Glen Ford was committed to the liberation of African people.
The global African community lost a fearless truth seeker and speaker, journalist Glen Ford, who joined the ancestors at the age of 71.
We at Black Star News send our condolences to Ford's family as well as his colleagues and friends at the Black Agenda Report (BAR) where he had been a founding publisher. The impact of Ford's death was announced this way by Dr. Cornel West on social media: "My dear brother Glen Ford has passed! He kept alive the highest standards of truth-telling and justice-seeking of the Black radical tradition. He was a giant in revolutionary vision, analysis and praxis! We should never forget him!"
Glen Ford was a passionate advocate and defender of African communities all over the world. The Black Agenda Report is dedicated to discussing and analyzing how public policy and corporate greed impacted African Americans, Africans on the continent, in Europe, in the Caribbean, in South America, and elsewhere.
BAR is a stellar international media platform that documents and denounces the suffering inflicted on Black people by Western political and corporate hegemony here in the U.S. and wherever African people reside. BAR critiques the corporate and big-donors driven workers-be-damned agenda of both the Democratic and Republican parties and administrations.
BAR tied the global African struggle together by showing, as Kwame Nkrumah illustrated in “Neocolonialism The Last Stage of Imperialism” and Walter Rodney in “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” how global finance capital still dominates and exploits the countries of the periphery, while undermining their sovereignty and political aspirations.
BAR often excoriates, through penetrating articles and radio commentary, the western corporate driven agenda that turned East and Central Africa into killing fields resulting in the deaths of millions of Africans in Uganda, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central Africa Republic, and South Sudan.
BAR has been at the forefront of exposing how U.S. financial and military support for two African dictators, Gen. Yoweri Museveni in Uganda and Gen. Paul Kagame in Rwanda, both western clients, has led to those millions of deaths. In their respective countries, these World Bank and IMF sponsored generals preside over vicious autocracies, jailing or killing political opponents while presiding over periodic sham elections.
Uganda and Rwanda, with U.S.-backing, have invaded Congo multiple times since 1997, fueling genocidal wars that have led to the deaths of more than six million Congolese. The wars have been supported by successive U.S. Democratic and Republican administrations because even as millions of Africans perished, American and other western corporations earned billions of dollars by plundering mineral and natural resources from Eastern Congo which are exported through Uganda and Rwanda.
Glen Ford and his BAR colleagues have been at the forefront of exposing this corporate-driven genocide. I was fortunate to call Glen a friend. He and his colleagues interviewed me several times on his BAR radio show and published several of my articles.
Some years ago Glen also wrote a robust and brilliant review of my book "The Hearts of Darkness, How White Writers Created the Racist Image of Africa," (Black Star Books, 2003) and published excerpts.
More recently BAR has been at the forefront of documenting the deadly power struggle amongst the bourgeoisie elite in Haiti and South Africa and how the marginalized working poor suffer the consequences.
Glen Ford loved the African global family and we who considered him a brother loved him for his straight forward, dedicated, and fearless journalism.
Africans everywhere suffered a devastating blow with the loss of Glen Ford.
Thankfully Glen helped create an institution that will continue the struggle to free African people everywhere from corporate internal colonialism in the West and Neocolonialism in Africa and elsewhere.
All those who appreciate the critical role independent Black journalism plays in the struggle for African liberation should visit Black Agenda Report and contribute financially to this excellent platform.
Aluta Continua Glen Ford.
Victoria Acerta!
This article originally appeared in Black Star News.
The Black Agenda Report team gives special emphasis to African Liberation Day, which is celebrated on May 25.
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