Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016 | Black Agenda Report

Black Agenda Report for Week of August 15, 2016

16 Aug 2016

🖨️ Print Article

Greens are Alternative to “Democratic Plantation”

Ajamu Baraka, the veteran Black activist tapped as Jill Stein’s presidential running mate, said the Green Party can make a difference, this year, by “building an alternative to the Democratic plantation” and “transcending the politics of fear.” Baraka is a co-founder of the U.S. Human Rights Network and an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. “With the continued deterioration of the democratic processes, and of this economy, and the clear tendency on the part of the state to repress political opposition, our time is limited in terms of the extent we can take advantage of the limited democratic space that does exist,” said Baraka.

Neither Trump Nor Clinton Can Resolve Crisis

Although both major party candidates acknowledge that the economy is benefiting only the One Percent, the difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton lies in how they “identify the source of the problem,” said Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Duboisian scholar and Black Radical Organizing Committee activist from Philadelphia. “Clinton says that the policies of financialization, of Wall Street privilege, of trade deals like NAFTA and TPP, are not fundamentally wrong – that we should tweet them, not change them,” said Dr. Monteiro. “Trump, in essence, argues that the problem of the American economy is grounded in the export of capital, and that this is the source of the impoverishment of the American working class.” Monteiro believes “Trump’s stating of the problem is far more accurate than Clinton’s,” but neither of them “provide a solution to the problem.”

Roots of Black Movement for Self-Defense

Black scholars and activists came together, in Detroit, to celebrate the life of Robert F. Williams, the former NAACP leader in Monroe, North Carolina, who in the 1950s formed a Black Armed Guard to defend Black people from racist violence. Among the speakers was Dr. Akinyele Umoja, chair of the African American Studies Department at Georgia State University and author of the book We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance in the Mississippi Freedom Movement. “There were already people in the South practicing armed self-defense,” said Dr. Umoja. “The thing that distinguishes Williams is that he was an advocate. Most people were quite” members of informal protective networks, but Williams advocated self-defense in his newspaper, The Crusader, and “people began to look at the movement he and others were talking about.”

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.

listen

http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/BlackAgendaRadio_20160815.mp3

More Stories

The Editors, Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: The Peril of Mispronouncing “Parsley,” Sorayda Peguero Isaac, 2021
13 Nov 2024
Dominican author Sorayda Peguero Isaac on the persistence of anti-Haitianism.
Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report Contributor
Implications of a Second Trump Term for Working Class and Oppressed Peoples
13 Nov 2024
Irrespective of the rhetoric that characterized the campaign, the world’s majority will continue to be compelled to struggle against imperialist exploitation and oppression.
Jon Jeter
Why Kamala Lost: The Democrats’ Anti-Black Electoral Strategy
13 Nov 2024
The Kamala Harris campaign for the 2024 presidential election was a display of the democratic party's willingness to abandon the most loyal segment of their base to remain fully committed to their…
Tunde Osazua
Violence and Extraction in Mozambique: How Neo-Colonial Forces and Corporate Interests Undermine Security
13 Nov 2024
Western corporate interests have targeted Mozambique to exploit its natural resources, using tactics of destabilization and neoliberal austerity measures to weaken the nation. While these imperialist…
Anthony Karefa Rogers-Wright
Unprincipled, Unstrategic, and Unsustainable: e(U)logy for the U.S. Climate “Movement”
13 Nov 2024
The ineffectiveness of the climate movement during the 2024 election signals its inevitable collapse. But from the rubble, a new movement dedicated to the working class can be built.