Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 25, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 25, 2016

26 Apr 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Charter Schools: Bad for Education

“On the whole, charter schools do not perform better than public schools, even though public school are being defunded and demonized all the time,” said Dr. Shawgi Tell, professor of education at Nazareth College, Rochester, New York, and author of Charter School Report Card. Whether test scores improve or not, charter schools are bad schooling policy because “they represent privatization and marketization of education.”

Youth Incarceration Down, But Racial Disparities Increase

In the past decade, overall rates of youth incarceration have been cut in half, but disparity in Black youth incarceration has gone up by 15 percent, according to Josh Rovner, of The Sentencing Project. Rovner is an author of the new report, “Racial Disparities in Youth Arrests and Commitments.” He said young people are committing less crime. “There’s fewer kids being driven into the system in the first place,” said Rovner. However, Black teenagers are still more likely to be detained, prosecuted and committed to juvenile facilities than whites.

Million Student March Against Massive Debt

“Just last year, a million students defaulted on their student loan payments,” said Darletta Scruggs, an activist with the Million Students March and a member of the Socialist Alternative Party. “You can’t file bankruptcy on it, and our government will start garnishing your wages after a certain time. There are people whose Social Security checks are being garnished because of past student debt,” said Scruggs, speaking to host Solomon Comissiong, of Your World Report.

Global Rich Play “Shell Games” with Wealth

The now infamous “Panama Papers” revealed how elites from around the world hide their money in offshore tax havens. Americans were conspicuous by their relative absence because the U.S. provides lots of hiding places for ill-gotten gains. “The United States is a tax haven for global wealth,” said Chuck Collins, senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and author of the article, “Panama Papers Expose the Hidden Wealth of the World’s Super-Rich.” Said Collins: “If you’re a small business in the U.S. and you have to compete against a global company that’s playing these shell games, and you’re paying your fair share of taxes and they’re not, that’s an unlevel playing field.”

Hillary’s Conspiracies Against Democracy in the Americas

Back in 2009, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “pretended it wasn’t a coup” when the Honduran military overthrew the country’s elected president, said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Clinton’s charade “helped the coup government dictatorship consolidate itself.” The U.S. has encouraged the “silent coup” in Brazil, where corporatist lawmakers are trying to impeach the left-wing president. “We know that the United States has always wanted to get rid of the left governments” in the region, said Weisbrot.

CLICK BELOW TO HEAR BLACK AGENDA RADIO

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

https://blackagendaradio.podbean.com/mf/play/tqq2cx/BAR_042516.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
African Descendants and Just Transition in the Climate Crisis
24 Apr 2026
The first International Conference to Phase Out Fossil Fuels takes place in Santa Marta, Colombia, from April 24 to April 29. Anthony Rogers-Wright, a Black Agenda Report contributor, provides…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Trump Uses Immigration Enforcement to Make America Whiter Again
22 Apr 2026
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement policies are racist and are intended to send even documented Global South immigrants and naturalized citizens out of the country. The evidence is…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist , Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
White Power, White Decedance, White Denial: A Dialog with Ajamu Baraka
22 Apr 2026
Ajamu Baraka and Margaret Kimberley discuss how the assault on Iran exposed the pathological nature of white power, the cynical games of the duopoly, and a new campaign to move the World Cup out of…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: The Class War in Cuba, Julio Antonio Mella, 1926
22 Apr 2026
“This pamphlet is a response to the bloody offensive by our tyrant and his master –Yankee capitalist imperialism.”
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Blackshirts and Reds, the Profound and Persistent Class Analysis of Dr. Michael Parenti
22 Apr 2026
On Saturday, April 25th a memorial service will be held in Berkeley, California for Dr. Michael Parenti, radical historian, social scientist, author, and public speaker. There will be a…