Black Is Back Coalition Holds National Conference
“We’ve got to uproot this system, so that our people can live,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations, at a conference in Philadelphia that marked the groups second year of operation. Yeshitela recalled that, back in the autumn of 2009, when the new coalition decided to stage a march on the White House, lots of Blacks “were upset that we would challenge of Negro president.” The coalition has tried “to create a new trajectory for the African Liberation movement.” Membership in the Black is Back Coalition, Yeshitela told the crowd, “is something that will enhance what you do” in your usual political work, “not hurt what you do.”
Peoples Organization for Progress Supports OWS
“This system cannot deliver a decent quality of life for our people,” said Larry Hamm, president of People’s Organization for Progress (POP), at the Black Is Back Coalition conference. POP, a coalition affiliate, is statewide grassroots organization in New Jersey. POP supports the Occupy Wall Street movement. “Yes, there are contradictions,” said Hamm. “But, as long as I read that the captains of finance and industry hate what they are doing, we will support it.” Hamm reminded the conference that POP launched daily demonstrations for jobs, education, housing and peace back in June, before there was an OWS movement. The protests, in Newark, are set to last for at least 381 days, the duration of the 1955 Montgomery, Alabama Bus Boycott.
Historic Church Joins POP Protest
Newark’s Bethany Baptist Church, which this weekend celebrated its 140th anniversary, marked the occasion by joining with POP’s daily demonstrations. “I like the idea of partnering with other organizations,” said Bethany’s Rev. William Howard. “There is no more critical question than meaningful employment for our community. So many of our young people are criminalized at an early age and unable to pursue conventional employment.” Rev. Howard is a former president of the National Council of Churches.
Occupation Movement Has Made Politics as Usual “Trivial”
The Occupation movement “has established for tens of millions of people that it is finance capital and Wall Street that are at the very core of the economic and social problems we face in this country,” said Tony Monteiro, professor of African American Studies at Temple University, in Philadelphia. “The Occupation has such moral authority that it has, literally, taken the Tea Party out of the news, and has made politics as usual trivial to millions of people,” said Monteiro. “It has the potential of animating and bringing militancy to the labor movement, and to forcing Black people to come out of the stupor we are in as a result of confusion about Obama and bourgeois politics.”
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 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
Days of extreme heat without access to enough water and cooled air become deadlier for an aging prison population.
Protests erupted in France after police killed a teenager of Algerian and Moroccan ancestry. Just as in the U.S. racism in France is the cause of police violence.
The recent Supreme Court ruling which bans affirmative action as an admissions' criteria does not apply to the military academies. White elites are secure in their advantages while the military…
Multi-billionaire Elon Musk claims to practice freedom of expression on his Twitter platform. But numerous complaints of anti-Black racism at his Tesla plant make a mockery of any claims of freedom…
37 years after a 1986 International Court of Justice ruling, the United States still refuses to pay Nicaragua the reparations it legally owes. Today, the Nicaraguan government is demanding that the…
