Obama “Might As Well Switch Parties"
Black South Carolina political activist Kevin Alexander Gray says the president’s collusion with the GOP shows where he stands on the political spectrum. Blacks will be the “last to jump off” the Obama “bandwagon, even as we get rolled over by it.” What progressives need, says Gray, is “a movement that is external to” Obama.
Doug Henwood, editor of Left Business Review, says Obama is “pretty much at one with neoliberal economic policies.” The president’s “heart is on the right wing of the Democratic Party.”
Detroit Teachers May Buck Obama and National Union
“The problems of education are really problems of inequality,” says Steven Conn, candidate for Detroit teachers union president in the January 3 election. Conn’s Defend Public Education/Save Our Students slate hopes to join teachers in Chicago and Washington who have rebelled against national union leadership and the Obama administration’s educational policies. “Instead of a commitment to integration and equality we now have a commitment to charterization and the dollar,” says Conn.
New Orleans Schools Suspend Nearly 30 Percent of Students
A recent study by the Southern Poverty Law Center shows almost 30 percent of students in the New Orleans Recovery School District are suspended from class each year. Study author Shakti Belway says schools handcuff large numbers of students for minor infractions, some of them as young as six years old. Charter schools enforce “silent lunches” in cafeterias, forbidding children to speak to one another.
“Withholding education is not appropriate punishment” for behavioral problems, says Florida Family Court Judge Irene Sullivan, author of Raised by the Courts: One Judges Insight Into Juvenile Justice.
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.
Any act of solidarity with the Haitian people in the Dominican Republic is blocked by the national police force and Neo-Nazi groups.
United States "aid" to Afghanistan covers up the theft of that nation's assets and the resulting suffering of its population. The Black Alliance for Peace Afghanistan News Update explains.
The world needs a new United Nations. Its current formation gives great power to a handful of nations, ignores most of the world, and is ineffectual in addressing issues such as the climate…
The undercount of communities of color worsened in the 2020 census, the 20th commemoration of Gabriel's Rebellion at the African Burial Ground in Richmond, Virginia, and the quest for justice for…
Kelly Percival is Senior Council with the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. She is co-author of the report Improving the Census. She joins us from New York to discuss the…
