Antar Lumumba Seeks to Reclaim City Hall in Jackson, Mississippi
Voters in mostly Black Jackson, Mississippi, will decide on June 6 whether Antar Lumumba will succeed his father, the veteran activist and lawyer Chokwe Lumumba, who died during his first year in the mayor’s office in 2014. Antar Lumumba won the Democratic primary with 56 percent of the vote. “If we can’t turn out the Black working class, then we are in trouble,” said Kali Akuno, of Cooperation Jackson and the Lumumba campaign. Jackson, the state capital, faces challenges of gentrification, high municipal debt, “threats of the privatization of our water system, and loss of our school system to a state takeover,” said Akuno.
Russians See Hostile U.S. Agenda
Longtime anti-war activist David Swanson recently returned from a trip to Russia. “I wanted to see what Russians thought about foreign policy, about the United States, and about all the ‘scandals’ in Washington that mention Russia all the time but hardly ever have any evidence in them,” said Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.org. Russians are keenly aware of the history of U.S. encirclement and hostility towards their country. “They see opposition to Trump in the United States as all coming out of an anti-Russian agenda,” he said. “They have no idea, whatsoever, that people might dislike Trump for some other reasons.”
Black Colombians Strike Against Racism, Poverty and Violence
Riot police brutally attacked protesters in the mostly Black city of Buenaventura, the South American nation’s largest port. Charo Mina-Rojas, of Black Community Process, part of a broad spectrum of organizations behind a general strike in the city of half a million people, said water is unavailable 150 days of the year, the people “don’t have access to health care, teachers have not been paid in months,” and violence is rampant in poor neighborhoods controlled by paramilitary gunmen. “We don’t see opportunities for real peace in Colombia if Black people continue under these racist attacks by the national government,” said Mina-Rojas.
Mumia Supporters Demand Documents That Could Lead to a New Trial
In the wake of a court decision that former district attorneys who become judges should not be allowed to rule on cases they prosecuted, supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal are demanding release of documents related to the conduct of former Philadelphia DA Ronald Castillo. Supporters are urged to call the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (215.686.8000) “to demand that files in Mumia’s case be turned over to Mumia’s lawyers, to attain real justice,” said Gwendolyn Debrow, of the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home. Abu Jamal was convicted of murder in 1982 in the death of a Philadelphia policeman. “It’s time we pulled the lid off this case and expose this system, its corruption and violence and prosecutorial misconduct and the police framing of Mumia,” said Debrow.
Trump May Be Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire
In an essay for Prison Radio, the nation’s best known political prisoner described President Donald Trump’s “tweets and utterances” as “a daily cascade of craziness.” “Not since Watergate have we seen such a fury for the hide of a president,” said Mumia Abu Jamal. “This smells of corruption, of capitalist greed and excess, and of imperial arrogance on a grand, global scale. This feels like the beginning of the end.”
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.
Israeli and Arab military officials have come together for meetings and trainings, facilitated by U.S. Central Command, on regional threats, Iran and underground tunnels.
Solidarity activist and analyst Roger Harris takes stock of the rapidly escalating US military threats against Venezuela.
In this week’s segment, we hear about a graphic novel that presents the history of Black armed resistance in the U.S. But first, we discuss the city of Chicago and how activists and communities are…
Frank Chapman is Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. He joins us from Chicago, which Donald Trump has targeted with an onslaught of federal law…
Ben Passmore is the author of the graphic novel: “Black Arms to Hold You Up: A History of Black Resistance,” published by Pantheon Books. Ben Passmore is an award-winning political cartoonist who has…
