Beware Biden-Harris Neoliberalism
Corporate Democrats may be more dangerous than overt racists, because neoliberals “cloack themselves in the rhetoric of ‘racial uplift,’” said Rebecca Ann Wilcox, a community organizer and PhD candidate at Princeton Theological Seminary. For example. celebrations of Kamala Harris elevation to first Black woman vice president “obscures the fac that she will helm genocidal wars in the Middle East…and the wars she already started with Black incarcerated children.”
Reparations Not Yet a “Mainstream” Demand
Reparations “hasn’t reached the point where there’s really a discussion among white politicians” on the merits of the issue, said Zuri Arman Kent-Smith, a writer and activist with a degree in Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Kent-Smith doesn’t forsee a “productive conversation” about reparations when politicians like president-elect Joe Biden not only refuse to endorse defunding of police, but “want to increase funding” for the cops.
Black Masses Not Yet Sold on Defunding the Police
Lawrence Grandpre, research director for the Baltimore-based activist organization “Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle,” agrees in principle with the demand for defunding police but doesn’t think Black Lives Matter has been able to sell the concept in Black communities. “Working people need to see you on the ground every day, for years, pushing that alternative,” but that’s not yet happened, said Grandpre, speaking on Dr. Jared Ball’s acclaimed podcast “I Mix What I Like.”
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
The movement against police oppression “is long overdue, but it needs political organization in order to create lasting change,” said Margaret Kimberley, longtime Green Party
“We have to do more than just create a new party,” said Nick Brana, national coordinator for the Movement for a Peoples Party (MPP).
Most of the Congressional Black Caucus are “opportunists” who have “joined the neoliberals to derail any real attempt at challenging the devastating power of the police,” said Clarence
The Black movement will be asphyxiated by the ubiquitous fingers of the Democratic Party if it does not build independent nexuses of people’s power.
Cutting police budgets without establishing public control over their behavior doesn’t solve the problem, and invites politicians to shuffle budget numbers around like a three-card monte swind
