Cornel West: Washington March Organizers are Part of the “Obama Plantation”; Says Sharpton Attempts to “Contain Black Rage”, Jay-Z an Example of the “Re-Niggerization of the Black Professional Class.”
Bruce Dixon's Open Letter to Melissa Harris-Perry, Toure, Joy Ann Reid: Stop the Hate, Grow Some Guts
Glen Ford: US Military Conquest of Africa "All But Complete"
Cornel West on Sharpton, Jay-Z, and the 50th Anniversary Farce on Washington:
Rev. Al Sharpton and other organizers of the March on Washington 50th anniversary commemoration are so tightly tied to “the Obama plantation,” said activist and academic Dr. Cornel West, “we won’t get to focus on the New Jim Crow; we won’t get to focus on the privatization of education; we won’t get to focus on the land grabs and the gentrification of land it the city; we won’t get to focus on working class people; and we certainly won’t get to focus on the drones and those bombs landing on innocent brothers and sisters in Pakistan and Yemen and Somalia, and especially the 222 innocent children who have been murdered by the U.S. government so far, and counting.”
President Obama is scheduled to speak at the August 28 event at the Lincoln Memorial. Dr. West, of the Union Theological Seminary, in New York City, does not plan to attend. “If Martin [Luther King Jr.] were to show up at this march and they asked him to give a speech,” said West, “what he would say would be so subversive that those on the Obama plantation would be revealed for who they are, which is obsessed with career, obsessed with access, obsessed with status as opposed to being obsessed with the suffering of poor Black brothers and sisters.”
Speaking on Black Agenda Television, Dr. West said George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin has fueled “an overwhelming Black rage, and Brother Sharpton and the others are trying to contain it, and of course Obama and Holder are fearful of it, because Black rage is always the catalyst to Black self-determination, toward Black self-respect, and toward Black self-defense.”
Dr. West rebuked entertainment mogul Jay-Z, who said his “presence is charity” to Black people, “just like Obama’s is.”
“It’s what I call the re-niggerization of the Black professional class, where you have fear, you have a tremendous sense of being intimidated even though you have big money,” said West. “So you say to Brother Jay-Z, What are you risking? We don’t want to just see you successful, we appreciate it, we want to see you faithful to something bigger than you, and faith has to do with risking something. The only way you become de-niggerized and free is when you are willing to risk, when you’re willing to go against the grain, to show you’re not fearful, you’re not afraid. Unfortunately, Jay-Z at his worst is an example of folk who get so elevated that they don’t show courage and take a risk for something that is bigger than them.”
Bruce Dixon to Melissa Harris-Perry, Toure, Joy Ann Reid: Grow Some Guts
When the White House gets upset, Black MSNBC talking heads get apoplectic. MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Toure and Joy Ann Reid whipped themselves into McCarthyite fervor against secrets-leaker Edward Snowden. Harris-Perry and Reid lost all sense of decorum, screaming like banshees at Wikileaks spokesman Kris Hrafnsson. In an open letter to the trio, Black Agenda Report managing editor Bruce Dixon described Harris-Perry and Reid as playing “a reprehensible game of make believe, where leakers are criminals instead of heroes, Wikileaks is a conspiracy instead of a media organization, Joy Ann's a tough district attorney and Melissa's a special agent ready with the handcuffs.” As for Toure’s reflexive defense of Obama’s global dragnet for Snowden: “We all know you're just repeating what the White House the Pentagon the intelligence agencies tell you. That's just plain lazy, man,” said Dixon, in his latest Black Agenda Television commentary. “Until the three of you grow the guts and integrity to represent something besides your own shallow careers on the tube, stop the fronting, stop the hate, and leave the real journalists alone.”
Glen Ford: U.S. Military Conquest of Africa “All But Complete”
Since its founding in 2008, AFRICOM, the United States Military Command in Africa, “has forged deep relationships with the militaries of EVERY country on the continent – except two,” said Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford. “Only Zimbabwe and tiny Eritrea have avoided entanglement in the AFRICOM Matrix – which is why these two countries are on the American Hit List for regime change. All of the rest of Africa’s militaries, every single one of them,” said Ford, in his latest commentary for Black Agenda Television,” has been to some degree integrated into the U.S. Military Command. To that extent, African independence on the military level has ceased to exist.”
For more information on Black Agenda Television, contact Glen Ford at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
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John Parker is Coordinator of the Harriet Tubman Center for Social Justice in Los Angeles and a candidate for a congressional seat in California’s 37th District.
