Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 19, 2018
U.S. Slavery Was Uniquely Capitalist
Even on the left, the capitalist nature of US slavery is not well understood, said historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment. “The commodification and capitalization of Black bodies is pretty unique to the United States,” she said. “Marx himself did not grasp it. Eurocentrism of analysis is a problem.”
Mass Incarceration With No End?
Although US incarceration rates have been going down in recent years, at the current pace it would take 75 years to cut the prison population in half, according to Nazgol Ghandnoosh, of The Sentencing Project. Moreover, simply reducing the prison population does not address the system’s racial disparities and lack of rehabilitation programs. Even with half the inmates, the US would still “have a higher incarceration rate than our peer countries.”
Confronting Black-Immigrant Conflicts
“Immigrants have been increasingly criminalized by the state in ways that are very similar to African Americans,” said Dr. Johanna Fernandez, one of the organizers of a March 23 event in New York City under the heading “Breaking Down Laws and Prison Plantations: Mumia, Migrants and Movements for Liberation.” The conference hopes to tackle conflicts between Blacks and immigrants, said Fernandez, of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
Reporter Eva Bartlett Blasts UN
“The United Nations is deliberately participating in war propaganda” favoring the US-backed “terrorists” in Syria, said Eva Bartlett, an independent Canadian journalist who helped expose the White Helmets as a public relations unit of al Qaida. The jihadists occupying East Ghouta, near Damascus, have been preventing civilians from leaving the war zone, said Bartlett.
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.
Brazil and the US lead the world in coronavirus fatalities, with Blacks in both countries dying disproportionately, said Jaime Amparo Alves, an author and social anthropologis
“Black August started in San Quentin to highlight the armed struggle,” said Jihad Abdulmumit, chairperson of the Jericho Movement, which advocates for political prisoners
Unless folks are under the delusion that victory over the “fascists” is imminent, the condition of political prisoners should be a deeply personal, as well as political, concern to all activists.
The election was stolen from Clinton four years ago and the even weaker 2020 candidate can expect the same fate.
When it comes to China, Democracy Now, Jacobin, The Nation and others on the imperial-minded US ‘left” are allies of white supremacy.
