A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Assatu Shakur has been made the face of terror on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, but there is a larger target. “They are publicly defining the Black liberation movement as a priority domestic target for repression.” On Thursday, the Black Is Back Coalition holds a demonstration for Assata’s safety and freedom for all political prisoners.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

The total U.S. prison inmate population held in solitary confinement on any given day exceeds 100,000 – “the equivalent of locking up every man, woman and child in Charleston, South Carolina, in their own little 8 by 12 foot box – for an eternity.” Prisoners in solitary at California’s Pelican Bay may once again go on hunger strike, July 8. They need support from the outside.

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 5/6/13

America: A Law Unto Itself

Longstanding principles of international law “have given way to the idea that there are two sets of rules in the world: one for the United States, and one for everyone else,” said David Swanson, anti-war activist and publisher of the influential website, WarIsACrime.org. “Even so-called ‘human rights’ organizations like Amnesty International are sending out emails lamenting the war-making arsenal of Assad and never mentioning similar actions by the other side, in order to provoke a wider war,” and in which even Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Keith Ellison holds up the U.S. assault on Libya “as a model.”

Release Lynne Stewart, Now

Human rights lawyer Lynne Stewart’s prospects for compassionate release from a 10-year prison sentence have increased because of the many “voices from around the world, the petitions that people have signed,” said Ralph Poynter, Stewart’s husband and partner in activism. “There is no one who can argue whether Lynne has been the sister of us all, or not.” Stewart is suffering stage four breast cancer.

Corporations Too Big for the Law

“The Justice Department is handing out these non-prosecutions and prosecution deferred agreements like candy,” said Russell Mokhiber, editor of the Corporate Crime Reporter. The publication sponsored conference, in Washington, under the heading, “Neither Admit Nor Deny: Corporate Crime in the Age of Deferred Prosecutions, Consent Decrees, Whistleblowers and Monitors.” Corporations are “too big to fail, too big to indict, and too big to challenge, apparently,” said Mokhiber.

Mumia Lauds Student Fight Against Mass Imprisonment

“You and those you inspire can be the spark that spells the end of mass incarceration – because movements change everything,” said political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, in a telephonic address to the first national conference of Students Against Mass Incarceration, at Howard University, in Washington.

“The system of mass incarceration is about controlling the people at the bottom of society so that they will not rise up against the 1%,” said Baruch College professor Johanna Fernandez.

Pam Africa, head of International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu Jamal, told the conference that Abu Jamal’s death sentence was set aside “because the movement was large, and it needs to get a whole lot larger.”

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

Black city hall, black police chief and mostly black cops, and black-landlords colluding to push working class African Americans out in favor of newer, whiter, more affluent residents? Sound familiar? You might be living under the new urban regime....