Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

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



Your browser does not support the audio element.

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

More Stories


  • El Sayed Harris
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    El-Sayed Is the Arab Obama
    11 Aug 2026
    The Democratic Party will recalibrate its messaging after its well-funded senate candidate in a Michigan primary lost to Abdul El-Sayed, who by his own admission is a capitalist, not a socialist, and…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    DOCUMENT: Declaration of the Rights of Caribbean Peoples to Self-Determination and Self-Government, West Indies National Emergency Committee, 1940.
    11 Aug 2026
    “Conflicts over colonies constitute the major source of war in the modern world.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Saudi Arabia Forms a 14-State Coalition to Stop Ansar Allah
    11 Aug 2026
    Saudi Arabia has formed a 14-state coalition to stop Ansar Allah, which has threatened to blockade its oil tankers in the Red Sea.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    Why The Democrat Party’s Precipitous Slide from De Facto to De Jure Racism Should Surprise No One
    11 Aug 2026
    “...when I talk about our political institutions, there is no reason for any American to continue to be victimized by what we still refer to as the Republican and Democratic parties…We don’t have to…
  • x
    Djibo Sobukwe
    Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution and Africa
    11 Aug 2026
    In commemoration of the Fidel Castro centenary on August 13, 2026, we present remarks given by Djibo Sobukwe at The Symposium on Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution on January 21, 2017,…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us