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


  • MANIFESTO: A Call to Workers and Peasants of Curacao, 1932
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: A Call to Workers and Peasants of Curacao, 1932
    19 Apr 2023
    Reparations for slavery? What about imperialism? A 1932 statement on Dutch imperialism as the exploiter of the masses of Curaçao suggests why.
  • The Tennessee Three speak in We
    Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
    The Tennessee Three speak in We
    19 Apr 2023
                                                           …
  •  BAR Book Forum: Malcolm Harris’s Book, “Palo Alto”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Malcolm Harris’s Book, “Palo Alto”
    19 Apr 2023
    This week’s featured author is Malcolm Harris. Harris is a freelance writer and the author of Kids These Days: The Making of Millennials and Shit is Fucked Up and Bullshit: History Since the End of…
  • Modern Day Reconstruction and Tennessee's Expulsion of Black Lawmakers
    Jon Jeter
    Modern Day Reconstruction and Tennessee's Expulsion of Black Lawmakers
    19 Apr 2023
    The temporary expulsion of two Black Tennessee legislators was a reminder of why even a tiny semblance of Black political independence is feared and hated. The expressions of support from …
  • Apologies Not Accepted - Or I Love It When The Universe Proves Me Right
    Jacqueline Luqman
    Apologies Not Accepted - Or I Love It When The Universe Proves Me Right
    19 Apr 2023
    Jacqueline Luqman was vilified for pointing out a simple fact. Black people will not make common cause with racists and bigots. Racists do not get a pass because they call themselves anti-war.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us