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.
This week we hear about the absence of home rule in Washington DC and the congressional and white house decision to overturn its city council’s criminal statutes, and the Chicago community’s…
The Black Agenda Report team are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Kevin Alexander Gray, who was a Black Agenda Report contributor, an author, and a longtime activist from South Carolina.
Netfa Freeman is an organizer with Pan African Community Action based in Washington DC, which is working on a campaign for community control over the police.
Frank Chapman is Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. That organization led the fight for community control of the police, with the creation of the…
On March 8,1971 a brave group of people revealed the extent of FBI spying, harassment and even the killings of US citizens. More than 50 years later we would do well to remember the significance of…
