Black Agenda Radio – 04.11.16

Welcome, to the radio magazine that brings you news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective with your host Glen Ford and his co-host, Nellie Bailey.

– Mississippi’s Republican state government is trying to strip its mostly Black capital city, Jackson, of control over its airports and other revenue producing properties. The state also seems eager to seize the city’s water system. We spoke with Kali Akuno, of Cooperation Jackson, the political organization that elected Chokwe Lumumba as, arguably, the most radical Black mayor in the country, back in 2013. But Mayor Lumumba died the next year, and now his supporters are fighting from outside. Kali Akuno says the Mississippi Republican Party is determined to crush all possibility of Black political and economic power in Jackson. He calls it, “the Confederate Spring.”

– In New York City’s Harlem, this weekend, the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations held a national conference on the elections and Black self-determination. The conference explored whether this election season has opened up new possibilities for a radical, independent Black politics. Margaret Kimberley, a Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist, was one of the speakers.

– Boston-based writer and activist Danny Haiphong is a regular contributor to BAR. In a recent article, Haiphong said the fractures in the Republican and Democratic parties are reflections of the general crisis in the system of capitalism.

Danny Haiphong – NATO and the Dangerous Escalation of US imperialism

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has arguably been the most utilized tool of imperial war since the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Ironically, the sole purpose of NATO’s creation in 1949 was to “contain” revolutionary socialism wherever it emerged. The world was a very different place in 1949. The Soviet Union had developed into an industrialized, socialist state with links to independence struggles all …