| Black Agenda Report

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: COVID-19 and Black Workers
01 Apr 2020
The gross inequalities and declining standards of life in the US are magnified by the corona crisis, pushing already marginalized populations to the brink. “The supposedly great nation is just a failed state with a big army and a powerful oligarchy.”
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
“The American Disease”: Only the Overthrow of the Oligarchy Will Cure It
02 Apr 2020
Although the coronavirus provided the trigger for the current global shrinkage, the economic crisis was already looming when the pathogen made its physical appearance. “The Race to the Bottom cannot coexist with a living wage or a truly universal national health care system.”
Barry Spector
Affirmative Action for White People
08 Apr 2020
Most whites have been able to live out their lives completely unaware of the long term, institutional factors that have kept people of color down – and themselves up. “Logic and reason will not penetrate the hard shell of white denial.” Part One Question: What’s the difference between ignorance and…
Philippe Gendrault
Public Health? Anyone? Twelve Ways to Avoid Talking About Capitalism
08 Apr 2020
The failure of the American public health delivery system facing the Covid-19 is a socio-political and ideological failure born from the intrinsic contradictions of contemporary capitalism at large. “The present crisis forces a confrontation pitting the notion of a health care system owned,…
Vijay Prashad, Paola Estrada, Ana Maldonado and Zoe PC
Trump Sends Gun boats to Venezuela While the World Partners to Fight a Deadly Pandemic
08 Apr 2020
The Trump administration has used the fabricated narco-trafficking charges against Maduro and other officials as an excuse to intensify pressure on Venezuela. “As far as the U.S. government’s own drug agency is concerned, there is no cocaine or any other narcotic that comes from Venezuela.”
Jessica Corbett
Moral Leaders Demand Coronavirus Relief for Most Vulnerable
08 Apr 2020
The relief package “leaves out the majority of homeless, undocumented immigrants, the disabled, and anyone too poor to have to file taxes,” says the Poor Peoples Campaign. “We need a relief bill that centers the needs of the homeless, the uninsured, the underemployed and the low-wage workers now…
Soraya Nadia Mcdonald
In 1918 and 2020, Race Colors America’s Response to Epidemics
08 Apr 2020
A century ago, In cities across the nation, black people struck by the flu were often left to fend for themselves. “In Baltimore, white sanitation department employees refused to dig graves for black flu victims.” In American epidemics, race is a preexisting condition.
Elizabeth Cooney
Blacks May be Bearing the Brunt of Covid-19, But Access to Data is Limited
08 Apr 2020
The feds don’t keep racial data on the coronavirus, but local reports show Blacks are dying at multiple the rates of whites in some cities. “African Americans in many large cities began to practice social distancing behavior much later than whites, largely due to the fact [whites] could stay at…
Dean Spade and Roberto Sirvent, BAR Contributors
BAR Abolition & Mutual Aid Spotlight: Chicago Community Bond Fund
08 Apr 2020
This arena of the mutual aid movement is energized by “a vision of the absence of prisons, jails, detention, and criminalization.” “Paying bail is more than paying ransom.”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Xavier Livermon’s “Kwaito Bodies”
08 Apr 2020
The author examines how Black youth in post-apartheid South Africa imagine freedom under tremendous systems of constraint. “What I wanted to get at in this book is the political value of multiple forms of excess and exuberance.”