| Black Agenda Report

Chris Hedges
My Student Comes Home from Prison
01 Jul 2020
In 1990, Lawrence Bell was 14, orphaned and living in an abandoned house when three Camden cops pressured him to sign a confession of murder. “Break the reigns of terror by the police and the bonds of the world’s largest prison system and the ruling elites will stand naked before us.”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Edward Onaci’s “Free the Land”
01 Jul 2020
The desire for US citizenship was never the sole consideration of African and African-descended people. “Many of the sociopolitical problems African-descended peoples experience in the U.S. could be solved through political independence and territorial sovereignty.”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Nicole Fleetwood’s “Marking Time”
01 Jul 2020
Incarcerated activists have so many tools and skills to teach about resisting brutal regimes. “Penal space is both the built environment of carceral facilities and also the social relations structured through cacerality.”
Jahan Choudhry BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
01 Jul 2020
This week community control of police and the failings of the Biden campaign were on your minds. We share your letters for “Yes, Defund the Cops — And Put Them Under Community Control” and “Freedom Rider: Democrats Move Right and Towards Defeat.”
Mark P. Fancher
Is “Black Lives Matter” a Therapeutic Mantra for White Guilt?
01 Jul 2020
Many who took to the streets were out there to engage in a form of mass group therapy. “it was necessary for many whites who had never before engaged in race activism to rush into street protests to declare: ‘I am not a bad racist person!.’”
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Amiri Poem for Boss Tweet
01 Jul 2020
Who tolt us ‘bout an unknown 19th of June— who the TikTok teens cast as buffoon? Who? Who say Douglass alive and doin’ good work— who turn the War House into a grifter perk? Who? Who be grabbin’ pussy and standin’ they ground— who think they farts have symphonic sound? Who? Who say Mexicans are…
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
How Do You Spell Desecration of African Burials?: “Nigger!”
01 Jul 2020
Much of the nation may be repudiating white supremacy, but not Montgomery County, Maryland, which is paving over sacred Black ground in an attempt to bury its own racist history. “Scattered pieces of ‘light-colored elongated material consistent with skeletal material’ may be our…
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Neocolonial African Conservation Inspired by “Tarzan”
01 Jul 2020
Ann Garrison responds to a critic of neocolonial nature “conservation” in Africa, and discusses US-backed threats to national sovereignty and all forms of life in the Democratic Republic of Congo. “The US and the rest of the West have appointed Kagame as the neocolonial manager of DRC’s vast…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Russia, Afghanistan, and the Big Lie
01 Jul 2020
Far from being an enemy, Russia assisted the U.S. and its coalition in their fight against the Taliban. “Russia is the nation least likely to do business with jihadists.”
Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
Protest and Power
02 Jul 2020
Building People’s Power is the vital arena of struggle under late stage capitalism, when the “system” is not only objectively failing, but the people know it is coming apart at the seams. “Diminished budgets do not make the police accountable to the people or allow the people to…