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

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Interview with Sara-Maria Sorentino
30 Mar 2022
This week’s featured scholar is Sara-Maria Sorentino. Sorentino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender and Race Studies at the University of Alabama. Her article is “Mistresses as…
Kevin Edmonds
Elections in Haiti: Legitimizing Imperialism and Killing Democracy?
30 Mar 2022
As the white rulers of Haiti push for illegitimate elections, can the “Montana Accord”- an agreement among some civil society groups to return democracy to Haiti - offer a way out of the country’s…
Jelin Esau Jules
Haiti: A Grassroots Analysis on the State of Affairs Since the Assassination of de facto President Jovenel Moïse
30 Mar 2022
March 29, 2022 - Haitian community activists are out in the streets to commemorate the 35th anniversary of the Haitian constitution, drafted after the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship, and to…
Abayomi Azikiwe
Tens of Thousands Threatened with Property Tax Foreclosures in Detroit
30 Mar 2022
March 31 has been designated as the deadline for Wayne County residents to pay back property taxes from 2019 and before despite the failure to provide adequate assistance to working and impoverished…
Telesur
Colombian Vice-Presidential Candidate Gets Death Threat
30 Mar 2022
Colombian Vice Presidential candidate Francia Marquez is again threatened by right wing groups in that country. She demands that president Ivan Duque protect her and others leaders as well.