Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016

16 Aug 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Greens are Alternative to “Democratic Plantation”

Ajamu Baraka, the veteran Black activist tapped as Jill Stein’s presidential running mate, said the Green Party can make a difference, this year, by “building an alternative to the Democratic plantation” and “transcending the politics of fear.” Baraka is a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network and an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. “With the continued deterioration of the democratic processes, and of this economy, and the clear tendency on the part of the state to repress political opposition, our time is limited in terms of the extent we can take advantage of the limited democratic space that does exist,” said Baraka.

Neither Trump Nor Clinton Can Resolve Crisis

Although both major party candidates acknowledge that the economy is benefiting only the One Percent, the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lies in how they “identify the source of the problem,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar and Black Radical Organizing Committee activist from Philadelphia. “Clinton says that the policies of financialization, of Wall Street privilege, of trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, are not fundamentally wrong – that we should tweet them, not change them,” said Dr. Monteiro. “Trump, in essence, argues that the problem of the American economy is grounded in the export of capital, and that this is the source of the impoverishment of the American working class.” Monteiro believes “Trump’s stating of the problem is far more accurate than Clinton’s,” but neither of them “provide a solution to the problem.”

Roots of Black Movement for Self-Defense

Black scholars and activists came together, in Detroit, to celebrate the life of Robert F. Williams, the former NAACP leader in Monroe, North Carolina, who in the 1950s formed a Black Armed Guard to defend Black people from racist violence. Among the speakers was Dr. Akinyele Umoja, chair of the African American Studies Department at Georgia State University and author of the book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. “There were already people in the South practicing armed self-defense,” said Dr. Umoja. “The thing that distinguishes Williams is that he was an advocate. Most people were quite” members of informal protective networks, but Williams advocated self-defense in his newspaper, The Crusader, and “people began to look at the movement he and others were talking about.”

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://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/BlackAgendaRadio_20160815.mp3

More Stories

Garrett Felber , Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Black Agenda Report Book Forum: An Interview with Garrett Felber
15 Feb 2023
To commemorate 100 years since the birth of former political prisoner Martin Sostre, the Black Agenda Report Book Forum interviews Garrett Felber, A Visiting Fellow at Yale University who is…
Thad Baltimore
The Caribbean Connection | Jeffrey Epstein, JP Morgan Chase and How Powerful Banks Escape Accountability
15 Feb 2023
Banks operate with impunity and so they act accordingly.
Clau O'Brien Moscoso
Report From Lima, Perú
15 Feb 2023
On December 7, 2022 a right wing coup removed Perú’s President Pedro Castillo Terrones from power, but the people have protested against the coup regime ever since.
Shaka Shakur
An Open Letter to Current and Former Prisoners, Their Families, Friends, and Comrades
15 Feb 2023
"We cannot go through decades of this physical and psychological abuse behind these walls and think We are coming home undamaged, without scars," explains New African political prisoner Shaka Shakur.
Socialist Movement of Workers of the Dominican Republic
We Condemn the Repression in Cap Cana That Left One Haitian Worker Dead and Several Injured
15 Feb 2023
Violence against Haitians and Haitian descended people continues in the Dominican Republic. The Socialist Movement of Workers of the Dominican Republic condemn the latest state sanctioned…