A Note on the Importance of Black Agenda Report and Why It Deserves Your Support

by Danny Haiphong

“The American left has been restrained partly because of the absence of reliable independent media that can communicate anti-establishment politics to the people.”

New York City is not the only location in the Empire where young Black and Latino Americans are stopped and frisked by the police. The organizations Black and Pink, Youth Against Mass Incarceration, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have formed a coalition to fight stop and frisk in the city of Boston. As part of the work of this coalition, The ACLU released a report this month detailing stops of youth of color by the Boston Police Department. From 2007 to 2010, the report found that Black people in Boston made up 63 percent of all police stops despite making up only about a quarter of the city's population. The results were similar to that of New York City, where studies show that Black and Latino residents make up 81 percent of all stop and frisk encounters.

Stop and Frisk, and the racist police occupation of Black America as a whole, is a reality that needs to be understood on a mass basis. But we live in the United States. Here, the media is a monopoly owned by and for the corporate ruling class. Four to six large parent corporations own the vast majority of available media space. Corporations like Disney, Viacom, and General Electric have acquired hundreds of billions of dollars from mass media mergers. This has been a gradual process that gained significant speed when Washington deregulated the FCC in 1996. Under these conditions, the American left has been restrained partly because of the absence of reliable independent media that can communicate anti-establishment politics to the people. Black Agenda Report has been a consistent example of what building independent media should look like in the particular period we live in.

“BAR pushes people to consider not just what is happening, but how and why it is happening.”

Black Agenda Report does what media should do. Rather than build careers and mouthpieces for Washington and the rule of empire, Black Agenda Report works tirelessly to create an antagonism between oppressed Black people and Power. For the eight years of its existence, BAR has stayed true to the analysis that it takes real power in the hands of real people to build a social order based on the principles of freedom and self-determination in both the political and economic realm. The absence of a people’s movement based on these principles has not stopped BAR from keeping up with developments and calling them for what they are. BAR pushes people to consider not just what is happening, but how and why it is happening. In doing so, Black Agenda Report doesn't just report politics, it creates them.

The election of Obama in 2008 was a watershed moment for Black left politics and the left as a whole. BAR's coverage of this critical period in history has created an analysis written by, and in the interests of, Black America. It did so while much of the American left attached itself to racial symbolism and Obama's imperialism. The period has further opened up the political space for a new class of Black leaders to emerge. Black Agenda Report responded by naming Black leaders in Washington, corporate offices, and positions of corporate power the Black Misleadership Class.

The label represented a new way of framing an old idea. The corporate ruling class historically needs to create buffers between itself and the exploited Black majority to survive. White supremacy was the first buffer, a colonial-capitalist scheme that created a class alliance of European (white) Americans whose nominal power could only be protected with the oppression of Black people. Obama represented a new type of buffer within the same white supremacist framework. The empire was in crisis in 2008, mired in unpopular wars and capitalist economic crises. The ruling class employed Obama to reel in left political opposition and exploit the Black Freedom movement's legacy. Obama turned out to be the "most effective evil" corporate money could buy. The Obama Administration rebranded imperialist policy with a brown face and incurred the least possible resistance from large segments of the left.

“Obama represented a new type of buffer within the same white supremacist framework.”

Black Agenda Report was not afraid to say this even though much of the left could not bring itself to face up to the truth. Black Agenda Report has named the names and refuted shame as its fundraiser event suggests. It was Black Agenda Report that brought Black mass incarceration to the front lines of struggle before it became a cool subject for white liberals and Black misleaders to exploit. It was Black Agenda Report that condemned Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and the entire Black Misleadership class for supporting Israel, expanding the American empire's domestic and international war machine, and protecting the rule of Wall Street.

This has been no easy task. America's internal "coalition of the willing" comprised of liberal imperialists and Black misleaders have shamed the oppressed and working class into confusion and apology. Black Agenda Report has pushed through the confusion by not only building a platform of opposition to empire, but also one which allows organizers, activists, and radical journalists to come together around common interests. This can be seen in the frequent appearances of organizations like Detroit's Moratorium Now coalition, the United Anti-war coalition, Friends of the Congo and many more.

I came into contact with Black Agenda Report in 2011 when I was in New York City interning for a labor union. At this point in my life, I was disillusioned with everything. I came to the big city thinking I would escape from white racist academia and get further in touch with my working class roots. What I found was a labor movement in disarray and an Occupy Wall Street Movement dominated by White America. I responded to political alienation by isolating myself and studying politics. A simple Google search brought Black Agenda Report to my computer screen.

“The corporate ruling class historically needs to create buffers between itself and the exploited Black majority to survive.”

I began following the US-NATO led intervention in Libya with ferocity, as Black Agenda Report was one of the new resources I found that covered the lynching of Black Libyans and the socialist state extensively. I also studied Bruce, Glen and Margaret's piercing analysis of the Obama Administration's domestic and international policies. As an Asian American and white working class person, race and white supremacy play a pivotal role in shaping my experience with the world. Black Agenda Report infused a political and historical analysis of white supremacy into issues that shaped my everyday life and the lives of young people a generation removed from the social movements of the past. Combined with a deep study of revolutionary theory and history, Black Agenda Report's weekly radio and news program offered something I could not find elsewhere: a constant application of theory and practice as it related to the self-determination of Black people and all oppressed people globally.

My three years of reading Black Agenda Report has been part of an overall commitment to revolutionary political struggle. In college, BAR's influence helped solidify my ability to speak on Black Solidarity Day about the importance of criticizing the Obama Administration's historical purpose as the "more effective evil" of imperialism. BAR further gave me courage to organize a speak-out on campus following the murder of Trayvon Martin and publicize the names of Black Americans murdered by law enforcement every 28 hours detailed in Malcolm X Grassroots Movement's report, "Operation Ghetto Storm." I have since continued to forward the struggle against racism and exploitation in the Boston area. I contribute weekly to Black Agenda Report because of the role BAR has played in my political development. Although I cannot make it to the 8th Anniversary Celebration, I hope all who read this will help ensure Black Agenda Report's much needed coverage of Black political thought and action.

Danny Haiphong is an organizer and case manager in the Boston area. He can be reached at wakeupriseup1990@gmail.com. He'll be at Black Agenda Report's 8th anniversary celebration this Friday. Will you?

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