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
  • omnibus

Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
10 Feb 2021
Letters from Our Readers
Letters from Our Readers

This week you discussed the multilayer crisis facing American people. We share your letters for “Nightmare Years Will Repeat Themselves – Until the People Kick Out the Cabal,” in which Glen Ford argues that only a Black led movement with ideological clarity can end the capitalist disaster the U.S. population is living through.

Paul Billings writes:

“‘The most massive popular mobilization in U.S. history put tens of millions in the streets in June under the Black Lives Matter banner, proof that much more than a critical mass of the public is willing to mobilize for social justice. A Harris and Just Capital poll taken the previous month showed that only 25 percent of the public believed our current form of capitalism ensures the greater good of society – a belief gruesomely confirmed when the pandemic death toll approached half a million at year’s end.’

“On a related note, I attended multiple massive rallies- in Washington, NYC and Philadelphia opposing Bush II’s 2003 war on Iraq. As you are aware, these protests were completely impotent at challenging US imperial lust for Iraqi energy reserves. Indeed, US taxpayers have shelled out circa $5 trillion on the continuing strategic debacle in Iraq.

Obviously, ‘demonstrations and protests’ while potentially garnering a spot on the evening news do not fundamentally confront the actions of the State. If anything, they are exploited to reinforce the image of ‘freedom of expression’ and the tolerance of US ‘democracy’, which is complete BS. This made me realize that the only way to confront the Empires crimes is via working class solidarity and the ability to completely shut down economic activity by massive strike action.

“Unfortunately, this has been made increasingly difficult by our corporate/consumer-driven economy, as working people are increasingly surviving on credit cards and debt to maintain their standard of living. Obviously by going on strike, paychecks stop, while rent/mortgage, cell phone, cable and utilities, medical insurance and car payments continue. Thus, how many working people will risk going on strike when the potential economic consequences are so dire? Further, will other unions, such as the Teamsters recognize/respect your picket line? “[Remember there was virtually no support for PATCO strikers by organized labor]. Bottom line- class relations are a lot more than bourgeois politics.”

Ron Campbell writes:

“U.S. imperialism is a fact, which the U.S. Government always denies. However, U.S. President Barack Obama implicitly ‘justified’ it when he told graduating students at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, on 28 May, 2014, ‘The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation.’ That means: every other nation is ‘dispensable;’ only the U.S. is not. He then went into a tirade against Russia and China, and even added: ‘From Brazil to India, rising middle classes compete with us, and governments seek a greater say in global forums… It will be your generation’s task to respond to this new world.’ He was telling these West Point cadets (ever so tactfully) that they would be waging war for the benefit of America’s international corporations, and against ‘rising middle classes [which] compete with us, and governments [which] seek a greater say in global forums’ — and that these graduating cadets would be serving in the U.S. military forces in order to crush such ‘competitors,’ if and when America’s diplomatic corps and CIA are turning out to be insufficient to do the job. U.S. military muscle, he was telling them, is against ‘rising middle classes [which] compete with us, and governments [which] seek a greater say in global forums’ — to block such ‘rise,’ and to prevent those other nations from having ‘a greater say in global forums.’ How much more clearly — though only by way of logical inference from what he was explicitly asserting — could he have admitted that America’s military is for global conquest, against all other nations (the world’s ‘dispensable’ nations), and is NOT for national defense? And how much more hostile could he possibly have been to ‘rising middle classes’ abroad, than to say they ‘compete with us,’ and to tell — to America’s future generals, no less — that it will be their ‘task to respond,’ to them, and to that?”

Ideological clarity on questions of war and peace, identity politics, and the meaning of socialism are needed among progressive forces in this time. It will take a great struggle.

Jahan Choudhry is Comments Editor for Black Agenda Report.  He is an organizer with the Saturday Free School based in Philadelphia, PA.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comme  nt by emailing us at [email protected]

Comments

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


Related Stories

Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
21 April 2021
This week pro-Zionist censorship and police brutality were on your minds.
Letters from Our Readers
by Jahan Choudhry, Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
07 April 2021
In "On Anarchism and Black Revolution" Peter James Hudson examines the historical roots of critiques of anarchism and its relation
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
31 March 2021
This week the U.S. state’s propaganda and the Black elite were on your minds.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
10 March 2021
This week Pan Africanism and the Black Panther Party were on your minds.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
03 March 2021
This week the blackout in Texas, the recent film on Fred Hampton, and Democracy Now’s international coverage were on your minds.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
24 February 2021
This week you discussed the struggle against the dollar and neocolonialism.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
17 February 2021
This week color-blindness on the left and the Black Misleadership Class were on your minds.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
03 February 2021
The federal government’s stimulus payments and the role of black police officers were on your minds.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
27 January 2021
This week our readers talked about the weakness of the U.S. left, the storming of the Capitol, and the crisis of U.S. imperialism.
Letters from Our Readers
Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
20 January 2021
This week the uprising in Washington and Du Bois’s writings on the Soviet Union were on your mind.

More Stories


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Ryan Coogler, Shedeur Sanders, Karmelo Anthony, and Rodney Hinton, Jr
    07 May 2025
    Black people who are among the rich and famous garner praise and love, and so do those who are in distress. But concerns for the masses of people and their struggles are often missing.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    LETTER: Thank you, Mr. Howe, Ama Ata Aidoo, 1967
    07 May 2025
    Ama Ata Aidoo lands a knock-out blow to white neocolonial anti-African revisionism.
  • Jon Jeter
    The Only Language the White Settler Speaks: Ohio Police Say Grieving Black Father Avenges Son’s Slaying By Killing One of Theirs
    07 May 2025
    The killing of Timothy Thomas in 2001 ignited Cincinnati’s long-simmering tensions over police violence. This struggle continues today, forcing a painful question: When justice is denied, does…
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment
    07 May 2025
    "DOGE— Department Of Grifter Enrichment" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Brittany Friedman’s Book, “Carceral Apartheid”
    07 May 2025
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Brittany Friedman. Friedman is assistant professor of sociology at the University of…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us