Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 2/2913
The Looming Police State
“There’s a push to scare Americans into a police state,” said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut, referring to the overwhelming force brought to bear following the Boston Marathon bombing. State repression is designed to contain “a division within society that is expanding.” The only way to resist the police state, said Williams, “is to take it to the streets, to create chaos for them, because they understand nothing else.”
White Terror
“If we did a little racial profiling, in terms of the FBI’s list of groups and individuals that are engaged in domestic terrorism, they’re all white,” said Beau Grosscup, an author of several works on terror. “But, of course, that doesn’t fit the portrait that we have been encouraged to adopt in terms of who is responsible for U.S. terror.”
Operation Ghetto Storm
“Roughly 90 percent” of the extrajudicial killings of Blacks documented in “Operation Ghetto Storm,” an updated report by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, “are just straight-up coverups” of routine police practices, said Kali Akuno, one of the authors. The report concludes that a Black person is murdered by police, security guards or vigilantes every 28 hours in the United States. Police are “under no real pressure or threat” to change their practices, “except for what we organize as a community,” said Akuno, speaking on Your World News.
Stop the Torture of Solitary Confinement
Anti-mass incarceration forces must start now to build support for prisoners held in long term solitary confinement in California, who went on hunger strike in 2011, said Carl Dix, of Stop Mass Incarceration. “The authorities promised to change conditions” two years ago, “but they lied,” said Dix. This time, “we want to spread the word” before the inmates’ next tentative strike date, July 8.
Obama’s Behavior Predictable
President Obama is a deeply conservative politician who “has been making noise about rolling back” entitlement programs “pretty much from the beginning of his career,” said Paul Street, author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. “Obama has damn near explicitly stated that, for all intents and purposes, he’s a Republican.”
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.
Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston.
Dr. Melina Abdullah is Director of Black Lives Matter Grassroots and Co-Founder of Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles. She is also a Professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University Los…
Dr. Kristen Budd is a Research Analyst with the Sentencing Project. She joins us from Washington to discuss their new report, “Increasing Public Safety by Restoring Voting Rights.” The report…
Margaret Kimberley was a guest on the Sputnik program, The Final Countdown, with hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan. In this excerpt, she discusses the announcement of Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
People in the U.S. venerate its violent history, support violence committed by the state, and remain very racist, yet express shock when individuals kill and maim.
