Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016

16 Aug 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Greens are Alternative to “Democratic Plantation”

Ajamu Baraka, the veteran Black activist tapped as Jill Stein’s presidential running mate, said the Green Party can make a difference, this year, by “building an alternative to the Democratic plantation” and “transcending the politics of fear.” Baraka is a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network and an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. “With the continued deterioration of the democratic processes, and of this economy, and the clear tendency on the part of the state to repress political opposition, our time is limited in terms of the extent we can take advantage of the limited democratic space that does exist,” said Baraka.

Neither Trump Nor Clinton Can Resolve Crisis

Although both major party candidates acknowledge that the economy is benefiting only the One Percent, the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lies in how they “identify the source of the problem,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar and Black Radical Organizing Committee activist from Philadelphia. “Clinton says that the policies of financialization, of Wall Street privilege, of trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, are not fundamentally wrong – that we should tweet them, not change them,” said Dr. Monteiro. “Trump, in essence, argues that the problem of the American economy is grounded in the export of capital, and that this is the source of the impoverishment of the American working class.” Monteiro believes “Trump’s stating of the problem is far more accurate than Clinton’s,” but neither of them “provide a solution to the problem.”

Roots of Black Movement for Self-Defense

Black scholars and activists came together, in Detroit, to celebrate the life of Robert F. Williams, the former NAACP leader in Monroe, North Carolina, who in the 1950s formed a Black Armed Guard to defend Black people from racist violence. Among the speakers was Dr. Akinyele Umoja, chair of the African American Studies Department at Georgia State University and author of the book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. “There were already people in the South practicing armed self-defense,” said Dr. Umoja. “The thing that distinguishes Williams is that he was an advocate. Most people were quite” members of informal protective networks, but Williams advocated self-defense in his newspaper, The Crusader, and “people began to look at the movement he and others were talking about.”

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://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/BlackAgendaRadio_20160815.mp3

More Stories

Rohan Rice
Britain’s Imperialist Maneuvers in Iran
08 Apr 2026
Keir Starmer and Trump are putting on a puppet show for the cameras. Behind the scenes, Britain remains a junior imperialist partner working for the destruction of Iran.
Black Alliance For Peace
BAP’s 9th Anniversary: Turn Imperialist Wars into Peoples’ Wars Against Imperialism
08 Apr 2026
The Black Alliance for Peace marks nine years of fighting against U.S. imperialist brutality. Now the movement must transform imperialist wars into people's wars for liberation.
Erica Caines
Dialectics, Iran and the Long Durée of Anticolonial Revolution
08 Apr 2026
The war on Iran is part of a class war against any country that refuses to open itself up for foreign profit. Understanding Iran means seeing its fight as part of the same struggle that defines the…
Adam Mahoney
An Oil Explosion in a Black Texas Town Traces Back to Trump’s Iran and Venezuela Crises
08 Apr 2026
“The chickens have come home to roost,” one resident said. “Our exact fears have come true.”
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio April 3, 2026
03 Apr 2026
In this week’s segment, we discuss the impact on the voting rights of Black people if the SAVE Act is signed into law. But we begin with a discussion of an historic vote at the United Nations which…