Black Agenda Radio for Week of September 21, 2015 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio for Week of September 21, 2015

22 Sep 2015

🖨️ Print Article

What Price Reparations?

Based on calculations by University of Connecticut researcher Thomas Craemer, reparations to African Americans for slavery would cost between $5.9 trillionand $14.2 trillion. Prof. Craemer’s formula multiplies the number of hours worked by every enslaved man, woman and child above the age of five, at prevailing unskilled labor wages, with interest compounded at three percent per year. It is widely recognized that the surplus produced by slave labor allowed the United States to rapidly develop into a world economic power. “You could look at this as a start-up loan that the United States took out with African Americans – and never repaid,” said Craemer.

The Afro-Americanization of “Momma Emanuel”

In 2011, a suburban Washington DC police officer shot to death Nigerian-American college senior Emanuel Okutuga. The cop was never charged with a crime. The youth’s mother, whom activists call “Momma Emanuel,” became a mainstay of demonstrations against police violence. “She’s a tower of strength,” said Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the renowned whistleblower and activist with the Hands Up Coalition-DC, who is also an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. Momma Emanuel “now feels very African American,” said Coleman-Adebayo. “When she talks about white supremacy, she now understands what she’s talking about.”

New “WikiLeaks” Book shows U.S. Runs Amuck in Latin America

Diplomatic cables from the Bush and early Obama administrations document years of U.S. subversion and attempts at regime change in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras and El Salvador, according to The WikiLeaks Files, a new book by three analysts for the Center for Economic and Policy Studies. The U.S. funded right-wing NGOs that tried to topple the Venezuelan government, said co-author Dan Beeton. For example, a U.S. diplomat in Caracas cabled his superiors to report: “The streets are hot, and all the people organizing these demonstrations are our grantees.” Beeton cannot imagine that the U.S. would tolerate “Chinese or Iranian funding of NGOs that put up street blockades in Washington, DC.”

Post-Katrina Documentary: “Fear No Gumbo”

Kimberly Rivers-Roberts, the New Orleans filmmaker and hip hop artist also known as Queen Kold Madina, is raising funds to complete Fear No Gumbo, her new documentary on the city’s incomplete recovery from Hurricane Katrina. Her first film, Trouble the Water, depicting events during the first five days after the storm, was nominated for an Oscar and won several awards at the Sundance Film Festival. The new project aims to show “that the recovery isn’t over, even ten years later.” Rivers-Roberts considers her film “an educational piece to get people back to the table, get some positive change, and get the Lower Ninth Ward rebuilt.”

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.

listen

http://s63.podbean.com/pb/0e1ceb9d43f29a04d28ed6781f676f62/56002c4d/data2/blogs18/277790/uploads/BAR_092115.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Week of Action in Solidarity with Venezuela
14 Nov 2025
The U.S. regime change effort against Venezuela has recently intensified with the killings of Venezuelans, Trinidadians, and Colombians said to be drug traffickers, the latest salvo in the long U.S.…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
International People's Tribunal for Palestine
14 Nov 2025
We're joined by Farah Imad, an organizer of the International People's Tribunal for Palestine, which takes place in Barcelona on November 22nd and 23rd. She is a lawyer who has written about…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Glen Ford on the Bipartisan Nature of American Exceptionalism
14 Nov 2025
The Trump administration’s threats against Venezuela are a reminder that U.S. aggression is thoroughly bipartisan. In 2019, Glen Ford provided this analysis of a Democratic Party presidential debate…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Democrats' Treachery Ends the Shutdown
12 Nov 2025
Voter support for the Democratic Party in the government shutdown showdown was irrelevant. The Senate capitulation was a cynical and inevitable endgame for a party devoted to the austerity race to…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: The Southern Sudan, Joseph U. Garang, 1969
12 Nov 2025
“Thus it can be said that British colonialism is mainly responsible for the Southern Sudan problem…”