| Black Agenda Report

Janine Jackson
If Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case Is a ‘Non-Issue,’ Why Have Media Gone to Such Lengths to Silence Him?
12 May 2021
The corporate media is second only to the police in spreading falsehoods about the nation’s best known political prisoner. “The Philadelphia Inquirer wouldn’t cover rallies and tribunals in support of Abu-Jamal, calling them ‘stunts.’”
The Peoples Party
We Must Break the Duopoly Or Biden Will Deliver Something Much Worse Than Trump
12 May 2021
Biden promises popular progressive policies, then quietly reneges while the corporate press turns a blind eye and falls silent. “Biden will spend the rest of his term proposing progressive legislation while ensuring that it won’t pass.” The first 100 days of a president’s term are historically…
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor
The Emerging Movement for Police and Prison Abolition
12 May 2021
In the past year or two, the proposition of defunding or abolishing police and prisons has travelled from incarcerated-activist networks into mainstream conversations. “Mariame Kaba, a New York City-based activist and organizer, is at the center of an effort to “build up another world.”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Stefanie K. Dunning’s “Black to Nature”
12 May 2021
The author explores various social, political, and cultural sites that explore and highlight the Black pastoral experience. “Under-valued, rural, and pastoral locations embody generative possibilities for liberation.”
Tiana Reid
BAR Book Forum: Short Meditations on Christina Sharpe’s “In the Wake”
12 May 2021
There was no way to make light of this daunting book and its effects on me, no matter how much I thought I knew it. “I would learn how life could “texture my reading practices.”
Matthew D. Lassiter
Police and the License to Kill
12 May 2021
Detroit’s wanton killing of hundreds of Blacks in the civil right era shows why most of today’s proposals to make police more accountable are bound to fail. “Detroit officers killed at least 219 civilians between 1957 and 1973, but this is definitely an undercount.”
Mark P. Fancher
The USA – Immoral, Illegal, Irredeemable, and Irrelevantto Global Africa’s Liberation Struggle
12 May 2021
The U.S. can never be reformed to render justice to its African residents. “Our struggle must have Africa at its core.” The seemingly endless debate in America over what people of African ancestry should call themselves has made many of us weary -- and with good reason. Consensus on this question…
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
The acrobats are back…(gimme a bleepin’ break!)
12 May 2021
The acrobats are back—riding bareback and backwards on Donkeys! They’re back juggling hocus-pocus focus groups; Back, spinning Wall Street straw into fools’ gold for the war- mongering mouth of a punch drunk politician. Back hallucinating on FDR Fairytales. Back somersaulting over scarlet…
Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist
From Palestine to Colombia: The End of the White World Colonial/Capitalist Project?
12 May 2021
Despite the quickening decline of the “West,” the US and its junior partners in imperialism are determined to hold humanity hostage to terminal capitalist greed and violence. “Biden labels himself an ‘Atlanticist’ — shorthand for a white supremacist.”
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
Open Letter to Superstar Rapper J. Cole about Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo
12 May 2021
Dear Mr. Cole: I’m no rap or hip hop aficionado, so I contacted my fellow Pacifica Radio producer and Hard Knock Radio host Davey D. Cook to see what he could tell me about you as soon as I saw that you’ll be suiting up to play for the Rwandan Patriots at the debut of the Basketball…