Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 21, 2015 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio for Week of December 21, 2015

21 Dec 2015

🖨️ Print Article

Michigan Water Crisis Rooted in Crisis of Democracy

In majority Black Flint, Michigan, the mayor has declared a state of emergency due to unsafe water, while in mostly Black Detroit tens of thousands of poor people have been shut out of the water system. Both jurisdictions were plunged into crisis under the dictatorial powers of state-appointed emergency financial managers. Thomas Stephens, a people’s lawyer and activist, blames corporate governance. “The problems with water affordability and access in Detroit, leading to a public health crisis, and the problems with lead and other contaminants in Flint actually have the same root cause: treating water, a necessity of life in our communities, as if it were a widget, something to be dealt with pursuant to the corporate bottom line.”

Exploring the Black Radical Tradition

Activists and intellectuals will converge on Temple University, in Philadelphia, for a conference on “The Black Radical Tradition In Our Time,” January 8 through 10. Keynote speakers include Angela Davis, Cornel West, Anthony Monteiro and Charlene Carruthers, of Chicago’s Black Youth Project 100. Larry Hamm, chairman of Newark, New Jersey’s People’s Organization for Progress, will speak at one of the conference panels. “The conference is needed,” he said, “because we do need a theoretical understanding of what is happening, and at the same time, those who are involved in theoretical work need to hear from people who are involved in the actual organizing on the ground, so that we can have a synthesis of the two.”

Prison as an Incubator for Hepatitis C

About 100 supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal gathered at a Scranton, Pennsylvania, courthouse where a federal judge heard arguments to compel the state prison system to treat the nation’s best known political prisoner for Hepatitis C, which caused complications that almost killed him earlier this year. Joe Piette, of Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal, said 8,000 Pennsylvania inmates carry the infection. “People are tested routinely for HIV, but they’re not tested for Hep C,” said Piette. “So they go back to the community when they get out of prison and it just spreads throughout the community.”

Venezuelan Revolution Down, But Not Out

The Socialist Party founded by the late Hugo Chavez was soundly defeated in legislative elections, earlier this month. The voting took place amid raging inflation and deep shortages of consumer goods. “The reality is that this was a deliberately constructed scarcity for the purpose of psychological warfare against the people of Venezuela,” said Eric Draitser, a New York-based political analyst who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Venezuela. After the victory of the U.S.-backed parties, said Draitser, “all of a sudden, those items began magically returning to store shelves.” Draitser’s most recent article on Venezuela is titled “The Revolution That Will Not Die.”

CLICK BELOW TO HEAR BLACK AGENDA RADIO

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

listen

http://blackagendaradio.podbean.com/mf/play/frg6q2/BAR_122115.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
The Death of DEI with Jamarl Thomas
31 Jan 2025
Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on Jamarl Thomas's YouTube podcast. She discussed her latest Black Agenda Report article on “The Death of DEI.” The issues surrounding DEI are contradictory.…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Death of DEI
29 Jan 2025
Black people must be discerning about racist attacks on DEI programs while also acknowledging that “diversity” can be a con that damages Black politics, just as it was meant to do.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
POEM: Note to All Nazis, Fascists and Klansmen, Langston Hughes, 1943
29 Jan 2025
Langston Hughes’s 1943 poem against fascism is precise, droll, and eternal.
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Why Hasn’t the UNSC Sanctioned Rwanda or Referred Its President to the ICC?
29 Jan 2025
The UN Security Council (UNSC) has never sanctioned Rwanda or referred its president to the International Criminal Court (ICC), despite decades of UN documentation of their international crimes in…
Clau O'Brien Moscoso
Dollarization in Ecuador: How the Safest Country in Latin America Became a Money Laundering Transnational Crime Hub
29 Jan 2025
Ecuador was once a safe country. However, U.S. interference, the rise of neoliberal economic policies, the dollarization of its currency, and enhanced state repression have combined to worsen the…