Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of July 9, 2012

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Black Is Back Coalition National Conference

The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations holds a national conference in Newark, New Jersey, August 18. “We will examine the role of elections in this society, the role of money in elections, and the question of how, or whether, Black people should be involved,” said Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela. “The idea of voting simply for the sake of voting is not something that any rational person” advocates.

Pennsylvania’s Assault on the Very Poor

Seventy thousand of the state’s poorest people were given virtually no notice that they are to be removed from cash public assistance. State Rep. W. Curtis Thomas said Republicans also want to use “asset testing” to keep people off food stamps and are discussing making the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program into a loan, to be repaid when recipients gain employment. Meanwhile, corporations are getting “carte blanche access to drilling” for natural gas in the state. “So, while we are throwing people into the street on one hand, we are fattening corporate welfare at an alarming rate,” said the Philadelphia lawmaker.

Canadian Police are as Racist as U.S. Cops

The youth activist group Justice Is Not Colour-Blind is demanding an end to racial profiling and police raids in the Black community of Toronto, Canada. “Racial profiling is rampant in Toronto,” said Odion Fayalo, of JINCB. The police practice of arbitrarily demanding that Black males produce ID, called “carding,” is the Canadian version of stop-and-frisk.

Manning Marable Got it Wrong on Malcolm X

The late Dr. Manning Marable’s 2011 book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention attempts to “liberalize Malcolm X” and misrepresent his revolutionary nationalist politics, said Morgan State University professor Jared Ball, an editor and contributor to A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manny Marable’s Malcolm X. Marable “would have welcomed an exchange and criticism of his book,” said Dr. Ball, but “those who walk in his footsteps…will not engage in principled debate.”

Malcolm X Radio to Power Up

Low-power FM radio station WMXP needs $15,000 to bring the broadcast signal to full power, said Atty. Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. WMXP’s programming “connects the local community with the national and international Black community and provides an opportunity for political education that would not otherwise be available.”

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Tuesday at 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.