U.S. Demands Global Respect, But Disrespects Its Own Black Citizens President Obama’s polices, “both foreign and domestic, are the same as any leader of the Empire,” said South Carolina activist and author Kevin Alexander Gray , editor of Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence . U.S. corporate media “cried” about Iran forcing U.S. sailors to put their hands up, but the sailors “were given a greater amount of deference and respect than Tamir Rice got from the police, and that Michael Brown got from the police,” said Gray. “It seemed that Iran respected America’s sailors’ rights more than America and American police departments respect the rights of Black people” in the U.S.
Obama Most Aggressive Imperial President Over the last seven years, Barack Obama has “asserted imperialist power more than any other president,” said Black Agenda Report senior columnist Margaret Kimberley . “Reagan tried to kill [Libyan leader Muammar] Gaddafi, but then said, Oh, never mind; Obama actually did it,” said Kimberley. “Other presidents thought about trying to take out the Syrian president, but it was the Democrat, Obama, who tried to make that a reality.” Obama has “left no stone unturned in attacking the rest of the world.”
Obama Set Venezuela Up for Subversion The “deceptive nature of President Obama” fooled lots of world leaders into thinking his tenure would be different, said Cynthia McKinney , the former six-term congresswoman from Georgia and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate. “During the campaign, candidate Obama was Abraham Lincoln, he was Franklin Roosevelt, he was John Kennedy, he was Martin Luther King Jr., he was all of those personalities we revere,” said McKinney, whose PhD dissertation was on the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. “I think the openness with which people received President Obama was abused, and allowed the nefarious polices” of U.S. subversion of Venezuela’s government.
Haitians Say No to Another Rigged Election Another round of Haitian elections is scheduled for January 24, despite opposition from nearly everyone except the ruling party and its U.S. backers. Irregularities marred almost half the ballot sheets in the first round of elections. “It’s not just opposition politicians who are formally against this process, but also a wide range of human rights organizations, diaspora organizations, religious leaders, etc.,” said Jake Johnston , a researcher for the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research.
U.S. Continues Legacy of Oppression in Congo The United States is trying to influence upcoming elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, luring student activists with offers of money. Washington is always up to no good in the Congo, according to Kambale Musavuli , of Friends of Congo. “The United States was the first country to recognize Congo as the personal property of [Belgian King] Leopold in the late 1800s,” said Musavuli. “The United States backed the killing of Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the Congo. They supported a dictator who was imposed on the Congolese people for 32 years,” and “they supported an invasion of the Congo by Rwanda and Uganda that has taken the lives of millions of Congolese.”
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Alabama Communists helped lay the foundation for the organized civil rights movement that emerged in the late 1940s and early ’50s.
Prison and police abolition were key to the thinking of many midcentury civil rights activists.
If there’s ever a time when a Reconstruction might actually lead to democratization and the end of American imperialism, this is the opportunity, says Robin D.G. Kelley.
Jackson, Mississippi’s Black mayor is celebrated as a “radical” in some quarters, but his cops kill, maim and abuse Black people just like police forces everywhere in the US.
Inequality: The American Ethos
