Black Agenda Radio, Week of May 27, 2015 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio, Week of May 27, 2015

26 May 2015

🖨️ Print Article

Tanks Don’t Kill Blacks – It’s the Racist System

President Obama’s executive order “banning” the transfer or sale of certain weapons, gear and vehicles to local police departments is “based on a false narrative” that the conflict between police and Black communities is “non-racial,” said Justin Hansford, an associate professor at the University of St. Louis School of Law. “The armed occupation of Black communities by police has been going on for many decades before they brought out the tanks,” said Hansford, a Washington, DC native. “It’s an attempt to create an easy fix and a non-racial fix.” Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless others were not killed by cops shooting automatic rifles from the tops of armored vehicles. “They were killed by a false narrative of Black criminality” and “the idea that Black life is more disposable.”

Cops Kill Sisters, Too

The “Say Her Name” campaign is necessary to “bring into the mix of this discussion of police getting away with murder the fact that police kill sisters, too,” said Carl Dix, a co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. Protesters took to the streets and public transportation systems of Chicago, Detroit, Oakland and Philadelphia, last week, to highlight police violence against women and girls.

Death By Demonization

Political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal told Prison Radio that the recent deaths of nine bikers in Waco, Texas, the 1993 massacre of Branch Davidian men, women and children in Waco, and the 1985 bombing of the MOVE house in Philadelphia “all have something in common: they’d been demonized.” Abu Jamal remains seriously ill from untreated diabetes and other, unknown ailments.

Settlement to Curtail “Trap-and-Detain” Arrests

In what the Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice Fund calls an “unprecedented” settlement, the U.S. Department of the Interior has agreed to abide by strict standards for policing demonstrators on federal property. Fund executive director Mara Verheyden-Hilliard said the agreement “requires that they not use police lines to surround demonstrators, and stop the ‘trap-and-detain’ kettling tactic that was used around the country.” If police are contemplating making arrests at protests, “they must give people complete notice and opportunity to comply with any lawful police orders,” said Verheyden-Hilliard. The settlement also awards $2.2 million to 400 protesters arrested in 2002, in Washington.

Socialist Alternative Exploring Electoral Possibilities in St. Louis

Seeking to expand from its base in Seattle, Washington, the Socialist Alternative party is considering fielding candidates or backing other leftist political aspirants in St. Louis, Missouri, said organizer Ashton Rome. Campaigns could be centered on demands to “tax the rich” and for a civilian police oversight board “that actually has teeth.”

Malcolm X Set the Stage for Sixties Rebellion

The Sixties “was the high tide of Black intellectual and political thought around the world” – much of it influenced by the work of Malcolm X, who would have been 90 years old on May 19, said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the African Peoples Socialist Party. In a birthday salute to Malcolm at the Uhuru House, in St. Petersburg, Florida, Yeshitela said: “They assassinated him, but they killed him too late; it was his influence that created the Black Panther Party...and that was the most influential throughout the country.”

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/ba-radio-week-of-20150527.mp3

More Stories

Kit Klarenburg
Gilbert Bigio: Israel's Man in Haiti and the Architect Behind the US Migrant Crisis
09 Oct 2024
Billionaire oligarch Gilbert Bigio, is well know as one of the forces of influence that allow for shipments of arms to enter the country, provide cover for the western-backed gangs, and…
Max Ajl
Dismantling Green Colonialism: Stages of a Just Transition?
09 Oct 2024
Dismantling Green Colonialism: Energy and Climate Justice in the Arab Region has received much critical acclaim since its publication with Pluto Press in October 2023. Here, while acknowledging…
Recognized Movement
Open letter to President Abinader: We call for compliance with the Constitution and an end to denationalization and racial discrimination
09 Oct 2024
September marked eleven years since the Dominican Republic passed the law that revoked the citizenship of millions of Dominican people with Haitian heritage. The government still maintains that the…
Joel Mukisa
The problem is systemic: understanding the #OccupyParliament movement in Kenya
09 Oct 2024
Reflecting on the mass protests that recently shook Kenyan society from top to bottom, Joel Mukisa argues that we must go much further than a choiceless democracy to find answers. A systematic…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio October 4, 2024
04 Oct 2024
A Haitian politician's amusing moment at the United Nations obscures continued interference from the US and the UN. But first, we hear analysis of US and Israeli actions that have sparked the…