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


  • Internally displaced persons in Amhara Region, Ethiopia, 10/2021. Credit: Jemal Countess
    Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Shell Shocked in Amhara, Ethiopia: “I don't even want to hear the word ‘America’ ”
    06 Oct 2021
    A displaced person in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region told photographer and human rights investigator Jemal Countess that he didn’t want to talk to him because he was American and “didn’t even want to
  • Some provisions of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation benefit the masses of Black people, but this legislation is a bare minimum effort to blunt some of the sharpest contradictions of the system while attempting to maintain the neoliberal order.  
    ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    Build Back Better Legislation: New Keynesianism or Neoliberal Public Relations Stunt?
    06 Oct 2021
    Some provisions of Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation benefit the masses of Black people, but this legislation is a bare minimum effort to blunt some of the sharpest contradictions of the
  • BAR Book Forum: Louis M. Maraj’s “Black or Right”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Louis M. Maraj’s “Black or Right”
    06 Oct 2021
    In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Louis M.
  • AOC Offers a Hard Lesson on the Need to Dump the Duopoly
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    AOC Offers a Hard Lesson on the Need to Dump the Duopoly
    06 Oct 2021
    Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other so-called progressives exemplify the dangers of depending on the Democratic Party to enact any meaningful change.
  • Groupe des Patriotes du Mali
    Mark P. Fancher
    From Russia Without Love - Mercenaries in Mali
    06 Oct 2021
    The "scramble for Africa" continues with the U.S., former colonizers such as France, and now Russia, all competing for influence.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us