Black Agenda Radio

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: What does genetic testing have to do with Reparations? A professor of anthropology makes the political connection. Hospital closings and endemic health problems have made rural America more vulnerable to the Coronavirus. And, Mumia Abu Jamal tells us what a pandemic looks like from behind the prison walls.    But first – Black America’s most prolific political author, Dr. Gerald Horne, has watched capitalist structures crumble under the impact of Covid-19 and the systems own contradictions. The professor of History and African American Studies says the pandemic has shaken global capitalism to its core. Dr. Carrie Hemming-Smith, of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, is dismayed by the death toll from Coronavirus in rural America. She’s co-author of an article that shows rural counties with Black or indigenous majorit

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The United States is in the grips of a health crisis and an economic crisis, but is the ruling class in crisis? A Black scholar says the oligarchy may be losing its grip. And, How do you sell Africa on the world market? You name a perfume after the continent, and make the commercial in Rome. Joe Biden has finally come up with a presidential campaign platform tailored to Black America. He calls it the “Lift Every Voice and Sing” Plan. But Ajamu Baraka, the 2016 Green Party vice presidential candidate, doesn’t see anything to sing about in Biden’s plan. Is the current crisis an economic collapse with a health component, or a health crisis that set off an economic meltdown? We put that question to Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar. Half a century after most African nations emerged from colonialism, advertisin

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: We’ll hear how upscale Black mothers from Detroit who move their families to the white suburbs are met with a barrage of micro-aggressions. And, Black former prison inmates have a hard time finding employment, or getting anybody to vouch for their trustworthiness. In the last decade, “Black Lives Matter” grew from a hash-tag to a movement. But the question still remains: Whose lives – and deaths -- matter enough to make the evening news? Colgate University sociology professor Alicia Simmons did a study of corporate media to find out how newspaper and TV newsrooms treat police killings of unarmed Black people.  The great Black activist and sociologist W.E.B. Dubois said Black life takes place behind a “veil” that serves as both a cloak and a shield against white attack. Professor Chasity Bailey-FAKhoury, at Grand Valley State Universit

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: a Black scholar says Blacks will remain a subservient people if they continue making REQUESTS, rather than DEMANDS, of power. And, we’ll take a look at a state that where whites, Hispanics and Native Americans are all acknowledged celebrated, but Black people are erased from history. But first – the state of Louisiana incarcerates more of its citizens per capita than any other place in the world, most of them Black. That Black prison majority is now mortally endangered by the coronavirus epidemic. The Black Is Back Coalition held a national teleconference, featuring two activists battling to free Louisiana’s prisoners from the Covid-19 death-trap. Belinda Parter Brown spoke first. She’s head of Louisiana United International. It has long been fashionable in some Black circles to speak of all the racial “progress” that has been made. Bu

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: Public housing tenants have long suffered from poor services and ceaseless attempts to demolish their homes and scatter them to the winds. But the Coronavirus epidemic presents public housing dwellers with a whole new set of challenges. And, a South African journalist is doing what he can to make scientific concepts accessible in the languages spoken by Black Africans.   But first – the Black Is Back Coaliion held a national ZOOM conference on the COVID-19 epidemic, and how Black people can fight back. We’ll present two of the conference presenters. First up, Betty Davis, of New York City. Whether the challenge is public health, police violence or education, Black Power is the answer. Philip McHarris is a PhD candidate at Yale Unversity who published an article in Essence Magazine titled “Public Housing Residents May Be Some Of The Ha

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The coronavirus had caused people in authority to take measures they’ve never even considered before, like letting lots of folks out of prison. We’ll hear from a district attorney whose allowing 40 percent of his city’s prisoners to ride out the epidemic at home. A Black scholar says Black kids are kicked out of class in obscene numbers because slavery and Jim Crow are alive and well in the nation’s schools. And, we’ll hear how racism was behind the coup that ousted Bolivia’s first Native American president. llinois Governor J.B. Pritzker has promised not to bring any more inmates into his state’s prison system due to the coronavirus epidemic. But Alan Mills, executive director of the Uptown People’s Law Center, says the prisons are already infected, and the state needs to free many more inmates from being trapped in a cage with the di

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: The word “Strike!” is on the lips of activists in the United States and Europe, where capitalist austerity has shaped the government’s response to the coronavirus epidemic. We’ll talk with an American activist in Spain who’s an expert on rent strikes, and a student activist at the University of California who proposes a strike for the people’s social welfare. Cooperation Jackson, the Black activist and workers cooperative organization headquartered in Jackson, Mississippi, is circulating a call for a general strike and a list of demands that would reorganize the economy to protect working people. The strike would begin on May first -- May Day. We asked Cooperation Jackson spokesman Kali Akuno: How to you launch a general strike when much of the country is under a general lockdown? Peter Gelderloos is an American anarchist activist, no

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret Kimberley, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: a young activist and writer explains why Bernie Sanders’ brand of socialism doesn’t measure up to the real thing. A call for change-makers to imagine the unimaginable. And, Mumia Abu Jamal says the system that put him in prison is coming apart at the seams.   But first – the superpower that wants to rule the world can’t even muster the resources to combat a virus, the lowest form of life on the planet. In Philadelphia, Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro says the American people have lost trust and belief in the system. We asked him if that fits the description of a crisis of legitimacy. Joshua Briond is a North-Carolina-based activist and member of the Black Alliance for Peace who used to be an enthusiastic supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. But he sees the world differently, now. Briond recently wrote

This is the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Nellie Bailey, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: James Baldwin had a very long career, but never wrote an entire book about Africa. However, a Black scholar says Baldwin’s later works show a keen understanding of African liberation. And, should a female athlete be disqualified from competition if some people think she looks and performs too much like a man? But first – Dr.Jared Ball has spent years disproving the proposition that the road to progress lies in harnessing Black consumers’ “buying power,” which supposedly exceeds a trillion dollars a year. Dr. Ball is a professor of Communications at Morgan State University and author of “The Myth and Propaganda of Black Buying Power.” The great writer James Baldwin is mostly known for his insights on race in the United States. But, according to Dag-Mah-Wee Woub-shet, a professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, Baldwin displayed a

This is the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Joe Biden, the corporate Democrat, has taken the lion’s share of Black votes, despite his long history of anti-Black politics. And, Black women with babies that could pass for white. Ain’t that a conversation-starter? Ajamu Baraka, a veteran human rights activist who ran for vice president under the Green Party banner in 2016, and who is now lead national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, says much of the Black political class has allied itself with the rich and attempted to strip Black politics of any class analysis. This Black Misleadership Class backs Joe Biden for president, despite his record as a mass Black incarcerator, warmonger and friend of the banks.  Branko MAR-CHA-TEACH is a longtime journalist and author of the book, “Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.” MAR-CHA-TEACH thinks that Black voters have been opting f

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: The last of the Move 9 political prisoners is coming to New York City to celebrate his release from the prison gulag. And, two Black scholars talk about the books they have their students read – and whether the students appreciate or understand them.  Police violence against Black people in Britain looks very much like it does in the United States. Adam Elliott-Cooper is a Phd candidate in the Department of Geography at Kings College, in London. Elliott-Cooper’s doctoral paper draws upon years of interviews he conducted with leaders of Black organizations opposed to police violence. He concluded that women are the heart and soul of the movement. Delbert Africa, the last of the surviving Move 9 defendants to be released from prison in the 1978 death of a Philadelphia policeman, is coming to New York City to celebrate the end of his 42 year-

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: We’ll take a look at some of the earliest fighters against Black Mass Incarceration; the last of the Move 9 political prisoners has been released from confinement; and, a Black scholar discusses peace activism three generations ago. The United National Anti-War Coalition recently held its annual national conference at the People’s Forum, in New York City. Black Agenda Report senior columnist Margaret Kimberley was one of the speakers. Mass Black Incarceration has been the norm in the United States, ever since the abolition of slavery, and Black women have always been in the forefront of prison reform. Nikki Brown is a professor of history at the University of New Orleans. She authored an article in the Journal of African American History, titled “Keeping Black Motherhood Out of Prison: Prison Reform and Woman-Saving in the Progressive Era.”

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Bail has been abolished for some offenses in New York State, but people held on one dollar bail find it hard to get out of jail; A Black professor says Emmet Till and Trayvon Martin both died on the alter of white womanhood; and, Mumia Abu Jamal makes some comparisons between 21st century poverty and the Great Depression. Most people think of environmental damage as having to do with pollution of the air and water. But Willie Wright, a professor of geography and African American Studies at Florida State University, in Tallahassee, says the landscape can also be damaged by using it to commit or conceal acts of violence against Black people. Professor Wright wrote an article for a radical journal on geography. New York is one of several states that have abolished cash bail, which has been used to keep poor people locked up before they’ve even

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Black America has invested much of its energies in the promise of public education, but a Black educator wants schools, as we know them, abolished. And, Julian Assange is in the courts, fighting against extradition to the United States. Why are BOTH corporate political parties so intent in imprisoning the founder of Wikileaks? Kansas City, Kansas, like most American cities, is the site of massive gentrification, forcing Black and poor people out of the urban core. But, in the past year, tenants in Kansas City have fought back, winning passage of a Tenants Bill of Rights. We spoke to one of the main organizers of the city’s tenant organization, Tara Rah-who-Veer. She said Kansas City tenants have made great strides in a short space of time. Growing numbers of activists are calling for the abolition of prisons in the US, as vestiges of slave

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Black women have taken the lead in calling for a basic makeover in health care in the United States, a profession that was largely built on experimentation on enslaved Black people, and which has failed to serve Black men, women and children, ever since. And, reading may be fundamental, but much of what young people read in school is a racist lie. We’ll talk with a professor whose reading list tries to correct the misinformation of US and world history. Democrats and Republicans alike stood up and cheered at President Trump’s State of the Union Address, when he introduced Juan Guaido, the right-wing politician who last year proclaimed himself president of Venezuela. Nobody voted for Guaido, and Venezuela already had an elected government, but the U.S. recognized Guaido, anyway. American activists then occupied the Venezuelan embassy in Washi

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: The amazingly prolific and ground-breaking Black scholar Dr. Gerald Horne talks about untangling the racist distortions of history; a French writer and activist maintains that racism is baked into the culture of the colonial powers of Europe; and, we’ll learn about the deep connections between Black people’s religions on both sides of the Atlantic Oc Erica Caines is an activist and writer in Ann Arundel County, Maryland. Caines has created a program that brings Black-themed books to children. She hopes to raise a generation of revolutionaries. Dr. Gerald Horne is professor History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, and a phenomenally prolific author. Horne’s scholarship has challenged long-held beliefs about the actual nature of the white American settlers war for independence from Britain. Dr. Horne recently appeare

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Black women from across the French empire were instrumental in shaping the gobal liberation movement; and, Claudia Jones, a Black communist woman from Trinidad, put her mark on Black feminist politics.  The African People’s Socialist Party has been around since the Sixties. In a few days, the party will hold an important plenary session. Chairman Omali Yeshitela outlines his party’s overall world view. The French colonial empire stretched across much of Africa, Asia, the South Seas and the Caribbean – and has not been fully deconstructed even in the 21st century.  Annette Joseph-Gabriel is a professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor. She’s written an important new book, titled ““Reimagining Liberation: How Black Women Transformed Citizenship in the French Empire.” Back in the 1950s and 1960s, t

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: The Black Lives Matter period of confrontations with the cops may have petered out in much of the country, but the movement against police oppression is alive and well in New York City. And, a new book explores the interaction between US suppression of minorities at home and American military policy, abroad. The FBI claims that it has revised its policy on targeting so-called Black Identity Extremists. However, many observers doubt that, including Yah-FAY-OH Ba-la-GON, a leader of the Dallas Texas-based Huey P. Newton Gun Club. The club urges Black people to arm themselves for self-defense. In New York City, a coalition of organizatons is planning a new series of actions against police oppression in the city’s mass transit system. Sharon Jones, of Bronxites for NYPD Accountability, says the protesters will rally under the banner, F-T-P. An

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: Black people in Great Britain go to prison in approximately the same rate as in the United States. We’ll take a look at the state of the human rights movement in that country. And, Black women in the United States suffer far more problems in giving birth, and after their babies are born. We’ll look into racial disparities in treatment of post-partum depression. President Donald Trump brought the world to the brink of another Mideast War, with his assassination of a top general in the Iranian armed forces. But, political assassination is nothing new to Washington. We spoke with a renowned expert on international law. Francis Boyle is a professor of law at the University of Illinois. He says Donald Trump is guilty of many impeachable acts, but the Democrats aren’t charging him with his worst crimes.   Black people make up only about six perce

Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Glen Ford, along with my co-host Nellie Bailey. Coming up: New scholarship explores the lives of the first Africans to fall under European rule, half a millennium ago; and, the birth of hip hop, in New York City. A Black scholar claims that urban destruction under neoliberal capitalism laid the groundwork for the new musical genre. The US assassination of a leading Iranian general threatens to bring the world once again to the brink of war. We spoke with Dr. Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar. The roots of Hip Hop music and culture have long been debated. Dr. Lisa Calvente teaches Intercultural Communications at DePaul University. She wrote a recent article for the political journal “Souls,” in which draws a straight line between neoliberal capitalism and the birth of hip hop in New York City.  Before Christopher Columbus ever set out for the New World, the Portuguese had b