Black Agenda Radio for Week of April 4, 2016

05 Apr 2016

Carolina Youths Demand Black Community Control of Police

The city of Greenville, South Carolina witnessed two large funerals in recent weeks: one for a white cop, the other for 17 year-old Deontaye Mackey, who police claim killed the officer and then committed suicide. Black young people don’t buy the cops’ version, and believe the deaths occurred as part of a police scheme to flood the community with drugs and guns. “This was a dirty cop, he harassed the Black community,” said Efia Nwangaza, director of Greenville’s Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination. Black youth “are committed to developing their own patrols and calling for Black community control of police,” and plan to “launch their own ‘people’s investigation’ into what actually happened.”

Cornel West Blasts Neoliberalism, Jesse Jackson Redefines “Socialism”

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., the Rainbow-PUSH leader who ran for president in 1984 and 1988, and Dr Cornel West, the nation’s best known Black public intellectual, discussed “Politics, Black Lives Matter and the 2016 Election” at Columbia University, in New York City. Rev. Jackson has endorsed no one in this year’s Democratic presidential primaries, but praised Bernie Sanders’ goal to “democratize capital” – which Jackson said means “the same thing” as socialism. Dr. West, who has been stumping for Sanders, described Hillary Clinton this way: “When you hear the word integrity, her name is not the first one that comes to mind. Granted, Hillary Clinton is better than the neofascist in-the-making, Donald Trump,” said West. “But neoliberals are still dangerous.”

Flint Water was Poisoned on Purpose

BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, a former federal Environmental Protection Agency official who blew the whistle on her bosses nearly two decades ago, said the massive contamination of Flint, Michigan’s water system was “intentional.” “We know that the EPA and the State of Michigan knew this community was being poisoned for at least nine months,” but refused to do anything about it, said Coleman-Adebayo. “The Flint crisis makes the Tuskegee Experiment look like child’s play.” In light of Black people’s experience in this country, “How many times are we going to keep saying, ‘Oops, they made a mistake?’”

Don’t Confuse DeRay McKesson with Black Lives Matter

“I would separate DeRay McKesson from the founders of Black Lives Matter,” said Umi Selah, the former Phillip Agnew, of the Florida-based Dream Defenders. “McKesson is a self-proclaimed activist from an Ivy League school and from Teach for America, that created an online persona for himself and is now able to parlay that into huge revenue and a fledgling campaign for mayor of Baltimore,” he said, in an interview with Pascal Robert, a frequent contributor to Black Agenda Report. Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi “have a history of doing deep grassroots organizing. What they created is something we haven’t seen since Occupy,” said Selah.

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