Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016

16 Aug 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Greens are Alternative to “Democratic Plantation”

Ajamu Baraka, the veteran Black activist tapped as Jill Stein’s presidential running mate, said the Green Party can make a difference, this year, by “building an alternative to the Democratic plantation” and “transcending the politics of fear.” Baraka is a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network and an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. “With the continued deterioration of the democratic processes, and of this economy, and the clear tendency on the part of the state to repress political opposition, our time is limited in terms of the extent we can take advantage of the limited democratic space that does exist,” said Baraka.

Neither Trump Nor Clinton Can Resolve Crisis

Although both major party candidates acknowledge that the economy is benefiting only the One Percent, the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lies in how they “identify the source of the problem,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar and Black Radical Organizing Committee activist from Philadelphia. “Clinton says that the policies of financialization, of Wall Street privilege, of trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, are not fundamentally wrong – that we should tweet them, not change them,” said Dr. Monteiro. “Trump, in essence, argues that the problem of the American economy is grounded in the export of capital, and that this is the source of the impoverishment of the American working class.” Monteiro believes “Trump’s stating of the problem is far more accurate than Clinton’s,” but neither of them “provide a solution to the problem.”

Roots of Black Movement for Self-Defense

Black scholars and activists came together, in Detroit, to celebrate the life of Robert F. Williams, the former NAACP leader in Monroe, North Carolina, who in the 1950s formed a Black Armed Guard to defend Black people from racist violence. Among the speakers was Dr. Akinyele Umoja, chair of the African American Studies Department at Georgia State University and author of the book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. “There were already people in the South practicing armed self-defense,” said Dr. Umoja. “The thing that distinguishes Williams is that he was an advocate. Most people were quite” members of informal protective networks, but Williams advocated self-defense in his newspaper, The Crusader, and “people began to look at the movement he and others were talking about.”

Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Length: one hour.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/BlackAgendaRadio_20160815.mp3

More Stories

Lexis-Olivier Ray
Black People Make Up 75% Of All Weed Arrests At LAX, Data Shows
16 Apr 2025
Roughly a third of the people who were arrested by LAPD in the city of Los Angeles for cannabis-related offenses since 2020 were arrested in Westchester. Nearly all of those arrests happened at Los…
Nora Barrows-Friedman
Rafah “obliterated” by Israel’s attacks
16 Apr 2025
Israel is intensifying its genocidal assault on Gaza—starving civilians, bombing hospitals, and burning journalists alive. Yet amid the devastation, Palestinians persist in acts of defiant resistance.
Oscar León
Daniel Noboa’s Electoral Theft Will Cement Cartel and Corporate Control Over Ecuador
16 Apr 2025
President Daniel Noboa is accused of stealing Ecuador’s election. He’s now poised to consolidate control of a system that has benefitted cartels and multinational corporations – including his family…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio April 11, 2025
11 Apr 2025
In this week’s segment, we hear about a new effort to have an independent, socialist candidate on the ballot in New York City’s upcoming mayoral race. But first, we speak to an academic about the…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Palestine Solidarity Under Attack: A Conversation with Helyeh Doutaghi
11 Apr 2025
Our guest is Dr. Helyeh Doutaghi. She was Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy Project at Yale University Law School until she was targeted by Zionist groups dedicated to silencing anyone…