Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

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.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/black_agenda_radio_20170116.mp3

More Stories


  • Somaliland
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Israel’s Recognition of “Somaliland” Is Destabilizing Somalia and the Horn of Africa
    18 Feb 2026
    I spoke to the Black Alliance for Peace AFRICOM Watch Bulletin about Israel’s recognition of Somalia’s secessionist state, which is further destabilizing the volatile Horn of Africa. 
  • Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    It will be about the survivors and about the Tao
    18 Feb 2026
    "It will be about the survivors and about the Tao" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    The Anti-Imperialist Imperative: Confronting Globalized Fascism
    18 Feb 2026
    Ajamu Baraka, BAR Editor and Columnist, gave this presentation at the U.S. Peace Council Webinar on Iran.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    A Final Solution to The Human Surplus Problem (Or, How the End of EPA’s Endangerment Finding Also Ends the Farce of Trump “Populism”)
    18 Feb 2026
    Trump's EPA denies that greenhouse gases endanger public health. It is destroying public health protections and confirms that environmental policy serves corporate interests exclusively.
  • Booker Omole
    Statement on Zionist Plans to Create a Mini-State in Kenya and the Lessons from History
    18 Feb 2026
    In 1903, Britain offered Kenyan land to Zionist settlers. That scheme failed. Now, a new attempt is underway in Nakuru.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us