Beware Biden-Harris Neoliberalism
Corporate Democrats may be more dangerous than overt racists, because neoliberals “cloack themselves in the rhetoric of ‘racial uplift,’” said Rebecca Ann Wilcox, a community organizer and PhD candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. For example. celebrations of Kamala Harris elevation to first Black woman vice president “obscures the fac that she will helm genocidal wars in the Middle East…and the wars she already started with Black incarcerated children.”
Reparations Not Yet a “Mainstream” Demand
Reparations “hasn’t reached the point where there’s really a discussion among white politicians” on the merits of the issue, said Zuri Arman Kent-Smith, a writer and activist with a degree in Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Kent-Smith doesn’t forsee a “productive conversation” about reparations when politicians like president-elect Joe Biden not only refuse to endorse defunding of police, but “want to increase funding” for the cops.
Black Masses Not Yet Sold on Defunding the Police
Lawrence Grandpre, research director for the Baltimore-based activist organization “Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle,” agrees in principle with the demand for defunding police but doesn’t think Black Lives Matter has been able to sell the concept in Black communities. “Working people need to see you on the ground every day, for years, pushing that alternative,” but that’s not yet happened, said Grandpre, speaking on Dr. Jared Ball’s acclaimed podcast “I Mix What I Like.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
The memorial gathering for Glen Ford was held on Saturday, September 18, 2021 in New York City at the Riverside Church.
Memories of the last 20 years are rarely focused on increased state violence and repression in the post-9/11 world. The damage has largely been forgotten.
The race to the bottom is an imperative of austerity, which is foundational to the history of state violence in the U.S.
Another twenty-year anniversary is the World Conference Against Racism (WCAR) that took place in Durban, South Africa between August 31, and September 8. The George W.
U.S. wars in foreign countries always come home.
