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

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 6/24/13
25 Jun 2013
🖨️ Print Article

Ralph’s DC Vigil for Lynne

“We all know that Obama and [Attorney General] Holder can move this with the stroke of a pen,” said Ralph Poynter, husband of people’s lawyer Lynn Stewart, whose Stage Four breast cancer worsens by the day in a Fort Worth, Texas, federal prison facility. A request for Stewart’s compassionate release from a ten-year prison sentence has stalled at the desk of Federal Bureau of Prisons director Charles Samuels. Asked how long he would maintain his vigil in front of the White House, Poynter replied, “I will be in Washington until Lynne is free or dead.”

Rich Men’s Fears Drive U.S. Hyper-Surveillance

The wealthy classes that rule the country “are very scared of the fact that the average American citizen may rise up and rebel against the redistribution of wealth to the top,” said Dr. Johnny Williams, professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. “The surveillance state isn’t creeping, anymore. It’s here.”

Obama Defiles Democracy

All-pervasive spying on the citizenry “is one more thing that we can add to the list of offenses that Obama has committed against every assumption of democracy and democratic rights,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition. The revelations follow on the heels of the administration’s doubling of the bounty on Black liberation movement exile Assata Shakur. “That means anybody who supports Assata Shakur can be charged with supporting terrorism,” said Yeshitela. “I don’t think a white president could have gotten away with that.”

“Humanitarian” Imperialism

Ajamu Baraka, an Institute for Policy Studies fellow and co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network, said “the U.S. strategic objectives in the Middle East is to prevent any effective opposition to its interests in the region.” In an interview with Kali-Ahset Amen, host of Atlanta radio station WRFG’s “Moving the Center” program, Baraka described the doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention as part of “desperate attempt on the part of the U.S. and the West to maintain their global hegemony” through force of arms.

Richmond’s Slave Origins Deserve Preservation

Shockoe Bottom, the historic center of old Richmond, Virginia, and site of what was once the nation’s second largest slave market, should not be replaced by a shopping mall, said human rights activist and journalist Anna Edwards. “Shockoe Bottom is the birthplace of the city of Richmond,” said Edwards, an editor of Defenders for Freedom, Justice and Equality newspaper. Richmond, “like so many cities in the United States, was born out of slave societies.”

African Americans Should Show Some Humility, Says Scholar

Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston, had a quick response to African Americans who might ask, “What have the Palestinians ever done for us?” The Palestinians “did a much better job than many of these Africans in North America in terms of lobbying on behalf of African liberation,” Horne told Norman Richmond, host of Regency Radio’s Saturday Morning Show, in Toronto, Canada. Blacks in America “should really have a bit more humility.”

 

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


  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    The Necessity of Birthright Citizenship for Black People
    02 Jul 2025
    Black citizenship was non-existent for the first 200 years that enslaved and free people were present in what became the United States. Even long-standing legal victories are tenuous, and now…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Black Refugees Unwelcomed! Gaou Guinou Balewa, 1973
    02 Jul 2025
    “Haitian refugees and political exiles find themselves being refused the hospitality granted others.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Aggressors Unnamed in Rwanda-DRC “Peace Agreement”
    02 Jul 2025
    Rwandan and M23 forces are the aggressors in the DRC. They are integrated under Rwandan command.
  • Jon Jeter
    Mamdani’s Train is Running But Blacks Wonder if There is Space for Them
    02 Jul 2025
    Zohran Mamdani’s democratic socialist vision won NYC’s primary but lost Black voters to scandal-plagued Cuomo by 20 points, exposing the left’s racial blind spot even as Wall Street prepares to spend…
  • Maurice Carney
    Donald Trump’s Congo Venture: A Scramble for Minerals Under the Guise of Peace
    02 Jul 2025
    Trump’s ‘peace deal’ between Rwanda and the DRC is a corporate resource grab disguised as diplomacy, rewarding Rwandan war crimes while U.S. investors stake claims to Congo’s coltan mines.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us