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

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 12/23/13
24 Dec 2013
🖨️ Print Article

NSA Spying Recommendations

Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, was surprised at the scope of a presidential panel’s recommendations to limit spying by the National Security Agency. Some of the 46 proposals reached “beyond the NSA, to also suggest measures to curtail FBI abuses,” said Buttar, who noted that lots of agencies spy on Americans, “including the Postal Service.”

Detroit as Model for Urban Subjugation

A federal bankruptcy judge’s ruling could allow bankers and corporations to “go after pension funds around the United States,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, Detroit community activist and editor of the Pan African News Wire. Judge Steven Rhodes ruled that retiree pensions deserve no more protection than any other creditors. “We’re talking about hundreds of billions of dollars, if not trillions, that are tied up in these pension funds,” said Abayomi.

People’s lawyer Thomas Stephens said “capital is facing a catastrophe, that it created, in Detroit and everywhere else. Where better than Detroit to work out the model” for subjugating urban America?

Vast Inner City Land Grab

A new breed of Wall Street-backed mega real estate companies has been spending $100 million per week for over a year – for a total of $7.5 billion – buying up foreclosed homes to turn them into rental properties, said journalist and author Laura Gottesdiener. One firm, the Blackstone Group, has purchased more than 40,000 homes in 14 cities. The volume is such that “not only are they controlling home prices in these cities, pushing them up, but it’s very likely they’ll be able to price-fix the rental rates, as well.” Gottesdiener is author of A Dream Foreclosed: Black America and the Fight for a Place to Call Home.

New Oscar Grant Book

Five years after Oscar Grant was killed by a transit police officer, journalist Thandisizwe Chimurenga is publishing a new book on the subject. The Murder(s) of Oscar Grant “takes a look at the way the media and the court system also murdered” the young Oakland father, said Chimurenga, founder of the Ida B. Wells Institute. “I’m also looking a police murder in general through the lens of this case.”

 

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.


More Stories


  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Short word problems: do the math
    03 Jun 2026
    "Short word problems: do the math" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Dhoruba bin-Wahad
    Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Co-Founder of Black Liberation Army, Reflects on the Legacy of Assata Shakur and Revolutionary Sacrifice
    03 Jun 2026
    On May 30, 2026, a Celebration of the Life and Legacy of Assata Shakur was held at the Riverside Church in New York City. Dhoruba Bin Wahad, co-founder of the Black Liberation Army, wrote these words…
  • Erica Caines
    The Persecution of Kaia Sealy and the Manufactured Crisis in Trinidad and Tobago
    03 Jun 2026
    Trinidad and Tobago's Prime Minister says she backs Trump's conservatism and capitalism, and the criminal case against a hairdresser paralyzed in a police shooting shows exactly what that partnership…
  • Clau O'Brien Moscoso
    Bolivia in Crisis: In Conversation with Evo Morales
    03 Jun 2026
    Former Bolivian president Evo Morales Ayma spoke with Black Agenda Report correspondent Clau O’Brien Moscoso.
  • Black Alliance For Peace
    Black Alliance for Peace Calls On International Community to Boycott the 2026 World Cup Games Scheduled for the United States
    03 Jun 2026
    The World Cup is meant to be a celebration of global unity, not a propaganda shield for a superpower waging genocide abroad and running detention gulags on its own soil.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us