| Black Agenda Report

Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Progressives Capitulate to Biden
06 May 2021
There can be no more excuses made for Democratic “progressives,” who steadfastly refuse to fight for what they know to be right. “There is no lesser evil, no one who will save us.”
Riva Enteen
Biden is Full of Crap on Helping Working People
12 May 2021
If Biden wants to help workers, he can fully implement the National Labor Relations Act, which hasn’t been enforced in 86 years. “Workers need guaranteed affordable childcare, and by now $15 an hour doesn’t even cut it.”
Dr. Kweli Nzito
A Curious Tale of an Iceberg with a Hacked Tip
12 May 2021
Practitioners of the dark art of bigotry find a perfect camouflage behind impenetrable walls of denial to mask their wicked ways. “The likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have been observing a deafening silence on the victims of oppression.”
Joshua Moufawad-Paul
Epidemic Empire: Colonialism, Contagion, and Terror 1817-2020
12 May 2021
“Disease poetics” has been part of global capitalism since its emergence. “Medical science as an institution, regardless of the fact that it generates truth procedures and empirically verifiable technologies, is definitely affected by the social relations within which it is embedded.” Epidemic…
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.”