Black Agenda Report - Issue for June 6 –12

The Black Caucus’ Fatal FOX News Embrace
by Leutisha Stills, chief congressional correspondent, CBC Monitor
Congressional Black Caucus leadership insists on continuing its indecent dance with FOX News despite public and internal opposition to a join FOX-CBC Democratic presidential debate. With only three candidates now willing to participate, it is doubtful the accursed event will occur as planned, in September. However, the Caucus’ eagerness to partner with Rupert Murdoch’s racist propaganda machine reveals a deep corruption among the misleadership class. If they are willing to tango with FOX News, they’ll have illicit relations with anybody.

Black Labor Vows ‘We Will Not be Made Expendable”
by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
The global “Race to the Bottom” is fast erasing Blacks from the ever-shrinking unionized labor force, an historical crisis that demands an all-out campaign to dismantle the corporate agenda. Black Labor, which has always seen itself as an extension of the Black Freedom Movement, gathered in Chicago for a frenzy of activity at the 36th annual convention of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists. Unlike “traditional” trade unionists, the CBTU understands the need for a revamping of the Current Order, “which cannot be cured, as it is.” Black folks have already seen the bottom, and will not go back.

Freedom Rider: John Conyers and the Bush Dictatorship
by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley
Hardly anyone in the corporate media seemed to notice when, last month, George Bush gave himself the power to run the government all by himself in situations of “catastrophic emergency.” It would also be up to Bush to decide just what constitutes such an emergency – natural disaster, economic dislocation, or even launching of another of Bush’s premeditated wars, who knows? Democratic leadership remained silent as Bush set the stage for dictatorship-at-will. It’s past time for Rep. John Conyers to put impeachment back “on the table” – before it’s too late.

Barack Hussein Obama: The Meteoric Rise of a Race-Neutered Presidential Candidate
by BAR contributing editor Nathaniel X Turner II
Barack Obama is a double-whammy: a pretender to Black leadership who refuses to even acknowledge the existence of a “Black America.” With an Audacity of Arrogance, this self-styled “Joshua” claims unearned moral authority to demand loyalty from African Americans, while avowing that he himself has no loyalty to any “tribe.” Far from representing the fulfillment of Blacks’ historical dreams, Obama’s candidacy is anathema to the very concept of African American self-determination.

Lynching: Black Resistance and Capitulation
by BAR contributing editor Tamara K. Nopper
Writer and activist L.V. Gaither wasn’t surprised to discover three Black faces in a photo of a crowd that watched the lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, Texas, in 1916. “I was expecting [to find] them,” said Gaither, whose new book explores the capitulation of some Blacks to lynching, “legal” and otherwise. Black leadership vacillates on the issue of capital punishment, partly in hope of sparing “Blacks en masse from being suspected as criminal,” but also to diffuse threats of armed rebellion that might endanger deals that have been struck with the white power structure.

FOX News, the CBC, and the Indictment of ‘Dollar Bill’ Jefferson
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR managing editor Bruce Dixon
Both “liberal” Democrats and the far-right FOX News network have used the indictment of Louisiana congressman “Dollar Bill” Jefferson for their own ends. Liberals who couldn’t get worked up about the disenfranchisement, dispossession and dispersal of 200.000 black New Orleanians are happily howling for pieces of Jefferson’s crooked scalp. And FOX News has seized the occasion to besmirch and defame it’s so-called “partners,” the Congressional Black Caucus.

Other stories:

Poverty Scavengers
by Danny Glover and Nichole Lee
The vultures of predatory capital are circling Africa, buying up the debt of poor nations and winning court awards several times the price. TransAfrica Forum’s Danny Glover and Nichole Lee warn that these vulture capitalists make a mockery of the rich countries’ promises to forgive African and Latin American debt. As a consequence, “U.S. taxpayers’ money, pledged to provide relief and assistance through debt relief, will fall into the hands of these greedy corporations.”

ENDS

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