A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The electoral scenery must be quite depressing to those who think change must come through the ballot. The system disgorges “a multiracial cast of scoundrels from both major parties coiled up incestuously under the same corporate tent.” However, something different may be afoot in at least three points on the map.
A Tale of Three Cities: Newark, Jackson, Seattle
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The vote is hardly worth casting, these days.”
Electoral politics, the arena that half of Black America was barred from entering until only about 50 years ago, has become a vast wasteland, hopelessly polluted by corporate dollars. Black electoral politics is no exception. It’s been only a little over a decade since corporate America got serious about creating a new class idiot Harold Ford Congressional Black Caucus
That’s why what’s unfolding in Newark, New Jersey, Jackson, Mississippi, and Seattle, Washington, is so rare – and important.
In Seattle, there’s a group of folks who don’t mind working hard and building alliances, all the while telling the world that socialism is the only alternative to barbarism. Kshama Sawant, the newly minted city councilperson, and her Socialist Alternative comrades have forced corporate Democrats to pretend that they really would like to see the city’s minimum wage raised to $15 an hour. Socialist Alternative also demands that the rich pay for an overhaul of public education and transportation – a platform that most people would support, if they thought it had a chance of passing. Kshama Suwant and her comrades believe that people will vote in their own interests if the candidates have proven they are trustworthy.
In Jackson, Mississippi, 66 year-old Mayor Chokwe Lumumba cooperative economy
In Newark, New Jersey, which Cory Booker made into a playground for corporate educational experimentation, city councilman and high school principal Ras Baraka father’s funeral
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
In the wake of the expulsion of the Organization of the American States from Nicaragua, we need to revisit one of its major crime scenes: Haiti.
Kwame Nkrumah’s 1961 speech on the assassination of Patrice Lumumba exposes the the international white supremacist cabal responsible for his death, and for the crisis of the Congo.
It is not surprising that a settler colonial state would practice racism for centuries or that race would be the major factor determining who lives and who dies.
Donald Smith always performed at Black Agenda Report events in New York City. He was a great musician and friend to the Black Agenda Report team. He will be missed.
BAR contributor Ann Garrison reports on conditions in Ethiopia.
