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


  • Community Control of Public Safety: Building a Transitional Program for Power 
    Netfa Freeman
    Community Control of Public Safety: Building a Transitional Program for Power 
    16 Jun 2021
    Why is more effort is put into trying to discredit CCOP, while the ruling class is pulling all stops to hoodwink the public with actual reformism, like the George Floyd Act.
  • Lessons from Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party
    Ahjamu Umi
    Lessons from Eldridge Cleaver and the Black Panther Party
    16 Jun 2021
    Just like we glorified the black leather jackets, black berets, and guns in the 60s, we still romanticize African people with guns and mouths that fire more inaccurately than the guns they carry.
  • Walter Rodney’s Death Records to be Amended and Children’s Books Placed in Schools
    Denis Chabrol
     Walter Rodney’s Death Records to be Amended and Children’s Books Placed in Schools
    16 Jun 2021
    The martyred revolutionary’s assassination has finally been acknowledged by the Guyana state, and his works will become part of the educational curriculum. 
  • BAR Book Forum: Jerrilyn McGregory’s “One Grand Noise”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Jerrilyn McGregory’s “One Grand Noise”
    16 Jun 2021
    To break cyclical, systemic oppression requires a functionality that rejects reified notions of governance, global capitalism, and accommodation.
  • BAR Book Forum: Cisco Bradley’s “Universal Tonality”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Cisco Bradley’s “Universal Tonality”
    16 Jun 2021
    Jazzman William Parker’s work is a bold art of resistance to capitalism, colonialism, racism, and the runaway train that is our present-day America.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us