Friday, January 2, 2015

The Movement Can Take the Initiative, Blue Coup in NYC, Cuba in the American Imagination: BA Report for Dec 24, 2014

Taking the Initiative Back For the Movement After the Brinsley Killings


by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

The killing of 2 NYPD officers by Ismaaiyl Brinsley were the occasion for fascist cops, mostly Republicans and authoritarian liberal politicians, mostly Democrats along with their black civil rights and media spokespeople, to seize the initiative from the movement against police murder and brutality. But the movement can take the mic back. This issue of Black Agenda Report, is mostly about the movement response to the NYPD killings, along with some timely information on Cuba's present and past role in African liberation, and a remembrance of the US invasion of Panama 25 years ago, which leveled several African neighborhoods in Panama City.
We'll be taking a break next week, and back the first Tuesday or Wednesday in January. Happy holidays and peace, to those who fight for it, and everyone else.

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

New York City's cops "threaten mutiny if the State does not stick up for the men and women who do its dirty work." The police say they are now on a "wartime" footing – as if a state of a war has not existed between police and Black America for the past two generations.
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

The imperial mentality is not limited to the right wing of the American political spectrum. Some purported leftists greeted the opening to Cuba as if recognition by the U.S. was the greatest thing that ever happened to the island nation. The Cubans don't see it that way, although they wanted the deal. "President Raul Castro stated in no uncertain terms that Cuba will remain socialist and will not extradite Assata Shakur or anyone else granted asylum by the government."

By Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist

Ex NYC Mayor Bloomberg used to call NYPD his army. Facist thug cops are acting the part, publicly feuding with corporate media and liberal authoritarians like the mayor, the attorney general and the president over the degree of their immunity and impunity. DC's Hands Up Coalition, like the rest of the real movement, expresses sympathy and solidarity with the family of Shaneka Thompson, and vows that the demonstrations and public pressure will continue.

by Michelle Matisons

The three deaths in New York this past weekend – two cops, one young Black man with a gun – do not alter the issues and imperatives of the movement against police repression in Black America. However, "the corporate state's policing apparatus will do everything in its power to use this event as a further call to arms against protesting U.S. residents and communities of color."

by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka

Twenty-five years ago, the U.S military bombed, shot and burned to death 3,000 people in the mostly Black neighborhood of El Chorillo, in the capital city of Panama. It was a war crime, within the larger crime of foreign invasion. "U.S. troops committed numerous other war crimes, from summary executions to the wanton destruction of civilian property and the failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets."

by BAR poet-in-residence Raymond Nat Turner

Young and strong, marching
All night long on search and
Destroy missions, uprooting,
Overturning, anything decayed 

by Johanna Fernández

"The police are already using the killings of these cops as an opportunity to declare war against the black community and to criminalize the growing movement against police violence."
In real-world America, cops are rarely killed, yet their institutional behavior is central to the "crazy-making" of a racist society.

by Davey D

When a white couple killed two Nevada cops earlier this year, draping a tea party flag and swastikas on one of the corpses before being gunned down, we didn't hear a nationwide outcry about how cops feared for their lives. There was no pressure on open carry and tea party folks to denounce the killers. What does this kind of selective outrage tell us?

by Danny Haiphong

The battle against the Black Mass Incarceration State will move forward through both organized, concrete action and spontaneous rebellion. The goal is social transformation. "Capitalist ideology is merely window-dressing for a genocidal, racist system built on the graves of Black America and the material conditions that brought the #BlackLivesMatter movement to life."

by Thandisizwe Chimurenga

In their haste to seize a political opportunity with the killing of 2 NYPD officers by Ismaiyil Brinsley, corporate media, cops and politicians have shown once again whose causes and lives really matter. Brinsley's first victim was Shaneka Thompson. Remember her name. Her life matters too.
 

by Brian Mier

Brazil has the largest population of black people outside Africa, leads the planet in police murders of young blacks. Like their US counterparts, murderous Brazilian cops enjoy immunity and impunity. Besides the article published below, our friends at This Is Hell interviewed Brian Mier...

by Jeb Sprague

In Jamaica, as in so much of the formerly colonized world, debt strangles development and negates national sovereignty. "Jamaica's two main political parties are largely concerned with remaking Jamaica into a more globally competitive platform for transnational capital."
 

A Cuban Odyssey: Cuba's key role in the struggle for African Liberation

An indispensable film by by Jihan El-Tahri.

From its beginnings, the Cuban Revolution has been the indispensable ally of liberation forces on the African continent.
This is part of the history that most Africans, and certainly every Cuban knows, but which few of us in the US, even activists and scholars are aware. It's also key to understanding the implacable hostility of the US to the Cuban Revolution.
Counter-Revolution in Cuba by Other Means
The U.S. is establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time in nearly 55 years, but Washington is still up to no good. "I think the people in the Obama administration have decided that this is just another way to overthrow the Cuban revolution," said Netfa Freeman, of the International Committee for Freedom for the Cuban 5. "They still have the same disposition about Cuba, but they want to change how they go about destabilizing it." The remaining three members of the Cuban 5, who were imprisoned in 1998 on espionage charges, were freed as part of the diplomatic breakthrough.
Ferguson as Truth-Teller to the World
Russians were shocked at Michael Brown's killing and the scale of protests that followed, said Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley, just returned from a conference of the Anti-Globalization Movement of Russian, in Moscow. "The small suburb of St. Louis is now known around the world," said Kimberley, "and the people of Ferguson have really done an amazing thing in telling the world the truth about life in the United States, particularly for Black people." Kimberley traveled as part of a delegation from UNAC, the United National Anti-War Coalition.
U.S. Power Structure Searching for Slick Black Hope
Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, the BAR editor and columnist, renowned whistleblower and activist with the Hands Up Coalition-DC, said U.S. rulers confront a huge challenge: "How do we take control of the movement and provide it with a leader that will be accepted among the young?" Obama favorite Al Sharpton and much of the traditional civil rights leadership are vying for the job. The power structure "needs these organizations to provide a diversion away from people asking very fundamental questions about whether capitalism can meet the needs of Black people in this country."
The Ever-Morphing Police State
New York police commissioner Bill Bratton, architect of the "Broken Windows" philosophy of policing, has other tricks up his sleeve, said Josmar Trujillo, of New Yorkers Against Bratton. "He's here to figure out new, innovative ways to get into our lives," such as "predictive policing," a "muscled-up, proactive" approach that provides yet more forced encounters between cops and their Black and brown prey. "The police state that communities of color live in is, literally, killing people" – such as "Broken Windows" victim Eric Garner.
Mumia Abu Jamal Daughter Dies
Samiyah "Goldie" Davis Abdullah, the 35 year-old daughter of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, has succumbed to cancer. The mother of two girls and spoken word artist had just finished earning her masters degree in social work at the University of Pennsylvania. At Frackville State Prison, Abu Jamal told Prison Radio that his daughter "remains with us, echoing in our souls. She is a song we will sing forever."
Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network is hosted by Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey. A new edition of the program airs every Monday at 11:00am ET on PRN. Click here to download the show. Length: One hour.
 
 

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Ron Karenga, the man who invented Kwaanza, headed the US organization, which was responsible for the murder of 4 Black Panthers in Southern California as a tool of COINTELPRO, and the torture of two of its own female members. Kwaanza may now be bigger than its inventor, but Karenga's crimes do cast a shadow on the holiday for many of us.
 

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