African American Collusion with Religious Right
“An elite white, male lynch mob has targeted Planned Parenthood to strike at the heart of reproductive justice,” says Sikivu Hutchinson, editor of BlackFemLens.org and a frequent contributor to Black Agenda Report. “This is part of the far-right, religious agenda to implement patriarchal rule.” These “fascistic” forces have enlisted Black helpers. “We have people like Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King, proclaiming that ending abortion is a civil rights initiative,” says Hutchinson, a disturbing sign of “collusion between African American forces and the religious right.”
Wisconsin Governor Poses Threat to a Century of Progress
It’s not just teachers and other public employees that are targeted by Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s Agenda, says Ben Manski, of Wisconsin Wave and the Liberty Tree Foundation. “Working people across the board, as well as the unemployed and the poor, are really hit by this agenda,” which threatens “everything the people of Wisconsin have created over the last 100 years.” Students, especially, do not favor intervention by President Obama, who has cut Pell Grants and frozen federal workers’ wages. “These people are saying to Obama, please stay out,” says Manski.
Public Unions Helped Build Black Middle Class
“The origins of public sector unions coincide with the civil rights movement,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “The most famous strike in American history is the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike,” in support of which Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated. Public employment, says Lichtenstein, has been “one of the main vehicles for making” Blacks and Latinos “part of the middle class.”
Dr. James Turner, founding director of the African Studies and Research Center at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, recounts the origins of Black Studies as a student initiative of the late 1960s.
Dr. Jared Ball, Black Agenda Report editor and columnist, explores the concept of African Americans as an internal colony of the United States.
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 4:00pm ET on PRN. Length: One hour.
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BAR contributor Ann Garrison continues her reporting from the Horn of Africa. She is now in Eritrea.
In this feature, we interview Syrian-born journalist Richard Medhurst about state propaganda, the mainstream media, and U.S. imperialism.
This week’s featured scholars are Adam Bledsoe and Willie Wright. Bledsoe is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota. Wright is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida.…
Russian athletes have been banned from the Boston Marathon, Wimbledon tennis championships, and perhaps the next Olympic games. These punishments were not meted out to citizens of the U.S. and allied…
