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: Most Americans have been led to believe that the only purpose of political parties is to win elections. But a Black party in Maryland believes its main mission is to organize the people. And, Black people that immigrate to the United States from elsewhere in the diaspora inherit the historical legacies of Black Americans, but also bring their own perspectives on liberation. We’ll hear from a multicultural scholar, born in Nigeria.   But first – politically active Black teachers have created a 21st century version of “freedom schools,” to prepare a new generation for struggle. Peta [Peh-TAY] Lindsay is a California teacher and a founder of the Ida B. Wells Education Project.   The Ujima People's Progress Party has been organizing for about a decade in Baltimore and other Maryland cities. But, for Ujima, winning elections takes a back seat to grassroots organizing and political education – as organizer Nnamdi Lumumba explained on Dr. Jared Ball’s influential podcast, I Mix What I Like.   Kovie [KOH-vee] Biakolo [Bee-AH-kolo] is a writer and scholar, born in Nigeria, who specializes in culture and identity. Her recent article is titled, “We Can’t Talk About Immigration Without Acknowledging Black Immigrants." Biakolo says the period of the Harlem Renaissance was a turning point in Black American politics and culture, partly because of the influence of Black immigrants.    

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: Donald Trump told lies every day, but so did Democrats, who now have most of the microphones to themselves. We’ll hear from a former CIA analyst, who knows a great deal about lying. Mumia Abu Jamal has a commentary on the “American Way of Fascism.” And, we’ll discuss anti-Black racism in Brazil, and police brutality and corruption in Nigeria.   But first -- a report by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the billionaire class in the U.S. has grabbed more money, in shorter time, during this pandemic and economic crisis than has ever been amassed in the history of the world. The crisis has given birth to 46 new billionaires, for a total of 660 super-rich oligarchs, while the billionaire class has added more than a trillion dollars to their already fabulous wealth. Omar Ocampo was one of the researchers that studied this explosion of billionaire wealth. Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton, of The Gray Zone, are serious journalists of the Left. They recently interviewed Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who has vigorously argued that Russiagate is a fiction concocted by his former employers and the Democratic Party to justify a New Cold War, and to provide an excuse for Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016. Although the media these days refer to every Black activist and protest group as “Black Lives Matter,” today’s youth-based, Black-led movement is made up of many organizations. One of the newer groups is the North Carolina-based Assata Collective. We spoke with Crystal Eze (eh-zeh), a college nursing school graduate and member of the Assata Collective who has been organizing against police repression in both the United States and her birthplace in Africa. Academics make up an important section of the current movement for social transformation. Dr. Ugo Edu teaches African American Studies at UCLA, and is a medical anthropologist. She’s done field work in Brazil, thinks that environmental justice should be at the cutting edge of the Movement. Mumia Abu Jamal has been a political prisoner for more than two generations. But Abu Jamal is known around the world as a keen observer of current affairs. His latest essay is titled, “The American Way of Fascism.”

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 people of Haiti have not been allowed to govern themselves since the United States overthrew their elected president, 15 years ago.  We’ll get an update on the Haitian people’s struggle to take back control of their island nation. And, Not since the McCarthy era has the threat of censorship loomed so large in the United States. The Democrats seem intent on making it impossible to even discuss ending the rule of the rich.   But first -- The last time Joe Biden was part of the administration in power, the U.S. got involved in seven new wars. Black Agenda Report contributing editor Danny Haiphong has some predictions on how long it will take President Biden to start his own armed conflict. Haitians continue to mount street protests demanding the resignation of president Jovenal Moise, accusing the U.S.-backed politician of massive corruption and brutality. We spoke with Daoud Andre, the Brooklyn, New York-based organizer of the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti. The young political organizing group called the Dissenters last week held an online discussion of the prospects for war and political oppression under the new U.S. administration. One of the speakers was Ajamu Baraka, national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and a former Green Party vice presidential. Baraka said corporate politicians are anxious to impose a regime of censorship, so that Americans won’t be able to even discuss how to end the rule of the rich. Also on that program was Robin D.G. Kelley, the activist, author and UCLA professor of history. He elaborated on Ajamu Baraka’s analysis.

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 hear a lot of discussion these days about the history of genocide against Black Americans, but many people are still unaware that Black leftists presented a petition to the United Nations charging the U.S. with genocide, 70 years ago. And, Patrice Lumumba, the first elected prime minister of the Congo, was assassinated 60 years ago, with the collaboration of the United States. A group of scholars marked the occasion with a discussion of Lumumba’s political legacy.   But first – it’s been one helluva year, politically and on the public health arena. The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held a national conference, last week, to sum up the changes and challenges that emerged in 2020.  Black Is Back is a Coalition of organizations. Betty Davis is a New York City activist who chairs the Coalition’s Community Control of Education Working Group. She says Black folks need to seize control of their local education budgets. Ajamu Baraka is a veteran activist who ran for vice president on the Green Party ticket in 2016. He’s national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, which is part of the Black Is Back Coalition. Baraka told the Coalition’s year-end conference that U.S. imperialism was clearly in disarray in 2020. In 1951 Black entertainer and activist Paul Robeson and other Black leftists presented a petition to the United Nations demanding that the United States be held accountable for a long list of crimes against its Black population. The petition was titled “We Charge Genocide.” Last week, Dr. Charisse Burden-Stelly joined other Black activists and academics to commemorate the events of 70 years ago, in an online seminar.  Dr. Burden-Stelly is a professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College, and part of the team that produces BAR’s Black Agenda Review. She reminds us that U.S. government atrocities against Black people have never stopped.   Also present to commemorate the “We Charge Genocide” petition of 1951, was Dr. Trevor Ngwane, a lecturer at the Center for Sociological Research at the University of Johannesburg. Dr. Ngwane is co-author of the book, “Urban Revolt, State Power and the Rise of People’s Movements in the Global South.” He says Black South Africa is quite familiar with colonial perpetrators of genocide.   Sixty years ago, the legally elected prime minister of the newly independence Democratic Republic of the Congo was assassinated as a result of plots orchestrated by the United States and its European allies. The Friends of Congo celebrate January 17 as Patrice Lumumba Day. To mark the occasion, activists and academics held on online seminar, moderated by Dr. Samuel T. Livingston, Associate Professor and Director of the African American Studies Program at Morehouse College. Among the speakers: Ludo De Witte, a Belgian sociologist and historian and author of his book, “The Assassination of Lumumba”;  Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, a professor of African and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; and Ira Dworkin, associate professor of English at Texas A&M University. Dworkin is author of “Congo Love Song: African American Culture and the Crisis of the Colonial State.” He Black Americans immediately recognized the assassination of Lumumba as a crime against all people of African descent.

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: More and more, these days, we hear activists describe themselves as Black anarchists. But, what is Black anarchism. And, a Black author based in Europe says we all need to cultivate and make use of our “sensuous knowledge.”   But first – the white supremacist assault on the U.S. Capitol was aided and abetted by police officers. So says Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, Co-Founder of the Washington-based Partnership for Civil Justice. The Partnership is demanding “a fully public investigation” into the way the cops responded to the massing of President Trump’s followers at the Capitol. African Americans are near universally agreed that, had Black people stormed the U.S. Congress in such a manner, police would have used deadly forced against them. "Ebony "Sima Lee" Outlaw is an Afro-Indigenous womanist, emcee, poet, teacher and photographer, currently living in Baltimore. She also calls herself a Black anarchist – a description that has been adopted by growing numbers of Black activists. We asked "Ebony ‘Sima Lee’ Outlaw how she became attracted to Black anarchism. A prominent Black writer and social critic, based in Europe, has produced a new book with a tantalizing title. Minna Salami is a public intellectual of Nigerian, Finnish and Swedish descent. Her latest work is titled, “Sensuous Knowledge: A Black Feminist Approach for Everyone.” We reached Salami in the United Kingdom. Her book treats “sensuous knowledge” as a deeply political subject.

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 old Year, 2020, laid bare the fundamental contradictions of capitalism. We’ll hear from Ajamu Baraka, of the Black Alliance for Peace, who says electoral politics must be secondary to grassroots organizing. And, U.S. involvement in the African nation of Cameroon has created humanitarian crises on both sides of the the Atlantic Ocean.   But first – the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations is in its 12th year of advocacy for Black self-determination, world-wide. Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela says the Covid-19 epidemic and economic breakdown have exposed the United States as a power in decline. Four years ago, Ajamu Baraka ran for vice president on the Green Party ticket. He then formed the Black Alliance for Peace, which has taken the lead in demanding the dismantling of the U.S. Military Command in Africa and an end to the police occupation of Black communities in the United States. Baraka was recently interviewed by Dr. Jared Ball on his influential podcast, “I Mix What I Like.” Baraka said electoral politics can be important, but only as a tool of grassroots organizing. All but one nation in Africa is collaborating with AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa that was created by the George Bush administration but vastly expanded under President Obama. AFRICOM is deeply involved in the west African nation of Cameroon, where the United States supports a French-speaking government that is at war with both Boko Haram fighters and its own English-speaking population. Journalist Joe Penny has been covering the Cameroon conflict for The Intercept.

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: hundreds of thousands of Americans have died from Covid-19, and the U.S. economy remains crippled, but China is nearly Covid-free and economically growing. A new book explores the vast differences in how the two social systems performed during the contagion. And, major league baseball claims it is embracing the old Negro leagues. However, a professor of Afro-American studies says something’s wrong with that picture.   But first – Paul Clark is a doctoral candidate in African and American Studies who’s been doing research on labor, policing and privatization in South Africa. Before the end of white minority rule, South Africa was a world leader in mass incarceration, along with the Soviet Union and the United States. Clark says South Africa continues to hold that dubious distinction. Veteran activists Sara Flounders and Lee Siu Hin are the editors of an important new book, titled “Capitalism on a Ventilator: The Impact of COVID-19 in China & the U.S.” It’s an anthology of essays by 50 writers, that explores why the United States has handled the virus so badly, while China was able to quickly bring the contagion under control. Sara Flounders says the real loser, is late stage capitalism.   Major League baseball has finally agreed to recognize the contributions to the so-called national past-time by the Negro baseball leagues, back in the time of segregation. The historically white franchises are now, in a sense, taking ownership of the Black baseball teams that they once excluded. Is that a good thing? We asked Josh Myers, a professor of Afro American studies at Howard University.

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 post-colonial regime in Zimbabwe was determined to, literally, keep Black women in their place. We’ll speak with an author who has studied that era.  And, a new book details how sex was a leading item of political discussion among anti-colonial activists in the Dutch West Indies.    But first -- Before famed Black Power advocate Stokely Carmichael changed his name to Kwame Ture, he made a big impression on freedom organizations in Africa – some of it good, some not so favorable. Back in 1967, Carmichael took part in several conferences on the continent, and offered a critique of how the Black Liberation movement was going on the continent. Toivi Asheeke is a post-doctoral fellow in the sociology department at Vassar College. He wrote an article titled, ““Black Power and Armed Decolonization in Southern Africa: Stokely Carmichael, the African National Congress of South Africa, and the African Liberation Movements.” Rudo Mudiwa is a Phd in Communication and Culture, and currently a Research Fellow at Princeton University. Mudiwa is a native of Zimbabwe, and is critical of how the Black government that replaced white rule treated Black women. Dr. Mudiwa wrote a recent article titled, “Stop the Woman, Save the State. Policing, Order, and the Black Woman’s Body.” In the years after World War Two, sex was the big topic of discussion among pro-independence activist in the Dutch Caribbean colonies of Aruba and Curaçao   New York City University History professor Chelsea Shield has studied this era, and written a book titled “Offshore Attachments: Oil and Intimacy after Empire.” We at Black Agenda Report had never heard of a colonial struggle in which sexual issues – including prostitution – played such an important role.  

 Welcome to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective. I’m Margaret, along with my co-host Glen Ford. Coming up: It is now widely accepted that Black Americans are owed a debt for hundreds of years of slavery and racial oppression. But, can Reparations be a distraction from the work of Black liberation that needs to be done? And, how do you defund the police in a city like Baltimore, unless you can also assure the Black community that other ways can be found to deal with violence and crime?   But first – President-elect Joe Biden’s cabinet is taking shape, comprised mainly of corporate and imperial political operatives. Rebecca Ann Wilcox is a community organizer and Phd candidate at the Princeton Theological Seminary, with a special focus on Race, Gender and Class Analysis. Wilcox believes that corporate Democrats are, in some ways, more dangerous than overt white supremacists. Zuri Arman Kent-Smith is a Poet, writer and activist with a degree in Africana Studies and Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. Kent-Smith has a particular interest in the question of Reparations for Black Americans. In the early stages of the Democratic presidential primaries, a number of candidates endorsed the principle of Black Reparations. But, does that mean the issue has become mainstreamed? The grassroots youth organization called “Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle” have been deeply involved in Black empowerment activities in Baltimore, Maryland. Lawrence Grandpre is the organization’s Research Director. He was a recent guest on Dr. Jared Ball’s acclaimed podcast, “I Mix What I Like.” Grandpre agrees in principle with the demand for defunding of police. But he doesn’t think the Black Lives Matter organization has a clue how to sell the concept to the Black community.

 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: New and updated terms have entered the vocabulary of Black liberation. We’ll speak with an academic and activist about critical race theory, racial realism and Afro-pessimism. And, we’ll take a look at the history and current struggles of quilombos, the autonomous Black and indigenous settlements of Brazil. But first -- A globally important webinar on U.S. militarization of Africa, through its military command, AFRICOM, will be held on December 4. One of the panelists is Marie Claire Far-EYE, a Congolese member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Far-Eye currently lives in Great Britain, a country where, like the United States, most people are not even aware that the greatest genocide since World War Two is still unfolding in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Shameka Powell is co-director Educational Studies at Tufts School of Arts, and co-author of an essay titled, "Kissing Cousins: Critical Race Theory’s Racial Realism and Afropessimism’s Social Death.” These are subjects that are hotly debated in Black academic circles, and among some activists, but not the stuff of daily Black conversation. We talked with Prof. Powell about the relevance of Racial Realism and Afropessimism. Brazil is home to the biggest Black population in the world outside of Nigeria, yet Blacks wield very little institutional power. Carla Maria Guerrón Montero is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Delaware. She’s done extensive studies of Black populations in Latin America. Most recently, Professor Montero immersed herself in the Quilombos of Brazil, autonomous settlements established to escape slavery and ongoing oppression of Black and indigenous people.