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

Krys Cerisier
How Afro-Colombians are Fighting White Feminism
05 Apr 2022
The struggles of Black, Indigenous, and Queer women must be part of any conversations about feminism in Latin America. Afro-Colombians like vice presidential candidate Francia Marquez exemplify this…
Peoples Health Dispatch
Rise of Violence, Deterioration of Rights Sparks Month-Long Actions Among Health Workers in Haiti
05 Apr 2022
Health workers in major public hospitals in Haiti continue to strike over bad working conditions, as others join them to protest a rise in gang violence and kidnappings.
Benjamin Norton
New Cold War Neocolonialism: West Threatens Solomon Islands Over China Alliance
05 Apr 2022
The Solomon Islands, a sovereign country in the Pacific, broke ties with Taiwan and allied with China. So the US backed a failed violent coup attempt. Australia now calls the area its “backyard,” and…
Nick Turse
U.S. Airstrike Killed 11 Libyan Civilians and Allies, Human Rights Groups Say
05 Apr 2022
A criminal complaint accuses a former commander at a U.S. airbase in Sicily of murder. But U.S. full spectrum dominance and its AFRICOM iteration are the true perpetrators.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio April 1, 2022
01 Apr 2022
Left Voices are Censored, The U.S. Crisis Plays Out in Ukraine, Judge Ketanji Brown-Jackson Nomination Brings Drama but No Substance