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


  • BAR Book Forum: Adeline Masquelier’s “Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Adeline Masquelier’s “Fada: Boredom and Belonging in Niger”
    11 Dec 2019
    Young men in Niger meet at fadas to figure out what to do with their lives under uncaring global capitalism.
  • BAR Book Forum: “Books I Teach”
    Nana Osei-Opare
    BAR Book Forum: “Books I Teach”
    11 Dec 2019
    This teacher has Black liberation on the menu: from Mau Mau and African communists, to Biko, Nkrumah and Fanon.
  • A Letter to Intellectuals Who Deride Revolutions in the Name of Purity
    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Ana Maldonado, Pilar Troya Fernandez, and Vijay Prashad 
    A Letter to Intellectuals Who Deride Revolutions in the Name of Purity
    11 Dec 2019
     Critics on the left in North America and in Europe gave the Chavez and Morales governments no time to breathe.
  • Abstract Leftism Leaves Bolivia and the Global South in Imperialist Crosshairs
    Netfa Freeman
    Abstract Leftism Leaves Bolivia and the Global South in Imperialist Crosshairs
    11 Dec 2019
    The phony US Left specializes in finding excuses to betray victims of US imperialism.
  • How the Global North’s ‘Left’ Media Helped Paved the Way for Bolivia’s Right-Wing Coup
    Lucas Koerner
    How the Global North’s ‘Left’ Media Helped Paved the Way for Bolivia’s Right-Wing Coup
    11 Dec 2019
    So-called progressives in the US can find every wart in foreign governments, but are blind to Washington’s regime change crimes.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us