Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 12/30/13
Racial Hatred in the Dominican Republic
The Dominican Republic’s efforts to deny citizenship to hundreds of thousands of residents of Haitian descent is rooted in the racism of an “elite that has never wanted to have anything to do with Black people,” said Dr. Jemima Pierre, a professor of African American and Diaspora Studies at Vanderbilt University. “They’re trying to establish rules that will also effectively get rid of dark-skinned people who don’t have Haitian ancestry. What about the poor Dominican woman who doesn’t have any papers and can’t prove she isn’t Haitian?” asked Pierre, who is also an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report.
The Uncounted Homeless
The Obama administration’s claim that homelessness declined last year is based on “incomplete” data, said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. The government’s methodology mainly counts “who is in a shelter, which really just measures the capacity of shelters – and we know that shelters turn people away every night,” while failing to adequately measure the number of people those who are living on the street or have crowded into unsustainable quarters with friends and relatives, said Foscarinis.
Nationalize the Banks
In the face of unremitting criminality by the biggest American banks, “any reasonable person would say that leaving banking in the hands of these banksters is unwise public policy, and terribly costly for everyone else,” said Dr. Richard Wolff, professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Big Finance must be nationalized, not just broken up into smaller pieces – as would be obvious to most Americans “if we weren’t drowning in a fog of ideology,” said Wolff.
U.S. Spreads Chaos in World
“The one thing that’s become clearer than at any time in the past is that U.S. intervention creates spreading destabilization and chaos,” said Sara Flounders, of the United National Anti-War Coalition. “It’s designed to do that. We can see the immediate results in South Sudan, a country that came into existence under U.S. protection in order to put this oil-rich region directly under the control of U.S. and U.S.-led forces,” said Flounders. “A quarter of all the oil that is consumed in the U.S. comes from Africa. Washington has no interest at all in democracy, development and freedom” – only in power and profits.
Length: One hour.
“Code speaking” in the presence of Power can be strategic, but it is also fraught with perils for Black folk.
“Deserts are natural phenomena, but the lack of food services in Black communities is a systemic, man-made evil.
Harris favored criminalizing truancy, raising cash bail fees and keeping prisoners locked up for cheap labor.
Between 1968 and the end of the ‘70s, the Bronx was the scene of thousands of fires.
The history of black postal workers demonstrates the critical importance of government employment and a robust public sector.
