Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Agenda Radio for Week of August 15, 2017
Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
16 Aug 2017
🖨️ Print Article

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.


More Stories


  • Our ‘democracy’
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    Our ‘democracy’
    23 Jul 2021
    Shangri-La—untaxed, socially-distanced champagne- caviar, Cayman Island, yacht crowds who Pay nothing for water washing their waste to sewage 
  • The Conspicuous Absence of Derrick Bell—Rethinking the CRT Debate, Part 1
    Patrick D. Anderson
    The Conspicuous Absence of Derrick Bell—Rethinking the CRT Debate, Part 1
    23 Jul 2021
    Bell levels a class critique against the Black bourgeoisie, whom he sees as having led Black political protest down the wrong path time and time again.
  • Memo to France as Its Soldiers Leave Africa: “Get Out and Stay Out!”
    Mark P. Fancher
    Memo to France as Its Soldiers Leave Africa: “Get Out and Stay Out!”
    22 Jul 2021
    French bullying of Africa has been driven entirely by self-interest and greed.
  • BAR Book Forum: Matthieu Chapman’s Book, “Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Matthieu Chapman’s Book, “Anti-Black Racism in Early Modern English Drama”
    22 Jul 2021
    This book analyzes Early Modern English Drama as a form of cultural production in which the paradigm of Early Modern England was shifting to account for encounters with black Africans.
  • BAR Book Forum: Julia Rose Kraut’s “Threat of Dissent”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Julia Rose Kraut’s “Threat of Dissent”
    22 Jul 2021
    Ideological exclusion and deportation from the United States, and how they has been consistently used as tools of political repression.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us