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

Abdoulaye Diop
Letter from Republic of Mali to UN on French Aggression and Support for Terrorism in Region
24 Aug 2022
The government of Mali has accused France of numerous violations of its airspace and has requested that the United Nations Security Council investigate. French forces may have left Mali, but the…
Amzat Boukhari-Yabara
In Brussels, Pan-Africanism Faces Eurafrica
24 Aug 2022
This article was written on the occasion of the sixth summit between the European Union and the African Union which was held in Brussels on 17 and 18 of February 2022. These meetings are…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio August 19, 2022
19 Aug 2022
The history and significance of Black August, presidential elections and politics in Kenya, and reflections on the anniversary of the Sandinista Revolution.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
The History and Significance of Black August
19 Aug 2022
Kalonji Changa is co-founder of Black Power Media and founder of FTP Movement. He joins us from Atlanta to talk about Black August, which has been a fixture of the liberation movement for 43 years.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Kenya Politics and the Presidential Election
19 Aug 2022
Irene Asuwa joins us from Nairobi, Kenya. She is co-convener of Ecological Justice and supports outreach at Ukombozi Library. We discuss the recent presidential election in that country.