by BAR Managing Editor Bruce Dixon
More than two-thirds of the Congressional Black Caucus signed on as members of the Out of Iraq Caucus, but when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic corporate cohorts turned up the fire, all but four melted into the mass of hypocrisy that joined the U.S. war machine while pretending to resist it. The heroes are mostly heroines: Reps. Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Diane Watson, and the only man in the bunch, John Lewis. The collapse of the CBC is not a morality play, but the story of a power play. The lesson: the CBC will not stand up to Power, and is a politically spent force as presently constituted. The same must be said of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, only four of whose non-Black members stuck by their guns.
NATO’s depleted uranium weapons leave a deadly legacy—cancer, birth defects, and environmental ruin in war-torn regions. The silent genocide continues long after the bombs stop falling.
For millions, a job is no longer enough to afford housing—yet the myth that homeless people don’t work still dominates public opinion.
In this week’s segment we discuss New York state proposals to change rules on discovery, the sharing of evidence between defense attorneys and prosecutors.
Ajamu Baraka is a Black Agenda Report contributing editor and director of the North-South Project for People(s)-Centered Human Rights, a project of the Black Alliance for Peace. He recently…
We are joined by Conrad Blackburn, policy counsel and staff attorney in the Criminal Defense Practice of the Bronx Defenders. The Bronx Defenders is a public defender non-profit organization and a…
