| Black Agenda Report

Philippe Gendrault
Some Reflections on Systemic Racism and Capitalism
02 Sep 2020
The system of exploitation that bore slavery remains, albeit without slavery, the very same system of exploitation. “American capitalism cannot possibly be anything but racist.”
Don Fitz
Cuba’s Experience Teaches Us That Medicare-for-All Is a Beginning, Not the End Point
02 Sep 2020
Cuba built a universal health system from scratch, and we should follow that example to replace the US non-system of medical care. “Though a necessary beginning, Med-4-All is a conservative demand which does not recognize that a failure to go forward will inevitably result in market forces pushing…
Hana Kiros
A Tale of Two Teens: When White Killers Are Treated Better Than Black Victims
02 Sep 2020
It’s Cowboys and Indians updated: a wicked game where Black people are seen as predators but almost always end up prey. “The goodwill that’s been granted to this white boy who has taken two lives will never be given to Trayvon Martin or Jacob Blake.” I remember being thirteen and staying up to see…
Mark P. Fancher
Police Kill. We March. Why?
02 Sep 2020
We must instead think creatively about how to either take total community control of law enforcement as an institution or to bring about an independent, nation-building, self-governing reality. “We are able to develop new approaches to community security adapted to the current material conditions…
Jake Johnson
US Facilitates Arms for Killer Cops and Criminals in Haiti
02 Sep 2020
Weapons are flowing to pro-regime gangsters suspected of assassinating opponents of the US-backed regime. “G9 is evoking the horrors of the Tontons Macoutes, the government-backed paramilitaries that terrorized Haiti for decades under dictator François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude.”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting”
02 Sep 2020
Looting and rioting appear as immediately effective tactics in the struggle against whiteness, property and the police. “The non-violent Civil Rights Movement we learn about in elementary school never really existed.”
Asha Noor
BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
02 Sep 2020
An abolitionist frame of thought is a rebirth, a spiritual process, a painful undertaking, and an ancestral conjuring for Black and brown people. “Abolition has become a salient part of the conversation, yet many wouldn't see themselves as unfree.” In this series we ask organizers, artists, and…
Jahan Choudhry, BAR Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
02 Sep 2020
This week the Democratic Party presidential ticket was on your minds. We share your letters for “'Kamala Auntie': On the Vulgarity of Bourgeois Identity Politics in 2020” and “Biden Offers Nothing But More War, Austerity and White Supremacy - Without Trump.”
Anthony Monteiro
The Invention of Ibram X Kendi and the Ideological Crises of Our Time
02 Sep 2020
Rich white capitalists may be donating millions to Black Lives Matter, but they’re also funding and praising nonsense like Kendi’s babblings on race and capitalism. “When the ideas of the Black Radical Tradition are finding wider agreement, this book is an attack upon it.”
P. Khalil Saucier
“The Balls in (Y)our Court:” Naomi Osaka and (Continued) Black Genocide
02 Sep 2020
Osaka’s statement must be seen as part of a radical tradition too often redacted from sports history. “Genocide creates the imperative for radical transformation, not social reform, and leaves people with no other choice but to dismantle the conditions that spawn it.”