Dr. Cornel West to March Organizers: Get Off the Obama Plantation
“If Martin Luther King Jr. were to show up” at this month’s commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington, said academic and activist Dr. Cornel West, “what he would say would be so subversive that those on the Obama plantation would be revealed for who they are, which is obsessed with career, obsessed with access, and obsessed with status as opposed to being obsessed with the suffering of poor Black brothers and sisters.” Appearing on the latest edition of Black Agenda Television, Dr. West said Rev. Al Sharpton “and so many others” will not address the New Jim Crow, privatization of education and gentrification because of their ties to the White House. Preacher-educator Michael Eric Dyson and MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry have “become sycophants” of the administration, said West.
Stop-and Frisk Ruling is Blow to Bloomberg and His Top Cop
Last week’s federal court ruling puts Mayor Michael Bloomberg on notice that “you can’t just lump all Black or Latino New Yorkers together with the criminal population of the city and say, We can now stop you because members of your community may have committed crimes in the past,” said Darius Charney, the lead attorney in the class action suit. The decision should also remove Police Commissioner Ray Kelly from consideration to head the Department of Homeland Security, “given his utter disrespect and disregard for people’s fundamental constitutional rights.”
But, Court Keeps Foxes and Wolves in Charge of Henhouse
Although the judge provided a “service” by declaring the NYPD’s practices unconstitutional, said Stop Stop-and-Frisk co-founder Carl Dix, the court’s order “sets up a system through which the NYPD will reform itself with oversight from the federal government.” As Malcolm X advised, 50 years ago, said Dix, “They’re saying that the foxes are going to reform their approach to the chicken coop, and the wolves will oversee that reform in the approach to the chicken coop. What is that going to mean to the chickens?”
Black Federal Employees Blast EEOC
The Coalition for Change (C4C), an organization of minority federal employees, issued an angry rebuttal to an EEOC assessment that workplace discrimination is largely a problem of “perceptions” and “unintentional bias.” The EEOC, said C4C founder Tanya Ward Jordan, “seeks to downplay the pain, anguish, and the attacks that are going on right now under the Obama administration.” Fifty years after the March on Washington, “we still don’t have any measure to hold these managers accountable,” said Jordan. “At the end of the day, even if we are successful in proving our claim, and there is a finding against these public officials, there is no mandatory discipline.”
Huge “Regression” on the Black Education Front
“We are in a period of regression” in the educational arena, said Dr. Donald Smith, a founder of the National Alliance of Black School Educators. Black and Latinos “hardly exist” in the core curriculum being promulgated to public schools throughout the nation. “In fact, if you look at the fifth grade curricular suggestion, not a single writer of African or Hispanic descent is included,” said Dr. Smith. “The gains that we made in attempting to help our people understand our African heritage and how important that heritage is to the strengthening of our students, is being evaporated.”
Left and Secular Supporters of Egyptian Coup Do Great Harm
The military coup in Egypt is a disaster for the country’s people, said Sara Flounders, of UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition. “It’s so unfortunate to see, in Egypt and reflected here in the United States, those who because they had differences with the Muslim Brotherhood actually siding with the oppressive arms of the state,” said Flounders. “The revolutionary ferment is now in danger. And those who stood with the military have created the greatest danger, because they disoriented people in a massive way.”
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.
Johanna Fernandez touched many lives through her scholarship, activism, and belief that people themselves can change history and be "the ones we've been waiting for."
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