Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 16, 2017 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 16, 2017

17 Jan 2017

🖨️ Print Article

The Democrats: Serving the One Percent, Blaming the Russians

The Democrats are using the Russians as a scapegoat to avoid confronting “the rightwing Wall Street-captive party that they’ve become,” said activist and educator Paul Street, author of several books on President Barack Obama. Essentially, Democrats are saying, “It’s not that we’re a rightwing, corporate, neoliberal party beholden to the nation’s unelected dictatorship of money and empire. It’s not that we abandoned the working class and the causes of social justice and peace decades ago.” Speaking at the Open University of the Left, in Chicago, Street said Donald Trump did not ride to victory on a “big rust belt rebellion of the white working class.” The real story “is that the Democrats lost those voters to non-voting.”

When Capitalism Gets Sick, the Democrats Get Mean

The Democratic Party’s sharp turn to the right is its response to the “existential crisis at the core of capitalism,” a global phenomenon that has left the ruling class and its servants with “hardly any space to reform the system,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar and activist. With “no room to maneuver,” the capitalists resort increasingly to war and repression. “Monopoly capitalism must be undone, the banks broken up, and a large part of them nationalized,” said Monteiro. “In other words,” there must be “a profound and fundamental end to the neoliberal order, globally; a retreat from empire and war; and a seizing of the military budget and turning it towards economic development, jobs and a green economy.”

Political Prisoners Under Pressure in Indiana

Khalfani Malik Khaldun, serving time at Wabash Valley prison, in Indiana, said officials have carried out “a series of raids on targeted political prisoners,” including himself. Khaldun was told by “top brass” that they consider him to be the facility’s “most influential” inmate and are pressuring him to use that influence to “stop the proliferation of meth, a synthetic drug spreading throughout the prison.” Otherwise, “they had orders to put me and ten of my comrades in solitary confinement,” where he is now housed. Khaldun said prison officials “are making me out to be running some form of drug ring, in an attempt to destroy my political credibility as an activist on the inside.”

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/black_agenda_radio_20170116.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
The UK Left Lose Despite a Labour Party Victory
12 Jul 2024
Roger McKenzie joins us to examine the recent elections in the UK that brought the Labor Party back to power after 14 years of Tory governance. We discussed how Labour is not the traditional left…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Tennessee Abortion Ban Impacts Marginalized Communities
12 Jul 2024
Robyn Baldridge joins to discuss the fight to access abortion care in Tennessee, where they are navigating some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the country - including the criminalization of…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Joe Biden's Electoral Prospects
12 Jul 2024
Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on the Sputnik News program, Fault Lines, with co-hosts Jamarl Thomas and Melik Abdul. They discussed the recent debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump,…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Project 2025 Continues the Historic Racist, Fascist Project
10 Jul 2024
Project 2025 is just the latest in a series of conservative think pieces which outlines how republicans should wield presidential power. The outrage surrounding it ignores democrats’ collusion with…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
TESTIMONY: Opposition to Military Assistance Act of 1949, W. E. B. Du Bois, 1949
10 Jul 2024
On the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the founding of NATO, we reprint W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1949 powerful testimony against the US militarization of Europe and the world.