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

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of January 7, 2013
08 Jan 2013
🖨️ Print Article

 

Both Parties Sabotaging Entitlement Programs

Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid “have been set up to take the fall for the nation’s deficit,” said Dr. Maya Rockeymoore, president of Washington-based Global Policy Solutions. President Obama “views it as his legacy to rein in entitlement programs while creating this grand bargain” with the Republicans. Those who expected a more progressive Obama in his second term are mistaken. “I think that the president did not make a Freudian slip in his first debate when he said that he and Mitt Romney actually agree on Social Security.”

EPA Chief Used Alias

Lisa Jackson was forced to resign as chief of the Environmental Protection Agency because she conducted some of her public duties under an alias, said famed whistleblower Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, of the NO FEAR Coalition. Jackson was “extremely upset” with the Occupy Movement, which staged demonstrations against “her cowardly behavior” as guardian of the environment. Dr. Coleman-Adebayo believes Jackson used her alias to cloak her role in government spying on movement activists.

End Stop-and-Frisk

“We feel that 2013 has to be a year of rising resistance to stop-and-frisk in the streets and in the courtrooms,” said Carl Dix, a founder of Stop Mass Incarceration Network. “We’re not talking about mending an injustice; we’re talking about ending it.” The capitalist system is incapable of providing a “future for millions and millions of young people growing up in the urban areas of the country,” said Dix. “You can put Black faces in high places, but if it’s the same system that has oppressed and exploited you, it’s not going to change. Revolution is the solution.”

Big Brother Obama Hears All

President Obama has shown himself to be a more aggressive foe of civil liberties than George Bush. “Absolutely, we’ve seen this to be true from the FISA authorization, to the use of drones, and with the NDAA” preventive detention bill, said Samantha Peetros, spokesperson for the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. Just before New Years, Obama signed a five-year extension of legislation allowing warrantless phone and email surveillance.

Charters Crowding Out Public Schools in Philly

“I think that there is a growing movement among decision makers to shut the door on public education,” said W. Curtis Thomas, a Black state lawmaker from Philadelphia. The city has targeted 60 public schools for closing, while expanding charter schools by 5,000 seats. “The decision to move kids towards these charter schools is really an effort to resegregate a system that was never totally integrated, anyway,” said Rep. Thomas.

 

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 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: One hour.


More Stories


  • Pachamama and the Pope
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Pachamama and the Pope
    18 Dec 2019
    The violent coup in Bolivia may have been presaged by events at the Vatican, where right-wing Catholics rebelled against the Pope’s display of respect for the indigenous earth goddess.
  • Barring Politics from the Courtroom: The State Versus the Venezuela Embassy Protectors
    Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor
    Barring Politics from the Courtroom: The State Versus the Venezuela Embassy Protectors
    18 Dec 2019
    A black, Obama-appointed judge intends to hide key facts from the jury and referred to the embassy protectors as a "gang."
  • The old playbook
    BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
    The old playbook
    18 Dec 2019
    “The hatred of Tsarism was directed particularly against the Jews.
  • The Thick Blue Line: How the United States Became the World’s Police Force
    Patrick Blanchfield
    The Thick Blue Line: How the United States Became the World’s Police Force
    18 Dec 2019
    Many of the tools and tactics adopted by American police over the past half century were originally deployed to fight communism abroad.
  • BAR Book Forum: Eric Pritchard’s “Fashioning Lives”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Eric Pritchard’s “Fashioning Lives”
    18 Dec 2019
    Through writing, many Black queer people are creating the world we all deserve to live in.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us