Building a Black “Movement” from the Current “Momentum” Dr. Cornel West , the nation’s best known Black public intellectual and a keynote speaker at this weekend’s conference on the Black Radical Tradition, at Philadelphia’s Temple University, said Black America is not yet experiencing a mass social movement. “I would say it’s significant motion and momentum that can become a movement if we can sustain it. We’ve got a significant number of brothers and sisters who have broken the back of fear,” said West, a co-founder of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. The path to a full-blown movement starts “with the criminal justice system, and we connect it to mass unemployment, mass underemployment, then connect it to a critique of capitalism and a critique of empire.”
Chicago’s Mayor Failing the “Pacify the Blacks” Test Rahm Emanuel “is not doing his job,” said activist, scholar and author Paul Street . “One of the main jobs for a mayor of Chicago, frankly, is to keep the Black community in line and non-rebellious, so that downtown finance and real estate interests can continue their endless gentrification and expansion, free of disturbance.” Calls have intensified for Emanuel’s resignation or recall from office for covering up police crimes against Blacks.
Obama to Press for TPP in State of the Union Address President Obama will “make a very big push” for congressional passage of his Trans Pacific Partnership corporate trade treaty in his January 12 State of the Union Address, said Kevin Zeese , of Popular Resistance. However, Zeese believes TPP can be defeated. “We’re going to have our people out in force on-line, in the Twittersphere and social media, getting out the facts, because we expect a lot of dishonesty from the president,” said Zeese, who notes that the top Democratic and Republican candidates to succeed Obama oppose TPP.
The Semantics of Terror On January 25, the U.S. and its allies will meet with the government of Syria and its Russian ally to discuss which of the West’s jihadist proxy armies might be considered legitimate players in any future peace process. Washington considers all of the armed groups except ISIS and al-Qaida to be “moderate rebels.” Sara Flounders , of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC), said: “They asked Saudi Arabia to head up the countries that will be vetting these terrorist groups. Now, who is most directly responsible for the arming and funding – from ISIS on through – of terrorist groups operating in Syria and Iraq and throughout the entire region?” The whole exercise, said Flounders, “is an outrageous fraud.”
CLICK BELOW TO HEAR BLACK AGENDA RADIO
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.
On March 8,1971 a brave group of people revealed the extent of FBI spying, harassment and even the killings of US citizens. More than 50 years later we would do well to remember the significance of…
Revisiting a 1974 editorial on Black women and the international struggle against patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and capitalism on International Women’s Day.
In Africa as in the rest of the world, US machinations undermine its goals and bring other nations together as they seek to protect themselves from a desperate empire.
…
This week’s featured author is Biko Mandela Gray. Gray is Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse University. His book is Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject.
