| Black Agenda Report

Shaun Ossei-Owusu
Coronavirus and the Politics of Disposability
06 May 2020
When the dust settles, as in all U.S. disasters, there will be a tale to tell of who mattered and who was sacrificed. “The people whose disposability is on widest display are those who work in immediate-risk industries: the financially precarious service workers, the health care workers tasked with…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Mayday 2020
06 May 2020
(For Ferguson, Baltimore, Million Workers March, Arab Spring, Standing Rock, Occupy, Jackson Rising, Fight for Fifteen, Extinction Rebellion, #Me Too…) Magnolia scents of class Struggle fill early morning air. Rippling heat waves of resistance rise up, up, up in refreshing spring …
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
United States of Distraction: A Book Review
06 May 2020
The authors recount and document the descent into “post-truth” partisan journalism from the alt-right to the right, liberal, and even independent left media, between 2016 and now. “Team Clinton had imagined Trump would be the easiest Republican to beat, but the strategy backfired.”
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
In the People’s War against COVID-19, Socialism Offers Victory while Capitalism Spells Defeat
06 May 2020
Socialist societies are capable of doing much more to contain diseases like Covid-19, such as rapid testing, neighborhood food deliveries, and the use of AI technology to trace contacts and symptoms. “In struggle to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest enemy of the people is not partial…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Joe Biden and the Black Misleaders
06 May 2020
The black misleadership class has no shame, only narrow ambitions. They are now called out to rescue the man who looks very much like a loser. “Stacey Abrams couched her criticisms of Trump with criticisms of Xi Jinping and blather about defeating communism.”
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Whose Crisis?: When the People Lose, the Corporate Parties and the Rich Win
07 May 2020
The Democratic Party is a servant of corporate capital and cannot possibly be converted to a people’s party. The rise and demise of Bernie Sanders proves the point. “The people were force-fed the reality that the United States has no health care system capable of defending the public against…
Stansfield Smith
Chicago Mayor Lightfoot’s Coronavirus Threats and Government Incapacity to Handle a Pandemic
13 May 2020
The city’s Black mayor threatened Black house partyers with arrest, but ignored 500 un-masked white people protesting the Covid-19 lock-down. “Lightfoot opposed releasing those in Cook County jail who cannot pay bail.”
Don Fitz
Can We Simultaneously Oppose Bayer/Monsanto’s Biotechnology and Support Cuba’s Interferon Alpha 2B?
13 May 2020
It is necessary to compare the use of biotechnology by food corporations with that of Cuba to decide if they are the same or fundamentally different. “Food imperialism fosters dependency but Cuba promotes medical independence.” Genetically engineered crops are a form of food imperialism.…
Patrick D. Anderson
On George Jackson and Julian Assange
13 May 2020
Both see the United States as the Empire, and they agree that it must be opposed. “Both believe science is the best means of opposing Empire and securing self-determination for the peoples of the world.”
William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kirsten Mullen
Coronavirus is Making the Case for Black Reparations Clearer Than Ever
13 May 2020
The COVID-19 crisis only heightens the urgency of black reparations, which is now more essential than ever. “To bring the native black share of the nation's wealth at least into equivalence with its share of the population would require $10 trillion to $12 trillion.”