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 June 18, 2012
19 Jun 2012
🖨️ Print Article

 

Backwards Logic: Obama’s “We Got Your Back” Black Campaign Ad

The Obama 2012 campaign’s radio ad, in which a chorus of Black voices assures the president that “We got your back,” implies a “reciprocal relationship” between Blacks and Obama – “that we’re all in this together,” said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. However, “there’s been very little that he’s done directly for Black people to show us that he’s got our back.”

Why Wisconsin mobilization and Occupy movement “Faltered”

The “biggest ongoing labor rally since the 1930s got shunted into electoral politics…because there wasn’t also the pursuit of independent movement building,” said Arun Gupta, co-founder of the Occupy Wall Street Journal. The problem, said Gupta, was not simply that Democratic Party and labor union “honchos” steered the movement into an unsuccessful bid to unseat Republican Scott Walker. Rather, the Wisconsin mobilization and the Occupy movement, “despite their potential, have been faltering because of…a lack of organization, a lack of discipline, and a lack of strategy.”

Medicaid for All Would Have Passed Constitutional Muster

President Obama could have avoided constitutional problems if he had chosen a health care plan that “most people have long supported” and which is “constitutionally safe”: Medicare for All, said political analyst and author Paul Street. “All you have to do” to create a single-payer system ”is to go into the Medicare bill and take out the clause that says its for people over 65 – and just say its for everybody.” Instead, Obama pushed a bill that guaranteed price-setting power to the drug and insurance “mafias.” The U.S. Supreme Court is set to rule on Obama’s health care legislation, which requires people to purchase private insurance.

Obama Violates His Own Law on Congo Killings

Friends of Congo is circulating a petition demanding that Washington cut off funds to nations that “destabilize” their neighbor, the Democratic Republic of Congo. Executive director Maurice Carney notes that the law was authored by Sen. Barack Obama and co-sponsored by Sen. Hillary Clinton, now U.S. Secretary of State. Rwanda and Uganda are both guilty of destabilizing the DRC, “resulting in the death of millions of Congolese,” said Carney. Both Rwanda and Uganda are close allies of the U.S.

No Compromise with Capitalism

“You have to have, as an objective, overturning the system of capitalism, itself. And to do that, you’ve got to be organized,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the African People’s Socialist Party, founded in 1972. Yeshitela was speaking at the national convention of the Uhuru Solidarity Movement, in Philadelphia.

 

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.


More Stories


  • BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
    Anima Adjepong
    BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
    29 Jul 2020
    The lesson is to remain woke, because not all abolitionists share the goal of Black liberation.
  • BAR Book Forum: Erika Edwards’s “Hiding in Plain Sight”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Erika Edwards’s “Hiding in Plain Sight”
    29 Jul 2020
    Anti-blackness manifests as black invisibility in Argentina, a society that was determined to marginalize and discriminate against Black women. 
  • “This is the Scene of a Crime”: An African Artist/Activist Journey, Part II 
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    “This is the Scene of a Crime”: An African Artist/Activist Journey, Part II 
    29 Jul 2020
    An interview with Dr. Karen Wilson- Ama’Echefu.
  • Oh Boya: If It’s Goya, It Has To Be No Good
    Will Guzman
    Oh Boya: If It’s Goya, It Has To Be No Good
    29 Jul 2020
    Goya’s CEO thinks Trump is a “blessing,” so the brand has been cursed with a boycott. 
  • The Poor People’s Economic and Human Right Campaign: a Case for How Change Works
    Belinda Davis
    The Poor People’s Economic and Human Right Campaign: a Case for How Change Works
    29 Jul 2020
    With no well-financed publicity department and no links to the machinery of big party politics, movements like PPEHRC can sometimes seem lost in plain sight.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us