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


  • Why We Focus on Africa
    Black Alliance For Peace
    Why We Focus on Africa
    30 Sep 2020
    Africa can’t demonstrate independence and power because the entire continent has a giant U.S. military boot on its neck.
  • Hamilton and the Minstrel Show Remix
    Deborah L. Bowen and Tryon P. Woods
    Hamilton and the Minstrel Show Remix
    30 Sep 2020
    Hamilton has sent white people with emotional investments in not being racist over-the-moon.
  • Letters from Our Readers
    Jahan Chowdhry, BAR Comments Editor
    Letters from Our Readers
    30 Sep 2020
    This week the governments of Mexico and Rwanda, the dictatorship of capital in the US, and this dictatorship’s wars in Africa were on your minds.
  • BAR Book Forum: GerShun Avilez’s “Black Queer Freedom”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: GerShun Avilez’s “Black Queer Freedom”
    30 Sep 2020
    The author helps us think about Blackness, queerness, and artistic production in new lights.
  • Health Justice and Black Liberation: Ugo Edu
    Gwendolyn Wallace and Roberto Sirvent 
    Health Justice and Black Liberation: Ugo Edu
    30 Sep 2020
    State violence directly impacts communities’ and individual’s ability to feel well, safe, dignified, respected, and valued.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us