| Black Agenda Report

Bill Quigley
Barack Obama and Jeremiah Wright: Sabotage, Division, or Sedition
14 May 2008
by Brother Bede Vincent Barack Obama made his break with Rev. Jeremiah Wright under relentless pressure from white corporate media to disavow the Black Liberation theologian. Rev. Wright did not choose the time and terms of the split with his former parishioner - "He was thrust into the…
Bill Quigley
Police Terror and Lawless Order
14 May 2008
by Dr. Floyd W. Hayes, III "I see a growing prison-garrison state in which urban residents will become the targets of mounting police murder and incarceration." The author's grim assessment is based on the "absolute disregard for the sanctity of Black life" that marks each era of American…
Bill Quigley
Boss's Boycott: Barry Bonds Vanishes
14 May 2008
by Dave Zirin Barry Bonds has been made to disappear. Like those who fell out of favor with Stalin, Bonds has become a non-person, a former hero wiped from the public record, the "Leon Trotsky of Major League Baseball." The all-time home run king can't buy a job, thanks to an agreement among…
Mark P. Fancher
House Slaves, Field Slaves and the Obama Predicament
14 May 2008
by Mark P. Fancher How does a present day House Negro behave? Would such people recognize themselves as successors to the House Slaves of old? Could one become president of the United States? What about the political heirs to the Field Slaves? And where would one find the Big House in the…
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Freedom Rider: America Brings Hell to Somalia
14 May 2008
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley The U.S. "war on terror" is in fact a war on international law and civilization, a catch-all category of assaults on the weak. Under the anti-terror banner, Washington grinds Somalia into the sand, through hi-tech weaponry and the deployment…
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Freedom Rider: Why We Write About Obama
23 Jan 2008
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley Caught up and rendered silly by Obamamania, Black progressives who should know better have unilaterally disarmed themselves in surrender to a media-amplified euphoria that most resembles a group drug fest. The faculties of memory and common…
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Freedom Rider: The End of Truth
07 May 2008
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley A Barack Obama presidency would certainly be a first - the first time that "most black people will end their historic progressive politics and applaud this country's criminal activity just because the head criminal looks like them."…
Bill Quigley
Sean Bell Verdict: It May Be Legal But It’s Not Right
07 May 2008
by Mel Reeves Barack Obama demands that African Americans "respect" the verdict in the Sean Bell case - but what about justice? Why should Blacks respect any element of a police-judicial apparatus that sanctions the deployment of 50-round firing squads targeting unarmed men? If all U.S. laws…
Bill Quigley
The Senator, His Pastor and the Israel Lobby
07 May 2008
by Ali Abunimah If Liberation Theologians like Rev. Jeremiah Wright feel discarded by Barack Obama, consider the Palestinians. By all accounts, as an Illinois State Senator Obama was at least open-minded about the plight of Palestinians - to the distress of Israel lobbyists. No more. Obama…
Bill Quigley
Give the Candidates the MLK Test
16 Jan 2008
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford The "hope-la" and "change-la" emanating from the Obama and Clinton campaigns turned sour as Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday approached. The two front-running candidates and their corporate media-megaphones found themselves on shaky ground when the…