Group Demands Louisiana Prisons Be “Evacuated”
“The coronavirus is a death sentence on Black people,” who make up two-thirds of Louisiana’s prisoners, said Belinda Parker Brown, head of Louisiana United International. In a Black Is Back Coalition zoom conference, Attorney Zena Crenshaw-Logal called for the “evacuation” of prisons in the state, which holds the distinction of incarcerating more of its citizens than any place else in the world. The first Louisiana inmate to die from Covid-19 “was a young man who was only in jail for a parole violation,” said Crenshaw-Logal.
The Black “Progress Narrative” is Self-Defeating
“When we think we’ve made progress, we are blinded to the ways we have not,” and wind up affirming our slave-like relationship to power, said Boston College Law School Professor Anthony Farley, author of a recent article titled “Perfecting Slavery.” Blacks must make demands, not requests, when confronting Power. “Requests requires you to recognize the authority of the person you are making the request of,” as if he is your legitimate master, said Farley. Demands affirm one’s dignity and determination to prevail.
New Mexico Exalts “Three Peoples” – and Leaves Blacks Out Entirely
In a recent article, Dr. Natasha Howard, a lecturer in Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico, cited the campus’s “Three Peoples” mural as exemplifying the state’s historical exclusion of Blacks. The mural celebrates Anglo whites, Hispanics, and Native Americans, but rejects Black people as components of the “Tricultural State.” At one point, said Dr. Howard, Hispanic elites, who once enslaved Native Americans, supported taking New Mexico into the Union as a slave state so that Blacks would constitute an “absolute bottom” beneath which no other group could fall.
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.
The author explores various social, political, and cultural sites that explore and highlight the Black pastoral experience.
In the past year or two, the proposition of defunding or abolishing police and prisons has travelled from incarcerated-activist networks into mainstream conversations.
Biden promises popular progressive policies, then quietly reneges while the corporate press turns a blind eye and falls silent.
The corporate media is second only to the police in spreading falsehoods about the nation’s best known political prisoner.
“Disease poetics” has been part of global capitalism since its emergence.
