A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The electoral scenery must be quite depressing to those who think change must come through the ballot. The system disgorges “a multiracial cast of scoundrels from both major parties coiled up incestuously under the same corporate tent.” However, something different may be afoot in at least three points on the map.
A Tale of Three Cities: Newark, Jackson, Seattle
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford
The vote is hardly worth casting, these days.”
Electoral politics, the arena that half of Black America was barred from entering until only about 50 years ago, has become a vast wasteland, hopelessly polluted by corporate dollars. Black electoral politics is no exception. It’s been only a little over a decade since corporate America got serious about creating a new class idiot Harold Ford Congressional Black Caucus
That’s why what’s unfolding in Newark, New Jersey, Jackson, Mississippi, and Seattle, Washington, is so rare – and important.
In Seattle, there’s a group of folks who don’t mind working hard and building alliances, all the while telling the world that socialism is the only alternative to barbarism. Kshama Sawant, the newly minted city councilperson, and her Socialist Alternative comrades have forced corporate Democrats to pretend that they really would like to see the city’s minimum wage raised to $15 an hour. Socialist Alternative also demands that the rich pay for an overhaul of public education and transportation – a platform that most people would support, if they thought it had a chance of passing. Kshama Suwant and her comrades believe that people will vote in their own interests if the candidates have proven they are trustworthy.
In Jackson, Mississippi, 66 year-old Mayor Chokwe Lumumba cooperative economy
In Newark, New Jersey, which Cory Booker made into a playground for corporate educational experimentation, city councilman and high school principal Ras Baraka father’s funeral
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com
One reason Black women are in the forefront of British anti-police violence campaigns, is to counter the capitalist smear that Black families are “not capable of raising children, leading to crimin
Many Black voters recoiled in abject terror at the very thought that the Democratic Party – “our” party, in many Black folks’ minds – might fracture under the challenge of the Sandernistas.
The duopoly corporate parties enforce silence and ignorance on foreign policy to ensure that Americans have neither the knowledge nor the tools to resist their country’s policy of endless war.
Bernie Sanders’ rise to frontrunner status has done nothing to challenge the endless wars waged by the US, yet he is sure to face more smears and attacks the more his campaign succeeds.
The program deputizes teachers to spy on students and recruits social service agencies to assemble dossiers on them while providing mental health services.
