Black Oppression is Environmental Injustice
The definition of environmental racism must be broadened to include such phenomena as the ghettoization of Black people, which “deteriorates the landscape that Black children grow up in,” said Willie Wright, professor of geography and African American Studies at Florida State University. Prof. Wright wote an article for the radical geography journal Antipode, titled “As Above, So Below: Anti-Black Violence as Environmental Racism.”
One Dollar Bail, But Still in Jail
Despite the abolition of bail for many offenses in New York State, thousands of people remain lockup up because of hurdles created by bureaucracy and hostile jail personnel, said Amanda Lawson, co-founder of the Dollar Bail Brigade. “Something that was meant to keep track of time-served has led to people regularly being kept incarcerated for just one dollar bail,” said Lawson, whose volunteers have assisted hundreds of New Yorkers to gain their release.
Blacks Continue to Die on the Alter of White Womanhood
Although Emmet Till and Trayvon Martin were killed 57 years apart, both of the Black teenagers died for the same reasons, said Angela Onwuachi-Willig, a dean and professor at Boston University School of Law. Emmet Till was murdered by two white racists for alledgedly whistling at a white woman, in 1955. Onwuachi-Willig says George Zimmerman was portrayed as protecting a mostly white neighborhood from predation and molestation by young Blacks like Trayvon Martin, in 2012. She wrote a paper on the subject, titled “From Emmet Till to Trayvon Martin: The Persistence of White Womanhood and the Preservation of White Manhood.”
Mumia Speaks on the Cops and Today’s Deadly Economy
The nation’s best known political prisoner sees parallels between the plight of today’s low wage workers and conditions during the Great Depression, when workers were brutalized for seeking unionization and a living wage. “I though of that dismal history when I heard of cops breaking the bones of U-Cal graduate students who are only striking to get the ability to pay their rent,” Mumia Abu Jamal told Prison Radio.
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:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
Dr. Nicole Price is the Forbes Books author of Spark The Heart: Engineering Empathy In Your Organization.
Nick Encalada-Malinowski is Director of the Civil Rights Union campaign at Vocal-NY.
The climate emergency won't end because of heartfelt pleas to the people and the interests who created the crisis. Ecocide will stop when capitalism ends.
To mark the last days of Black August, we reprint below Freedomways’ 1975 editorial about Joanne Little, a Black woman indicted for killing her white prison guard and would-be rapist.
Somali nationalists claim victory and raise the Somali flag above the city of Las Anod.
