hedges. “It’s the whim of the security and surveillance state, whoever they want to go after, they can pretty much do so under this legislation.” The former New York Times correspondent believes “there has been a clear effort on the part of the security state to try to tar the Occupy movement as an enemy of American democracy.”

Punish Police Torture

“It’s time to recognize torture under federal law as the crime against humanity it is,” said Taylor Flint, of Chicago’s People’s Law Office, at a Capital Hill briefing. Illinois Rep. Danny Davis has introduced legislation to punish police torture of suspects. Over a 20-year period, a police squad under detective John Burg tortured at least 200 suspects into giving false confessions. One of them, Darrell Cannon, spoke at the briefing. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” said Cannon, who served 26 years in prison. “I can never forgive, I can never forget.” Congressman Davis’ bill would also eliminate the statue of limitations on police torture.

“Handwriting on the Wall” in Nigeria

The gasoline price hike “was the straw that broke the camel’s back” and led to a general strike in Nigeria, earlier this month, said Aniedi Okure, of the Africa Faith and Justice Network, in Washington. The Nigerian government first doubled, then reluctantly reduced, prices for gasoline, causing instant inflation in a whole range of other prices. Although a major oil exporter, Nigeria imports most of its gasoline. Mr. Okure blames the Nigerian elite – “the .0001%,” as he called them – for vast economic disparities. “I’m praying that this awakening does not die out,” he said. “The politicians saw the writing on the wall. We might have had a French-style revolution on our hands.”

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of October 24, 2011

Mon, 10/24/2011 - 21:24 — Nellie Bailey a...

 

Gaddafi Death Puts U.S. on More Aggressive Course in Africa

“Gaddafi was slaughtered. There was no attempt to utilize the rule of law” by the NATO-backed Libyan rebels, said Prof. Vijay Prashad, director of international studies at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. “Are we going to see the same kind of retribution and bloodbath in the short term which we have already seen over the past two months?” Prashad thinks the U.S. has gained “renewed confidence in operating militarily on the African continent,” and can be expected to behave more aggressively in the future. Kenya, which recently sent a large force of troops into Somalia, “would never have moved without a [U.S.] go-ahead.”

The FBI’s “Industrial Strength” Racial Profiling Campaign

Under the guise of ferreting out national security threats, the FBI is systematically “mapping” Black, brown and Muslim communities, said Michael Germain, of the American Civil Liberties Union. For example, an October, 2009, Atlanta FBI office “threat alert” on supposed “Black separatist” activity actually “tracks census data to show the growth of the Back community” in the Atlanta area. “The Bureau uses such hypothetical ‘threats’” as “justification for collecting information on what they call racial and ethnic behavior,” said Germain. These “mapping” practices amount to “industrial strength racial profiling” of entire communities.

Direct Action to Stop Stop-and-Frisk

With police stop-and-frisks of New Yorkers on track to exceed 700,000 this year, local activists and volunteers from the ranks of Occupy Wall Street descended on the “worst” police precinct in Harlem. Thirty-three were arrested, including Princeton professor Cornel West and Rev. Stephen Phelps, interim senior minister of historic Riverside Church. “We can’t simply observe these wrong systems, we have to put ourselves on the line,” said Rev. Phelps. “Direct action is the best way to bring this to light.” Prof. West said a focus on stop-and-frisk allows the movement to “make the connection between this arbitrary police power and how it ties in with corporate greed, Wall Street…the military-industrial complex.”

Occupy All of the Hoods

“It’s critical for us to participate now” in the Occupy Wall Street movement, “and strike while the iron is hot,” said Jamal Crawford, an activist with Occupy the Hood, Boston. “Our people have been organizing around these issues for decades, at a minimum. If white people are upset about unemployment, imagine how average Black people feel when our rates are double, and in some cases triple or quadruple.” If the OWS movement were “purely a group of the worst affected, it would be a lot Blacker and browner.”

Workers’ Interests Not Necessarily the Same as Democrats

Organizers of the Million Worker March of 2004 endorsed the Occupy Wall Street movement. Clarence Thomas, of International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 10, in the San Francisco Bay Area, recalls that seven years ago unions and the Democratic Party “wanted the working class to get behind the election of John Kerry, to the denial of the workers agenda.” Since then, “the crisis has intensified and it is global. That’s why it is so critical that we find a way to connect to this movement.”

Newark Union Joins POP for “Peace, Jobs, Equality and Justice”

Local 108 of the retail workers union has assumed responsibility for some of the daily protests mounted by Newark, New Jersey’s Peoples Organization for Progress (POP). Local president Charles Hall said his members “will go to the finish line” with POP, which is in its 121st day of demonstrations for “Peace, Jobs, Equality and Justice” – and has vowed to keep it up for 381 days, the duration of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott. “We all need to come together,” said Hall. Days later, the Newark Teachers Association joined the campaign.

NPR Faulted in DC Protester’s Firing

Lisa Simeone, a freelance host for an opera show aired on National Public Radio stations, was fired after taking part in October2011 demonstrations at Washington DC’s Freedom Plaza. NPR was “frantically trying to get her out of work because they were beginning to get right-wing criticism,” said activist and writer David Swanson, publisher of the influential web site War Is A Crime. “NPR goes out of its way to kiss up to corporations and the extremely wealthy, who fund it.”

Imprison George Bush for Torture Crimes

The New York based Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the Canadian Centre for International Justice have teamed up to force Canada to bring charges against former president George Bush. The legal teams have provided Canada’s attorney general with a 65-page indictment of Bush and 4,000 pages of evidence, CCR senior attorney Katherine Gallagher, in hopes that Ottowa will do its duty as a signatory to the international Convention Against Torture. If not, they will initiate a private prosecution of Bush, and ultimately take the issue to the United Nations.

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If the Airport is a Police State, What is the Ghetto?

Tue, 11/23/2010 - 22:33 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

It is right to howl at the indignities inflicted on airline passengers – but hypocritical, if the howls come from folks who applaud or remain silent while police in big cities across the country subject hundreds of thousands of Black and Latino males to arbitrary stop and frisks. “As a Black male who is often perceived as Latino or Middle-Eastern, I expect to get stopped and questioned, pulled from the crowd and patted down.”

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Secret NYPD Tapes Document Routine, Massive Police Racism

Tue, 05/11/2010 - 01:01 — Glen Ford
A Black Agenda radio commentary by Glen Ford
We were right when we said it in the Sixties. The police are an occupation army in the Black community. Secret NYPD tapes reveal the cops’ quota system for stopping and frisking hundreds of thousands of innocent minority residents every year. But when New Yorkers of color are victimized by crime, they “are often threatened with arrest, themselves, by belligerent detectives trying to fudge the figures.”

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