Tag: Black Agenda Report

The people of the world need to know that the corporate media is fabricating a massif of lies concerning the on-the-ground facts of the illegal war against the people of Libya by American and NATO forces. News reports represent Qaddafi as a hated and unpopular leader. Yet he has struggled harder than any Western leader to champion the rights of the poor and abolish racism against Black people. I wish the world could see the universal support of the young people for their government.

Gerald Perreira has lived and worked in Libya as an organizer and journalist and has been giving regular reports to Block Report Radio and the San Francisco Bay View newspaper. It is important to develop our own media and experts who can speak from an African perspective.

There is a popular myth which explains President Barack Obama’s reluctance to stand up to Pentagon militarists, Wall Street banksters and corporate greedheads. The myth is that he really does want to do all these things, but we the people have abandoned our responsibility to “make him do it.”

Emancipatory journalism aggressively argues that we need radical community-based journalism that, while professional, organized and researched, is clear about its bias in favor of oppressed communities and their political organizations and struggle.

I am pleased to stand with my colleagues today who are outraged at Nobel Peace Laureate President Obama’s decision to wage war on Africa in Libya. At the outset, let me state that Libya is home to tens of thousands of foreign students and guest workers. The students come from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. The messages I have received from concerned Africans state that these young, innocent people, inaccurately labeled by the U.S. press as “Black mercenaries,” have been trapped in hostile territory and are hated by the U.S.-allied Al Qaeda insurgents.

There is no possibility of understanding what is happening in Libya within a Eurocentric framework. Libya’s system and the battle now taking place on its soil stands completely outside of the Western imagination. The battle that is being waged in Libya is fundamentally a battle between pan-African forces on the one hand, who are dedicated to the realization of Qaddafi’s vision of a united Africa, and Libyan Arab forces who look toward Europe and the Arab world for Libya’s future.

On the afternoon of Feb. 21, 1965, I went to the Audubon Ballroom to hear Malcolm X speak. It was the saddest day of my life. An update has been added to this story, originally published in 2009.

"Since the start of the Dec. 9 peaceful work stoppage and appeal for reform and respect for human rights, some inmates have been targeted and others have simply disappeared. We are urging the Department of Corrections and Governor-Elect Nathan Deal to act now to halt these unjust practices and treat these men like human beings,” said Ed Dubose, President of the NAACP of Georgia.

Eight days after the start of Georgia’s historic prisoners’ strike, advocates met with state corrections officials and visited a prison. “The prisoners have done all they can do now. It’s up to us to build a movement out here that can make the changes which have to be made,” said Rev. Kenny Glasgow of The Ordinary Peoples Society (TOPS).

I hope you’ll consider giving your support to the massive prison strike going on in Georgia right now. Inmates at several institutions in the state have coordinated the largest prison strike in U.S. history as a collective fight for their rights to educational opportunity, decent health care, access to their families, and an escape from cruel and unusual punishment.

In a protest spreading through Georgia’s prison system, inmates are striking for better conditions and to be paid for their work, which they're now forced to do for free. They've locked themselves down in peaceful protest but are being punished violently, some beatings resulting in broken ribs and one man beaten beyond recognition. Sign the petitions and learn other ways you can help.

Jubilant at finally breaking the blockade to bring aid to the people of Gaza, three Black heroes - former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, fresh out of an Israeli prison, New York City Councilman Charles Barron and M-1 of dead prez - and Viva Palestina organizer British Member of Parliament George Galloway's are interviewed by the world press. Yet U.S. media are silent. Read all about it right here.

This past Sunday over 1,200 people showed up at Salem Methodist Church in Harlem to listen and weigh in on a discussion that has been raging on in our communities but is oftentimes swept under the rug.