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

Cradle Correspondent
Gaza's Smoke Clouds the West Bank's Flames: The Colonial Project Made Permanent
10 Dec 2025
As international eyes stay locked on Gaza, Tel Aviv is executing its most aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing and land theft in the occupied West Bank since 1948.
Jill Clark-Gollub , Margaret Flowers
First International Day Against Unilateral Coercive Measures
10 Dec 2025
Unilateral coercive measures, sanctions, are weapons of mass suffering. This new international day marks a global rejection of the West’s economic warfare against sovereign nations.
Maurice Carney
United States Secures its National Security Interests In Congo Peace Deal
10 Dec 2025
The so-called "peace agreement" between Rwanda and Congo prioritizes U.S. access to mineral riches. The violence carried out against thousands of civilians continues.
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Year in Rear View: What the Lack of Principled and Pronounced Opposition Reveals About that US Left (Or, Why Oppressed People Best Watch Your Backs)
10 Dec 2025
Trump’s accelerated fascism is met with the silence of a compromised U.S. "left." Its institutions, tethered to capitalism and the Democratic Party, reveal they are part of the machine they claim to…
Essam Elkorghli
De-Baathification 2.0: One Year Since the Fall of Syria
10 Dec 2025
Western media celebrate the terrorist they supported as Syria's savior. Syria’s new U.S.-backed rulers have erased anti-colonial history, enacted neo-liberal policies, and welcomed Israeli occupation…