Black Is Back Coalition National Conference
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations holds a national conference in Newark, New Jersey, August 18. “We will examine the role of elections in this society, the role of money in elections, and the question of how, or whether, Black people should be involved,” said Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela. “The idea of voting simply for the sake of voting is not something that any rational person” advocates.
Pennsylvania’s Assault on the Very Poor
Seventy thousand of the state’s poorest people were given virtually no notice that they are to be removed from cash public assistance. State Rep. W. Curtis Thomas said Republicans also want to use “asset testing” to keep people off food stamps and are discussing making the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program into a loan, to be repaid when recipients gain employment. Meanwhile, corporations are getting “carte blanche access to drilling” for natural gas in the state. “So, while we are throwing people into the street on one hand, we are fattening corporate welfare at an alarming rate,” said the Philadelphia lawmaker.
Canadian Police are as Racist as U.S. Cops
The youth activist group Justice Is Not Colour-Blind is demanding an end to racial profiling and police raids in the Black community of Toronto, Canada. “Racial profiling is rampant in Toronto,” said Odion Fayalo, of JINCB. The police practice of arbitrarily demanding that Black males produce ID, called “carding,” is the Canadian version of stop-and-frisk.
Manning Marable Got it Wrong on Malcolm X
The late Dr. Manning Marable’s 2011 book Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention attempts to “liberalize Malcolm X” and misrepresent his revolutionary nationalist politics, said Morgan State University professor Jared Ball, an editor and contributor to A Lie of Reinvention: Correcting Manny Marable’s Malcolm X. Marable “would have welcomed an exchange and criticism of his book,” said Dr. Ball, but “those who walk in his footsteps…will not engage in principled debate.”
Malcolm X Radio to Power Up
Low-power FM radio station WMXP needs $15,000 to bring the broadcast signal to full power, said Atty. Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. WMXP’s programming “connects the local community with the national and international Black community and provides an opportunity for political education that would not otherwise be available.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Tuesday at 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
BAR contributor Ann Garrison continues her reporting from the Horn of Africa. She is now in Eritrea.
In this feature, we interview Syrian-born journalist Richard Medhurst about state propaganda, the mainstream media, and U.S. imperialism.
This week’s featured scholars are Adam Bledsoe and Willie Wright. Bledsoe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. Wright is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida.…
Russian athletes have been banned from the Boston Marathon, Wimbledon tennis championships, and perhaps the next Olympic games. These punishments were not meted out to citizens of the U.S. and allied…
The 2002 attempted coup against Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez was undone because of popular action. The Bolivarian Republic recently held an international summit commemorating events which…
