| Black Agenda Report

Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Amandla Thomas-Johnson’s “Becoming Kwame Ture”
07 Apr 2021
The Stokely Carmichael of the 60s continued to politically and ideologically evolve while in Africa where he adopts the names of his political mentors Sekou Toure and Kwame Nkrumah. “Ture imagined a world where holding fast to principles of anti-imperialism and anti-racism were crucial, not…
Troizel Carr
BAR Book Forum: Short Meditations on Christina Sharpe’s “In the Wake”
07 Apr 2021
Being in the wake, in the afterlives of slavery…is to be caught in the reverberating aftermath of a long disaster, a durational dance with danger, with terror. “In the Wake is a dramaturgical analysis of Black life, both historical and contemporary.”
by Jahan Choudhry, Comments Editor
Letters from Our Readers
07 Apr 2021
In "On Anarchism and Black Revolution" Peter James Hudson examines the historical roots of critiques of anarchism and its relationship to Black liberation movements. Johnnie Lewis writes:
Sylvie Laurent, interviewed by Arvind Dilawar
MLK Was a Radical Who Hated Not Only Racial Subordination But Class Exploitation
07 Apr 2021
King explicitly linked the value of human dignity to the material conditions necessary to enable people to live a decent life. “Racial domination and economic exploitation ought to be uprooted altogether.”
Black Alliance For Peace
Biden-Harris Look Ready to Keep U.S. In Afghanistan—Say No!
07 Apr 2021
The new Democratic administration seems determined to sabotage an agreement to end the “longest war.” “A key component of the agreement—the removal of U.S. troops by May 1—may not happen.” It’s looking like the Biden-Harris administration will scuttle a historic agreement the Trump administration…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Testi-lyin’
07 Apr 2021
Northeast, midwest, southwest, south, down south, up south, out south—south of the Canadian border—Slouched down in his cruiser, slow-rollin’ the ‘hood; Or a- top his horse, bullwhip barking at shiny bent Black backs: “150 lbs of cotton today!” It’s in his DNA—he’s trained that way…
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
PAMPHLET: Africa Fights for Freedom, Alpheaus Hunton, 1950
07 Apr 2021
A pamphlet written 70 years ago by an exiled Black American communist reveals an African continent seething to break free from European colonization. “The colonial peoples’ resistance is at the very core of the present world struggle.”
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
Criticizing the Democratic Party is not “Privileged”, It is the Duty of a Revolutionary
07 Apr 2021
Neither AOC nor the rest of the Squad has mounted any significant challenge to the party’s corporate leadership, despite being elected for this exact purpose. ‘Black Americans are the lifeblood of the Democratic Party’s legitimacy, thereby making it necessary for the DNC to drape its loyalty…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: The U.S. Can’t Control the World
07 Apr 2021
Slow-witted Joe Biden appears to think that we’re still in the age of the sole superpower, when in fact that era has come and gone. “China’s Belt and Road Initiative involves countries on every continent and provides opportunity where the western nations offer only debt and subjugation.”
Kenneth Rogoff
The US Dollar’s Hegemony is Looking Fragile
15 Apr 2021
French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing famously the dollar’s special status called America’s “exorbitant privilege” – which it might be in the process of losing “China’s GDP (measured at international prices) surpassed that of the US back in 2014 and is still growing far faster than…