Black Agenda Radio for Week of March 20, 2017 (full show, 57 min.)
Huey P. Newton Model for Control of Police Pushed in Washington, DC
Residents of the various wards that comprise Washington, DC, would be chosen by lottery to serve on a board that would hire, fire and set the budget for police, under a plan devised by Pan African Community Action (PACA). Selection by lottery, as proposed more than generation ago by former Black Panther Party leader Huey P. Newton, “is important,” said PACA activist Netfa Freeman, “because elected officials are prone to be co-opted. They’re also prone to be pulled from the more privileged classes of people.”
Philly Council Prez Categorically Rejects Community Rule Over Cops
The Philadelphia chapter of the Black Is Back Coalition’s proposed resolution for Black community control of the police was recently rebuffed by the City Council. Coalition spokesman Diop Olugbala said council president Darrel Clark vehemently rejected the proposal for a citizen’s board with hiring, firing and subpoena power over the cops. “That’s not a surprise, given the track record of the City of Philadelphia in terms of unlimited, unending police terror against our community,” said Olugbala. The Black Is Back Coalition will hold an Electoral Politics School, April 8 and 9, with the larger goal of replacing politicians like Clark.
U.S. Prison Gulag is Worse Than Old-Time Slavery
The U.S. prison system is a form of slavery, say organizers of the Millions for Prisoners’ Human Rights march, set for August 19 in Washington, DC. “What we have in this new, modern-day slavery is master who don’t care about the slave,” said Pastor Kenneth Glascow, an outside spokesman for the prisoner-run Free Alabama Movement and founder of The Ordinary People Society, comprised of formerly incarcerated persons. “They won’t even spend money to keep the slaves healthy, because they have no investment in them,” said Glascow, who is also the half-brother of Rev. Al Sharpton.
Be Like Dr. King: Demand Peace
One hundred years after the U.S. entered World War One, and 50 years after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his historic anti-war speech at New York’s Riverside Church, peace activists will hold an event titled “Remembering Past Wars, Preventing the Next,” at New York University’s School of Law, on April 3. “Here we are in a day and age when war has become this monstrosity that I don’t even think Dr. King imagined,” said David Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.Org and an organizer of the NYU event. “I don’t think Eisenhower, in his military-industrial complex’ speech, even fantasized what war has become.”
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.
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El Jones is a poet, journalist, professor and activist in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.
