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Tavis Smiley

The Historical Failure of Black Leadership

Tue, 02/05/2013 - 14:49 — Pascal Robert

by Pascal Robert

There’s something wrong with the process by which Black leadership is selected. “Black people are trapped in a viscous cycle of looking at their favorite leaders and revering them like baseball cards.” What’s needed is democracy in struggle. “People must be trained with the organizational and political capital to advocate and fight for policy and economic models that best serve their needs.”

I’m Black and I Want More “Stuff” and “Things”: An Open Letter to Bill O’Reilly

Tue, 11/13/2012 - 17:00 — Jesse Hagopian

by Jesse Hagopian

The arch-racist Bill O’Reilly believes Blacks expect to receive “a cornucopia of benefits” from the newly-reelected president. However, it’s about four years late for that. African Americans know they’ll have to fight – and work – to get what they deserve, as has always been the case.

Dr. King’s Televised Challenge to Obama: Tavis Smiley's Anti-War MLK

Wed, 03/31/2010 - 02:32 — Glen Ford

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

Since the onset of the Obama phenomenon, Dr. Martin Luther King’s birth and death days have been “polluted” by false and ahistorical comparisons between Obama and MLK. The two men represent opposite political poles: one, a radical opponent of imperial war and concentrated economic power, the other, an ally of Wall Street and commander-in-chief of “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” In focusing on King, the man of peace, Tavis Smiley’s PBS special corrects a history that has been distorted, sometimes beyond recognition – not the least by the revisionist and poseur in the White House.

Tavis Smiley Ends State of Black American Union Show, Continues Media Lockdown of Obama's Black Left Critics

Wed, 01/13/2010 - 10:41 — Bruce A. Dixon

Tavis Smiley announced on January 6 that the annual State of the Black Union event, held in early February for the last ten years, will not be held this year. His public reasons are vague and unconvincing. The real deal is that corporate media, the Democratic party and the Obama administration cannot tolerate the emergence of public leftward pressure from Black America. So the black conversation that SOBU showcased over the last decade must be silenced.

Latest Black Agenda Radio Commentaries

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What to Think Whenever You Hear "The Worst of the Worst"

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Detroit and America’s Racial “Exceptionalism”

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Rep. Clyburn: Putting Obama First – Civil Liberties, Peace, Justice, and Reality Last

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Ben Jealous’ Obscene “Truth and Reconciliation” Proposal

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The African Union: Still Subservient After All These Years

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Saving Detroit’s Art Treasures – While the Rest of the City is Picked Clean

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The Irrelevance of the African Union at 50

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Demonstrators Demand End of Impunity for Banks

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DJ Sese - Politics of Drugs mixtape

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Solitary Watch

Chicago-based historian and activist Paul Street cuts through the fog of fantasy and wish-fulfillment that makes up much of political discourse in the U.S. left for a sober assessment of the Obama administration in the real world of power and empire. The Empire's New Clothes uniquely measures Obama's record against the expectations many of his supporters hoped he would live up to. Taken together, it is a startling indictment not just of the current president and his people-proof, reform-proof but an indictment of what passes for the U.S. left.

The Real News Network

Was the US and NATO's Libyan intervention a humanitarian campaign to protect Libyans against Muammar Gaddafi’s threats of mass violence and genocide, or was it a cynically “rehearsed military expedition” to force regime change and wield Western authority in the region? Far from being an action to save lives, NATO’s “indiscriminate” bombing of civilian targets and cities such as Sirte (Gaddafi’s birthplace) resulted in genocide, ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, and civil war..

African scholar Mahmood Mamdani challenges the fabricated stats and fraudelent history popularized by the Save Darfur Coalition and the advocates of robust U.S. military intervention in Sudan. The Save Darfur Coalition, he argues is not a peace movement but a war dance, blocking a peaceful settlement by spreading falsified casualty figures, groundless charges of genocide, and offering the U.S. public an appealing but misleading case for military intervention.

The year that saw an African American run for the presidency as a viable contender also witnessed a truly remarkable silence. While millions of words written about the political ascent of one black man, there was virtually nothing about the descent of black leadership into well-nigh total ineffectiveness. Barack Obama’s personal itinerary was mapped in the minutest detail. The larger itinerary of African Americans was mostly ignored.