Black and Brown Schools Already Over-Policed
“When we look at whose schools are policed and which students have to go through metal detectors, get pad-downs, get drug-searched on a routine basis, it’s our students of color and our communities of color across this country,” said Matthew Cregor, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund. The Newtown, Connecticut, massacre has led to renewed calls for an increased police presence in schools. However, what inner city students need are more social workers, psychologists and counselors, and teaching resources, said Cregor.
Savage School Inequalities Intensify
“Our schools are more segregated and less equal than they were in 1968, when Dr. King was taken from us,” said Jonathan Kozol, the educator, activist and author. “This kind of inequality is a theological abomination, a crime against the least of us,” said Kozol, author of the 1991 classic Savage Inequalities: Children in America’s Schools. He was interviewed on public radio’s Smiley & West show.
Obama “Co-Conspirator” in Austerity Schemes
“Austerity is, essentially, shifting of the burden of the economic depression from those who created it onto the working class and the poor,” said activist Eric Draitser, who has been organizing anti-austerity forums. “This is a concerted attack by financiers and the ruling class against the legacy of the New Deal.” President Obama is “a co-conspirator and collaborator with these austerity schemes.” Draitser is publisher of the web site StopImperialism.com.
MLK vs. Obama
Barack Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have nothing in common, politically, according to Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. “The only connection they would have in the real world be that Dr. King would be leading the demonstrations against the Obama regime, if he were alive,” said Yeshitela. Obama has “extended the war machine beyond anything in recent memory.”
Lynn Stewart’s Cancer Spreads
Human rights lawyer Lynn Stewart, serving ten years in a Fort Worth, Texas, prison for her zealous defense of an accused terrorist client, has suffered a relapse of cancer. “It has spread to her other lung and to parts of her back,” said Stewart’s husband, Ralph Poynter, speaking on the radio program Taking Aim. Prison regulations prevent Stewart from obtaining the care she needs. “We feel that it is a death sentence,” said Poynter.
Happy Birthday to Ramsey Clark and Dr. King, from Mumia
If MLK were alive, he would be 84 years old, a year younger than former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, whose birthday was recently celebrated at New York City’s historic Riverside Church, along with the 20th anniversary of the International Action Center. Dr. King “would be with the people, with the IAC, with Ramsey Clark, at Riverside,” said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal in a message recorded for the event.
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.
Gerald Horne joins editor Margaret Kimberley in analyzing his 2014 book, “The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.”
In this week’s segment, we hear analysis of the situation in Cuba, which is struggling under a U.S. siege meant to undo the revolution. Yet Cuba is resolute in its determination to enact its own…
Dr. Jemima Pierre is an editor and contributor to Black Agenda Report and a professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. She joins BAR editor Margaret Kimberley to discuss the…
James Counts Early joins Black Agenda Report editor Margaret Kimberley to discuss the latest U.S. efforts to undo the Cuban Revolution and Cuba’s determination to retain its sovereignty while under…
“This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
