This week's entire show is selections from last weekend's conference in St. Louis MO on Community Control of Police.
The crisis means it's time to imagine self determination for our communities. What cops do in our communities will not change unless our communities are in the position to give the police their orders, according to Omali Yeshetila of the African Peoples Socialist Party. It's time to lift our sights beyond this black face and that reform and wrap the black political imagination and political practice around the project of actually controlling what the police do.
Hiring more black cops and “sensitivity training” won't prevent more Fergusons. As long as the core mission of the police include counter-insurgency and being the intake valves for black mass incareration, hiring more black police doesn'will nott change what police do, explains Glen Ford. Neither will so-called “community policing” or sensitivity training for cops. The policing mission will only change when there is authentic community control of the institution of the police.
Nothing in political is ever guaranteed, says Larry Hamm of the Peoples Organization for Progress in Newark NJ.
The only solution to a system out of control is mass organization to confront the powers that be. If power will concede nothing without demands, it's up to the organized people to make real and significant demands to change the way society is ordered, and to put their energies, if need be, their bodies on the line behind those demands.
listen
http://blackagendaradio.podbean.com/mf/web/5krg2z/BAR_042715.mp3
A 1930 essay by Black activist Hermina Dumont Huiswood tells of the bold resistance of the Haitian population to U.S. occupation, and offers hope for the resistance to come in 2024.
African Stream is an anti-war, anti-imperialist video and text website based in Nairobi, Kenya. Ann Garrison spoke to its founder, Ahmed Kaballo.
"When bagman Vigor Moribund came to town" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
Book Forum Editor, Roberto Sirvent, interviews Onyesonwu Chatoyer about her political organizing and work as a writer and editor.
New York Democrats are fueling the panic over a fictional crime wave to increase surveillance and police presence in NYC.
