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

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 7/22/13
23 Jul 2013
🖨️ Print Article

Blacks Preyed Upon by For-Profit Colleges

Education corporations like Phoenix University have entrapped record numbers of African Americans in high debt and poor quality college course with no jobs at the end of the process, said journalist Kai Wright, author of an article titled “Young, Black and Buried in Debt: How For-Profit Colleges Prey on African American Ambitions.” Black college enrollment increased 35 percent between 2003 and 2009, twice the rate of white increase, according to Wright. However, most of the increase was in pursuit of “subprime degrees” from for-profit schools “that play on people’s ambitions and trick them into a terrible deal, because they’re desperate.”

Preventive Detention a Counter to Social Unrest

A federal appeals court last week upheld preventive military detention of U.S. citizens without charges or trial, ruling that the plaintiffs could not prove they were actually in danger of being detained. “It would be extremely simple for the executive and the legislative branch” to exempt U.S. citizens from the provisions, said former New York Times foreign correspondent Chris Hedges, one of the plaintiffs. “But they won’t do that, because they consciously want, in the event of social unrest, the capacity to use the military to carry out domestic policing.”

Cornel West: Zimmerman Verdict Reveals Nature of System

The “legal lynching” of Trayvon Martin “allows us to see what is systemic and what is chronic throughout the criminal justice system and its connection to the larger capitalist society,” said activist and academic Dr. Cornel West, of Union Theological Seminary. “We have to make the connection between the killing of our innocent brother Trayvon and the killing of innocent children by U.S. drones in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia.

California Hunger Strike is “Call of Desperation”

Ever Florez, a former inmate on solitary confinement in California’s notorious Pelican Bay prison, said the current hunger strike is more widespread than previous actions because prisoners are more desperate. “People get tired,” said Florez, a member of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network. “You live in a little cell for an enormous amount of years, and it makes you sick in your mind. If you feel that you’re on the brink of going insane, you have to make a call. It’s a call of desperation.”

Vigil at White House for Lynne Stewart

Ralph Poynter, husband and comrade of people’s lawyer Lynne Stewart, resumed his daily vigil outside the White House, demanding her compassionate release from prison. “They turned a cold ear to us and said, ‘See us in six months,’” said Poynter. “Psychologically, Lynne is fantastic,” he said. “Physically, she is dying a little each day.” Stewart is suffering from Stage Four breast cancer. Her lawyers are seeking a hearing with the judge that sentenced her to prison for ten years for zealously defending her client in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Why the U.S. Arms Islamic Jihadists

“U.S. imperialism feels that it can use the jihadists to depose a particular regime,” such as in Syria, “and then pivot and isolate and marginalize the jihadists and put in neoliberal forces,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American studies at the University of Houston. “That strategy has not been working – look at Libya, for example – and I think that perhaps that may lead to a rethink on the part of Washington.”

 

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.


More Stories


  • ​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
    A People(s)-Centered Human Rights Critique of “An Open Letter to Iran’s Political Prisoners”
    26 Aug 2026
    A People(s)-Centered Human Rights framework rejects the liberal abstraction that makes a false symmetry between Iranian authoritarianism and U.S. imperialism, which obscures the fact that one is a…
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    ESSAY: The CIA and Studies on Guerrilla Warfare, Robert Molteno, 1979
    26 Aug 2026
    “In the period since 1969, one can detect the same old close ties between right-wing U.S. academics, think tanks, foundations, and the U.S. Government…”
  • Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
    The Manifestation of Surplus Populations: How Gary, Indiana is the Latest Exemplar of the Wrong Complexion for Protection
    26 Aug 2026
    White supremacy works through institutions, and FEMA's formula for allocating disaster relief shows us how the state decides which neighborhoods are prioritized and which are left to suffer. Those in…
  • Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    U.S. Liberal Media Literacy Guide: The World Bank and the IMF
    26 Aug 2026
    The IMF and World Bank are not subjects the corporate media cover in any real sense. Instead, their role is treated as unquestionably immutable and beneficial.
  • Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective
    The Guardian Letter: The Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective Responds
    26 Aug 2026
    The Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective (AISC) wrote this response to the open letter To Iran's political prisoners, 'trapped between two blades of a scissors' which appeared in The…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us