U.S. Senate “Hypocrisy” Defeated Adegbile Nomination
The U.S. Senate rejected President Obama’s nomination of NAACP Legal Defense Fund lawyer Debo Adegbile to head the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, based on the LDF’s involvement in the defense of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. “This clear sends a chilling message in terms of who can be represented” by competent counsel in this country, said Linn Washington, a veteran Philadelphia reporter, Temple University journalism professor, and editor of the influential web site ThisCantBeHappening.net. Washington said some corporate journalists are envious of Abu Jamal, because he “knows more about what’s going on in the world than 95 percent of the journalists out there – and he doesn’t even have access to the Internet.”
In Life or Death, You Can’t Trust Mississippi
When the state coroner of Mississippi refused to do an autopsy on the body of Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, who died February 25, the family sought and found funds for an independent examination. The state’s action was not unusual, said Akinyele Umoja, a close Lumumba family confidant and chair of African American Studies at Georgia State University, because Black “lives are not considered that valuable” in Mississippi. Even if the state were willing to perform the autopsy, “there would still be questions, because it’s a matter of how much we trust them,” said Prof. Umoja. Some Black Mississippians believe Lumumba was assassinated.
Lynne Stewart Shut Out of Medical Care
A “bureaucratic morass” has prevented people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart from gaining access to Medicare or Medicaid since she left federal prison on compassionate release, December 31. Her husband and comrade, Ralph Poynter, said “we have been doing all the homeopathic things we can to beat this” Stage 4 breast cancer. However, Stewart has been told she can’t sign up for federal medical programs until July. “Welcome to America,” said Poynter.
Black Youth More Valuable in Prison
U.S. rulers “don’t want to supply jobs and education to inner city youth,” said Bonnie Kerness, of the American Friends Service Committee Prison Watch Project. “That 15 year-old in Newark is worth nothing on the streets to the United States economy.” However, “you put him behind bars and that kid is generating $30,000 a year” in contracts and wages for the prison industrial complex, said Kerness, author of the recent article, “Race and the Politics of Isolation in U.S. Prisons.”
Bayside is Worst Prison in New Jersey
Jean Ross, a lawyer and activist with the Newark-based People’s Organization for Progress, said some of her clients would rather be put in solitary confinement than be transferred to Bayside State Prison, in the southern part of the state. “The explicitness of racial epithets and the expression of racial hatred seems to be much more pervasive” at Bayside, where vicious beatings are routine, said Ross.
U.S. Proposed Another Coup in Haiti in 2010
The United States backed the 2004 coup that overthrew Jean Bertrand-Aristide, the democratically elected president of Haiti, and then forced him into exile in Africa. Six years later, in 2010, the U.S. attempted to depose Haitian president Rene Preval, and force him out of the country, said Dan Beeton, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington. “Preval made clear he wasn’t going to be thrown out,” said Beeton, “but it was really diplomats from Brazil and Argentina who stopped this coup from happening.”
In this week’s segment, we discuss the 55th anniversary and legacy of the 1971 Attica prison revolt. But we begin with the history of W.E.B. Du Bois and his struggle against the domestic repression…
Orisanmi Burton is the author of "Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Prison Repression, and the Long Attica Revolt." As we commemorate the 55th anniversary of the 1971 Attica rebellion, Burton…
Our guest is Dr. Gerald Horne, who discusses his newly republished International Publishers book, “Black and Red: Du Bois and the Afro-American response to the Cold War, 1944-63, the 40th anniversary…
Donald Trump and Interim Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez have announced a 'historic' oil deal between the United States and Venezuela. Although the terms remain murky, the deal appears extremely…
Hakeem Jeffries climbs the political ladder because he engages in dirty deeds with the world’s worst people. Being called a monkey gives him an easy out. The presence of a Black face in a high place…
