Black Agenda Radio

Sharpton Rally Rejects Young and Rebellious Aside from relatives of police murder victims, the speakers list at Saturday’s “Justice for All” event in Washington, DC, was dominated by conservative, Black establishment figures. “We came with the genuine intention to see whose voices they would elevate,” said Erika Totten, part of a youthful contingent of Ferguson activists that briefly took to the stage. “We kept being dismissed, so I said, ‘Stand behind me and follow me. We’re gonna shut it down, like we always do.’” Totten was interview by The Real News Network. Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the noted whistleblower and activist with Hands Up Coalition DC, said the Sharpton rally was an attempt to co-opt the growing movement. “The Obama administration has used a surrogate, Rev. Al Sharpton, to help corral that kind of energy and those kinds of issues back into the political system where those kinds of passions can die an unnatural death.” Obama Scrapes Bottom of Barrel to Choose Task Force Leader “It would have been hard for President Obama to find a more inappropriate choice” for co-chair of the new White House task force on police militarization than former DC police chief Charles Ramsey, said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund. The Fund won $20 million in damages for police abuse of demonstrators during Ramsey’s tenure as chief, during which he committed massive violations of civil rights and instituted a military style of policing. “Social change never comes in the United State because Congress or the White House suddenly, benevolently decided to do the right thing,” said Verheyden-Hilliard. “It comes because there’s a people’s struggle in the streets and in the courts.” Nothing New in CIA Torture Report Except “Rectal Feeding” Most of the information in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s highly redacted report on CIA Torture was “already part of the public record,” with the exception of revelations on forced “rectal feeding” of detainees, said Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois, at Champaign. “It’s really rape – rape-torture,” said Dr. Boyle. “The significance of this report is that we now have a branch of the United States government making official findings of fact,” which, in legal terms, amounts to “an admission against interest.” Boyle is preparing to demand an immediate investigation into CIA torture by the International Criminal Court. Mumia: CIA = Crime All the Time “The CIA, the executive hand of the president, has been involved deeply in every crime known to man,” said America’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. The agency commits thousands of crimes every day, but is immune from prosecution under the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2001. “That’s American law: the law of the outlaw,” said Abu Jamal. Psychologists Earn $80 Million Torturing Detainees A company owned by two psychologists was paid $80 million to design and oversee the CIA’s detainee torture program. Moreover, “there’s evidence that the American Psychological Association colluded with the CIA, the Department of Defense and the White House to adjust its ethics policy so that psychologists could consult and participate in interrogations and detention operations,” said Dr. Roy Eidelson, a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility. Both the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association refused to allow their members to participate in the CIA’s torture programs. Obama Grants Bush Iraq War Immunity The Obama administration filed papers granting officials of the Bush administration immunity from prosecution for waging war against Iraq. Inder Comar, a California lawyer, argues that George Bush, Dick Cheney and their crew began a conspiracy to wage an illegal war years before Bush won the presidency. How

CIA and Police Impunity are Linked The long-awaited Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture practices “could be the most important document, with respect to reviewing the crimes of U.S. intelligence agencies, since the Pentagon Papers,” said Shahid Buttar, executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee. “This is the cover-up underlying human rights abuses that no one has ever been held accountable for.” Yet, unarmed Black men fin the U.S. face extrajudicial assassination by police. “There is clearly no equal justice in this country,” said Buttar, “and no two things make it more clear than torture with impunity juxtaposed with mass incarceration.” Remove the “Instruments of Death” from Our Communities The new mass movement is wrestling with fundamental questions of Black life in America. “One demand is that you may not kill our children,” said Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the noted whistleblower and activist with the Hands Up Coalition - DC, which last week presented a list of demands to the U.S. Justice Department. “It’s important that we get these instruments of death out of our communities,” said Coleman-Adebayo, who is also an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report. Black People’s Humanity is not Negotiable The Obama administration points to the numerous consent decrees it has arrived at with police departments around the country as evidence that it is serious about combating abuses in the criminal justice system. However, Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, is unimpressed. “These federal consent decrees do not get to the heart of the problem, which is that this system has criminalized and demonized Black people,” said Dix – just as Ferguson cop Darren Wilson described Michael Brown as a “demon.” “We have to say No, Black life matters, and we will not allow you to erase our humanity.” What’s Trust Got to Do With It? The “impotent” Black political class mimics white politicians when they call for “restoration of trust” between Blacks and police. “When was there ever trust in the first place?” asks Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, in a report to Prison Radio. “The cruel, painful history of relations between police and the people is one of predation, not trust.” The police “are there to control Black mobility and to discipline Blacks for fear they’ll pose a threat to white wealth, life or property,” said Abu Jamal, at Frackville State Prison, in Pennsylvania. Fast Food Strikers Spearhead Low Wage Workers Movement Employees went on strike at fast food outlets in 190 cities, last week, demanding $15 an hour and union representation. The action, which also engaged airport, convenience store and other low wage workers, climaxed two years of organizing that began with a walkout at a single restaurant in New York City, said Kendall Sells, organizing director of Fast Food Forward. “Over the next six to twelve months,” said Sells, “I think people are going to see a complete explosion of low wage workers taking to the streets. That’s how we’re going to get these workers out of poverty.”

Ferguson Creates Crisis for U.S. Rulers“This government is on edge,” said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. “This government has an incredible quandary in dealing with the re-emergence of Black people in this ‘post-racial’ situation that’s supposed to be defined by the presidency of Barack Obama.” White people are on edge, too. “There’s no editorials being written about the fact that white people are arming themselves to the teeth in the whole Missouri area,” said Yeshitela. “It’s a crisis of great magnitude and they have no idea how to deal with it.”Black America Must Appeal to International Allies“At the end of the day, if this epidemic of police killings is” to be halted, “we are going to have to appeal to the international community,” as did Blacks of past generations, said Dr. Gerald Horne, historian and professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston. “It’s no accident that RT in Moscow, CCTV in China, Telesur in Venezuela, Prensa Latina of Cuba, and Press TV of Iran have been much more incisive” on Ferguson “than many of our local and domestic outlets.” Horne was interviewed on the Real News Network, as was Kevin Alexander Gray, the Columbia, South Carolina activist and author. “What needs to change is the ability of police on the street to invoke the death penalty without due process,” said Gray. Ferguson cop Darren Wilson “got a lot of due process; Michael Brown got none. What’s gonna happen is, people are going to have to rethink what self-defense means in this country, in light of giving the police such unfettered power.”Mumia: Ferguson Enters Pantheon of Black Pain“The name Ferguson joins an ancient line of place names of pain, loss and Black death – places like Birmingham, Philadelphia and, now, Ferguson,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. In a report for Prison Radio, Abu Jamal said that some Blacks will seal away the memory of Ferguson, while “others will grow in radicalism, convinced that this case is the very epitome of racist injustice.”Rev. Pinkney Promises “Breaking News” Before His SentencingFacing 25 years in prison following his conviction on charges of tampering with an election recall petition, Rev. Edward Pinkney “promises” to have “breaking news” before he is sentenced on December 15. The Benton Harbor, Michigan, community leader said he was “shocked” that he could be found guilty by an all-white jury “with absolutely no witnesses.” Police officer Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri, “murdered a boy with witnesses. Here, they’re about to send me to jail for the rest of my life with no witnesses, with no evidence at all,” said Pinkney, age 65. He promised revelations that will blow the case out of the water.Obama’s Secret Afghan War ExtensionWeeks before the November elections, President Obama secretly extended the U.S. combat role in Afghanistan through the end of 2015. The president’s conduct holds no surprises for author and anti-war activist David Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.Org. “Obama has been given credit for six years for ending a war that he tripled in size,” said Swanson. “This is his war, far more than George W. Bush’s, in terms of death, destruction, injuries, refugees, money spent, time spent – and he’s gonna keep it going.”

Cornel West and Bob Avakian Dialogue at Riverside ChurchThe nation’s foremost Black public intellectual shared the stage with the head of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) at New York’s historic Riverside Church. RCP leader Bob Avakian, an atheist “to the bone,” said: “The movement I envision is one in which people like Cornel and myself can walk together on the road of revolution and emancipation, uniting in struggle to bring about a world in which there will no longer be a wretched of the earth.” His “Christian revolutionary” interlocutor, Dr. Cornel West, of Union Theological Seminary, told the crowd: “This is a unique historical moment. Why? Because, historically, Black rage has always been the central threat to the status quo – not because Black people have a monopoly on truth, goodness or beauty, but because when Black folks wake up, all people who are subordinated and dominated can get in and wake up.”Roadblocks to Community Control of PoliceActivists have been trying to set up civilian boards to oversee police for almost 50 years, with only limited success, according to Larry Hamm, chairman of northern New Jersey’s People’s Organization for Progress (POP). “States must confer power on such boards, such as subpoena powers,” said Hamm. Would effective controls on police get through the state legislature in New Jersey and elsewhere? “I would dare say it would not. It’s gonna be a bumpy road.”Who Keeps Track of Killer Cops?The Black community lacks even the capacity to keep track of abuses committed against it by police departments across the nation, said author and activist Kevin Alexander Gray, of Columbia, South Carolina. “In the past, the NAACP in local areas was the place to report police abuse,” said Gray, an editor of the new book Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence. “Some organization needs to take on that role again. The way things are now, if a person has a complaint against the police department they’ve got to take it to – the police.”Haitians Protest Life Under OccupationThousands demonstrated in the Haitian capital of Port-au-Prince, last week, fueled by a variety of grievances, said Ezili Danto, of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network. “They were asking for an end to the U.S. occupation, behind UN guns and private military subcontractors; they were asking that the militarized, Ferguson-like police stop killing the people; and they were asking for mock elections not to continue in Haiti, but for real elections to be held.”

Black Agenda Radio - 11/17/14

Black Agenda Radio - 10/27/14

Pennsylvania Enacts Bill to Silence Prisoners – Especially Mumia Abu JamalA new law would curtail the speech of prisoners held by the State of Pennsylvania on the grounds that their utterances and writings might cause “mental anguish” to crime victims. “It’s a backlash, it’s a repressive law,” said Dr. Johanna Fernandez, professor of history at Baruch College and a supporter of Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. “It suggests that authorities are feeling the heat of emerging movements against police brutality and mass incarceration.”Speaking from Frackville State Prison, Mumia Abu Jamal said the legislation proves Pennsylvania’s government “doesn’t give a white about their own Constitution, nor about the United States Constitution. I welcome that, because it proves that they are the outlaws.” Police organizations were outraged that Abu Jamal was allowed to give a commencement speech at Vermont’s Goddard College.Month of Resistance to Mass Incarceration Police and FBI personnel have reverted to throwing around the old term “outside agitators” to describe activists that have journeyed to Ferguson, Missouri, to protest the U.S. criminal justice system. “They’re picking up the terminology of George Wallace, Bull Connor and the like,” said Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, who was arrested along with fellow co-founder Dr. Cornel West, in Ferguson, last week. The point “is to divide the movement to transform the status quo.” Nationwide actions to resist police brutality, mass incarceration and criminalization of Black people are set for October 22.Prop 47 Would Dramatically Reduce Incarceration in CaliforniaThe online activist outfit Color of Change has thrown its weight behind passage of Proposition 47, a ballot initiative that would reclassify some nonviolent crimes from felonies to misdemeanors and redirect prison funding to programs for transition to life on the outside. “It would impact up to 10,000 people who are currently incarcerated” and spare thousands more from being “overcharged” for offenses, said Matt Nelson, organizing director for Color of Change. Moreover, said Nelson, passage would go far to “make it unacceptable to have such high rates of incarceration, which really start in a racially biased culture.”Next Round: Rev. Pinkney vs. Whirlpool in Benton HarborCommunity activist Rev. Edward Pinkney goes on trial October 27 on charges of altering signatures on petitions to recall the mayor of Benton Harbor, Michigan, a mostly Black town long dominated by the giant Whirlpool Corporation. “They’re counting on an all-white jury that is motivated by something other than the truth,” said Pinkney, leader of the fight to recall Mayor James Hightower. Whirlpool and county police authorities “would do anything – I believe they would even kill – to keep him in office, because he is the corporate puppet,” said Pinkney.Temple University Students Supplement “Africology” with DuBoisStudents at Philadelphia’s Temple University are holding their own W.E.B. Dubois lecture series to make up for what’s missing from the new “Africology” courses instituted by Dr. Molefi Asante, chairman of the recently renamed African American Studies department. Asante refused to renew the contract of Duboisian scholar Dr. Anthony Monteiro. “We feel a critical analysis, historically, politically and economically, through the vantage of African American struggle, is lacking” under the Africology regime, said student organizer Sabrina Sample. Asante’s agenda has been to “eliminate any competition with Afro-centric ideology within the department.”

“Baby Doc” is Dead, But Duvalierism Lives On in Haiti RegimeHaiti’s elite flocked to the funeral of Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier who, along with father “Papa Doc” killed probably 20,000 people, terrorized the entire population and stole half a billion dollars over a period of two generations. Duvalier died of a heart attack at age 63, “but there are many others who were involved in the actual torture and arrests and stealing who supported that brutal system,” said Brian Concannon, executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. “The Duvalierist system has in many ways comes back” with the current government of Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly, who was closing associated with “Baby Doc’s” terror network.BBC Film Implicates Rwanda’s Kagame in Assassination of Two PresidentsA recently release BBC documentary shows that Rwandan dictator Paul Kagame’s rebel forces shot down the airplane carrying the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi, in 1994, setting the stage for mass killings. “Kagame’s complicity has been known for many years by the U.S. and the UN,” said Peter Erlinder, an international lawyer who has defended Kagame’s opponents and was himself jailed by the regime for questioning the prevailing narrative, that Kagame halted the Rwandan genocide. Once in power, Kagame’s forces invaded neighboring Congo, igniting yet another genocide that has killed six million people.Mumia Addresses Goddard College GradsIn 1996, while still on Pennsylvania’s death row, Mumia Abu Jamal earned his bachelor’s degree from Vermont’s Goddard College. “Goddard allowed me to really study what interested and moved me: revolutionary movements,” the nation’s best known political prisoner told the college’s graduating class. Police organizations across the country fought furiously to prevent Abu Jamal from making the commencement speech, in which he advised students to “take what you know and apply it in the real world. Help be the change you’re seeking to make.”New Film on 1898 Wilmington MassacreThe last vestiges of post-Civil War Reconstruction died in the flames and carnage of Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, when white supremacists mounted a military assault on the city’s alliance of Black Republicans and white Populists. Hundreds of Blacks may have died, half the Black population left the city, and the last Black Reconstruction congressman fled the state. Christopher Everett hopes to complete Wilmington on Fire, his new film on these historical events, by December. He said racist Democrats carried out the massacre “to put out a signal to the rest of North Carolina that, if they can take over Wilmington, the whole state will follow.”Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Click here to download the show. Length: One hour.

New Youth Party Demands West Finance Ebola FightEvents in Ferguson, Missouri, have inspired formation of “an alternative party of young people of color” in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota. In its first major demonstration, set for October 16, the Young people’s Freedom and Justice Party is “demanding that the U.S. government and the western world provide the funding for drugs for treatment” of Ebola “and that they move with all deliberate speed,” said Sara Osman, one of the organizers. The party is comprised of college and high school students as well as youths who are not in school.Black Is Back Coalition to March on White House November 1In November, 2009, President Obama’s first year in office, the newly formed Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held its first rally and march on the White House. “I think, five years later, even the most die-hard Obamites would have a serious problem trying to ignore the criminality of this regime, or to separate what the United States government is doing under Obama from anything it’s done under George W. Bush or any of the other criminals who have occupied that office,” said Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela. The Coalition holds a rally and march on the White House on November 1, followed by a teach-in at Howard University the next day under the theme “Peace Through Revolution.”U.S. Intelligence Agencies Were Aware of ISIS’s PlansFar from being in the dark about ISIS’s capabilities and goals, the CIA was well aware of the jihadist’s plans to attack the Iraqi city of Mosul and seize much of the country, according to journalist Nafeez Ahmed, author of the Guardian newspaper article “How the West Created the Islamic State.” The U.S., Britain and the Gulf oil monarchies were plotting regime change in Syria even before the outbreak of demonstrations against the government, in 2011. The same countries that have been “supporting and financing and manipulating” Islamist militants are now “being mobilized to fight the very enemy they created,” said Ahmed, author of Zero Point, a novel that actually predicted the events now unfolding in Iraq.Washington’s Incessant LiesU.S. foreign policy seems full of contradictions because “they are at war with the world and have to constantly hide their aims and their goals, and can turn on the very forces that they create,” said Sara Flounders, of the International Action Center. But, said Flounders, “what they’re telling the people of the world is always a lie. Always.”Rally Makes Connection Between African American and Palestinian StrugglesOn October 11, hundreds will gather at the Malcolm X and Betty Shabbaz Center, in Harlem, to affirm their solidarity with Palestinians under the Israeli apartheid regime. “The World Stands with Palestine” rally will highlight parallels in the plight of Blacks in the U.S. and Palestinians under occupation. The Center is housed on the site of Malcolm X’s assassination, in 1965. “Malcolm would have been an African internationalist,” said hip hop artist and activist M-1. “To have the rally in the former Audubon Ballroom completes the cycle.”Black Politicians Silent and Ineffectual: Throw Them OutOne looks at the images from Ferguson “and sees in an instant that there is a war against Black people,” said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. What are Black politicians doing? “Many, if not most, have been silent,” said Abu Jamal, in a report for Prison Radio. “A new, militant, responsive politics must arise, built by the young who are clear-eyed and committed.”Detroit: Water Cut-Offs Lead to EvictionsPastor Ray Anderson, of the House of Help church and community center, joined with the grassroots Water Brigade to halt the water cut-offs that have affected hundreds of thousands. Before long, the city cut off the House of Help’s water, too. “A lot of people are losing their homes when their house goes into foreclosure because of the water bill,” said Pastor Anderson. “I believe i

No Indictment in Cop Killing of John Crawford III at Wal-MartStudent leaders in Ohio plan further mobilizations in the wake of the failure of a Green County, Ohio, grand jury to indict the police who shot 22-year-old John Crawford III, on August 5. Crawford was killed while talking on his cell phone and handling a toy air rifle on display at the store. “I’m a direct reflection of John Crawford,” said Jovan Webster, of the Ohio Student Association. “I’m around the same age, same color, same culture. Me holding a candy bar is threatening in America.”Change of Mayor in New York, but No Change in Police BehaviorStatistics show that New York City police arrested virtually the same number of Black and brown people on petty “quality of life” charges in 2014 as during the previous year, despite the intervening election of “liberal” mayor Bill de Blasio. “The current NYPD is continuing the same harsh, aggressive ‘broken windows’ type of policing that characterized the [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg years,” said Robert Gangi, executive director of the Police Reform Organizing Project.Bias Against Black Women and Girls Not a PriorityA new study released by the National Women’s Law Center and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund says more attention needs to be paid to specific bias against Black females. The report is titled “Unlocking Opportunity for African American Girls: A Call to Action for Educational Equity.” According to the law center’s Fatima Goss Graves, “the suspension rate for African American girls is around 12 percent, which is far higher than any other group of girls and higher than most groups of boys.” Black women are the only major group for whom joblessness has not declined, and 43 percent of Black women without a high school diploma live in poverty.Palestine and Ferguson: The Parallels of OppressionThe Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz Center, formerly the Audubon Ballroom, hosts “The World Stands with Palestine” rally on October 11, in New York’s Harlem. “There are so many parallels” between the plight of the Palestinian people and the oppression of Blacks in the U.S., said Dr. Robyn Spencer, professor of history at Lehman College and an organizer of the rally. “The reality of occupation; economic underdevelopment of Palestinian territories; the ways in which daily life is militarized; the cultural appropriation – the parallels are really strong,” said Dr. Spencer. The lineup includes Mumia Abu Jamal, Rebel Diaz and a host of other speakers and cultural icons.Don’t Cheer Obama Just Because You Hate ISISSpeaking to a teleconference of UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition, activist academic Dr. Vijay Prashad said peace forces must challenge those who think “imperialism is a hammer that can be used for the purposes of the Left.” The same argument was made in 2011,  when the U.S. and its allies bombed the government of Muammar Gaddafi out of existence, resulting in disaster for the people of Libya, said Prashad, a professor of history and international relations at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut.Obama Displays Phenomenal “Chutzpah” at UNPaul Street, the author and activist who has followed Barack Obama’s career since the early days in Chicago, says the president reached new heights of hypocrisy and “chutzpah” at the United Nations, last week. Obama claims to be “outraged at the brutality of ISIS,” said Street, but the U.S. “killed 500,000 Iraqi children through economic sanctions in the 1990s.” The president cites ISIS’s “Network of Death,” but “the U.S. maintains more than 1,000 military installations across more than 100 sovereign nations. Is that not a ‘Network of Death?’” Street is author of The Empire’s New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power.Mumia: The U.S. is the Architect of DestructionEverything Washington touches turns to chaos and death, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. Libya and Iraq “are horrific examples of U.S. interventions that have plunged b

Obama Plans “Rebel” Assault on Damascus Under U.S. Air CoverThe “real objective” of President Obama’s latest mobilization in the Middle East is to deploy U.S. air power to support a renewed “rebel” assault on Damascus, the Syrian capital, from the south, said veteran human rights activist Ajamu Baraka. Washington’s plan remains “to engage in regime change in Syria,” which is why it gave ISIS and other jihadist groups “the green light” to ravage that nation for the last three years. The U.S. is “playing with forces that they think they can control, but history has already proven that those forces have agendas of their own” and are not controllable, said Baraka, an editor and columnist for Black Agenda Report.Ohio Students Press for Federal Intervention in Police Killing of John Crawford IIITwenty-three year-old John Crawford III was shopping at a local Wal-Mart in Green County, Ohio, examining a toy air rifle on display and talking on his cell phone, when police shot him dead, August 5. The Ohio Students Association and two other young people’s organizations, fearing a whitewash by an “old boys network,” have launched an extended campaign to compel the U.S. Justice Department to enter the case. The state attorney general was a prosecutor in Green County, as is his daughter, and the officer that shot Crawford killed another man in 2010, but was never indicted, said student organizer James Hayes. “Young people are coming of age at a time where this violence is so common, it’s predictable,” said Hayes. “We’re in this for the long haul; we’ve got our eyes on the prize.”U.S. Prison Population on the Rise AgainThe nation’s prison population increased slightly in 2013, after a three-year downward trend. Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, points out that the recent period of decline “only happened after nearly 40 years of record historic rises in the inmate population to more than two million people behind bars.” Three states – New Jersey, New York and California – were responsible for much of the previous decreases, with California under court order to reduce its prison population. Those who thought mass incarceration could be cured by “tinkering around the edges” of the system, were wrong, said Mauer. “This is the result of centuries of a racist history, particularly in the justice system.”“Rwanda Day”: Propaganda Based on LiesThousands flocked to Atlanta to celebrate – or protest against – “Rwanda Day,” a yearly public relations event staged by the Rwandan government of dictator and warlord Paul Kagame. The minority, Tutsi-dominated regime and its western backers claim Kagame’s military stopped the Rwandan genocide in 1994, and then brought prosperity to the country. But the truth is far different, said Claude Gatebuke, a genocide survivor and executive director of the African Great Lakes Action Network. Rwanda’s relative prosperity is based on “billions of dollars in diamonds and coltan and other minerals stolen from” the neighboring Democratic Republic of Congo, where Rwandan and Ugandan troops uNaming, Shaming the Black Caucus, These Joes Ain't Loyal, ISIS, Wayne Pharrnleashed a genocide that has claimed six million lives.Aristide Under House Arrest in HaitiFormer Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide, who was overthrown by the U.S. in 2004, is under house arrest on orders of a judge allied with the U.S.-backed current president, Michel “Sweet Mickey” Martelly. The vague charges against Aristide – of stealing public funds while in office – are “completely bogus” and create a climate reminiscent of “the bad old days” under the Duvalier dictatorship, said Pierre Labossiere, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee. Labossiere said it’s all part of a scheme to “smear Fanmi Lavalas,” Aristide’s political party, and once again “banish them from elections” – or to cancel elections altogether and allow Martelly to rule by decree.Mumia: The Lures of WarThe 2008 version of Barack Obama looked to many “like the an

“Shame on the Congressional Black Caucus” Rally The Israeli bombing of Gaza “was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back,” said Asantawaa Nkrumuah Ture, an organizer of a “Shame on the CBC” rally set for September 24 in front of the Washington Convention Center, where the Black Caucus opens its annual legislative conference and gala. “It’s well past time for us to hold them accountable.” The protesters want to “start a conversation, nationally,” said Nkrumah Ture, “not only regarding the Black Caucus’ support of apartheid Israel, about also their position on Internet neutrality, their ties with corporate America,” and the CBC’s overwhelming vote, in June, to continue militarization of local police forces.Motive: Black. Penalty: Death When Duane Buck faced sentencing on a murder conviction in a Houston courtroom, the judge allowed “expert” testimony that Blacks were inherently more dangerous than whites. On August 29, a federal judge called the testimony “repugnant and dangerous,” but upheld the death sentence, anyway. “It is absolutely shocking, it is stunning, it is appalling and it sets a terrifying precedent,” said Christina Swarns, litigation director for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which is handling Buck’s appeal. “This is asking a jury to rely on race to impose a death sentence.”New York City Needs Justice, Not More Police Training Police Commissioner Bill Bratton defended his “Broken Windows” policing policies before the New York City Council, claiming there’s nothing wrong with the NYPD that $30 million in training and 1,000 more cops can’t cure. Josmar Trujillo, of New Yorkers Against Bratton, disagrees. “The police department is one of the most trained in the world,” said Trujillo. “Training isn’t the issue. The systemic culture of brutality, which is reinforced by institutional racism, is really the conversation we need to be having.”Obama Targets Syria, Not ISIS President Obama’s bombing offensive in Iraq and Syria “brings humanity closer to world war than we have been, maybe, in 80 years,” said scholar and activist Dr. Anthony Monteiro. Although purportedly aimed at ISIS, Washington is actually targeting the Syrian government, Iran and, ultimately, Russia. Obama’s arming of so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels is a farce, said Monteiro. “There is no ‘moderate’ opposition to the Assad government. It is all extreme, gangster, thuggish militants who are funded by some of the very nations that are part of the ‘coalition of the willing.’” Dr. Monterio is fighting his termination from the African American Studies department at Temple University, in Philadelphia.U.S. Proxy Wars Empower Jihadists and Nazis “The United States is essentially contracting out its wars” in Libya, Syria and Ukraine, said Eric Draitser, an independent political analyst and publisher of StopImperialism.com. “The proxy wars that the United States has begun all over the world are part and parcel of a larger imperial agenda” dating from U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Central America. The Islamic State “is a by-product of U.S. foreign policy, just as the Nazis in Ukraine are a by-product of U.S. foreign policy,” said Draitser.September Surge in EEOC Case Dismissals Every year about this time, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission dismisses tens of thousands of discrimination cases, citing “lack of evidence” and a perennial backlog. “There is no backlog,” said Ricardo Jones, a former chief investigator for the EEOC in New York. “There’s been 15 years of not paying overtime” to deal with legitimate complaints, while the money “has basically gone to managers.”Black President Doesn’t Respect Black Culture or History Dr. Donald Smith, a founder of the National Alliance of Black School Educators, will be honored at a conference on Education for Liberation in the African American Tradition, in New York, October 10. Dr. Smith said Black history and culture is disappearing from classrooms around the country. “The major chal

Hundreds Arrested Demanding $15 and Hour and a UnionDarius Cephas, a McDonald’s worker from Boston, was one of more than 500 fast food employees arrested during strike and civil disobedience actions in 150 cities, last week. “It shows how strong and how powerful our voices are; the fact that everybody is trying to find out how folks are raising children on $8 an hour,” said Cephas, an activist with the Fast Food Campaign. “We are here and we’re not going away they until they raise the pay and let us form a union without retaliation.”Mass Incarceration is Built into the SystemEvents in Ferguson, Missouri, “have changed the way that people all across the country look at mass incarceration, police terror and the criminalization of Black youth,” said Carl Dix, of the Stop Mass Incarceration Network, which has declared October a “month of resistance.” Simply adding more Black cops to the equation won’t solve the problem “because we’re dealing with something that is built into the fabric of this capitalist system.”Draconian Sentences Rooted in Racist White Perceptions of CrimeA report by The Sentencing Project concludes that white people support harsh penalties for crime because they associate criminality with Blacks. “There are many instances where policymakers politicize crime and race in order to further their campaigns,” said Nazgol Ghandnoosh, co-author of the report, titled “Race and Punishment: Racial Perceptions of Crime and Support for Punitive Policies.”U.S. Political Prisoners Issue Passes UN HurdleA United Nations panel has instructed the United States to report, five years from now, on the status of its political prisoners, said international human rights advocate Efia Nwangaza, director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina. The move is significant, since the U.S. denies it holds any political prisoners, said Nwangaza, who argued on behalf of Civil Rights and Cointelpro era prisoners in collaboration with the Jericho Movement. “We’ve been building a record which strengthens the case for release of political prisoners,” she said. “It also strengthens our call for formation of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.”

Protesters Demand Dismantling of Militarized PoliceA host of organizations presented a list of nine demands to the U.S. Justice Department, in Washington, including immediate release of “Black boys and men incinerated for minor crimes”; the imposition of “life sentences for law enforcement officials who murder unarmed boys and men”; and, “recall of all military equipment already given to cities and states.” Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, of the NO Fear Coalition, a top organizer of the rally, said events in Ferguson, Missouri, raise fundamental questions about the role of police in Black America. “Clearly, the occupying forces inside our communities are not protecting or serving the people,” she said. “They are occupying the people.”The Enemy Within“We’re looking at a two-prong attack” on the Black resistance in Ferguson, said Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. “One is the obvious military organization” of the various police forces, and “the other – sometimes with their collars on backwards, sometimes not – are those who are there to pacify the people, to tamp down on militancy. They want it to go away.”Black Youth in Struggle for the DurationYoung people in Ferguson are trying to build real structures of enduring resistance, said Erica Totten, an activist from Washington, DC, who has been working with HandsUpUnited.org. “They need mental health care professionals, they need attorneys, they need people to go down there and support these young men and women because they’re going to continue to make noise,” said Totten.Mumia: Beware of Lawyers, Preachers and Politicians“It is the job of the managerial class of lawyers, preachers and politicians to reduce tensions, to deradicalize movements, to make them more manageable” when crises arise in places like Ferguson, said Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner. However, “the masses know the essential nature of the police, fro they see them daily. And they are anxious to oppose them.”Click here to download the show, about 52 minutes.

Obama and ISIS in Dance of DeathThe growing U.S. bombing campaign against the self-proclaimed Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria serves no one but war profiteers, said veteran anti-war activist David Swanson. “I know that ISIS had to be aware that slitting throats on camera would result in more bombing, just as President Obama had to be aware that blowing men, women and children up with 500-pound bombs would result in slitting throats,” said Swanson, publisher of the influential web site WarIsACrime.Org. “The beneficiaries of escalation, which is entirely predictable, are the weapons makers.”Black Strategies Must Include Self-Defense“First and foremost, it is right for our people to rebel,” said Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement and co-author of the groundbreaking report “Operation Ghetto Storm,” which documented extrajudicial killings of Black Americans under color of law. “I think it boiled over in Ferguson as a result of a transformation in our people’s consciousness, especially our young folks,” said Akuno. “They’ve had enough of the brutality, of being systematically excluded.” Black community self-defense must be part of any organizing strategy. “This has been part and parcel of what we know we have to do in the face of white supremacy and in the face of the brutality that the capitalist system has reserved for us, in particular.”Black Passivity is Mentally UnhealthyPolitical protest is therapeutic for Black Americans, said Dr. Vernellia Randall, professor emeritus of law at the University of Dayton and author Dying While Black. “I want us to be less passive, I want us to engage in civil disobedience” – and not the kind of protest-like activities sanctioned by the authorities. “If they’re telling us, Here’s how you can protest, then that, to me, is not civil disobedience,” said Randall. “If you are coloring within the lines that the establishment establishes, then you are putting no pressure on the establishment.”Cuba Should Join in Fight for Slavery ReparationsThe young United States was a horrible example of democracy, but it did lead the way in the business of human trafficking. “After the establishment of the United States, it quickly became the leader in the African slave trade to Cuba,” said Dr. Gerald Horne, professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston and author of Race to Revolution: The United States and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow. “They also became the leader of the African slave trade to Brazil, helping to account for the fact that Brazil has more people of African descent than any other nation outside Nigeria,” said Horne, who hopes to enlist Cuba in “our journey to claim reparations for the enslavement of Africans in the Americas.”