Black Control of the Police is a Democratic Right
The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held its annual conference in Chicago, highlighting its 19-point National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination. Philadelphia coalition organizer Diop Olugbala said Point #3, demanding Black community control of the police, “is a democratic demand, in that it places control of the police directly in the hands of those most affected by police behavior. That means,” said Olugbala, “that the police will cease to be an invading force that comes into the Black community looking for trouble, but will have to live in the community and share the contradictions of the community.”
Black Chicago Politicians are “in the Mayor’s Pocket”
Veteran activist Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression united with the Black Is Back Coalition on community control of the police. His organization is pushing a measure to take “all the power away from the mayor, away from the independent police review authority, and putting that power in the hands of the people.” However, few of the measure’s supporters in the city legislature are Black. “Most of the Black aldermen are in the mayor’s pocket,” said Chapman, “and we have to change that.”
Flipping the Script on the NYPD
When the New York City Police Department held a community-oriented “Night Out Against Crime” in The Bronx, activists with the Freedom Cities movement staged a “Night of Safety and Liberation” counter-event. “It’s about a community vision that people don’t need a violent occupation force to keep the Black community safe,” said Albert St. Jean, of Freedom Cities and the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. “The community can cope with its own need for safety.”
Political Scientist Rejects Organizing Based on “Purely Ethnic Affinity”
Cedric Johnson, a political scientist and associate professor of African American Studies at the University of Illinois in Chicago, has no confidence in the long term effectiveness of organizing based on “a purely ethnic affinity.” Dr. Johnson told the Dead Pundits Society podcast: “There are many different interests that are operating within the Black population at any given moment. Whenever we have these sorts of national agenda-setting exercises, what you get is a portrait of some of the different things that Black people want, but it’s not really a functioning agenda.”
Mumia: Trump’s America Shows Its Nasty Butt
The events in Charlottesville, Virginia, reveal the raw racism endemic to the United States, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, in an essay for Prison Radio. To ask Trump to condemn white supremacists “is like asking grapes to condemn jelly,” said Mumia. “They are part of him, and he is part of them.”
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:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
“The revolutionary heroes of May 19th would find Sharpton and his clique not just repulsive, but criminal as well.”
“The ideology I’d like to dismantle makes every black person the same as every other black person, assumed to be a man or woman under the age of sixty-five.”
“Concepts of able-mindedness are historically based within gender and racial norms of masculinity and whiteness—with damaging and deadly results for black people.”
“We demand that the Congressional Black Caucus take a public stand in opposition to AFRICOM.”
“Kabila was always just a creature of the foreign powers underneath him.”
