Responses to a selection of reader emails this week.
Readers were eager to respond to “Letter to Kaepernick: Where Do You Go From Here,” “Black People Don’t Need Bill Cosby’s Kind of Race Man,” and “Trump Wants to Tax Protests in DC.” We received strong responses raising reflections on history.
On BAR Radio segment “Trump Wants To Tax Protests In DC” Glen Ford interviewed Mara Verheyden-Hilliard of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund about Trump administration plans to inhibit demonstrations in the capital with fees.
Edward Moser weighed in on the history of US presidential crackdowns on free speech:
“Some have criticized the Trump Administration for supposedly proposing to charge people fees for holding protests. It’s said this would be an infringement on freedom of speech. I hesitate to weigh in—as I’m on a diet—on this, but it’s undeniable that throughout American history Presidents have often suppressed freedom of speech.
“President John Adams instituted the Alien and Sedition Act that jailed some journalists and politicians 
speaking out against the federal government. President Obama’s aides turned the IRS against political campaign groups opposed to his Administration, according to New York Times reports.
President Wilson revived the alien and sedition laws to detain and imprison thousands of dissidents during World War I.
“False charges of collusion with Russia—allegations with no basis in evidence, according to Bob Woodward’s new book—were made against the current President, seemingly in an attempt to overturn a democrat election, truly a suppression of speech on a grand scale.
“President Lincoln, to save the Union, suspended habeas corpus in many locales and arrested newspaper editors who disagreed with his Administration. President Franklin Roosevelt detained Japanese-Americans on a massive scale. FDR and President Nixon also used the IRS against political enemies. Congress in the 1830's, with the support of President Jackson, placed a gag order on debates over slavery. Presidents Bush and Obama used the Patriot Act and the NSA in dubious ways to collect information on Americans.
“The lesson: freedom not only isn’t free, it’s precious, and often under siege, even in our own free nation.”
Its price is eternal vigilance."
In “Black People Don’t Need Bill Cosby’s Kind of Race Man” Glen Ford exposed the irony of the celebrity who demeaned black America for its propensity to face imprisonment being sent to the prison system himself.
Reader JC pushes back with points on the nature of the justice served to Cosby:
“I think timing was bad for the publication of Black People Don't Need Bill Cosby's Kind of ‘Race Man.’ I say that because it wasn't Haiti, the Independent Republic of Gullah-land or something similar, composed of his peers, that tried him. Regardless of innocence or guilt, the white American justice system, not having an inch of moral ground to try or sentence anyone, tried and sentenced him. It's the same system that ignores Carolyn Bryant Donham's admission that ‘Nothing that boy Emmet Till did could ever justify what happened to him.’ It's the same system and group of people that loathes Black Agenda Report and probably want to shut you down.
"Blacks don't own their politics.The African-diaspora, our dilemma in the west, comes with contradictions of all sorts. I understand the disappointment felt by Cosby's comments in his pound cake delivery. Even certain messages relayed during the Cosby Show, a time of all out attacks on the Black community in the United States. But, has Cosby made absolute no contributions to the Black community, Black art, Black universities and other institutions?
“Criticized for and confined to that pound cake speech, a speech of which I couldn't have disagreed more, he is now being equally confined, physically and narratively, by you know who, those who have not an inch of moral ground to stand on. America is reverting to its old playbook. Very old. And this ‘sexual predator’ designation is by no means confined to Bill Cosby. Remember the depiction of Black people in The Birth of a Nation and other films? The deranged sexual predator roaming about in search of white women.
“The US white justice system has gaping holes that could have been exploited in that article. Other angles could have been taken.”
To this Glen Ford responds:
“JC wants us to leave Cosby alone because the U.S. criminal justice system "has gaping holes" in its treatment of Black men accused of sex crimes. But my article takes no position on the merits of the legal case against Cosby. Rather, I condemn Cosby for his political crimes against Black people. Like Cosby himself, JC is obsessed with what white people do and say, rather than defending Black people from racist slander.”
In “Letter to Kaepernick: Where Do You Go From Here” contributor Danny Haiphong offered comradely political criticism to Colin Kaepernick and his followers on the ex-NFL player’s compromising decision to work with the NIKE corporation.
On FaceBook Robert Blandon responds:
“Danny Haiphong's critique of Kapernick's deal with Nike is excellent. It reminds me of the effusion of racial pride that many of us felt when Obama defeated McCain in 2008, but that feeling was ephemeral as Obama revealed himself as merely a tool of American imperialism. So let it be with Kaepernick, unless he comes to understand the dialectical nature of the struggle for black liberation and the concomitant advance toward complete human emancipation. Although we like to see a brother buck the odds and come back, we must be wary of who we align ourselves with in our comeback, what price it has on those who initially solidified in support of us, and how we must proceed as a class and race to defeat the hegemonic empire of decadent U.S. imperialism.”
I thank our readers for making us reflect on history in this week’s pieces. I look forward to more back and forth over the next week.
Jahan Choudhry is Comments Editor for Black Agenda Report. He is an organizer with the Saturday Free School based in Philadelphia, PA. Reach him at jchoudhry(at)blackagendareport.com.
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Dr. Gregory C. Hutchings, Jr. is an Executive-in-Residence for the School of Education at American University and a former superintendent of Alexandria, Virginia public schools.
