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 January 7, 2013
08 Jan 2013
🖨️ Print Article

 

Both Parties Sabotaging Entitlement Programs

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “have been set up to take the fall for the nation’s deficit,” said Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, president of Washington-based Global Policy Solutions. President Obama “views it as his legacy to rein in entitlement programs while creating this grand bargain” with the Republicans. Those who expected a more progressive Obama in his second term are mistaken. “I think that the president did not make a Freudian slip in his first debate when he said that he and Mitt Romney actually agree on Social Security.”

EPA Chief Used Alias

Lisa Jackson was forced to resign as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency because she conducted some of her public duties under an alias, said famed whistleblower Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, of the NO FEAR Coalition. Jackson was “extremely upset” with the Occupy Movement, which staged demonstrations against “her cowardly behavior” as guardian of the environment. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo believes Jackson used her alias to cloak her role in government spying on movement activists.

End Stop-and-Frisk

“We feel that 2013 has to be a year of rising resistance to stop-and-frisk in the streets and in the courtrooms,” said Carl Dix, a founder of Stop Mass Incarceration Network. “We’re not talking about mending an injustice; we’re talking about ending it.” The capitalist system is incapable of providing a “future for millions and millions of young people growing up in the urban areas of the country,” said Dix. “You can put Black faces in high places, but if it’s the same system that has oppressed and exploited you, it’s not going to change. Revolution is the solution.”

Big Brother Obama Hears All

President Obama has shown himself to be a more aggressive foe of civil liberties than George Bush. “Absolutely, we’ve seen this to be true from the FISA authorization, to the use of drones, and with the NDAA” preventive detention bill, said Samantha Peetros, spokesperson for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Just before New Years, Obama signed a five-year extension of legislation allowing warrantless phone and email surveillance.

Charters Crowding Out Public Schools in Philly

“I think that there is a growing movement among decision makers to shut the door on public education,” said W. Curtis Thomas, a Black state lawmaker from Philadelphia. The city has targeted 60 public schools for closing, while expanding charter schools by 5,000 seats. “The decision to move kids towards these charter schools is really an effort to resegregate a system that was never totally integrated, anyway,” said Rep. Thomas.

 

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


  • Freedom Rider: How Trump Can Steal the 2020 Election
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: How Trump Can Steal the 2020 Election
    05 Aug 2020
    The election was stolen from Clinton four years ago and the even weaker 2020 candidate can expect the same fate.
  • American Left Silence on China Helps Lay Foundation for the U.S.’ New Cold War
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    American Left Silence on China Helps Lay Foundation for the U.S.’ New Cold War
    05 Aug 2020
    When it comes to China, Democracy Now, Jacobin, The Nation and others on the imperial-minded US ‘left” are allies of white supremacy.
  • “We Need a National Industrial Commission, a Permanent One”
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    “We Need a National Industrial Commission, a Permanent One”
    05 Aug 2020
    Like the first Covd-19 relief package, the pending bill will have been written by “sleep-deprived staff and inattentive lawmakers who are making this all up on the fly.”
  • Testi-lyin’ low Barr
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Testi-lyin’ low Barr
    05 Aug 2020
    a man ‘made’ $13 billion in a day—while  Stomachs of millions of men, women and  children are symphony orchestras tuning to “Last Days of Pompeo…”
  • Essays on The Cult of White Feminism: The “Cos”-play of Elizabeth Warren 
    Earl Hazell
    Essays on The Cult of White Feminism: The “Cos”-play of Elizabeth Warren 
    05 Aug 2020
    A Black artist looks at the role of White Feminism in neutralizing the Progressive and Socialist Left in America, and its consequences.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us