by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been “polluted” by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In focusing on King, the man of peace, Tavis Smiley’s PBS special corrects a history that has been distorted, sometimes beyond recognition – not the least by the revisionist and poseur in the White House.
Black class relations explicated, Moynihan debunked, slave life explored, prison abolition made conceivable – all this is teachable.
The coup is driven by the Bolivian oligarchy, fully supported by the US government, which has long been eager to remove Morales and his movement from power.
Odell’s effectiveness and fidelity to principle is affirmed by the ferocity of Hoover’s redbaiting smears.
In celebration of Black Study’s 50th year in existence at Portland State, we also get to watch its death.
The National Lawyers Guild, born in resistance to political witch-hunts, seems to have neutered itself in the face of the new wave of manufactured hysteria.
