Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016

16 Aug 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Greens are Alternative to “Democratic Plantation”

Ajamu Baraka, the veteran Black activist tapped as Jill Stein’s presidential running mate, said the Green Party can make a difference, this year, by “building an alternative to the Democratic plantation” and “transcending the politics of fear.” Baraka is a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network and an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. “With the continued deterioration of the democratic processes, and of this economy, and the clear tendency on the part of the state to repress political opposition, our time is limited in terms of the extent we can take advantage of the limited democratic space that does exist,” said Baraka.

Neither Trump Nor Clinton Can Resolve Crisis

Although both major party candidates acknowledge that the economy is benefiting only the One Percent, the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lies in how they “identify the source of the problem,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar and Black Radical Organizing Committee activist from Philadelphia. “Clinton says that the policies of financialization, of Wall Street privilege, of trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, are not fundamentally wrong – that we should tweet them, not change them,” said Dr. Monteiro. “Trump, in essence, argues that the problem of the American economy is grounded in the export of capital, and that this is the source of the impoverishment of the American working class.” Monteiro believes “Trump’s stating of the problem is far more accurate than Clinton’s,” but neither of them “provide a solution to the problem.”

Roots of Black Movement for Self-Defense

Black scholars and activists came together, in Detroit, to celebrate the life of Robert F. Williams, the former NAACP leader in Monroe, North Carolina, who in the 1950s formed a Black Armed Guard to defend Black people from racist violence. Among the speakers was Dr. Akinyele Umoja, chair of the African American Studies Department at Georgia State University and author of the book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. “There were already people in the South practicing armed self-defense,” said Dr. Umoja. “The thing that distinguishes Williams is that he was an advocate. Most people were quite” members of informal protective networks, but Williams advocated self-defense in his newspaper, The Crusader, and “people began to look at the movement he and others were talking about.”

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://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/BlackAgendaRadio_20160815.mp3

More Stories

Jacqueline Luqman
The World Rises Up Against the U.S. Neoliberal Order
21 Oct 2026
The protests spreading across Spain, India, France, Chile, and other countries are responses to the global neoliberal order of austerity, privatization, and deregulation.
Belen Fernandez
Israel’s Lebanese Land Grab
21 Oct 2026
Under the guise of a farcical “pilot zone” project to restore Lebanon’s sovereignty, Israel is pursuing a scorched-earth strategy while entrenching its occupation.
Joshua Reaves Charmelus
At the "Foro Internacional Por La Paz," delegates from around the world demand an end to US Interference in Latin America
21 Oct 2026
Chile, Colombia, Bolivia, Honduras, Peru, and Costa Rica have all elected right-wing presidents in the past year, and most are open Trump allies. Brazil's runoff between Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro is…
Gerald Perreira
October 7, 2023: The day that changed the world
21 Oct 2026
October 7, 2023, was not an isolated attack, but the culmination of generations of Palestinian imprisonment and resistance in Gaza, comparable to Nat Turner's rebellion. History will record the Al…
Julia Wright
Behind French uprising: Impact of de-colonialization in Global South
21 Oct 2026
The 2026 French uprising is a continuation of the anti-colonial struggle, rooted in the 1961 Paris massacre of Algerians and the ongoing neocolonial relationship between France and its former…