Abolish – Don’t Tweet – Stop-and-Frisk
As popular anger rises against New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s draconian policing policies, “we must avoid being sidetracked by politicians, preachers or anybody else who might want to lead it into sit-downs and negotiations with the mayor and the police commissioner,” said Carl Dix, a founder of Stop Stop-and-Frisk. “The challenge” is to reject “some surface reform, some tweets, to a racist, illegal policy,” he said. Stop-and-frisk, “a pipeline to mass incarceration,” has to go.
Contemptible: Holder, Obama and the Congress
“We can openly admit that this attorney general and this president are Black and the congressmen going after them are a bunch of racists,” and still “condemn abuses of power” by President Obama and Eric Holder,” said David Swanson, publisher of the influential website WarIsACrime.org. The House committee that charged Holder with contempt in a gun trafficking scheme acted “hypocritically,” said Swanson. However, “you have a president who has been claiming state secrets powers in courts…to protect himself and his predecessors and their corporate allies, far and away beyond anything Bush or Cheney ever tried.”
A “Human Rights” Approach to Public Schooling
“Parents and communities and students must participate in all decisions that affect the right to education,” said Ellen Raider, of ICOPE, the Independent Commission on Public Education, in New York City. High drop-out rates violate the “human right to the full development of each child, to its fullest potential. It’s the new Jim Crow, as Michelle Alexander says.” Charter schools have been “used as a wedge to separate parents in Black and Latino communities,” said Raider. Meanwhile, the Coalition for Public Education has established the Paul Robeson Freedom School, in Brooklyn, to provide “education for liberation,” said spokesman Rodney Deas.
A U.S. Chapter for ILPS
Twenty-eight United States organizations have become the newest country-chapter of the International League of People’s Struggle. “We cannot succeed, either as an anti-war movement or as a movement against injustice in this country, without being united with our sisters and brothers around the world,” said U.S. chapter spokesperson Bill Dores.
Congo President Shares Blame for Genocide
Evidence mounts of Rwandan complicity in violence that has killed six million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo since 1996. However, DRC President Joseph Kabila is also part of the problem, said Jacques Bahati, policy analyst for the Africa Faith and Justice Network, based in Washington. If Congo had an “efficient and effective government, they could set up an army to secure its borders,” said Bahati. Rwanda gets away with destabilizing Congo because “it has a very good army” and is a close ally of the United States.
Western Heads of State, Including Obama, Guilty of High Crimes
The Pan-African Solidarity Hague Committee, comprised of activists from throughout the Diaspora, delivered a petition to the International Criminal Court charging the heads of state of the U.S. and other NATO countries with war crimes and crimes against humanity in Libya, Ivory Coast, Haiti, and in the “targeting and persecution of Black people in the United States,” said human rights lawyer Roger Wareham. “We have no illusions that the ICC is going to take our evidence, which is rock-solid,” said Wareham. “Of the 26 case that are before the Criminal Court, all involve Africans.” The ICC “has become a tool for the West to recolonize Africa.”
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.
Ann Garrison was invited to address the annual Eritrean Festival, which was held in Dallas. These are her remarks.
The elites who control international finance are the best educated people in the world. They are also the most dangerous and have inflicted the most harm.
Black August is the commemoration of actions carried out by revolutionaries ranging from Nat Turner to George Jackson. It is a month to "study, fast, train, and fight" to build the Black radical…
This week’s featured author is Maboula Soumahoro. Soumahoro is Associate Professor in the English department of the University of Tours. Her book is Black is the Journey, Africana the Name.
This week’s featured author is Jesse Olsavsky. Olsavsky is Assistant Professor of History at Duke Kunshan University in China.. His book is The Most Absolute Abolition: Runaways, Vigilance Committees…
