Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 13, 2015 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio for Week of July 13, 2015

14 Jul 2015

🖨️ Print Article

Austerity Rendering Detroit Unfit for Habitation

A serious fire raged out control due to chronic low water pressure in Detroit, despite the majority Black city’s location in one of the world’s major fresh water regions. “The whole process of so-called rebuilding of Detroit has not been clearly thought out,” said Abayomi Azikiwe, veteran activist and editor of the Pan African News Wire. “How can you rebuild a city when you don’t have fundamental infrastructure, such as fire services, public safety, education, emergency services, simple things like being able to go to a supermarket?” The economic elite are “doing everything possible to drive out the African American population,” he said, but poor infrastructure discourages white resettlement. “What you have is the anarchy of capitalism.”

Big Business Tries to Roll Back Socialist Alternative in Seattle

Corporate contributions are pouring into Seattle Urban League chief Pamela Banks’ campaign to unseat Kshama Sawant, the Socialist Alternative councilwoman who championed the city’s $15 an hour minimum wage law. “It’s not so much about my opponent’s qualities,” said Sawant, “It’s because corporations, billionaires, the people who have an incentive to uphold the status quo, recognize that if we win re-election this year, then it really confirms to working people in Seattle and everywhere that we can prevail against the full might of big business and the political establishment.”

Mumia: “Flags and Rags”

The heritage of the Confederate battle flag is “one of terror and violence in support of a system of organized theft of Black labor, in the name of white supremacy and Black subjugation,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, in a report for Prison Radio. “Dylan ‘Dumb and Dumber’ Roof knew, instinctively, what the flag stood for.”

Justices OK Painful Death Drug

The U.S. Supreme Court ended its term by allowing states to continue lethal injections with a cocktail that can cause horrific pain for condemned persons. “Prisoners remain less than human” in the High Court’s eyes, said Kenneth A. Hartman, a writer and prison activist serving life in California. “How else can a decision that allows for deliberate torture be explained?”

Fear of Blacks Triggered 1776 War of Independence

White settlers turned against the their mother country partly in fear that the British Crown would put guns in the hands of Blacks, according to Dr. Gerald Horne, chairman of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston and author of more than 30 books, including The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. In 1775, the British colonial governor of Virginia established an “Ethiopian Regiment” to counter rebellious white settlers. “One of the factors that caused formerly patriotic British subjects to revolt against British rule was this ‘Black scare’ that, I argue, led to the formation of the United States of America,” said Dr. Horne, in a lecture at the University of California at Santa Barbara.

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.

listen

http://blackagendaradio.podbean.com/mf/web/ai86mg/BAR_071315.mp3

More Stories

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum “Sports and Black Struggle”: Interview with Samantha N. Sheppard
30 Mar 2022
This week, we interview Samantha N. Sheppard. Samantha N. Sheppard is an associate professor of cinema and media studies in the Department of Performing and Media Arts at Cornell University. She is…
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Interview with Sara-Maria Sorentino
30 Mar 2022
This week’s featured scholar is Sara-Maria Sorentino. Sorentino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. Her article is “Mistresses as…
Kevin Edmonds
Elections in Haiti: Legitimizing Imperialism and Killing Democracy?
30 Mar 2022
As the white rulers of Haiti push for illegitimate elections, can the “Montana Accord”- an agreement among some civil society groups to return democracy to Haiti - offer a way out of the country’s…
Jelin Esau Jules
Haiti: A Grassroots Analysis on the State of Affairs Since the Assassination of de facto President Jovenel Moïse
30 Mar 2022
March 29, 2022 - Haitian community activists are out in the streets to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Haitian constitution, drafted after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, and to…
Abayomi Azikiwe
Tens of Thousands Threatened with Property Tax Foreclosures in Detroit
30 Mar 2022
March 31 has been designated as the deadline for Wayne County residents to pay back property taxes from 2019 and before despite the failure to provide adequate assistance to working and impoverished…