That was author and activist Pascal Robert, speaking at Broward College, in South Florida.

The continuity of US foreign policy, even as the Democrats and Republicans trade places in the White House, is quite amazing. Although Democrats portrayed President Donald Trump as representing everything they opposed, when Joe Biden took control of the Oval Office he left Trump’s moves against China and Cuba intact, virtually unchanged. That subject was explored by Sean Blackmon, of Sputnik Radio, in an interview with Netfa Freeman, of the Black Alliance for Peace.

That was Netfa Freeman, of the Black Alliance for Peace, on Sputnik Radio with Sean Blackmon and  Jacqueline Luqman.

When former South African President Jacob Zuma was arrested on corruption charges, housands of his followers rioted and looted in two African Provinces, last week. President Cyril Ramaphosa claimed the disturbances amounted to an attempted insurrection against the state. To dig deeper into this story, VAV Radio called o Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Detroit-based Pan African News Wire.

That was Pascal Robert, the activist and writer, along with Dr. Paul Macomb, of the University of West Virginia, at a webinar on Critical Race Theory as it actually exists in the United States – as opposed to the fantasies in the minds of millions of white Republicans.

The poor and oppressed majority in Haiti had been mobilized for many months, demanding that president Jovenel Moise step down for a long list of crimes. And then last week, Moise was cut down in his residence by a dozen bullets, purported at the hands of Colombian mercenaries. Dr. Gerald Horne and Dr. Jemima Pierre spoke at a webinar on “Haiti vs Imperialism and Necolonialism” a day before the assassination. Their talk on Haiti’s history is especially valuable, because it provides a background to understand today’s events on the island nation. Pierre is a Haitian American who teaches anthropology at UCLA. Horne is a professor of History at the University of

Houston, and the author of over 30 books – many of which put HAITI front and center in hstory.

Dr. Yannick Marshall is a professor of Africana Studies at Knox College. The title of his latest article in Black Agenda Report delivers a blunt message: “Black Liberal, Your Time is Up.” We asked Marshall, who are these Black liberals that have called the shots in Black politics for so many years?

The strategic center of Africa is the Congo River basin – an area that has also been ground zero for massive genocides and half a century of U.S. imperial dominance. Maurice Carney is a director and co-founder of Friends of Congo, which advocates tirelessly for African liberation. Carney was interviewed by Tierney Sheree, of African Esquire TV.

In southern Africa, a broad social movement  is determined to oust the King of Swaziland, one of the continent’s few remaining monarchs. Abayomi Azikiwe, editor of the Pan African News Wire, reports that Swaziland’s people are saying it’s past time for the King to vacate the throne.

That was Ajamu Baraka, national organizer wth the Black Alliance for Peace.

In recent years, increasing numbers of white people have come to favor some form of reparations for the harm Black Americans suffered under centuries of slavery and discrimination. But there is still no consensus among Black people on what kind of reparations should be demanded from the United States. Efia Nwangaza is director of the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina, and a longtime reparations advocate. Nwangaza is trying to pull reparations supporters together in her state.

That was Efia Nwangaza, at the Malcolm X Center for Self- Determination, in Greenville, South Carolina.

In Chicago, a majority of the board of aldermen now support community control of the police. Jasman Salas is co-chair of the Chicago chapter of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the organization that is spearheading the effort. Salas says women and trans people would greatly benefit from community control of the cops

But first -- What’s the ultimate cost when Black social movements accept corporate funding? This month, Dr. Joy James, professor of humanities at Williams College, moderated a summit meeting of activists and organizers on Accountability in Social Justice Movements. The founders of Black Lives Matter report they amassed $90 million, much of it last year from corporate philanthropists following the George Floyd protests. What does the donor class hope to get in return? Dr. James put the issue in historical perspective.

That was Dr. Joy James, speaking from Williams College. The G7 nations held their annual meeting this month, to much fanfare. A gaggle of European nations, plus the US, Canada and Japan, consider themselves to be world leaders. But another way of looking at the G7, is a collection of white settler regimes and former and present colonial powers. We spoke with Richard Medhurst, an independent journalist and political commentator who was born in Damascus, Syria. Here’s how he views the G7.

That was Journalist Richard Medhurst, speaking from Vienna, Austria. Charles Barron, the former Black Panther and current New York State Assemblyman from the neighborhood of East New York, took part in a webinar on legalization of marijuana, organized by the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations. The session was called “Reefer Madness” – which kind of sums up Charles Barron’s view of the matter.

That was Too Black, a poet and writer speaking from Indianapolis.

Universities in the United States have become capitalist engines of extraction and destruction in Black communities. So says Davarian Baldwin, a professor of American Studies and founding director of the Smart Cities Lab at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Baldwin wrote an article in Black Agenda Report titled “In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower.”

That was Professor Davarian Baldwin, speaking from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

The Green Party recently took a look at Joe Biden’s First 100 Days in office, with a focus on the new president’s war policies. One of the speakers was Julie Varaghese, of the Black Alliance for Peace. Varaghese said the US is waging a Cold War with China because Washington is losing the global economic competition.

But first – the Black Lives Matter movement has been enormously reinforced by activists from the widest range of ethnic and racial backgrounds. But how can organizers keep this multi-ethnic, multi-cultural army on the march for social change? Kovie Biakolo is a widely published writer, editor, and scholar specializing in culture and identity. We asked Biokolo what needs to be done to keep a mullti-cultural army on the move.

That was writer and scholar Kovie Biokolo, speaking from New York City.

Performance art is an important part of modern political organizing. Troizel Carr is a doctoral candidate in performance studies at New York University, and holds a teaching fellowship at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. We asked Carr about the role art plays in abolitionist organizing since the murder of George Floyd.

That was Troizel Carr, a doctoral candidate specializing in performance studies.

The CIA – the guys that specialize in political assassination, overthrowing governments the US doesn’t like, and lying to the public about EVERYTHING – is now trying to package itself as a politically benign institution, staffed by “woke”young Black and Latino intelligence agents. But anti-imperial activist Ramiro Sebastion Funez is using his podcasting skills to strip away the CIA’s new camouflage. Funez calls it “Unmasking Imperialism.” He interviewed Erica Caines, of the Black Alliance for Peace, who said Joe Biden is also trying to act like he’s always been a friend of Black and brown folks.

That was Frank Chapman, of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, speaking from Chicago.

The racial nature of capitalism is now better understood, largely thanks to a rejuvenated Black liberation movement. Justin Leroy is a professor of History at the University of California, at Davis, and has co-authored a book titled “Histories of Racial Capitalism.” Dr. Leroy says the US electoral system leaves the money classes, the capitalists, in power after every election.

That was Justin Leroy, speaking from the University of California, Davis.

After more than 20 million people protested the killing of George Floyd and other victims of police repression, last summer, corporate foundations poured millions of dollars into

the accounts of Black Lives Matter founders. Has all that money eroded the revolutionary character of the Movement? We put that question to Imani Wadud, an activist and doctoral student in American Studies at the University of Kansas.

That was Imani Wadud, at the University of Kansas.

Author, activist and researcher Elizabeth Hinton’s new book, “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion,” shows that Black urban revolts have dropped off dramatically since their peak in the early 1970s. Hinton explained why, in an interview with fellow activist and author Keeanga Taylor.

But first – The lop-sided war between Palestinians and their Zionist occupiers has spread to the streets of Israel, where Arab citizens have taken to the streets. For an overview of the fighting in Israel and the occupied territories, we spoke with Sara Flounders, a longtime activist with the International Action Center, in New York City.

In October, a commission of jurists from =around the world will convene in the United States for an International Tribunal on US Human Rights Abuses.  The organizing campaign leading up to October is called “In the Spirit of Mandela,” and was kicked off with a Webinar featuring Jihad Abdulmumit, a former Black Panther political prisoner and current co-chair of the Jericho Movement.

The United States is trying to blame the ongoing slaughter in the Democratic Republic of Congo on Islamic fundamentalist jihadists – despite the fact that hardly any Muslims live in that country. Kambale Musavuli spent years organizing in the United States. He’s now back in his native Congo, and working as an analyst for the Illinois-based Center for Research on Congo-Kinshasa. Musavuli says its not Muslims, but the US-backed governments of Rwanda and Uganda, that are to blame for the death of six million Congolese. 

The mostly Black town of Tallevast, Florida, was a poor but hard-working community where most of the families owned their homes and found ways to educate their children. But the water, land and people of Tallevast were poisoned by industrial polluters, including some of the biggest names in the military-industrial complex. James Manigault-Bryant is a descendant of one of Tallevast’s founding families. Dr. Manigault-Bryant is now a professor of Africana Studies at Williams College. He wrote a recent article for the Boston Review, titled “Poisoning Tallevast.”

That was journalist and researcher Nicole FROI-Oh.

Census Bureau data seem to show that white majorities will become a thing of the past in the United States before the mid-point of the 21 st century, largely because of continued immigration. However, what happens to that calculation if many of those immigrants from Latin America insist on claiming to be white? Could that prolong the existence of white majorities in this country? We posed that question to Professor Shantee Rosado, of the Africana Studies and Latino and Caribbean Studies departments at Rutgers University. Professor Rosado’s current book project is titled, “Latinxs and the Emotional Politics of Race and Blackness in the U.S.”

That was Dr. Shantee Rosado, speaking from Rutgers University.

The South American nation of Colombia, where millions of Black people have been driven from their homes in recent decades, is in the midst of a general strike against the US backed regime. President Ivan DOO-Kay’s police and military have killed scores of protesters. We spoke with Sharo Mina-Rojas, a leader of the Black Communities Process organization in Colombia, which is manning blockades of the roads near the largely Black city of Cali.

That was Margaret Flowers, of Popular Resistance, speaking from Baltimore.

The Haitian people have been protesting almost non-stop ever since Jovenel Moise was named president after winning only a small fraction of the nation’s voters in an election fraught with irregularities, in 2016. Moise now proposes to change Haiti’s constitution, so that he can rule with immunity from prosecution for crimes. We spoke with Daoud Andre, a Brooklyn-based radio host and an organizer with the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti. Andre says Washington calls the shots in Haiti.

That was Daoud Andre, of the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, speaking from Brooklyn, New York.

For the past 30 years, the oil-rich, but dirt-poor, nation of Chad, in Africa’s Sahel region, was run by Idris DAY-bee, a dictator backed by both France and the United States. But DAY-bee was reported killed in combat with rebels, last week, and his son is now in charge. Dr. Gerald Horne, a professor of history and African American Studies at the University of Houston, is adept at interpreting political events around the world. Horne was interviewed by Willmer Leon and Garland Nixon on Sputnik Radio.

Black politics is a vibrant force in the United States, including behind bars. Bilal Abdul Salem Bey is incarcerated in Hutchinson, Kansas. He’s a member of the New Afrikan Black Panther Party, and filed this report for Prison Radio.

But first – George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police set off the largest protests in US history. The trial of the cop charged in Floyd’s murder was still in progress when police in a nearby town killed another unarmed Black man. In Washington, Sputnik Radio host Garland Nixon spoke with Dr. Gerald Horne, the prolific writer and professor of African American Studies and History at the University of Houston. Dr. Horne says Blacks have always been in conflict with the U.S. State and its police.

That was Dr. Gerald Horne, speaking on Sputnik Radio, in Washington.

Justin Dunnavant is a post-doctoral student with a deep interest in Maroons, the enslaved people that escaped captivity and established relatively free settlements in the Americas. Dunnavant has researched enslaved and maroon communities in the Caribbean, Central America and Africa. He’s written an article titled, “Have Confidence in the Sea: Maritime Maroons and Fugitive Geographies.” Dunnavant says people that escaped from slavery lived in lots of places besides up in the mountains, thanks to their seagoing skills.

That was Justin Dunnavant, an expert of seagoing maroon communities.

Supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, expected that he would undergo heart surgery for blocked arteries last week. But the Pennsylvania prison system won’t even tell Mumia’s family what medical plans they have for responding to Abu Jamal’s health crisis. A number of his supporters gathered for a press conference last Thursday, in Philadelphia, hosted by educator Marc Lamont Hill. First up, was Mumia’s grandson, Jamal, who said the people’s movement – not supposedly progressive district attorney Larry Krassner – would ultimately free Mumia.

That was Dr. David Stovall, speaking from Chicago.

No big city has seen more gentrification and Black push-out than San Francisco. Nevertheless, black trans anarchist organizer Jemma DeCristo is still there, in the city by the bay. DeCristo is in full agreement with a recent Truthout article on the mostly white and affluent folks that call themselves “YIMBYs.” These YIMBYs say “Yes” to the proliferation of high cost housing in their own backyards and throughout the city. But Jemma DeCristo says what the rich gentrifiers are actually saying when they call themselves YIMBYs is, “Yes to white supremacy in my backyard.”

That was Jemma DeCristo, speaking from San Francisco.

SEE-ON Gurmu is Legal Director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration, or BAJI, which advocates for the rights of Black immigrants to the United States. BAJI is part of the Black Immigration Network. SEE-On Gurmu says the new Biden administration immediately showed its hostility to Black immigrants

That was Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, speaking from Cleveland.

On April 10 and 11, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will hold its yearly Electoral Campaign School – digitally, of course. Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela tells us how the electoral school became a yearly feature of the Coalition’s schedule.

That was Omali Yeshitela, chairman of the Black Is Back Coalition.

The Black Alliance for Peace is one of the member organizations of the Black Is Back Coalition. Alliance National Organizer Ajamu Baraka recently addressed the subject of fascism. We think Baraka’s remarks are a useful addition to Omali Yeshitela’s position on fascism.

But first – Transgender people attempting to migrate to the United States have a difficult time, especially if they’re Black. A young woman who goes by the name Deborah “A” is a national organizer for the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project – or, “BLMP,” for short. Deborah “A” says the BLMP works through regional networks across the country.

That was Deborah “A”, of the Black LGBTQIA+ Migrant Project.

It’s bad enough that Black liberation movements have always encountered massive white American hostility, but elite sectors of Black America have often opposed mass Black street action. Kandist Mallett is a columnist for Teen Vogue magazine. She’s author of a recent column titled, “The Black Elite Are an Obstacle Toward Black Liberation.”

That was writer and activist Kandist Mallet.

Jack Turner is a professor of political science at the University of Washington, and co- editor of the book, “African American Political Thought: A Collected History.” Turner’s contribution to that collection is a chapter titled, “Audre Lorde’s Politics of Difference.” It’s a rich subject. Audre Lorde was an important Black poetic and feminist luminary who was New York State Poet Laureate in the last years of her life. Professor Turner says Lorde clashed directly with President Reagan when the U.S. invaded the Caribbean nation of Grenada, in 1983.

Professor Jack Turner, speaking from the University of Washington.

With U.S. media describing the past 12 months as the “worst year ever,” imagine if you were locked up in even closer confines, with no defense against Covid-19 for a solid year. Long term Pennsylvania prison inmate Segio Hyland filed this report for Prison Radio.

And, here’s another report from a Prison Radio correspondent – Tabitha Maynerd, incarcerated in Michigan.

That was Dr. Layla Brown-Vincent, speaking from the University of Massachusetts, at Boston.

In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Decolonial Feminist Collective recently hosted an online interview with Dr. Joy James, the prolific author and Professor of Humanities at Williams College. The talk was entitled, “Radicalizing and Decolonizing Feminism.” Dr. James says the subject has revolutionary roots.

Dr. Joy James was interviewed by Jalessah T. Jackson, and Salome Ayuak, of the Decolonial Feminist Collective.

Around the turn of the 21 st century, Great Britain began a wave of deportations of Black residence with roots in Jamacia and other former colonies in the Caribbean. Luke De Noronha, a writer who teaches at the University of Manchester, is author of the book, “Deporting Black Britons: Portraits of Deportation to Jamaica.” According to De Noronha, the British government claims it is only ridding itself of “foreign criminals.”

That was Netfa Freeman, of Pan-African Community Action, speaking from Washington DC.

The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations has been around since 2009 and is now made up of 15 organizations, all of which are united around a 19 point National Black Political Agenda for Self-Determination. The Coalition held a webinar, last week, on the subject: “Fascism, Neoliberalism, and the Way Forward.” We’ll hear from two of the speakers. Jihad Abdulmumit is chairman of the Jericho Movement, which fights to free political prisoners. And, Ajamu Baraka is national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace. We begin with Abdulmumit, followed by Baraka.

That was Ajamu Baraka, of the Black Alliance for Peace.

Ever since Barack Obama’s administration, the African continent has once again been crawling with European and American soldiers and foreign military bases. We spoke with Ampson Hagan, a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He’s been doing research on how Europeans, in partnership with the United States, have essentially extended their borders deep into Africa in order to keep Black migrants from getting anywhere near Europe. Hagan says the focus of this containment policy is the former French colony of Niger.

But first – It’s been confirmed that the nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, has been infected with Covid-19. Abu Jamal is a senior citizen prisoner, having spent the last 39 years in the Pennsylvania prison gulag. Longtime Mumia supporter Dr. Johanna Fernandez held a press conference to demand that Abu Jamal and all elderly inmates and political prisoners be set free. Fernandez was joined by Mumia’s movement doctor, Ricardo Alvarez, and Rev. Kieth Collins, who has known Abu Jamal since they were both youngsters in Philadelphia. Dr. Fernandez said setting Mumia freeis good medicine, as well as justice.

That was Rev. Keith Collins, speaking from Philadelphia.

The modern Free Speech Movement began on California college campuses in the Sixties, and soon led to demands that campuses be free of police. But instead, cops have become even more deeply entrenched and militarized at US colleges, just as in the larger society. Dylan Rodriquez is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside, and he has plenty of experience combating the cops. Dr. Rodriguez says both the university system and its campus police are undergoing a crisis of legitimacy.

That was Professor Dylan Rodriguez, speaking from the University of California, at Riverside.

The Haitian people have made it plain that they want to be rid of Jovenel Moise, the incredibly corrupt president imposed on Haiti by the United States. Thousands of Haitians have been in the streets for weeks, demanding that Moise step down. But the regime refuses to budge, and has responded with gunfire that has left dozens dead. Dr. Jemima Pierre is an anthropologist in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA, and an activist with the Black Alliance for Peace. Pierre was interviewed by Dr. Jared Ball on his influential podcast, “I Mix What I Like.” She says Washington is the source of Haiti’s misery.

But first – a new newspaper has hit the streets in Philadelphia, dedicated to the liberation of the nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal. Pam Africa is coordinator of International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. She wants folks to sign a petition, in the newspaper, demanding that Philadelphia’s district attorney stop standing in the way of Abu Jamal’s freedom.

That was Pam Africa, of International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Mumia has been confined to the Pennsylvania prison system for the past 39 years. He filed this report for Prison Radio, in memory of Cicely Tyson.

At noon on Saturday, March 6, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations will hold a webinar on “Fascism, Neoliberalism, and the Way Forward.” The Democratic Party claims that it is a bastion of resistance to Republican fascism – but it is the Democrats that are most eager to put limits on free

speech and access to the Internet. Black Is Back Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela offers this analysis.

That was Omali Yeshitela, of the Black Is Back Coalition, speaking from St. Petersburg, Florida.

The U.S. Peace Council recently held a joint webinar with the Venezuelan section of the Committee for International Solidarity and Struggle for Peace. The event’s lead speaker was Ajamu Baraka, national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace.

But first -- SAHM-ah Mcgona SEE-say is a Justice Fellow at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and an organizer with the group called “Survived and Punished.” Police claim they are the force that fights for the rights of victims. But in fact, says SEE- say, the police, prosecutors and prisons only create more victims. She explains.

Many Americans are unaware that Black people in Great Britain have a long history of urban rebellions against racist policing. We spoke with Dr. Elliot Cooper, a Research Associate at the University of Greenwich, who sits on the board of The Monitoring Group, which challenges state racism and racial violence. Dr. Elliott-Cooper is co-author of a scholarly article on Britain, race and the criminal justice system, titled “Moral Panic(s) in the 21 st Century.”

Dr. Gerald Horne is professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Horne, a prolific author, was interviewed on a Sputnik Radio program hosted Dr. Wilmer Leon the Third, in Washington. Dr. Leon noted that president Joe Biden has been making noises about maintaining strong US economic sanctions against governments he doesn’t like, and insisting that US allies go along with Washington’s dictates. But, Europe seems tired of being bossed around the U.S, as Dr. Horne explains.

This week, we’re featuring two items from deep inside the U.S. prison Gulag. Laura Taylor is locked up in the Pennsylvania state penal system. She’s composed a message to the guards that boss her around every day and night. Ms. Taylor calls it a “Resignation Letter.”

But first -- Ajamu Baraka, national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, recently spoke at a webinar put together by the Dissenters organization. The subject: How the new Democratic administration is attempting to refurbish and strengthen the Euro-American world order, under the leadership of US Imperialism.

Dr. Corey Miles teaches sociology and anthropology at Morgan State University, in Baltimore. He says today’s Black US population is living in the “wake” of centuries of slavery, and that the work activists are doing now should be called “WAKE work.” “Wake” is not the same as “woke” – but Professor Miles says both concepts can be understood through Hip Hop.

Dr. Vincent Lloyd, a professor of theology and Africana Studies at Villanova University, says a progressive, liberationist theology can be useful to the movements against both police repression and U.S. imperial wars. However, Dr. Lloyd acknowledges that Christianity is a two-edged sword. Jesus is often called the Prince of Peace, but hundreds of millions have been killed or enslaved in the name of Christianity.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

But first – Native Americans say the holiday “Thanksgiving” is a celebration of genocide at the hands of European invaders, and should be replaced by a National Day Mourning.  We spoke with Nick Estes, an activist member of the Sioux nation who teaches American Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Black Psychology students at Bowie State University, in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC, last week held a panel discussion on Police Brutality and Community Control of the Police. One of those that spoke was Netfa Freeman, an organizer with Pan-African Community Action, which is pushing for community control of the police. Freeman says police are a militarized force of oppression. 

Former Black Panther Party member Dhoruba Bin Wahad spent 19 years as a political prisoner. He told the Bowie State University panel that we need to create a national front of organizations, all demanding Community Control of Police.

Colin Kaepernick, the National Football League quarterback who has effectively been banned from playing because of his political beliefs, was part of a virtual press conference last week, demanding the release of the nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal.  Kaepernick says Abu Jamal’s continued imprisonment is a crime against humanity.

Former Black Panther Jalil Muntaqim spent 49 years in prison until he was released on parole in October. When Muntaqim returned to his family home in Rochester, New York, he registered to vote—a mistake for which he was briefly jailed. We spoke with Muntaqim’s cousin, Blake Simons

But first – the corporate press has labeled virtually all Black protests as part of the Black Lives Matter movement, but the reality is that many organizations have taken to the streets against racism and the rule of the rich.  We spoke with BREE-YA Johnson, a masters student at George Washington University who is co-chair of Black Youth Project 100 in the nation’s capital.  We asked Johnson about BYP100’s relationship with local Black Lives Matter activists.

The Black is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations has organized a Black People’s March on the White House every year since Barack Obama was sworn in as president. According to Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela, this year’s demonstration coincided with the Saturday when the news media announced that Joe Biden had defeat President Donald Trump.

Wherever white supremacy has established itself, mixed race women have been used as symbolic weapons in maintaining racial oppression. Jasmine Mitchell is a professor of American Studies and Media and Communication at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. Dr. Mitchell is author of the book, “Imagining the Mulatta: Blackness in US and Brazilian Media.”  She says the Mulatta is depicted and exploited in similar ways by white power structures in both countries.

 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: Will a Joe Biden administration be an ally of the Black Lives Movement? Two of our guests say most emphatically, NO. How can the grassroots Black movement for social justice bring real power for Black people? We’ll talk with a young scholar who says the movement should follow a path of “communalism.” And, a Black people’s movement is making itself felt in Argentina, a country that long pretended that it had no Black population to speak of.

But first – Joe Biden and Kamala Harris pulled off a cliff-hanger victory over Donald Trump, last week, largely on the strength of Black voters. We spoke with Dr. Johnny Williams, a professor of sociology at Trinity College, in Hartford, Connecticut. Dr. Williams says Joe Biden is no friend of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

Justin Lang is a doctoral candidate in Africana Studies at Brown University, and author of a scholarly article on former President Baraka Obama’s unsuccessful attempts to quell the movement to abolish prisons and the police. Lang predicts that a Joe Biden administration will also try to co-opt and confuse the Black movement.

The Black Lives Matter movement has spawned a number of political currents during its brief history. Shay Akil McLean espouses a politics of “communalism.” McLean is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He wrote an article for Black Agenda Report on Black health. We asked McLean to explain what he means by “communalism.”

The South American nation of Argentina, like the United States, was founded on the dead bodies of native peoples and the labor of Black slaves. But, for centuries Argentinians have pretended that its Black population had died off. Erika Edwards has written a book that explains how Black Argentinians are resisting being written out of history. It’s titled, “Hiding in Plain Sight: Black Women, the Law, and the Making of a White Argentine Public.”

But first – ever since the Black rebellion in Ferguson, Missouri, the age-old debate over revolution versus reform has been raging. Dylan Rodriguez is professor of media and cultural studies at the University of California, at Riverside. Rodrizuez says reformism is just another form of counterinsurgency.

That was Professor Dylan Rodriguez, speaking from the University of California at Irvine. Rodriguez is author of the new book, “White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logics of Genocide.”

Black people are at the bottom of the social and economic rung in both North and South America. Jo-meera Salas, a doctoral candidate in sociology at Rutgers University, has written an article that argues on the different ways that Blackness is experienced in the Latin America, versus the United States. Salas’s focus is Latina Black girls.

In terms of the law, Africa may be the continent most hostile to queer folks. Thirty of its nations have laws against homosexuality. WUN-pini Fatimata Mohammed is a professor of journalism and mass communications at the University of Georgia. Doctor Mohmmad is author of an article in the Routledge Handbook of Queer African Studies, titled “Deconstructing Homosexuality in Ghana.

The nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, has some thoughts on the elections. He doesn’t trust the polls.

But first – the world is reeling from the double whammy of Covid-19 pandemic and a global economic depression. The crisis has created an historic opportunity for the super-rich to massively restructure capitalist economies in ways that spell disaster for poor and working people. We spoke with Anthony Monteiro, a Duboisian scholar and activist with the Philadelpohia Saturday Free School.

The Black Radical Tradition has always emphasized that Black American liberation is part of a global struggle. Desmond Fonseca is a doctoral student of history at the University of California who has lately been immersing himself in the study of Malcolm X.  Fonseca is greatly impressed with Malcolm’s writings, speeches and organizing work – especially in his latter years, when Malcolm was an outspoken advocate of Black American internationalism.

Lydia McCaskill is studying for both her Masters and Doctoral degrees at North Carolina Central University, and hopes to become a Constitutional Lawyer. But right now she’s a whirlwind of political activism in her hometown of Gastonia, in western North Carolina. McCaskill has launched a Stop Injustice Initiative.

But first – activists in Minneapolis says their protests have been disrupted by dozens of men and women wearing orange shirts that clearly have a relationship with the police. We spoke with Jae Yates, of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar.

The ideology of anti-Blackness is mobile, and is spread around the world by global capital. That’s the thrust of an article by Adam Bledsoe, a professor of Geography, Environment and Society at the University of Minnesota.. His article is titled, “The Anti-Blackness of Global Capital.”

How do Black LGBTQ inmates fare in the U.S. prison gulag?  A good place to find out is in the pages of “Black and Pink.” Fatima Shabazz is one the publication’s founders.

But first, Shannon Jones is co-founder of Bronxites for NYPD Accountability, which on June 4th led a protest in the South Bronx section of New York that was massively attacked by police, who claimed the marchers had violated a curfew. At least 61 marchers and bystanders were injured, according to a Human Rights Watch study. More than 250 were arrested, including Ms Jones. She says the cops had been waiting for a chance to crack down on the movement.

Activists have clashed repeatedly with police in the eastern North Carolina city of Greenville. The protests have been led by the Mapinduzi organization and the Coalition Against Racism. Mapinduzi spokesman Dedan Wha-Kee-UR-ee says Greenville’s government continues to reject demands for Community Control of Police, an independent prosecutor for police brutality cases, and that a police substation be turned into a People’s Resource center.   However, the city did agree to end its involvement with the Pentagon’s 1033 program, that funnels military weapons and equipment to local police.

Dr. Ashlee Davis is the Supervising Psychologist and Coordinator for Diversity and Social justice Initiatives at Fordham University Counseling Center, in New York City. She’s author of a recent article, titled “Traditional Femininity Versus Strong Black Women Ideologies and Stress Among Black Women.” We asked Dr. Ashley, just what is

 “Strong Black Women Ideology”? 

But first -- The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparation, has marched on the White House every November since its formation in the first year of the Obama administration. The Coalition and its 15 member organizations will be in Washington on November 6, 7th and 8th, putting forward an independent Black politics. Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela tells us about this year’s Black People’s March on the White House.

The whole world watched as millions took to the streets to demand a halt to police killings of Black people in the United States. But Black lives are at risk everywhere in the Western Hemisphere, according to Jameelah Imani Morris, an activist scholar workin on her doctorate at Stanford University.  Morris has done extensive work with Black youth in both the United States and Latin America. 

Mumia Abu Jamal is the nation’s best known political prisoner, a prolific author and journalist, now in his 39th year of incarceration in Pennsylvania. Abu Jamal’s latest report for Prison Radio is titled, “Breonna’s Deathbed.”

But first – Asha Noor is a Somali racial justice and human rights activist with the Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative. Noor says the best way to deal wtih over-policing in Black America, is to abolish the police.

The Black Alliance for Peace last week held a Webinar on the U.S. global military policy and its impact on Africa. One the speakers was Aziz Fall, an African political scientist and member of the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa, or GRILA.

The movement to defend the Earth’s environment has, of necessity, become largely a movement against capitalism. We spoke with Yolian Ogbu, a student organizer of Eritrean descent who serves on the national operations team of the climate crisis organization This Is Zero Hour.

Christopher Trotter is a Black man who’s been behind bars for almost four decades. He filed this report for Prison Radio.

But first – Chicago is arguably ahead of most heavily Black cities in two arenas of racial struggle: the fight for community control of police, and the long battle for reparations. Toussain Losier is a professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, at Amherst. But he earned is PhD at the University of Chicago and has long experience as an activist in that city. Losier is author of a recent article, titled ““A Human Right to Reparations: Black People against Police Torture and the Roots of the 2015 Chicago Reparations Ordinance.” He’s well-acquainted with the young Black Chicago activists that told a United Nations agency in Geneva that the United States is guilty of genocide against Black people.

Black people are today dying in disproportionate numbers from COvid-19, just as they succumbed to HIV-AIDS at greater rates than whites, two generations ago. Darius Bost is a professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Utah and a co-editor of “Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies.” Bost says white ignorance of actual conditions in Black communities led to mass deaths from AIDS. He’s written an article titled, ““Black Lesbian Feminist Intellectuals and the Struggle against HIV/AIDS.”

Chanda Prescod-Weinstein grew up in working class East Los Angeles, but she’s now a Theoretical Physicist, as well as a Feminist Theorist, at the University of New Hampshire. Doctor Prescod-Weinstein firmly believes that everyone has “the right to know the universe.” We asked her if she agrees that a physicist is one who tries to find out how WHAT IS, came to BE.

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: Dr. Gerald Horne’s new book explores the roots of white supremacy and capitalism, centuries ago, in colonialism and the slave trade. And, Malcolm X changed the way Black people saw themselves and their place in the world. We’ll discuss a new book on Malcolm, title “Black-Minded.”

But first – a Minneapolis judge is moving towards jury selection in the second degree murder trial of the policeman that killed George Floyd, setting off protests that put tens of millions in the streets. At the height of the turmoil the Minneapolis City council talked about getting rid of their police force in its present form. But Sam Martinez, of the Twin Cities Coalition for Justice for Jamar Clark, says there’s been no movement towards defunding or abolishing the police, and what’s needed is community control of the cops.

Unprecedented numbers of Americans of all races now claim to be part of the Black Lives Matter movement. But Americans, in general, know very little about the historical development of white supremacy. Dr. Gerald Horne is a professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, and author of more than 30 books. His latest volume is titled, “The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century.” If you want to understand why Black Lives don’t matter under the current system, says Dr. Horne, look to the events of five centuries ago.

More than a half century ago, Malcolm X left his indelible mark on the Black American mind. We spoke with Michael Sawyer, a professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies at Colorado College, and author of a new book, titled “Black Minded: The Political Philosophy of Malcolm X.” Dr. Sawyer says Malcolm X shaped the modern era of Black politics – and his own way of looking at the world, as well.

But first – Joy James teaches political theory, feminist theory and critical race theory at Williams College. We spoke with Prof. James about her upcoming book, on what she calls “captive caretakers” of the Black community, and her recent article, “Airbrushing Revolution for the Sake of Abolition.” 

When Dr. Asa Hilliard died in 2007, the former Dean of Education at San Francisco State University and Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University was mourned by thousands around the world. Hilliard was famed for advocating the African-izing of African American education. De Reef Jamison is a professor of African American Studies at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He recently published an article, titled “Asa Hilliard: Conceptualizing and Constructing an African-Centered Pedagogy."

Arsenic. It’s a lot more than just the favorite weapon of sneaky murderers. Arsenic occupies a special place in the history of killer chemical agents – which is Northwestern University Phd candidate Jayson Porter’s field of study. As Porter explains, arsenic has played a huge role in agriculture, manufacturing and war, ending the lives of untold numbers of insects, plants and human beings in the process.

But first – U.S. politicians have for generations gained power by scaring white people with threatening images Black males. President Trump is running on a platform that essentially mimics the old newspaper headline, “Black Buck Runs Amuk.” Douglas Flow is professor of History at Washington University, in St. Louis. He’s written a book, titled, “Uncontrollable Blackness: African American Men and Criminality in Jim Crow New York.” “Uncontrollable Blackness” is a provocative title. Was it planned that way?

There’s nothing new about the high death toll Blacks are suffering from the Covid-19 contagion. Thirty years ago, the HIV-AIDS epidemic killed disproportionate numbers of Blacks. J.T. Roane is a Research Fellow at the Schomburg Research Center in Black Culture, in New York City. He wrote an article about AIDS and Black Philadelphia.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, an immigrant from the Virgin Islands named Hubert Harrison influenced a whole generation of Black activists, including Marcus Garvey, A. Phillip Randolph and the entire so-called “New Negro” movement. Activist and scholar Jeff Perry has spent more than a decade chronicling the life and works of Hubert Harrison, and will soon release the second volume of his biography, titled “Hubert Harrison: The Struggle for Equality.”

But first – David West played for 15 seasons with the National Basketball Association, and is a two-time NBA All Star and NBA Champion. West is now living comfortably in California, serving as chief operating officer of the Professional Collegiate League, which aims to put money in college athletes’ pockets and prepare them for a future outside of sports. It’s long been common to hear Black folks say that high paid athletes should pool their capital to develop a stronger Black American economy and politics. We asked David West his take on that line of thought.

August is political prisoners’ month – a time to remember those captured while resisting U.S. government oppression, and to step up efforts to free those prisoners that are still behind bars. Jihad Abdulmumit is a former Black Panther who spent 23 years in prison. He’s now co-chair of the Jericho Society, and a member of the Black is Back Coalition for Peace, Social Justice and Reparations. The Coalition recently held a conference under the banner, “Fight for Black Power” and “Free All Political Prisoners.”

YOUR-gen Ostensen is the son of a former political prisoner. Ostenson is with the New York chapter of IWOC, the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee. He’s part of IWOC’s “Inside Prison Journalism” project and edits the organization’s twitter page, #PrisonsKill.

U.S. prisons are among the worst places to be during a pandemic. But Vice television news reporters recently shined a light on Covid-19 behind bars, and their revelations seem to have made a difference. Prison Radio has this report from the California penal system.

But first – activists around the country are commemorating “Black August,” in honor of the political prisoners who are still incarcerated, half a century after the crushing of the Black Liberation Movement.  We spoke with Jihad Abdulmumit, the chairperson of the Jericho Movement, and a former Black Panther Party political prisoner who spent 23 years behind bars. The Jericho Movement is part of the Black Is Back Coalition, which this weekend holds its national conference – where Jihad Abdulmumit will speak on the significance of “Black August.”

Brazil has the largest Black population outside of Africa, and is among the top three Covid-19 hotspots on the planet, along with the United States.  Brazilian social anthropologist Jaime Amparo Alves teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He’s written a book on Brazilian police terror against Blacks, and is busy raising funds for Black families caught in the coronavirus epidemic.

Dr. Amparo Alves notes that Blacks in Brazil and the U.S. have another thing in common: white supremacist presidents.

To send money to help Black Brazilian families survive the Coronavirus onslaught, Google UNEAFRO [OOH-Knee-Afro] Brazil. That’s U-N-E-A-F-R-O Brazil.  https://benfeitoria.com/Covid19Brazil

Slavery in the United States was the nation’s biggest business by far, and all of the financial sectors got their cut of the profits. Dr. Michael Ralph, director of Africana Studies at New York University, says the insurance industry was central to how white masters measured the value of their human property. 

Most people in the United States were born under the care of professional doctors and nurses. But mid-wives played a huge role in child-bearing, not so long ago. Dr. Sasha Turner, a professor of History at Johns Hopkins University, has written a book on mid-wives and the role they played in helping Black mothers give birth, during and after slavery in the Americas. Turner says mid-wife-ing – or mid-wiffery [whiff-ery] – was the norm before professional medicine took over.

But first – the institution of policing in the United States has been buffeted by the most massive demonstrations of the 21st century. The wave of protests began in Minneapolis, with the police killing of George Floyd. Adam Bledsoe is a Minneapolis native who teaches at the University of Minnesota. Bledsoe has put together what he calls a “Syllabus on the Minneapolis Uprising.” 

The Brooklyn-based December 12th Movement is calling for a national day of demonstrations to demand reparations for slavery and racist oppression. Roger Wareham is a longtime activist and human rights lawyer. 

Dhoruba Bin Wahad is a former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army political prisoner. He spent 19 years behind bars before his conviction was reversed. Bin Wahad talked politics on Dr. Jared Ball’s podcast, “I Mix What I Like.”

The wave of protests against U.S. policing and prisons has been keenly followed by the nation’s two million incarcerated people. Sergio Hyland filed this report for Prison Radio.

 Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley took part in a globally-watched web event that called on Americans, especially, to say “No to the New Cold War.”

But first—the entire planet remains in the grips of the Covid-19 contagion. The United States has fared worse than any other developed country, economically and in terms of loss of life. Everyone TALKS about how bad things are in the Age of Covid, but it’s even more crucial to ask, What KIND of crisis is this? We posed that question to Anthony Monteiro, the Philadelphia-based Duboisian scholar.

The Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations holds its national conference on August 15 and 16. Coalition chairman Omali Yeshitela says the emphasis will be on the plight of political prisoners.

Many tens of millions of people of African descent live outside the Continent, but what does that mean, in political terms? We spoke with Jayne O. EE-FEK-WUN-EEG-WAY, a senior scholar at the Center for Genomics, Race, Identity and Difference at Duke University. She says the Africa connection means different things to different people.

Black nationalism is a potent political force, with studies showing that about half of Black Americans see themselves as a nation within a nation. Edward Oh-NAH-Chi teaches history at Ursinus College, and has written a book titled, “Free the Land: The Republic of New Afrika and the Pursuit of a Black Nation-State.” Onaci says there have been calls for a separate Black nation for generations.

Mike Africa was born in a Pennsylvania prison, a captive of the long Philadelphia police vendetta against the Move organization, in 1978. After for decades behind bars, all of the surviving Move members are now free, as Mike Africa explains.

In North and South America and the Caribbean, there is a long history of escaped slaves establishing their own communities in far-off swamps and mountains. Willie Jamaal Wright is a professor of Geography and Africana Studies at Rutgers University. Wright wrote an article titled, “The Morphology of Marronage,” which explores the history of the people we call Maroons.

But first – by some measures, the current movement against police brutality is the largest political movement ever seen in the United States. But Clarence Taylor, a professor emeritus of history at Baruch College, in New York City, reminds us that brutal, repressive cops have been part of Americana for most of the nation’s history. Professor Taylor has written a book, titled, “Fight the Power: African Americans and the Long History of Police Brutality in New York City.”

When the corporate Democrats defeated Bernie Sanders’ first race for president, in 2016, a number of Sanders’ supporters left the Deocratic Party entirely, and formed the Movement for a People’s Party. Nick Brana is National coordinator for the M.P.P. Now Bernie Sanders has been forced out of the presidential race once again. We asked Nick Brana if Sander’s second defeat has resulted in a boost in recruitment for the People’s Party movement.

The Green Party held its national convention this weekend, and nominated party co-founder Howie Hawkins as their presidential candidate. Angela Walker, a Black activist from Milwaukee, is Hawkins’ vice presidential running mate. 

Black Agenda Report’s Margaret Kimberley is a Green Party activist, and BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka was the Green’s vice presidential candidate in 2016. Both Kimberley and Baraka spoke at the Party convention. First, Margaret Kimberley.

The United States military has a larger presence on the African continent than Britain and France at the height of their colonial empires. The Black Alliance for Peace is escalating its campaign against AFRICOM, the U.S. Military Command in Africa, which is active in almost every nation on the continent. Alliance activist Tunde Osazua points out that AFRICOM’s first big mission was the regime change attack on Libya, in 2011.

Dr. James Cone, the world-renowned theologian, died two years ago, but his work continues to influence Black political thinking. Matt Harris is a PhD candidate at the

University of California, at Santa Barbara. Harris co-authored an article titled, "In the Hope That They Can Make Their Own Future: James H. Cone and the Third World." Harris says Cone is considered the father of Black liberation theology.

In South Africa, “kwaito” music is wildly popular with young people – just as is hip hop among Black American youth. Xavier Livermon is a professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s spent years studying the kwaito music phenomenon, and written a book, titled ““Kwaito Bodies: Remastering Space and Subjectivity in Post-Apartheid South Africa.” Professor Livermon says Kwaito music has had a profound effect on South Afrian youth, whose 21 st century politics is quite different than the young people who rose up against white minority rule in Soweto in 1976.

But first – In the wake of last month’s huge George Floyd protests, polls show that majorities of white people now agree that Blacks don’t get the justice they deserve in the United States. But, what about fairness in housing, health care, employment, and all other aspects of life? Amson Hagan is a PhD candidate in anthropology at the University of North Carolina. Hagan’s made a study of “deservingness” – what kinds of people Americans think deserve humanitarian care.

But first – the current wave of Black-led protests are the largest and most sustained since the 1960s. Joshua Myers teaches Africana Studies at Howard University. He’s author of the book, “We Are Worth Fighting For: A History of the Howard University Student Protest of 1989.” Dr. Myers rejects the idea that the current protests are unique to this particular moment in history.

RAGE is one of the engines that has kept the current wave of protests going, week after week. Nicholas Brady teaches Africana Studies at Bucknell University. 

It’s been revealed that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security deployed airplanes, helicopters and drones over at least 15 cities to spy on the latest wave of public protests. The U.S. military isn’t supposed to back up local police without specific presidential authorization. Police spies in the skies are nothing new to the majority Black city of Baltimore. A police spy plane was discovered operating in secret four years ago. Now it openly spies on the public, as Vanessa Beck reported to a Zoom conference of her organization, the Black Alliance for Peace.

Haiti has seen wave after wave of popular protest against a succession of governments imposed on Haiti by the United States. African Americans have had a close relationship to the people of Haiti since the island’s slaves revolted and declared independence in 1804. We spoke with Vanderbilt University professor Brandon Byrd, who’s written a book entitled, “The Black Republic:: African Americans and the Fate of Haiti.”

But first – activists have been confronting local governments across the nation with lists of demands, mostly involving the police. Max Rameau is with Pan-African Community Action, which is calling for community control of the police In Washington DC. We asked Rameau why proposals to DEFUND the police have gotten so much more press coverage than community control.

Ajamu Baraka, national organizer for the Black Alliance for Peace, recently appeared on q podcast for Code Pink, the anti-war organization. Baraka agreed that U.S. advocates for peace overseas must also focus on police terror at home.

Bresha Meadows was 14 years old when she shot her abusive father to death in their home in Warren, Ohio. Meadows was threatened with trial for murder as an adult. Her case was championed by a number of criminal justice reform groups, including the organization called Survived and Punished. Ms. Meadows was allowed to plea to involuntary manslaughter charges, and was sentenced to a year in juvenile detention and six months in a mental health facility.  Bresha Meadows is now 18 years old, free, and looking forward to her future.

Dr. Gabby Yearwood is a socio-cultural anthropologist at the University of Texas at Austin. He recently authored an article titled, “Playing Without Power: Black Male NC-double-A Student Athletes Living With Structural Racism.” We asked Dr. Yearwood, Can’t a bunch of big, muscular, star athletes take care of themselves?

But first – in some cities, protesters have zeroed in on corporations that have gotten too cozy with the police. We spoke with Dr. Brittany Friedman, a professor of sociology specializing in Race and Rights at Rutgers University.

Dr. Johnny Williams teaches at Trinity College, in Harford, Connecticut. He blames a self-serving Black leadership for selling out the poor.

The demand for community control of the police drew a thousand activists to Chicago, last fall. The conference was organized by the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, chaired by veteran activist Frank Chapman. He says community control of police is a demand whose time has come.

It took thousands of atrocities, mass killings and other outrages by slaveholders before some white abolitionists finally recognized the necessity of violence to overthrow the system. Professor Jesse Olavsky is an historian at Duke University, and a scholar on resistance to slavery. She wrote a recent article about “Women, Vigilance Committees, and the Rise of Militant Abolitionism.

But first – It’s feeling much like the 1960s in America, with protests and clashes with police in scores of cities in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, in Minneapolis. One of those protests, in Newark, New Jersey, was led by Larry Hamm, chairman of the Peoples Organization for Progress. Larry Hamm is also running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Cory Booker. Hamm has been endorsed by Dr. Cornel West, the activist and public intellectual.

The U.S. civil rights movement may have been led by proponents of non-violence, but Black folks in Mississippi believed in defending themselves from racist attack. Akinyele Umoja is a professor of African American Studies at Georgia State University, and author of the book, "We Will Shoot Back: Armed Resistance and the Mississippi Freedom Movement.” In fact, he says most Black families in rural areas of the South owned guns.

Jalil Muntaqim is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Muntaqim has been behind bars for almost half a century, repeatedly denied parole. Now he’s battling Covid-19 in a New York prison hospital. For the latest on Muntaqim’s condition, we spoke with Jihad Abdulmumit, chair of the Jericho Movement

Slavery may have been abolished more than a century ago, but Black women still battle for the right to full ownership of their own bodies. Jill Morrison is director of the Women’s Law and Public Policy Fellowship at Georgetown University, where she is a law professor. Morrison has written an article titled "Resuscitating the Black Body: Reproductive Justice as Resistance to the State’s Property Interest in Black Women’s Reproductive Capacity." 

The Black Is Back Coalition is marking its 11th year of activism by holding a school on Electoral Politics, via ZOOM, on June 13th and 14th. The Electoral School has become a kind of legacy program of the Coalition, according to Black Is Back chairman Omali Yeshitela.

U.S. prisons are hot-spots for the Coronavirus, with many of the nation’s two million prisoners on lockdown. Mumia Abu Jamal is North America’s best known political prisoner. He says the whole country was left naked to the contagion.

Black people from across the African diaspora this weekend celebrated African Liberation Day. But the African continent is still not free. We spoke to Ndubuisi Christian Ani, a scholar at the Institute for Security Studies, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Suryia Nayal is Black feminist activist, trade unionist, psychoanalytic therapist, and Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the University of Salford in Great Britain. Dr. Nayak recently wrote a paper on the Combahee River Collective and its continued importance to Black feminism, worldwide.

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 majorities have the highest rates of premature death – and that was BEFORE the current epidemic.

Reparations for historical wrongs has emerged as a political issue, and genetic science now tells us more than we’ve ever known about our ancestors. But, can genetics become a useful tool for Reparations? We spoke with Dr. Jada Benn-Torres, of Vanderbilt University. She’s author of a recent paper, titled “Reparational’ Genetics: Genomic Data and the Case for Reparations in the Caribbean.”

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, has been experiencing the pandemic from behind bars in Pennsylvania. Prisons are hot spots of contagion, but Abu Jamal says it’s hard for individual prisoners to see the big picture.

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 majorities have the highest rates of premature death – and that was BEFORE the current epidemic.

Reparations for historical wrongs has emerged as a political issue, and genetic science now tells us more than we’ve ever known about our ancestors. But, can genetics become a useful tool for Reparations? We spoke with Dr. Jada Benn-Torres, of Vanderbilt University. She’s author of a recent paper, titled “Reparational’ Genetics: Genomic Data and the Case for Reparations in the Caribbean.”

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, has been experiencing the pandemic from behind bars in Pennsylvania. Prisons are hot spots of contagion, but Abu Jamal says it’s hard for individual prisoners to see the big picture.

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, advertising agencies are busy marketing the continent and its people. Dr. Grace Adeniyi- Ogunyankin, a professor at Queens University, in Ontario, Canada, says Africa has been repackaged for the global market. She wrote an article that examined, among other things, a commercial hawking a perfume, called ‘Scent of Africa.” We asked Dr. Adeniyi- Ogunyankin why the perfume ad caught her attention.

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 University, in Michigan, did a study of Black families that moved from Detroit to the mostly white suburbs in search of better schools for their kids, but were met with a barrage of micro-aggressions by teachers and other parents.  Professor Fakhoury titled her study, “State of the Art: Living Within the Veil.”

It is well known that ex-prison inmates have a hard time finding work – especially if they’re Black. But sociology professor Sandra Susan Smith, of the University of California at Berkeley,  has done a study that found, even Black folks that have been to prison are sometimes reluctant to vouch for other ex-offenders who are looking for a job.

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. But Professor Anthony Farley, of Boston College Law School, has written a paper that maintains the system of slavery is still with us in the United States, and that Black politics often amounts to nothing but Perfecting Slavery.

New Mexico is among the least Black states in the country. But Dr. Natasha Howard, a lecturer on Africana Studies at the University of New Mexico, says the reason Blacks are scarce is because the state was for a long time very hostile to ANY Black presence. Dr. Howard wrote on article that focused on a mural on display at the University, celebrating Anglo Whites, Spanish-speaking people, and Native Americans, but leaving out Black New Mexicans entirely.

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 Hardest Hit by the COVID-19 Outbreak.” McHarris says life in the projects was hard enough, before the epidemic.

Centuries of colonization and white rule in South Africa left the Black majority behind in all areas of education. Today, under Black governments, the country’s African language groups remain largely shut out of discussions of science. SEE-boo-SI-so Bee-YAY-la is a South African communicator and journalist. He recently wrote article on decolonizing science so that it is accessible in the many language spoken by Black South Africans. Bee-YAY-la told of being assigned to write in the Zulu language about the discovery of a new species of dinosaur. The problem was, the vocabulary necessary didn’t exist in Zulu.

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 disease.

Chesa Boudine, the leftish District Attorney for San Francisco, has a personal interest in dramatically reducing the US prison population. His father is a 75 year old prison inmate serving time for his role in the 1981 Brinks armored car robbery – a political heist by white radicals and members of the Black Liberation Army. District Attorney Boudine told National Public Radio’s Terry Gross that he’s reduced the San Francisco jail’s population by 40 percent -- both to fight the Covid-19 epidemic, and because this country puts too many people in jail.

Dr. Justin Coles is a professor at the Fordham University Graduate School of Education with an emphasis on Urban Education and Critical Race Studies. Dr. Coles co-authored an article on mass suspensions of Black students, a long standing phenomenon that Cole says is a relic of slavery and Jim Crow.

Race was the main force behind last year’s coup that overthrew Evo Morales, the elected president of Bolivia, South America’s most heavily indigenous nation. That’s the assessment of Dr. TaTHAgatan RaVINdran, a professor of anthropology and sociology in Colombia who has done extensive research on Bolivia’s Native American majority. Dr. RaVINdran says the United States and multinational corporations also had it in for Morales, but racism is what brought Bolivia’s first Native president down.

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, now living in Spain. He’s author of many books and articles, including a recent study of rent strikes throughout history. Gelderloos says strikes are the best response to the capitalist-controlled government’s behavior in the epidemic.

Graduate student teaching assistants at the University of California have been engaged in a series of protests over wages and working conditions. Semassa Boko is a Phd candidate at the university’s Irvine campus. He’s using his experience to help launch a strike in response to the epidemic and social crisis. Boko wrote an article on the concept of a social welfare strike.

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 an article in which he related how he was finally introduced to authentic socialism with the words, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

If capitalism is in a late and fatal stage, after hundreds of years at the top, then what is to take its place? Minkah Makalani is an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, who wrote a recent article titled, “The Politically Unimaginable in Black Marxist Thought.”

Mumia Abu Jamal is a former Black Panther who became an award-winning reporter in Philadelphia – before he became the nation’s best known political prisoner. Abu Jamal filed this report for Prison Radio.

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 growing understanding of the African liberation movement in his later works. Professor Woub-shet wrote an article on the subject for the Journal of Contemporary African Art.

Sociology professor Ah-NEE-ma Ah-jeh-PONG, of Simmons University, specializes in exploring questions of gender and sports. Dr. Ah-jeh-PONG published an article, recently, that focused on the 2012 Olympic Games, where South African women’s track star Caster Seh-MEN-yah won a silver medal but caused a huge controversy by looking too “mannish.”

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 for Joe Biden, not because they agreed with him on policy issues, but because they perceive Biden to be more electable.

White Supremacy makes itself felt in many ways. Sonita Moss is a Fullbright scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, who co-authored an article that focused on media fascination with light-skinned babies born to Black women.

 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-long ordeal. Among those who will be welcoming Delbert Africa and his Move political Family, is Gwen DeBrow, of the Campaign to Bring another political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, home.

Books I Teach is a regular feature of Black Agenda Report organized by BAR Book Forum Editor Roberto Sirvent. Boh-KAY Sah-EEsee is a Phd candidate at the University of California at San Diego. She exposes her students to a full range of books on subjects from Black feminist thought to political economy. We asked Sah-EE-see if her students arrive in her class with a comprehensive understanding of chattel slavery in the United States.

Another contributor to BAR’s “Books I Teach” feature, is Tee-AH-na Reid. She’s a PhD candidate in English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University where Reid conducts research in Black studies, Marxism, and feminism. Reid says she finds it useful to expose students to books about the appearance of the so-called “New Negro” in the 1930s.

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.” We asked Professor Brown why so many prison reformers belonged to socially conservative Black womens’ clubs.

The last of the surviving Move 9 members has been released from prison. Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, filed this report for Prison Radio.

 Before there was a movement against the Vietnam War, there was a movement against US militarism and support for white colonial regimes. Charisse Burden Stelly is a Professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College. She wrote an article for the Dubois Review, titled “In Battle for Peace During Scoundrel Time: W. E. B. Du Bois and United States Repression of Radical Black Peace Activism.”

We asked Professor Stelly, Who were the scoundrels during “Scoundrel Time?”

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 been convicted of a crime. But it’s often difficult to get out of jail, even if the bail is set at only one dollar. Amanda Lawson is a student at New York University and a co-founder of the Dollar Bail Brigade, whose volunteers have helped hundreds to navigate the jail bureaucracy.

Fifty seven years transpired between the murder of Emmet Till by white racists in Mississippi, and the killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman, in Florida. But Angela 

Own-WATCH-ee, a professor at Boston University School of Law, says both Black teenagers were killed for much the same reasons. Professor Own-WATCH-ee wrote a paper for the Dubois Review, titled “From Emmet Till to Trayvon Martin: The Persistence of White Womanhood and the Preservation of White Manhood.”

Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, sees parallels between low paid workers today, and during the Great Depression. He files this report for Prison Radio. 

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 slavery that cannot be reformed. David Stovall is a professor of African American Studies and Criminology at the University of Illinois, in Chicago. Stovall says, not only should prisons be done away with, but schooling, as we know it, should also be abolished.

Hearings begin on February 24, in Great Britain, on U.S. requests to extradite Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to the United States, to stand trail on 18 charges that could put him prison for 175 years. Assange is currently being held in Britain’s Belmarsh prison, where he is reported in poor health. Black Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford says Julian Assange is a political prisoner of Empire, who deserves support, along with all the other U.S. political prisoners. Ford was interviewed on Randy Credico’s radio show. 

Chuck Africa, the last of the MOVE 9 Black political prisoners convicted in the death of a Philadelphia cop back in 1978.  That was cause for celebration for the nation’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, who has been locked up since 1981 in the death of another Philadelphia cop. Abu Jamal is jubilant that Move member is out of prison.

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 Washington, to keep it from being taken over by Guaido supporters. They called themselves the Embassy Defenders. After almost a month-long siege, four of the Defenders were arrested. They face trial on February 11th, and could be imprisoned for up to a year and fined $100,000 each. One of the defenders is Kevin Zeese, of Popular Resistance. He says they’re being prevented from mounting an effective defense.

Black women in the United States are three times as likely to die in childbirth than white women, and Black American infant mortality is worse than in many poor countries of the world. Deirdre Cooper Owens is with the Department of History and the Humanities-in-Medicine Program of the University of Nebraska. She co-wrote a paper entitled, “Black Maternal and Infant Health: the Historical Legacies of Slavery.” Cooper Owens says much of modern U.S. medicine is based on medical practices devised during slavery.

It’s often said that reading is fundamental. But, what if most of what people read is historically wrong? Nana Osei-Opare teaches history at Fordham University. He submitted an article to Black Agenda Report’s “Books I Teach” feature. Osei-Opare has his students read a comprehensive list of authors and subjects, from the Kenyan Mau Mau, to South African liberationist Steve, former Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah, and radical writer and psychiatrist Franz Fanon. Near the top of the list is a book by Ruth First, who was assassinated by the white regime in South Africa.

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 appeared on a Washington Babylon podcast. He defended the New York Times’ 1619 project, which examined the origins of the Black presence in the English-speaking North American colonies.

The Black rebellion against the legitimacy of white domination rages on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. Ro-KIGH-ah Dialo is a French journalist, writer and film-maker, and a host of Black Entertainment Television—France. Diallo says white supremacy is baked into the culture of France and all the colonial powers of Europe. Ufortunately, however, the French never experienced a civil rights movement on their own soil.

Eziaku Nwokocha perceived intimate connections between Black people’s religious practices in Africa and the Western Hemisphere. Nwokocha has earned a Phd in in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylavnia, and she’s studying for her Masters degree in Theology at the Harvard Divinity School. She’s focused her studies on African and African American religions.

 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, the Soviet Union and China were bitter rivals, competing for leadership of the communist movement. One activist that straddled the China-Russia divide was Claudia Jones, a Black woman from Trinidad who did much of her most important work in the U.S. Zee-Fang Lee-ou is a doctoral student at Cornell University. He’s written a paper, titled, “Decolonization Is Not a Dinner Party: Claudia Jones, China’s Nuclear Weapons, and Afro-Asian Solidarity.” Lee-ou says Claudia Jones was a political pioneer.

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.

Anti-police brutality protesters often point to the collaboration between US cops and the counterparts in apartheid Israel. But author Stuart Schrader says the problem is a lot deeper than that. He’s written a new book, titled “Badges Without Borders:How Global Counterinsurgency Transformed American Policing.” It details how the US has learned to suppress rebellions at home and abroad, from Native American extermination and suppression of slave revolts, to becoming the policeman of the world.

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 percent of the populaton of Great Britain, but comprise a huge proportion of that nation’s prison population. Great Britain never experienced a civil rights movement on its own soil. But, Adam Elliot-Cooper, and Black activist and doctoral student at the Oxford University, says Britain’s human rights movement took place in its African and Asian and Caribbean colonies, during their struggles for independence. Elliot-Cooper says the British Empire’s oppression and exploitation of colonized people, world-wide, has come home to roost.

 America’s best known political prisoner, Mumia Abu Jamal, is co-author of a book detailing the litany of crimes committed by the United States in the course of its bloody history. It’s titled, “Murder, Incorporated.” Abu Jamal says the U.S. is living up to its reputation as an international assassin.

The United States has the highest rate of infant mortality in the developed world, and Black mothers die while giving birth at rates comparable to Third World countries. But Black mothers also suffer very high rates of what’s called post-partum depression, a mental health condition that is dangerous to both mother and child. Aneri Pattani is an activist and journalist. She wrote an article for Truthout, titled “Black Mothers Are Treated Less for Postpartum Depression Than Other Moms.” Pattani explains what post-partum depression is.

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 been making raids on West Africa, and taking Black prisoners as slaves. Nick Jones is a professor of Spanish at Bucknell University. He’s written a book about the lives of those African captives of the Portuguese and Spanish empires. It’s titled, “Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain.”

The United National Anti-War Coalition – UNAC – is planning a series of peace offensives for the New Year. One problem with organizing against war, Is that most Americans don’t even know that economic sanctions are as deadly as bombs and bullets, and are a form of warfare. We spoke with UNAC organizer Sara Flounders.

Last month, more than 800 activists from around the country gathered in Chicago to reestablish the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, with a focus on fighting for community control of police. Making the cops accountable to the Black community was a goal of the Black Panther Party. We spoke with Shepard McDaniel, known as “Brother Shep,” a veteran of the New York City chapter of the Panther Party. He would have liked to have attended the Chicago conference.

 That was Shepard McDaniel, or “Brother Shep,” formerly of the Black Panther Party in New York City. McDaniel is currently Community Affairs director for the Universal Zulu Nation

Justin 'Mujahid' Kaliebe is an activist doing hard time in the US prison Gulag. Kaliebe is not as well known as Mumia Abu Jamal, but he packs a powerful political analysis.

Aria Halliday is a professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of New Hampshire. Halliday co-wrote an article in the Black political journal “Soul,” titled, “The Power of Black Girl Magic Anthems: Nicki Minaj, Beyoncé, and “Feeling Myself” as Political Empowerment.” We asked Prof. Halliday, just what is “Black Girl Magic”?

The United States played a huge role in the recent military coup in Bolivia, where the hemisphere’s first Native American government was overthrown, and replaced with a white, far right Christian regime. The Organization of American States, or OAS sided with the coup plotters, who claimed that there were major defects in October’s election, in which President Evo Morales was seeking a third term. Jake Johnston is with the Center for Economic and Political Research, in Washington. He did a study of what actually happened in the election.

The period of rabid anti-communism and Red-baiting, often referred to as McCarthyism, actually lasted much longer than the career of it’s namesake, Senator Joseph McCarthy, and was deeply rooted in matters of race. Charisse Burden-Stelly is a professor of Africana Studies and Political Science at Carleton College, in Northfield, Minnesota. She wrote a compelling article in Soul, the  Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society, titled “Constructing Deportable Subjectivity: Antiforeignness, Antiradicalism, and Antiblackness during the McCarthyist Structure of Feeling.” We asked Dr. Burden-Stelly, What was this “McCarthyist Structure of Feeling”?

 Margaret Kimberley, a co-founder, editor and senior columnist of Black Agenda Report, has written a new book. It’s titled “Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents,” and examines how each of the previous leaders of the United States dealt with the Black presence in the country.

 School desegregation may have been a righteous cause, but Black college sports was one of the casualties. That’s the conclusion drawn by Derrick White, a professor of history at the University of Kentucky and author of the book, ““Blood, Sweat and Tears: Jake Gaither, Florida A & M, and the History of Black College Football.” White says Black colleges were out-performing white colleges in the 1940s and ‘50s, producing better athletes. But then, desegregation happened.

Mao Tse Tung, the father of the Chinese Revolution and the late leader of the Chinese Communist Party, famously warned that “capitalist roaders” within the Party were determined to turn the country capitalist. A new book by Zhun Xu, a professor of Economics at Howard University, says history has proven Chairman Mao to have been right. Prof. Xu’s book is titled, “From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty.”

 For decades, the Malcolm X Center for Self-Determination has fought on the side of the oppressed in Greenville, South Carolina, and the world. However, the bill collectors may be about to shut the center down, and silence its radio station, WMXP. We spoke with the Center’s director, veteran activist Efia Nwangaza.

The U.S. corporate media report almost nothing from the Syrian side in the 8-year-long war against US-backed Islamic Jihadists. Instead, corporate media parrot the version of events put out by the US government and its allies. The European media also black out the views of the Syrian government. Steven Sa-he-ou-ni is a Syrian American, and chief editor of the political journal MidEast Discourse. Sa-he-ou-ni recently appeared on the Taylor Report, on Canadian radio. Sa-he-ou-ni said the Italians are also censoring the news from Syria.

Another meeting between President Trump and other heads of state of NATO countries has ended in discord and confusion. However, Ajamu Baraka, of the Black Alliance for Peace, says the disarray in the North Atlantic Treat Organization is not necessarily a bad thing.

Polls show that Medicare For All continues to garner support from huge majorities of Democrats, and even about half of Republicans. The future of health care in the United States is also a multi-trillion dollar economic issue. We asked Kevin Zeese, of Popular Resistance, if the corporations that profit from privatized health care are panicking at the growing popularity of Medicare for All.

 Supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal rallied in a number of cities last week, as part of a push to finally free the nation’s best known political prisoner. Linn Washington is a legal scholar who has closely followed Abu Jamal’s case. He took part in a teach-in in New York City

For most Americans, Rastafarians are associated with music and marijuana. But Dave Dunkley, a professor of Black Studies at the University of Missouri, says Rastas played a key role in the emergence of a global Black liberation movement. Dr. Dunkley has authored a number of books on the subject, and wrote a recent article about the man who is credited with founding the Rastafarian movement, Leonard Percival Howell.

Nationwide opposition to the government has paralyzed Haiti for months, but the Jovenel Moise regime refuses to step down. Daoud Andre of the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti, says the regime has resorted to importing mercenaries to assassinate protest leaders.

The US global policy of overthrowing governments that don’t do Washington’s bidding has had successes and failures, recently. We spoke with Dr. Gerald Horne, the renowned historian and amazingly prolific author.

 Chicago has become the national focus of the struggle for community control of the police. Last month, 800 activists gathered at the Chicago teachers union hall for an historic conference to refound the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. The Alliance was originally founded in 1973, but was later largely disbanded. However, the Chicago chapter held on, under the leadershsip of veteran organizer Frank Chapman. Mr. Chapman presided over the recent refounding of the Alliance, and he’s a happy man.

 Supporters of Mumia Abu Jamal, the nation’s best known political prisoner, are gearing up for an important event in Philadelphia, on December 9. It’s called “Youth Rise Up Against Empire,” marking 38 years of Abu Jamal’s imprisonment, during which time he’s written a number of books. Mumia’s latest book is a trilogy, titled “Murder Incorporated,” that explores the history of US imperial crimes. Abu Jamal says he was inspired by the work of the late Howard Zinn. 

Activist and author William C. Anderson says radicals should not bow to pressures to tone down their demands, just to get along with the Democratic Party. Anderson co-authored a book called “As Black as the Resistance,” and recently wrote an article for Truthout titled ,”No Matter Who’s Elected, We Must Keep Demanding More.”

Margaret Kimberley, co-founder and senior columnist for Black Agenda Report, teamed up with acclaimed journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate before a packed house in midtown Manhattan. The subject was Propaganda – the lies that corporate media tell in service to US imperialism.

The socialist government that the late President Hugo Chavez brought to power in Venezuela 20 years ago is still standing, despite the efforts of three US presidents to overthrow it. Dario Azzelini is a visiting fellow at the Latin American Studies Program, at Cornell University. He’s an Italian who was raised in Germany and lived for years in a poor barrio in Caracas, the capital of Venezuela. Azzelini wrote a book, titled, “Communes and Workers' Control in Venezuela,” in which he argues that workers and peasants are building socialism from below in that country. We asked him why the right-wing has not been able to mount a successful coup against the Venezuelan government, despite crippling US sanctions and total support for regime change from the American media and the two corporate political parties.

Shannon Jones is an organizer with Bronxites for NYPD Accountability, part of a coalition from across New York City that has mobilized against high subway fares and police brutality underground. The coalition recently brought a thousand protesters to confront the police in Brooklyn, under the banner of “F.T.P” We asked Shannon Jones what “F.T.P” stands for.

 Supporters of the nation’s best known political prisoner are gearing up for an important event, December 7th, in Philadelphia. Suzanne Ross, of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal, explains.

 Benjamin Young is an interesting young scholar. He’s a professor in Cyber Leadership and Intelligence at Dakota State University, and was awarded a doctoral degree from the U.S. Naval War College. Considering his background, Young has unconventional interests: His doctoral studies centered on North Korea, and he recently wrote an essay for Soul, the Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture and Society. The essay was titled, “Imagining Revolutionary Feminism: Communist Asia and the Women of the Black Panther Party.

 Hispanics surpassed Blacks as the largest minority in the United States in the 21st Century. But minority status doesn’t necessarily mean that anti-Blackness is not a problem among Hispanics. We spoke with Janvieve Williams Comrie, a longtime activist who says racial justice and women’s reproductive rights are closely related.

The United States has been hostile to the government of Bolivia ever since Evo Morales was elected as that country’s first AmerIndian president. This month, right-wing forces and the military staged a coup against President Morales, forcing him into exile in Mexico. A white woman politician from a minority party declared herself president. Almost immediately, the Trump administration recognized the coup government – which is no surprise to Alex Main, of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, in Washington.