Don’t Just Count Black Bodies – We Need a Program of Liberation
Veteran Malcolm X Grassroots Movement activist Kali Akuno is a co-author of the 2012 report Operation Ghetto Storm, which documented the extrajudicial killing of Blacks by police, security guards and vigilantes – one every 28 hours. “We wanted to highlight, first and foremost to our own people, that we are being hunted,” said Akuno, now living in Jackson, Mississippi. “It’s basically population control and disposal of a population that is becoming unwanted and unnecessary for economic production.” Keeping count is not the point. “What’s the solution, what is the program of liberation? That is what folks should start focusing on now, while there is this upsurge, while there are young people beginning to become engaged in fighting back.”
Farrakhan: Take Down the Stars and Stripes!
“I don’t know what the fight is about the Confederate flag,” said Min. Louis Farrakhan, at the Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, in Washington, DC. “We need to put the American flag down, because we’ve caught as much hell under that as under the Confederate flag,” he told a cheering crowd. “What flag do the police have? What flag flies over the non-Justice Department?”
Pelosi Engaged in “Choreographed Corruption” in TPP Vote
The fight to defeat President Obama’s super-secret Trans Pacific Partnership isn’t over, said Popular Resistance activist Kevin Zeese. A vote on the full treaty will come up in the fall. In the showdown over “fast-tracking” the legislation, this month, said Zeese, “Pelosi did her job of fooling progressives into thinking she was on their side, but was in fact helping President Obama to get the exact numbers of votes he needed” – an example of the truth of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s statement that “nothing happens in politics by accident.” Zeese described Pelosi’s machinations as “choreographed corruption.”
Fair Housing Act Escaped Disembowelment by One Vote
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the legal principle that discrimination can be established based on disparities in the racial results of public policies, even if intent to discriminate is not proven. The 5-4 vote left the 1968 Fair Housing Act constitutionally intact. The ACLU’s Dennis Parker said he and fellow civil rights lawyers held their breaths awaiting the Justices’ decision. “People were saying, Why are they so intent on reviewing a principle that had long been established?” The lawyers feared “that they must want to disembowel the law.” That didn’t happen, but “it’s just a question of whether one Justice will join one camp or the other,” said Parker.
Jill Stein: “Power to the People” Means “Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Capitalism”
After formally announcing her presidential candidacy, last week, Jill Stein explained her Green Party’s Power to the People Platform. “It’s a plan to address the crisis of justice and democracy” in the country, said Stein. “It has echoes of the Black Panthers in it, and that’s not by coincidence. It’s about breaking the stranglehold of corporate capitalism and racism. It’s founded on the idea that the struggles of frontline communities should be on the front lines of presidential dialogue.”
Malcolm on Lumumba: He was “the Greatest African”
Had he not been assassinated in 1961, Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected prime minister of the Congo, would have been 90 years old on July 2. Maurice Carney, of Friends of the Congo, notes that this year also marks the 90th birthday of Malcolm X, assassinated in 1965. “To a large extent, it was Malcolm who introduced Patrice Lumumba to a new generation,” said Carney. “He said that Lumumba was the greatest African to ever walk the continent, because he stood on his own terms; they couldn’t reach him” – “they” meaning the Western powers.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
Son, it look lak Unca Jim say, “Las’ time I chek I’se de whip— an’ got no time fo’ young Negroz wit all dey Blak Life lip…”
The idea that we can resolve racism by integrating a fundamentally anti-Black institution is the most absurd notion of all.
The Bureau’s COINTELPRO deployed every trick and crime in the book to crush left dissidents, from disruption to assassination.
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Politicians ignore at their peril the power of popular culture and its people-moving practitioners.
