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

Chuck Squatriglia
Feds Lend Tesla $465 Million to Build Model S
26 Feb 2025
Elon Musk is Donald Trump's right-hand man and viewed as an evil incarnate, but it was Barack Obama's administration which bailed out Tesla with a $465 million loan in 2009. Both wings of the duopoly…
Tamara Nassar
Palestinians Forced to Flee US-Armed Israeli Military in West Bank
26 Feb 2025
Israel initiated a massive assault against the West Bank, displacing tens of thousands of people. As the terror and destruction go on, settlers continue to steal land as part of Israel's expansionist…
Kit Klarenberg
USAID Exported CIA Balkan Terror to Haiti
26 Feb 2025
After the CIA orchestrated the 2004 coup in Haiti, the U.S. ushered in a genocidal paramilitary organization from the Balkans to violently remove all resistance to regime change efforts.
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Black Agenda Radio February 21, 2025
21 Feb 2025
In this week’s segment, we hear about US policy towards Somalia, which is again the target of US policies of destabilization and military attack. But first, we talk to an organizer about the…
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Afeni on Mobilizing Against Neo-Liberalism and Imperialism
21 Feb 2025
Afeni is a Washington, D.C., organizer and an Electoral Justice Table member of the Movement for Black Lives. She joins us from Washington to discuss the first month of the Donald Trump…