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We Know Tea Party Repubs Are Scary. But Are Democrats in Congress Worth Defending At All?

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 10:10 — Bruce A. Dixon

By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon


Four years ago, the nation prepared for a congressional transition from Republican to Democratic rule. Rather than point to the scaaaary tea party hacks, let's examine what the nation expected from Democrats in the Congress, and whether we got it... any of it.

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Black is Back, Permanently. Join Us in DC on Nov. 13

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 07:32 — Glen Ford


by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations has had a good year since its first rally and march on the White House, November, 2009. “We proved that a critical mass of Black left activists and organizations was prepared to rebuild independent, anti-imperialist Black politics.” Now, as “the economic depression gripping our people deepens, and a cascade of crises loom for the nation and the world,” Black Is Back prepares for another year of struggle to reverse the “mass suffering and defeat” brought on by Wall Street and its servants in both major political parties.” Renew the struggle. Rally and march with BiB.

Freedom Rider: Parents in Jail

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 07:31 — Margaret Kimberley


by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

Some Black folks seem to just beg for punishment – or for the right to inflict it on fellow African Americans. In Detroit, public officials are demanding punishments, including jail time, for parents that don’t participate in school activities. “We have already seen the devastation wrought by a criminal justice system that constantly finds new forms of punishment that are always directed at black people.” Detroit’s Black-led government appears eager to “embrace the worst ideas about black Americans as a people.”

“Despite the Power of Money”: Reflections on the Vapid Obama Commentary of Professor Angela Davis

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 07:30 — Paul Street


by Paul Street

Angela Davis recently told television audiences that Barack Obama won the presidency “despite the power of money.” Any knowledgeable person – much less a learned academic and activist heroine – should know better. The reality, which is not in serious dispute, is that Obama “set new corporate fundraising records, receiving many millions of dollars from powerful Wall Street firms and other profit-based economic giants.” Prof. Davis is spouting discredited 2008 campaign propaganda, as a cover for the collapse of Left opposition to Obama’s pro-war and pro-Wall Street policies.

 

Introducing the Corporate Reform Action Pack (CRAP)

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 07:06 — Teacher Sabrina

Who needs research when you've got CRAP?  CRAP contains all the tools you need to create the illusion of a corporate-inspired school revolution!  If you cannot see the video above.

Black Bloggers Get Played By the White House

Wed, 10/27/2010 - 06:52 — Bruce A. Dixon

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon
When the White House wanted to get its latest message out to black communities, it didn't call a press conference. Its spokespeople didn't turn to BET or black radio. They called in black bloggers, most of them not even remotely political, and few if any working journalists. What the White House hoped to accomplish was crystal clear --- to use them the manner corrupt and lazy reporters are used, to seduce them with the illusion of “privileged access” in return for the ability to plant anonymous stories and gossip as “news” items.

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Whose Cops are More Racist, America’s or the Brits'?

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 19:47 — Glen Ford


A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

In any global battle of the racists, the U.S. and Britain are always top contenders. A new study has some putting odds on merrily racist Old England (and Wales) for the honor of white supremacist society in-chief. “The figures would seem to indicate that Blacks in England and Wales are targeted by police with even more ferocity than their counterparts in New York City.” But the Big Apple takes a back seat to no one, when it comes to bigoted police behavior on the streets.

 

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COINTELPRO 101

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 14:44 — Jared Ball


by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball

The U.S. government’s COINTELPRO assault on Black and radical political activists wasn’t just a Sixties episode: it was part of the continuity of oppression stretching from the European invasion of the Americas and the slave trade to this very day. American regimes are prepared to deploy COINTELPRO-like repression whenever popular movements threaten the established order. “Assassination, imprisonment, surveillance and encouraged internal strife [are] employed to forcibly dissolve these movements.”

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We've Learned Who's For Real, and Who's Frontin'

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 14:44 — Glen Ford

If you cannot see the video above, click here.

Socialism? The Rich Are Winning the US Class War

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 14:20 — Bill Quigley


by Bill Quigley

The Tea Party’s rants about President Obama’s “socialistic” policies would be hilarious, if they were not so widely believed. What a strange socialism, which fosters “the greatest inequality between rich and poor among all Western industrialized nations and it has been getting worse for 40 years?” The facts of American life describe a society in which the rich become richer and more powerful by the day, while “we now have the highest number of poor people in 51 years.”

 

Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey

Tue, 10/26/2010 - 10:33 — Nellie Bailey a...

Demands for a Foreclosure Moratorium

“There’s clear evidence that the current foreclosure system is broken and unreliable,” said Michael Calhoun, president of the Washington-based Center for Responsible Lending. Blacks have suffered most from the disaster, first from being steered to predatory loans, and now from “not getting the help they need to get a loan modification.” The problem, says Calhoun, is that “the same companies that couldn’t get the foreclosure paperwork right, are the same people that can’t get the loan modifications right.”

Unique Housing Conference in Harlem

The Harlem Tenants Council’s recent conference at New York City’s Schomburg Center was organized around the principle that a housing strategy must also relate to conditions in employment, education and general non-white political empowerment. The Obama administration’s policy on public housing is “conceptually about privatization, just like the charter schools,” said Mimi Rosenberg, of the Legal Aid Society. In order to resist the power of the rich and their friends in government, said Mark Torres, of the Coalition to Save Public Education, “we have to go into the projects. The projects are our fortresses.”

Obama’s Deficit Commission: The Looming Threat to Social Security

Why did President Obama create a deficit reduction commission that will surely call for an assault on Social Security, when its recommendations are released on December 1st? “Obama is trying to get some Republican votes,” says Doug Henwood, editor of the Left Business Observer. “It’s also his own conservatism.”

Private Capital Dominates PBS

The idea that public television is a bastion of the Left “has been a joke, for years,” says Peter Hart, of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. FAIR recently completed a study of corporate influence in, and even direct ownership of, Public Broadcasting System programming.

 

CLICK BELOW to hear the program.

 

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Obama Prepares to Triangulate Himself

Wed, 10/20/2010 - 11:03 — Glen Ford

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

What a guy! Barack Obama has neutralized Blacks, the white left, and the majority of his own party in service to Wall Street, and some still call him “liberal” (The insane call him “socialist.”) With Social Security and Medicare in his sights, “the stage is set for a performance of presidential political gymnastics that will make Bill Clinton, once known as the Great Triangulator, bow down to the master.”

Freedom Rider: Democrats Running Scared

Wed, 10/20/2010 - 11:03 — Margaret Kimberley

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

There should be no mystery to why Obama and the Democrats have failed to stir the passions of the party’s traditional base. Obama flounders because he tried to obey corporate directives while simultaneously “marketing himself as an agent of progressive change.” But Obama has delivered far more to the Right than to the Left. “He truly believes that black Americans and other progressives are less worthy of making political demands and having seats at the political table” than the rich.

Racial Narcissism Vs. Love of Black People and Justice

Wed, 10/20/2010 - 09:25 — Glen Ford

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

It is a false love of Black people that compels so many African Americans to forgive Black notables of the crimes they commit against Black people. In terms of the national security state and drug enforcement, Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department is in many ways identical to its Republican predecessor. Yet, too many Black misleaders "want only to bask in the glow of the first Black Attorney General."

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And We Are Still Not Yet Saved

Wed, 10/20/2010 - 09:17 — Jared Ball

by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball

Just as much of the southern "civil rights" movement collapsed after passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, Black progressive politics all but evaporated with the election of Barack Obama. Now, as Democrats face disaster in midterm elections, the insane idea circulates that Obama has "only failed in delivering our utopia because he has been hampered by Republicans," conveniently forgetting Obama's own services to the corporate agenda.

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