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

Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Keep Victoire Ingabire in Your Hearts
10 Mar 2021
Victoire risked her life to establish that Hutu people were also killed by the Tutsi army, before, during, and after the Rwanda genocide, writes Ann Garrison.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
MANIFESTO: African LGBTI Manifesto/Declaration, April 18, 2010
10 Mar 2021
The manifesto claimed the LGBTI struggle as an indelible and urgent part of the history of Pan-Africanism and the ongoing movements for Black sovereignty.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Meet me at Mary’s Place…
10 Mar 2021
“…he said if you can enjoy A real nice affair (Over at Mary's place—oh) Then you'll make it Your business to be right there… (Over at Mary's place— oh)” —Sam Cooke
Robin D.G. Kelley
Why Cornel West’s Tenure Fight Matters
10 Mar 2021
Harvard’s administrators completely miss the point of tenure, which was created to allow scholars to do their work, speak their truth, and stand up for something without risking their jobs.
Netfa Freeman and Jemima Pierre
Movements Not Saviors: Lessons from Bobi Wine’s Tweet for Juan Guaido
10 Mar 2021
Bobi Wine’s flirtation with US Venezuelan puppet Juan Guaido indicates that the Ugandan is also auditioning for the imperial puppet job.