Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 3, 2017
U.S. Elite Suffering from “Putin Derangement Syndrome”
The current anti-Russian hysteria is rooted in “turmoil in the upper ranks of the U.S. elite about Moscow and the declining position of U.S. imperialism, given the rise of China,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University if Houston. The mania can also be viewed as “chickens coming home to roost” for the real subversions, invasions and regime policies carried out by the U.S. around the world, said Horne, who characterized the Russia-phobia as “Putin derangement syndrome.”
Greens Say Dems Stole Philly Special Election
The Green Party of Pennsylvania is going to federal court, charging the Democrats with blatant fraud in a special election for a state legislative seat in the Kensington section of Philadelphia. Green candidate Cheri Honkala, a veteran activist from the neighborhood -- the poorest in the state – said last week’s vote was a “nightmare,” with fistfights breaking out in front of voting booths, people snuck in back doors” to the polls, and wholesale violations of law. Plus, “the main source of the literature they were passing out at the polls said I was a Republican,” said the lifelong radical.
A Platform for Black Self-Determination in St. Petersburg
Twenty year-old Eritha Akile Cainion is running for a city council seat in St. Petersburg, Florida, on a platform rooted in the National Political Agenda for Self Determination, a document promulgated by the Black Is Back Coalition, last year. “Public safety is contingent upon social justice, economic development and Black community control of the police,” said Cainion. Police should act “as servants of the people,” with the community empowered to “hire, fire, train and discipline them.” The Black Is Back Coalition will hold a national Black Electoral Politics School in St. Petersburg, April 7 and 8, to help train a new generation of political activist/candidates.
Denounce and Shame Black Sell-Out Politicians
When 120 of his constituents were swept up in a police raid on a public housing project, Bronx, New York, city councilman Andy King collaborated with the cops, causing the families of those arrested on RICO charges to “feel betrayed,” said Shannon Jones, co-founder of Why Accountability. That’s why Jones and others decided to disrupt a speech Councilman King attempted to deliver at the Schomburg Center for Research on Black Culture, in Harlem. “If it was not for community activist groups such as the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, Cop Watch Patrol Unit, and Take Back the Bronx,” Jones told Black Agenda Radio produce Kyle Fraser, “these families would have absolutely no support.”
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.
As organized labor deals with the defeat at Amazon in Alabama, another type of base-building power beckons.
“We feel like we got a heck of a start, and we’re proud of it, and we’re proud of the workers that are willing to continue that fight.”
Amazon is increasingly defining what entry-level labor now looks like in America.
Blacks and the US: a History of Resistance
Supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, held a press conference last Thursday demanding medical treatment for his damaged arteries, yet Pennsylva
