This week's entire show is selections from last weekend's conference in St. Louis MO on Community Control of Police.
The crisis means it's time to imagine self determination for our communities. What cops do in our communities will not change unless our communities are in the position to give the police their orders, according to Omali Yeshetila of the African Peoples Socialist Party. It's time to lift our sights beyond this black face and that reform and wrap the black political imagination and political practice around the project of actually controlling what the police do.
Hiring more black cops and “sensitivity training” won't prevent more Fergusons. As long as the core mission of the police include counter-insurgency and being the intake valves for black mass incareration, hiring more black police doesn'will nott change what police do, explains Glen Ford. Neither will so-called “community policing” or sensitivity training for cops. The policing mission will only change when there is authentic community control of the institution of the police.
Nothing in political is ever guaranteed, says Larry Hamm of the Peoples Organization for Progress in Newark NJ.
The only solution to a system out of control is mass organization to confront the powers that be. If power will concede nothing without demands, it's up to the organized people to make real and significant demands to change the way society is ordered, and to put their energies, if need be, their bodies on the line behind those demands.
listen
http://blackagendaradio.podbean.com/mf/web/5krg2z/BAR_042715.mp3
"Sitting Shiva in South Florida for Our souls/slivers of democracy …" is the latest from BAR's Poet-in-Residence.
Politicians and the liberal media cite "voter apathy" as the cause of reduced voter turnout, but the reality is that their devotion to corporate interests over those of the people creates a seeming…
Settler colonialism has caused the destruction of indigenous lands around the world and, as a result, the environment in which we all live. The path forward is an global struggle against these forces.
For Africans in the U.S., anger is an important first step in mentally emancipating themselves from empire and declaring war on it.
The peoples of this world will never see true liberation and peace until we are free of the shackles of U.S. and Western colonial domination.
