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

Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Is ‘Duel’ the better 4-letter Dream word for ‘Debate?’
26 Jun 2024
"Is ‘Duel’ the better 4-letter Dream word for ‘Debate?’" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Free All Political Prisoners –- Including Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning
26 Jun 2024
Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning paid a high price for revealing U.S. vicious criminality in Iraq. Their experiences are indicative of how far the state will go to silence anyone who reveals its…
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
“Reflections on Parenting and Revolutionary Struggle”: An Interview with Erica Caines
26 Jun 2024
“Reflections on Parenting and Revolutionary Struggle” is a space for parent-organizers to share their experiences and struggles with parenting. BAR Book Forum Editor, Roberto Sirvent will speak to…
Ujima People’s Progress Party
Ujima People’s Progress Party Statement on Governor Wes Moore’s Marijuana Conviction Pardons
26 Jun 2024
Maryland Governor Wes Moore recently issued pardons for over 175,000 people in a show of "progress" in criminal justice reform. But these pardons barely scratch the surface of the destruction of…
Abayomi Azikiwe
Detroit Wayne State U Faculty/Staff for Justice in Palestine Formed
26 Jun 2024
Wayne State University faculty and staff and the surrounding community steped up to support students as the school continues its repression against pro-Palestine organizing.