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: Margaret Stevens’s “Red International and Black Caribbean”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Margaret Stevens’s “Red International and Black Caribbean”
    27 Mar 2019
    Some of the best leaders of black working class people were communist or worked alongside communists.
  • U.S. Mercenaries Arrested in Haiti Were Part of a Half-Baked Scheme to Move $80 Million For Embattled President
    Matthew Cole, Kim Ives
    U.S. Mercenaries Arrested in Haiti Were Part of a Half-Baked Scheme to Move $80 Million For Embattled President
    27 Mar 2019
    The mercs’ aborted mission appears to have been part of a power play between the president and prime minister.
  • Get Tulsi Gabbard on the Debate Stage 
    Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
    Get Tulsi Gabbard on the Debate Stage 
    27 Mar 2019
    Tulsi Gabbard is the only candidate in the race running on a platform of peace.
  • A True Defense of Smiley and West
    Bryan K. Bullock
    A True Defense of Smiley and West
    27 Mar 2019
    Two men with track records of advocacy and activism were kicked to the curb in favor of a man with practically no history of Black advocacy.
  • Gentrification, School Closings, and Displacement in Chicago
    Eve Ottenberg
    Gentrification, School Closings, and Displacement in Chicago
    27 Mar 2019
    School closings are central to gentrification and Black dispersal from prime urban real estate.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us