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

C.J. Atkins
‘We should determine our own future’: Interview with Sudanese Communist Party
17 Dec 2025
Foreign powers are responsible for Sudan's destruction. Real peace can only come when the right of self-determination for the Sudanese people is respected.
Prince Kapone
Southern Spear: The American Pole and the Recolonization of the Hemisphere
17 Dec 2025
Operation Southern Spear is not a drug war—it is the first open military strike of a new U.S. doctrine: puncture the Caribbean, penetrate the continent, and weld the Americas into a captive bloc of…
Zophia Edwards , Corey Gilkes , Tamanisha John
Imperialism by Invitation: Murder, Mafioso Politics and Caribbean-Venezuelan Futurity
17 Dec 2025
Amidst US bombs and lies about Venezuelan drug trafficking as a pretext for regime change, the subordinated position of Caribbean states’ economies plays a role in U.S. aggression.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio December 12, 2025
12 Dec 2025
In this week’s segment, we listen to a press conference in support of the sovereign rights of Venezuela and of the rights of those who support the Venezuelan people to travel to that country. But…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Coup Attempt in Benin and Neo-Colonialism in West Africa
12 Dec 2025
Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor of Pan-African Newswire, joins us from Detroit to discuss the recent coup attempt in the West African nation of Benin. The coup ended with assistance from neighboring Nigeria…