Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 16, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Radio for Week of May 16, 2016

17 May 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Black Brazil Will Resist “Soft Coup” Against Workers Party

Dilma Rousseff, of the Brazilian Workers Party, was removed from her office as president, last week, and put on trial by the nation’s Senate on charges of manipulating the budget. Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific author and professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston, predicts the Workers Party will mount waves of protests, sit-ins and occupations against what they call a “soft coup” encouraged and abetted by the United States. “I think that during the Olympics, when the global spotlight will be on Brazil, there will be an exhibition by poor, working class folk to express their disapproval of what’s going on in their country,” said Dr. Horne.

Jill Stein: “I’m Not Holding My Breath” Waiting on Bernie

Kshama Sawant, of the Socialist Alternative Party, is circulating a petition asking Bernie Sanders to either run for president on the Green Party ticket, or pave the way for a “new party of the 99%.” The Green Party is already a party of the 99%, and will be on the ballot in most states, said presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein. She said the Greens have been “reaching out to Bernie Sanders since 2011, looking for ways that we might collaborate, and Bernie has always declined our invitation for dialogue by not responding. I’m not holding my breath,” said Stein. “He regards third parties as renegades and threats to political order.”

Alabama Prison Work Stoppages Wind Down

Inmates at prisons across the state of Alabama trickled back to work after officials filled their jobs with people on work-release and starved the protestors of needed calories. “They were getting bird-fed, meaning they were getting real low portions of food because of the peaceful strike,” said Pastor Kenneth Glascow, who negotiated with state officials on behalf of the inmates. Glascow is the half-brother of Rev. Al Sharpton, and a former inmate, himself, who heads the prison reform group TOPS, The Ordinary People Society. Prisoners earn as little as 17 cents an hour at for-profit prison enterprises, and are not paid at all for kitchen and laundry work.

The strike was called by inmates of the Free Alabama Movement. “We already have a Free Mississippi Movement, there’s a Free California Movement, there’s a Free Pennsylvania Movement,” said inmate activist Bennu Hannibal, of the St. Clair prison. Brothers and sisters behind bars have to organize “because the system is organized, and the only way we’re going to have an impact against them is if we organize in a likewise manner.”

CLICK BELOW TO HEAR BLACK AGENDA RADIO

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

https://blackagendaradio.podbean.com/mf/play/dmbyqp/BAR_051616.mp3

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
U.S. Threats Against Venezuela Target the Entire Region
31 Oct 2025
Gerald Perreira is the chairperson of the Organization for the Victory of the People in Guyana. He joins us from Guyana to discuss Donald Trump’s regime change threats against neighboring Venezuela,…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Zohran Mamdani and the New York City Mayor's Race
31 Oct 2025
Margaret Kimberley was recently a guest on James Fauntleroy’s YouTube program, Jaybefaunt. They discussed the upcoming mayoral election in New York City that pits the Democratic Party nominee, Zohran…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
The Shutdown and Neverending Hostility to the Welfare State
29 Oct 2025
The federal government shutdown is a fight between Trump and democrats, but it is also emblematic of the tenuous nature of the welfare state in the U.S. The duopoly parties are both committed to…
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
The United States and Israel: The Tale of Two Rogue Settler-Colonial States United by A Commitment to White Supremacy and Barbaric State Violence
29 Oct 2025
The genocide in Gaza, the threat to Venezuela, and the targeting of Iran are not isolated crises. They are coordinated fronts in a single war effort attempting to enforce imperial dominance.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
STATEMENT: The Challenge to the Colonial Powers, Delegates to the Fifth Pan-African Congress, 1945
29 Oct 2025
“Africans, as a last resort, may have to appeal to force in the effort to achieve Freedom, even if force destroys them and the world.”