US Imperialism Was in Disarray in 2020
Black Alliance for Peace national organizer Ajamu Baraka told a year-end conference of the Black Is Back Coalition that âthe US settler state is facing the most serious crisis of legitimacy since the collapse of the capitalist economyâ in the Great Depression. Betty Davis, of the Coalitionâs Community Control of Schools Working Group, said: âThe federal budget that comes down to New York City is the 23rd biggest budget in the world, but you donât control that money and thatâs why you are not having the same services as your white counterparts.â
US Genocide Against Blacks, Now and in 1951
The Black leftists that presented a petition to the United Nations, 70 years ago, charging the US with genocide against Black Americans, understood that âthere is a linked fate between whatâs happening to Black people in the US and what is going to happenâ to other racialized and oppressed people around the world, said Dr Charisse Burden-Stelly, speaking at an online commemoration of the event. The âWe Charge Genocideâ campaign was led by entertainer-activist Paul Robeson and Black members of the Communist Party.
Lumumba Assassination Changed Black American Politics
A panel of academics and activists marked the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the Congoâs first elected prime minister, by agents of the US and Belgium. Texas A&M professor Ira Dworkin, author of âCongo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State,â pointed out that it was Black women, led by singer Abbey Lincoln, who petitioned for Lumumbaâs release from arrest, and later organized against US policy in Congo. These protests âdid create a shiftâ in Black American politics towards confrontation with US policies in Africa and the world, Dworkin told the online seminar.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.