| Black Agenda Report

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Black Jobs Prospects Descending to a “Deeper Level of Hell”
02 Dec 2009
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford With each economic downturn, another layer of permanent Black unemployment is created. The effects are cumulative, and cry out for programmatic attention, but President Obama offers only bromides and moralizing. Wall Street wants deficit reduction…
Bill Quigley
The Selling of "Precious"
09 Dec 2009
by Ishmael Reed A movie that “makes D.W. Griffith look like a progressive.” Oprah Winfrey’s “third black man as sexual predator and the second black incest film.” A fiction whose “policy message is that welfare recipients are black women who wish to avoid work, who use their time having sex with…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Civil Rights Division To Clean Up After 8 Years of Bush
09 Dec 2009
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford President Bush's minions behaved like vandals in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, trashing the very concept of equal protection under the law. But the white backlash did not begin with Bush. Civil rights has been “in a state of…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Black Caucus Finally Gets the Message: Obama’s Not ‘The One’
09 Dec 2009
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford The Congressional Black Caucus agonizes as the accumulated miseries of their constituents force Black lawmakers to put distance between themselves and Wall Street's ally in the White House, Barack Obama. Ten members of the Caucus boycotted a vote…
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Freedom Rider: Progressives Still Love Obama
09 Dec 2009
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley President Obama talks excellent Bush-speak, a language he becomes more fluent in each day. Mouthing Bushisms, Obama told a television audience “it is in the ‘vital interests’ of the entire country to maintain the cycle of endless warfare.”…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
If Banksters Are Like Gangsters, Where's the Anti-Bankster Legislation?
09 Dec 2009
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford It's in the House of Representatives right now. “Nothing on the calendar of Congress, and no campaign from the grassroots, has anything approaching the potential of the Federal Reserve Transparency Act to focus public anger on Wall Street…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Why ACORN Won
16 Dec 2009
by Bill Quigley A federal court has affirmed that the U.S. Congress acted illegally in barring the grass roots organization ACORN from access to government contracts. Although the federal legislature is forbidden to mete out political punishment, don’t expect that to deter the Republican vendetta…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Paul Krugman's Blind Spot for Corporations and Obama
16 Dec 2009
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford At times of acute crisis, the oppressed and exploited find out who their real friends are. Old political labels become useless, as do former allies. Paul Krugman is the resident “liberal” on the New York Times op-ed page. But what use are his…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
"Progressives For Obama" Change Name To Omit Their President
16 Dec 2009
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford It has taken almost a year for “Progressives for Obama” to make a partial break with their former object of adulation, proof that groupie-love is a powerful emotion. “Two of the founding members, Bill Fletcher and Tom Hayden, are making…
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
Will the Last “Progressive for Obama” Please Turn Out the Lights?
09 Dec 2009
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford Black Agenda Report heartily endorses this Saturday’s Emergency Anti-Escalation Rally in front of the White House. Having said that, we turn to the subject of the legions of Obama-smitten activists that abandoned confrontation with Power for the past several years…