We reprint Dr. Jemima Pierre’s remarks at the 20th anniversary celebration for Black Agenda Report, New York City, November 7, 2026.
I learned about the radical journalism of what would eventually become the Black Agenda Report through the first article I ever read by Glen Ford and co-author, Peter Gamble. It was on the eve of the fateful February 29, 2004 US, French, and Canadian coup d’etat against Haiti’s first democratically elected president. I was trying to cut through the fog of the white western media’s reporting about Haiti and their breathless calls for US military intervention and “regime change.”
The February 26, 2004 article was published in the Black Commentator and was titled, “Bush Call Off Your Dogs! The US Can End the Killing it Started in Haiti.” Ford and Gamble squarely placed the rapid rise of violence in Haiti in early 2004 to US meddling, arguing “The Americans are on intimate terms with the thugs that have brought war to Haiti.”
I had not seen this kind of reporting on Haiti before – direct, forceful, and unapologetically anti-imperialist. I kept going back to the Black Commentor, and it soon became one of my entry points for domestic and global politics. Then, when Glen, along with other contributors to Black Commentor, Bruce Dixon, Margaret Kimberly, and Leutisha Stills left to found Black Agenda Report (BAR), I, as a reader, went along. From then on, BAR would be my first source for any and all analysis about Haiti and US imperialism around the world.
In the early days of the Obama presidency, especially, the analysis of Glen, Margaret, Bruce, Kevin Alexander Gray, cut through the liberal jive with forensic precision, giving us the kinds of political economic critique that allowed us to understand what the 2008 bank bailout meant for the future of capitalism and democracy, to comprehend the revanchist white madness that elected Trump and murdered Trayvon, and why “socialists” like Bernie Sanders were the “sheepdoggers” for the Democratic Party. When so much of so-called Black left critique remains trapped by identity politics, or mired in a fetishization of race and racism as the primary defining factor of Black social and political life, BAR’s contributors brought a knife-twisting critiques of liberalism, capitalism, militarism, white supremacy, and imperialism.
It was through Kevin Alexander Gray that I met the BAR team in the flesh – Glen, Margaret, Bruce. It was at the 2010 Left Forum conference in New York City, and Kevin and I were presenting on the US disaster imperialism in post-earthquake Haiti. Kevin introduced me to the amazing comrades at the Black Agenda Report – Glen Ford, Margaret Kimberley (who, I remember, was wearing her union jacket!), and Bruce Dixon. It was a set of connections from which I have learned so much and for which I will forever be grateful.
From that meeting, I kept in touch with Glen. During a conversation, as we were discussing U.S. interference in Haiti’s 2010 elections, I said to Glen: “I wish I could explain to people what was really going on.” He responded, “why don’t you just write it up for BAR?” I laughed and argued that I didn’t know how to write like the contributors to BAR. Glen looked at me earnestly and said: “all you need is a hook and 800 words.”
My first BAR article, “Of Fools and Sycophants: Haiti’s Presidential Selection” came out the next week. I soon became a regular contributor to BAR, and Glen was a superb and patient editor. Every once in a while, Glen would remind me not to sound too academic!
It is through BAR that I have been able to sharpen my political analysis over the past years. And I have felt quite proud to contribute to the coverage of Haiti, the Caribbean, and sometimes Africa. For me, BAR set the bar (pun intended!) quite high for providing sharp and radical Black anti-imperialist, and Pan-African socialist analysis. This is something that continues to be sorely lacking.
Over the past few years we have lost two of the key founders of BAR – Bruce Dixon, Glen Ford – as well as a key friend and contributor to BAR, Kevin Alexander Gray.
When Margaret brought all the regular contributors together to start the process of planning BAR's future, we all understood the significance of BAR and that the work had to go on. Five years on, we continue to strive to keep true to BAR’s mission of radical analysis from the Black left. But we also understand both the difficulty and enormity of this mission. As Peter Hudson and I have found out through our weekly Black Agenda Review column in BAR, Black radical analysis seems to have been more acute, numerous, and consistent in past decades. But we have slim pickings today – a result of the hegemony of liberalism and the integration of the Black liberal class, the misleaders, into the upper echelons of the white supremacist empire.
We continue along, providing the necessary analysis. But BAR is not enough. We need more, more writers, more Bruce Dixons, Kevin Alexander Grays, and Glen Fords.
Johanna Fernandez left a powerful and revolutionary legacy through her scholarship and activism.
Johanna Fernandez touched many lives through her scholarship, activism, and belief that people themselves can change history and be "the ones we've been waiting for."
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