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Black Agenda
Can Blacks Criticize Barack Obama?
Jan. 9 | It is ironical that these African Americans chose a celebration of Martin Luther Jr. to blackball and silence Tavis Smiley because of his political critique of a Black leader who like all other leaders should be held accountable for his deeds and policies....
Political Prisoners: Lessons for Occupationists and Us All
Dec. 14 | Mumia Abu Jamal’s life and work is testament to the need to put political prisoners at the top of the agendas of movements for change. “Political prisoners have much experience with the legal system, the police, the entire apparatus of surveillance...
J. Edgar and the Terrorism of Film
Dec. 7 | Clint Eastwood’s new movie is an attempt to sanitize J. Edgar Hoover’s dirty war to keep white men “atop the social pyramid.” It is also an apartheid film. “We get nothing of his concern over The Black Panther Party, or the surveillance and...
Decolonizing Our Occupations
Nov. 30 | White privilege, the legacy of 500 years of European military and economic suppression of the rest of the planet, is manifest even in movements that purport to be transformational, like Occupy Wall Street. Beneath the politics of economic reordering lie...
Hip-Hop Against the World!
Nov. 16 | Propaganda agencies operate on the principle that everything can be turned to advantage, even the cultural properties of the oppressed. Like jazzman Louis Armstrong’s “good will” tours for the U.S. State Department in the Fifties, rappers today...
Redefining Veteran’s Day
Nov. 9 | Wars produce veterans on both sides. Thus, opponents of the wars the U.S. government has waged since its inception against “enemies” within its territory are also veterans. “Nat Turner and his compatriots were once described as “insurgent[s]”...
Occupy These…! Slavery and Abuse by Metaphor
Nov. 2 | Young white demonstrators should be advised not to complain of being “enslaved” to student loans and such, any more than they would speak of a “Holocaust” of unemployment. Such metaphors of slavery are more than merely inaccurate – they may...
Russell Simmons Still Ain’t Hip-Hop and He Ain’t No Occupier Either!
Oct. 26 | The experience of the last five weeks shows that Wall Street “occupiers’ fear of liberal co-optation is fully justified.” Media mogul and debit card finance capitalist Russell Simmons escorted Kanye West and Al Sharpton into the Zuccotti Park occupation...
Memorials and Spectacles: The Anti-Dr. King Monument
Oct. 19 | Dr. Martin Luther King was made to suffer the indignity of being drafted into a corporate president’s campaign and corporate sponsors’ image-making. At the memorial ceremony in Washington, “it was clear Obama’s re-election bid was to be a primary...
