Reparations and Anti-Police Torture Demands Produced Results in Chicago
The young Black people that charged the US government with genocide at a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland in 2014 helped set the stage for local legislation “for some form of apology and reparations for the long legacy of police torture in Chicago,” said Toussaint Losier, professor of African American Studies at the University of Virginia. Losier is author of an article titled “A Human Right to Reparations: Black People and Police Torture and the Roots of the 2015 Chicago Reparations Ordinance,” a bill that granted some monetary compensation for victims of police torture and required public schools to include police torture in the curriculum.
Black Lesbian Intellectuals Shined Light on HIV/AIDS Epidemic
In the wake of the HIV-AIDS epidemic of a generation ago, Black intellectuals argued that “until we eliminate structural inequalities, we’re not going to eliminate the health disparities in medicine, particularly for Black people,” said Darius Bost, a professor of Ethic Studies at the University of Utah. Bost authored an article titled, “Black Lesbian Feminist Intellectuals and the Struggle Against HIV/AIDS.” Just as Blacks are dying from Covid-19 at twice the rate of whites, Black mortality rates from HIV/AIDS soared amidst silence, ignorance, deep prejudice and government neglect. Black lesbians brought intellectual and political clarity to the fight against the epidemic and its underlying causes, said Bost.
Blacks Should Aim for – and Understand -- the Stars
“We all have the right to know the universe,” said Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a Theoretical Physicist and Feminist Theorist at the University of New Hampshire and author of the soon to be released book, “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred.” Prescod-Weinstein does draw ethical lines in her scholarship. “I don’t particularly support people going off and doing weapons development. That’s not my ministry,” she said.
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.
We should see Haiti as a bellwether for what is occurring throughout the Americas and the world.
The flames burned both for Floyd and for the vanishing dream of a moral economy.
Can and should America continue to breathe if it continues to suffocate African American people and our communities?
If we had something approaching equal justice, would we still even be the United States? “Mr. Floyd was not human to these officers.”
While most advocates focus on police abuse of the black community, we must also hold accountable the people who call police and make false claims against black people.
