New York Stop-and-Frisk Trial Ends in Convictions
After a 5-day trial, 20 activists were convicted of disorderly conduct charges in a protest at a Harlem police precinct, last October. “This was a political showcase, in which not only stop-and-frisk was on trial, but our First Amendment rights,” said defendant Nellie Bailey, of Occupy Harlem. “Mass incarceration plus silence equals genocide,” said Carl Dix, co-organizer of Stop Stop-and-Frisk, along with activist Dr. Cornel West. “We are simply trying to minimize the suffering of these young people out there,” said Dr. West. Among those who spoke at a press conference outside the courthouse were: Rev. Stephen Phelps, Riverside Church, Rev. Earl Kooperkamp, St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Harlem, John Hector, Jamal Mims, Randy Credico, Jose LaSalle, Elaine Brower, and Sade Adona.
Welfare Drug Testing is Part of War Against Poor
Mandatory drug testing for public assistance recipients “has everything to do with an ongoing war against the poor in this country,” said Sara Totonchi, executive director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, in Atlanta. The Center is preparing potential legal action to thwart Georgia from imposing the tests, which courts have ruled unconstitutional. “Georgia politicians know that the way to win elections is to throw around this red meat, rhetoric-filled legislation,” said Totonchi. “Two years ago, the target was immigrants.”
Corporate Media Lose Interest in “Income Inequality”
A study by FAIR – Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting – finds corporate media make far less use of terms such as “income inequality” and “corporate greed” than when the Occupy Wall Street movement first brought these issues to the forefront. After an initial peak in interest in corporate behavior, media coverage returned to previous norms. “Income inequality, in the way that traditional journalists and editors see news, is not news. It’s a sort of given, a baseline,” said John Knefel, who covered the story for FAIR’s publication, EXTRA!. “They have no incentive to talk about income inequality or corporate malfeasance because, for one thing, they’re corporations.”
OWS in Danger of Cooptation by Democrats
“What is going on is a very sophisticated strategy to shunt a lot of this energy into the 2012 election,” said Arun Gupta, a co-founder of the Occupy Wall Street Journal who covers OWS for Salon.com. Moveon.org, for example, pushes the line that “Mitt Romney is Mr. 1% – like Obama isn’t part of the 1%?”
ICC Let’s Blair and Bush Go Free
“My beef with the International Criminal Court is its one-sided nature,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, prolific author and professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston. “They seem to have a proclivity for indicting Africans or a handful of Europeans who were once involved with socialist regimes” – Serbia. However, international lawbreakers like Tony Blair and George W. Bush seem to enjoy immunity. The ICC recently convicted former Liberian President Charles Taylor of crimes against humanity. Dr. Horne appeared on Regent Radio’s Sunday Morning Show, hosted by Norman Richmond, in Toronto, Canada.
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.
Dahoud Andre is a member of KOMOKODA, the Community to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, and host of Eritye Papa Desalin, the Heirs of Jean Jacques Dessalines, a daily Haitian community radio…
Erica Caines, Editor of Hood Communist and Coordinating Committee Member for the Black Alliance for Peace, joins the stream to discuss the New McCarthyism and its implications.
It is disheartening to hear movement leaders say they are inspired by Martin Luther King while also supporting the U.S. proxy war against Russia. Like all wars it endangers the lives of…
The demands for justice at home and abroad must not be sacrificed on the altar of what is called pragmatism. The false choices presented by liberalism can undermine the movement altogether.
A May Day 1928 essay by Black communist Williana “Liana” Jones Burroughs – aka Mary Adams – recounts the history of African revolt in the Americas.
