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

Pavan Kulkarni
67 Killed in Stampedes at Christmas Food Drives in Nigeria as IMF-Induced Hunger Engulfed Millions More in 2024
15 Jan 2025
After dozens died in stampedes, Nigerian President Bola Tinubu remarked, “We should just get on with it.” Tinubu’s IMF-prescribed policies have more than doubled food prices in the country,…
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
Ajamu Baraka on Fighting for Peace!
15 Jan 2025
Ajamu Baraka was a guest on the SOBH program on Press TV. He discussed his history of political organizing and activism, human rights, and the importance of the Black Radical Peace Tradition.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio January 10, 2025
10 Jan 2025
We talk about the killing of Robert Brooks by prison corrections officers and the need to close Rikers Island. We also discuss a recent Cuban conference dedicated to ending racism in that country.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Robert Brooks, Rikers Island and the Fight Against New York Incarceration
10 Jan 2025
Darren Mack, co-founder and co-director of Freedom Agenda, talks to us about the killing of Robert Brooks, who died after being beaten by corrections officers in a New York state prison, and the need…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Cuban Conference Against Racism and Racial Discrimination
10 Jan 2025
The National Program against racism and racial discrimination conference was held in Cuba as part of the UN declared International Decade of People of African Descent.