Black Agenda Report for Week of August 22, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report for Week of August 22, 2016

23 Aug 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Presidential Pollsters Ask the Wrong Question

“There’s no major poll that I know of that asks the American public who they want to be president,” said journalist and VotePact founder Sam Husseini. Instead, the five polling outfits whose surveys are used to determine if candidates have enough support to appear in televised debates ask, “If the election were held today, who would you vote for?” Husseini believes “there are probably millions of people who would want to vote for third parties,” but plan to pull the lever for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump as “a tactical maneuver.” Theoretically -- especially with Clinton and Trump rated unfavorably by majorities of Americans -- “we could have majority appeal for third party candidates right now, but we would never know it because nobody’s” asking the right question.

Clintonites Play Foul Against Greens

Green Party vice presidential candidate Ajamu Baraka said so-called “liberal” Clinton supporters “are trying to undermine the moral authority that we have as a campaign that stands up for the working class in this country to advance principles that transcend the limitations of liberalism; to talk about a new kind of democracy and an economic liberation that goes beyond the limitations of capitalism.” Baraka, a veteran human rights activist and editor at Black Agenda Report, said the Clintonites slime the Greens as part of the ‘loony left’ to “try to undermine this oppositional moment.”

Black Is Back Coalition Stresses Centrality of Self-Determination

For decades, the conversation around Black liberation in the United States has been missing the critical element of self-determination, said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. The movement that emerged in Ferguson in 2014 “wasn’t about body cameras, and it wasn’t about police-community review boards. We criticized those who could not even make a demand on the system,” Yeshitela told a gathering of the coalition, in Philadelphia. The coalition approved a list of 19 demands as the basis for a Black Agenda for Self Determination, to be submitted to the annual Black Is Back national conference in Washington, November 5 and 6.

Ralph Poynter, the veteran activist and husband of people’s lawyer and former political prisoner Lynne Stewart, assumed the chairmanship of the coalition’s Political Prisoners Working Group. “The modern death penalty -- 80 percent Black -- moved lynching indoors,” said Poynter. “The police, as the army of occupation, have taken lynching outside, again. The lynch mob is the racist system, including the courts and the media.”

Detroit Schools Activists Win Court Battle

A Michigan judge excoriated the state-run Detroit school district for attempting to bar Steve Conn and Nicole Conaway from advocating teacher strikes against the privatization and forced deterioration of the public schools. The district’s request for an injunction against Conn, a former president of the local teachers union, and Conaway, of By Any Means Necessary (BAMN), was “offensive to free speech,” said the judge. “We’re certainly going to urge more protests to defeat the governor for destroying our schools,” said Conn.

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.

Click the player below to listen to this week's show, or the mic at left to download it.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/BlackAgendaRadio_20160822.mp3

More Stories

O. Dave Allen
US Agenda in Jamaica Exposed
02 Apr 2025
Jamaica’s upcoming election has become a litmus test for Caribbean sovereignty as the U.S. and China compete for dominance. Washington’s threats to seize the Panama Canal and Marco Rubio’s heavy-…
Internationalist 360
Marco Rubio Travels to Guyana to Entrench U.S. Colonial Rule
02 Apr 2025
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s recent tour of Jamaica, Guyana, and Suriname was framed as advancing 'energy security' and regional stability. However, it served as a cover to escalate pressure…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio March 28, 2025
28 Mar 2025
In this week’s segment, we have an update on the Sudan civil war, which may be nearing a conclusion. But first, we discuss to what extent the Trump administration is an outlier in comparison to other…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Analyzing Trump: Aberration and Continuity
28 Mar 2025
Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly is an Associate Professor of African American Studies at Wayne State University. She is the author of Black Scare Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Is the Sudan Civil War Nearing an End?
28 Mar 2025
Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor of Pan-African Newswire, joins us from Detroit with an update on the two-year-long conflict in Sudan as government forces make headway in retaking the capital of Khartoum. Is…