Katrina Was a One Time Disaster, Detroit Will Be Replicated Many Times
Half the black population of New Orleans was exiled in the wake of Katrina, the result of neoliberal politics and a chance hurricane. But the dismemberment of Detroit's black metropolis is a model that the capitalists can replicate over and over across black America.
Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition evaluates the Obama presidency
President Obama “has been worse for the African community than Bush,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition, which will hold its annual national conference August 16 and 17, in Philadelphia. “First of all, Bush couldn’t have gotten away with what Obama gets away with. He’s neutralized so many forces – taken them out of action.” “He’s played the African community, his most loyal constituency,” said Yeshitela, appearing on BlackAgendaTV.com. “The only thing he’s done is criticize Blacks in the most callous, reactionary kind of way.”
For a growing number of African Americans, the Obama “spell has been broken.” However, too many Americans of all ethnicities think that politics consists only of elections. “What has been defined as politics locks us into imperialist space,” said Yeshitela. “At the moment when Africans and other people begin to look for alternatives to the Democrats, then some Negro will step forward to lead us back safely into the embrace of the system, through the Democratic Party. Jesse Jackson did that” in the 1980s.
The Shrinking Political Vision of African American leadership
BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon on how the political souls of black America's political class have shrunk to fit their hands.
Read against the terrible incineration of Rafah today, this poem of resistance and refusal, by Palestinian poet Samih al-Qasim, is as powerful now as it was fifty years ago.
I spoke to William Sakawa, a producer and reporter with the Nairobi-based media outlet African Stream, about Kenyan President William Ruto’s agreement to invade Haiti for the US.
"Hearing! Hearing! Hearing!" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
This week’s featured authors are Jeanelle K. Hope and Bill V. Mullen. Their book is The Black Antifascist Tradition: Fighting Back From Anti-Lynching to Abolition.
Despite the undeserved loyalty of Black people to the Democratic Party, lawmakers continue to push policy that ignores concerns about climate change and environmental damage in their communities.
