Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Black Agenda Radio for Week of January 16, 2017
17 Jan 2017
🖨️ Print Article

The Democrats: Serving the One Percent, Blaming the Russians

The Democrats are using the Russians as a scapegoat to avoid confronting “the rightwing Wall Street-captive party that they’ve become,” said activist and educator Paul Street, author of several books on President Barack Obama. Essentially, Democrats are saying, “It’s not that we’re a rightwing, corporate, neoliberal party beholden to the nation’s unelected dictatorship of money and empire. It’s not that we abandoned the working class and the causes of social justice and peace decades ago.” Speaking at the Open University of the Left, in Chicago, Street said Donald Trump did not ride to victory on a “big rust belt rebellion of the white working class.” The real story “is that the Democrats lost those voters to non-voting.”

When Capitalism Gets Sick, the Democrats Get Mean

The Democratic Party’s sharp turn to the right is its response to the “existential crisis at the core of capitalism,” a global phenomenon that has left the ruling class and its servants with “hardly any space to reform the system,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar and activist. With “no room to maneuver,” the capitalists resort increasingly to war and repression. “Monopoly capitalism must be undone, the banks broken up, and a large part of them nationalized,” said Monteiro. “In other words,” there must be “a profound and fundamental end to the neoliberal order, globally; a retreat from empire and war; and a seizing of the military budget and turning it towards economic development, jobs and a green economy.”

Political Prisoners Under Pressure in Indiana

Khalfani Malik Khaldun, serving time at Wabash Valley prison, in Indiana, said officials have carried out “a series of raids on targeted political prisoners,” including himself. Khaldun was told by “top brass” that they consider him to be the facility’s “most influential” inmate and are pressuring him to use that influence to “stop the proliferation of meth, a synthetic drug spreading throughout the prison.” Otherwise, “they had orders to put me and ten of my comrades in solitary confinement,” where he is now housed. Khaldun said prison officials “are making me out to be running some form of drug ring, in an attempt to destroy my political credibility as an activist on the inside.”

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.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/black_agenda_radio_20170116.mp3

More Stories


  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    An Electoral Victory Is Not the Defeat of Fascism: A Black Radical Perspective on the Democratic Party's Midterm Victories
    04 Nov 2026
    Democratic victories are a setback for Trump and the Republican Party, but not a defeat of the forces driving fascism.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: Black Organizations and White Money, Glen Ford, 1975
    04 Nov 2026
    “It is clear that the availability of white money caused Black organizations to restructure themselves into fund-raising agencies.”
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor , Daniel Teklai
    Ethiopia–Eritrea Tensions: Is the Media Telling the Full Story?
    04 Nov 2026
    BAR Contributing Editor Ann Garrison joins Daniel Teklai to examine the reporting, competing narratives, and U.S. foreign policy interests surrounding the Ethiopia–Eritrea confrontation.
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    AIPAC Going Dark Sheds New Light on the Derelictions of the Democrat Party
    04 Nov 2026
    AIPAC's decision to stop directly endorsing and funding candidates is merely a shift to dark money. Democratic Party leaders are completely in sync with AIPAC's goals and will not cut them out of…
  • Netfa Freeman
    The Inescapability of the Struggle for the African United Front In the U.S.
    04 Nov 2026
    African people in the U.S. must consolidate their myriad organizations into a united front. A U.S. revolution is impossible without first building local alliances among Black radical organizations…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us