Fight Mass Incarceration Like Our Ancestors Fought Slavery
“It’s remarkable how much the prison system looks like the institution of slavery,” said Kellie Jackson, author of “Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence.” Jackson, who teaches African American Studies at Wellesley College, said today’s activists are looking at “the tactics and strategies of the abolitionists and asking, How can we employ this in our own moment.”
US Black Peace Delegation Returns from Venezuela
A delegation of the Black Alliance for Peace was honored by the Venezuelan government and citizens for taking part in protecting that nation’s embassy in Washington from takeover by coup plotters. “Everywhere we went,” said BAP delegate Netfa Freeman, “Black and brown working class people were all indignant at the violation” of Venezuela’s national sovereignty.
Sudan Transition May Work
The agreement reached between civilians and the Sudanese military to share power in a three-year transitional government has a good chance to succeed if peace agreements can be finalized with armed groups in the next six months, said Ahmed Kadouda, a Sudanese national and researcher at George Washington University. Peace and structural reforms are necessary to give the population “a shared sense of what it is to be Sudanese,” said Kadouda.
Racist US Medical System Kills Black Mothers
“Pervasive racism in the medical profession” is to blame for the fact that three times as many Black mothers die in child-birth as whites,” said Dana-Ain Davis, author of “Reproductive Injustice: Racism, Pregnancy and Premature Birth.” Bad medical outcomes will continue for Blacks until the medical structure “is able to acknowledge that racism permeates the system,” said Davis, director of the Center for the Study of Women and Society at the City University of New York.
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.
Long before the Nike deal it was clear that Kaepernick’s politics were being subsumed by other forces pushing a weak soup of “diversity” and “free speech.”
Things could get very ugly in Chicago if the cop that killed Laquan McDonald is set free by a jury that includes only one Black person.
Rather than benevolent protector, the state enables and often perpetuates violence against marginalized communities, criminalizing them.
The racism of the larger society is internalized in us, including those of us who are Black and brown, and must be methodically confronted.
Incarcerated people are limited to pushing prison reform, while the unincarcerated have the privilege to advocate abolition.
