During This Economic Crisis, Capitalism’s Three Point Political Program: Austerity, Scapegoat Blacks, Minorities, and ‘Illegal’ Immigrants for Unemployment, and The Iron Heel.
Always Remember That Obamba Supported the Wall Street Bailout and Remember That President Obama, With a Majority Democrat Legislature, Started the United States Capitalist Austerity Program — The Race to the Botom or the Pauperization of the 99%!
Democracy?: As the Capitalist Robber Barons Steal from the 99%: Only the 1% Voted For Austerity — The 99% Should Decide On Austerity — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From Austerity! Under Austerity, All of the World Will Eventually Be Pauperized, Humbled, and Desecrated Like Greece and Puerto Rico. Socialism Means True Democracy — The 99% Will Rule! — Not the Few!
The 2017 manifesto was the most left-wing for decades. The 2019 manifesto – launched this morning in Birmingham under the title of It’s Time for Real Change – has proven to be even more radical. It promises a fundamental shift in the balance of power and wealth towards working people. Speaking at the launch event today, Jeremy Corbyn proclaimed that it is “a manifesto full of popular policies that the political establishment has blocked for a generation”. Included in the manifesto are: abolishing tuition fees; building 150,000 council houses and social homes per year; a windfall tax on fossil fuel companies; free fibre-optic broadband for all; introducing a £10 per hour minimum wage; banning zero-hour contracts; state-owned bus services; publically providing low-cost generic drugs; a 32-hour working week by 2030; introducing sectoral collective bargaining; free prescription charges; abolishing the Bedroom Tax; providing free NHS dental check-ups for everyone – and much more. — Labour’s Manifesto: Bold And Radical – But Can It Break The ‘Rigged System’?
The United States is not a Democracy (A government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly)! Only the 1%, through their ownership of the Republicrats and who profit from war and the war budget, vote for War and the war budget — A policy, which Gore Vidal called a Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace. — The 99% Should Decide On War — Not Just The 1% Who Profit From War! Under a Democracy, The 99% would have the right to vote on the policy of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace! The United States takes from the poor and gives to the Rich.
US Provides Military Aid To More Than 70 Percent Of World’s Dictatorships About three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships currently receive military assistance from the United States. This is a strange record for a nation that consistently justifies its sweeping foreign interventions as aimed at “promoting democracy” and “thwarting evil dictatorships.” About three-quarters of the world’s dictatorships currently receive military assistance from the United States. In the Cold War it was “He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Current analysis shows the U.S. militarily assisting dictators the world over, calling it “promoting democracy,” and disingenuously wondering why it’s all going so badly. By Whitney Webb
The NFL is But a Reflection of the Racism of Its Captitalist Owners: Before Kaepernick, The ‘Syracuse 8’ Were Blackballed By Pro Football They met in secret, away from their white coaches and teammates. “We used to meet at midnight,” former Syracuse football player Dana Harrell says. “And we could have met earlier. But we used to meet at midnight, to lay out our thoughts and plans, just like the slaves.” Harrell was one of nine college football players the international media would — incorrectly — call the “Syracuse 8.” It was the late 1960s, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy. Dana and his black teammates didn’t just see racial injustice. They lived it. And they wanted to do something about it. By Karen Given and Shira SpringerBlack Agenda Report November 20, 2019Public Housing as the Front Line of Green New Deal The AOC-Sanders initiative seeks to flip the racist script by revaluing public housing and its remaining occupants. “In the United States it is axiomatic that concentrations of poor Black people are bad, while high-rises full of affluent white people are good.”When Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced House and Senate bills to include what’s left of public housing in their sweeping Green New Deal environmental and economic salvation scenario , last week, the corporate media paid little attention. The Lords of Capital that own the press in the United States long ago consigned public housing to the dustbin of history, and have no intention of allowing the remaining 1.2 million units to escape privatization or demolition. Many cities now host only small remnants of public housing, having knocked the bulk of the buildings down and scattered their occupants – most of them to dwellings or sidewalks unknown – under the horrific Hope VI program and its successors. By Glen Ford , BAR executive editorFreedom Rider: The Ukrainegate Farce The Democrats are hoping that Ukrainegate will succeed where Russiagate failed and they can win the presidency without helping their voters. “This spectacle is a get out the vote effort that doubles as anti-Russian propaganda.” Donald Trump is not a very smart man. His decision to fire FBI Director James Comey is proof. That rash act sparked the Robert Mueller investigation which lasted for two years and did great damage to his administration. Yet when all was said and done it ended with convictions for nothing except process crimes and Mueller looking foolish when grandstanding Democrats insisted that he testify even after he made clear that he didn’t want to do that. By Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnistBook Review: Learning From the Soviet Collapse to Ignite a Socialist Revival The rise of liberal capitalist tendencies in the Communist Party led to Perestroika and the eventual overthrow of Soviet socialism. “The legacy of the Soviet Union been shaped by lies and anti-communist smears.” Author and socialist Carlos Martinez has written an invaluable book for the struggle for socialism in the 21st century. The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse acknowledges what too few in the socialist movement today are willing to confront: that an understanding of socialism is impossible without a critical look into the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. There are many reasons for the virtual erasure of the Soviet Union from the consciousness of activists within socialist circles in the U.S. and West. The Soviet Union represented the first experiment with socialism in a thoroughly capitalist world. Just as Haiti has been punished non-stop by the imperial powers for being the first nation to overthrow the yoke of slavery and colonialism, so too has the legacy of the Soviet Union been shaped by lies and anti-communist smears. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributorVictoire Ingabire Walks a Knife Edge in Rwanda The mass murderer that the US helped put in power in Rwanda flew into a raging rant against the woman who symbolizes the hopes of that country’s majority. “Kagame seemed to threaten her personally, though not by name.” A “Google Alert” triggers emails alerting me to new headlines about Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire. Of late I’ve opened them with dread, fearing words like “prison,” “imprisoned,” “reimprisoned,” or worse yet, “murdered” or “assassinated.” So I was pleased to open one this week and learn instead that the Spanish Association for Human Rights is honoring her with one of their annual Human Rights Awards. Ingabire walks a knife edge; as her international profile rises, so does Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s rage. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributoA War Criminal Chastises Children By BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised
and you’re always politically woke and all that stuff, you should get over that quickly.” — Drone Ranger, aka .44 Magnum, aka Iceberg Slim. It’s been four years since. he strode from the War House,
Saddlebags bulging, and galloped into the sunset of civilian life…Post Psy-Ops: Operation Neutralize Negroz;
(ONN) Operation Masked Man (OMM) (Read More)
Texas Court Halts Rodney Reed Execution Over Questions of Withheld Evidence, False Testimony A Black man gets a reprieve from execution in the death of a white woman who may have been killed by her cop husband. “Over the years the courts have erected barriers to those with solid evidence of innocence.” In a dramatic turn of events, Texas’s Court of Criminal Appeals issued an indefinite stay of execution for Rodney Reed, pending further court action on three points of appeal — including whether Reed is actually innocent of the murder that sent him to death row more than 20 years ago. By Jordan SmithThe Electoral College’s Racist Origins The nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College. “The three-fifths compromise was the foundation for the Electoral College.” Is a color-blind political system possible under our Constitution? If it is, the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 did little to help matters. While black people in America today are not experiencing 1950s levels of voter suppression, efforts to keep them and other citizens from participating in elections began within 24 hours of the Shelby County v. Holder ruling and have only increased since then. By Wilfred Codrington IIIBAR Book Forum: Nicholas Jones’s “Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain” “Behaving, talking, and sounding too black”—will never be separate from larger issues and questions of language and race. “Black folks will always hack the systems of oppression and revel in black joy and wit.”In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Nicholas R. Jones . Jones is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bucknell University. His book is By Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum EditorBAR Book Forum: Zachary Casey’s A Pedagogy of “Anticapitalist Antiracism” Many antiracist practices in schools are almost immediately coopted, privatized, and rendered ineffective. “What does a white person confessing their privilege actually do, in a material sense, to combat white supremacy?” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Zachary Casey . Casey is Assistant Professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College. His book is A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism: Whiteness, Neoliberalism, and Resistance in Education. By Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum EditorBolivian Coup Plotters Were Trained by US Military and Served as Attaches in FBI Police ProgramsCommanders of Bolivia’s military and police who helped plot the coup were educated for insurrection at the US military’s School of the Americas and FBI training programs. “The role of military and police officials trained by the US was pivotal in forcing regime change.” The United States played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia, and in a direct way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of the events that forced the country’s elected president, Evo Morales, to resign on November 10. By Jeb SpragueFinal Declaration of the Afro-descendant International Congress Tribute to the Afro-Venezuelan Cimarron “Guillermo Ribas” Neoliberal globalization deepens exploitation, while imposing a cultural homogenization that does not know the history of peoples, their traditions and their identity. “The offensive of U.S. elites and their allies seeks to end the cycle of progressive governments to impose neo-colonial relations in the so-called ‘national interest’ of the United States.” The following resolutions were approved by the Afro-descendant International Congress, in the City of Caracas, Cradle of the Liberator Simón Bolívar and Capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on November 12, 2019. By Afro-descendants of Our AmericaWhen Even The FBI Can’t Hold Police Accountable, How Can Anyone Else? A brutal New Jersey police chief who routinely spouted racist slurs and threats was fingered by his own officers, but exonerated in court. “Nucera faced three counts: a federal hate crime charge, deprivation of civil rights under color of law and lying to the FBI.” In the barrage of endless breaking news, you wouldn’t be alone if you likely missed a recent important story: the federal hate crime trial of a former New Jersey police chief. For three weeks a jury in Camden, NJ, listened and deliberated over the fate of Frank Nucera Jr., who served as chief of the Bordentown Township Police Department until his resignation in 2017 upon learning of the FBI probe. Nucera faced three counts: a federal hate crime charge, deprivation of civil rights under color of law and lying to the FBI. Back in 2005, when Nucera was deputy chief, I tried to have this very same police department investigated for what I said was a culture of racism, negligence and corruption after my dad’s death. Too bad nobody listened then. By Nida KhanMarker Now Calls 1898 Violence in Wilmington a “Coup,” Not a “Race Riot” White Democrats burned and killed their way to power in what’s viewed as the only successful coup d’etat in American history. “Black lives didn’t matter at that time in terms of reporting or documentation.” The state of North Carolina is moving away from using the phrase “race riot” to describe the violent overthrow of the Wilmington government in 1898 and is instead using the word “coup” on the highway historical marker that will commemorate the dark event. By Martha Waggoner
Race Riots in Wilmington, North Carolina, 1898 (Photo by Library of Congress/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images)
Labor:
‘Destroyer of Newspapers’ Vulture Fund Buys Majority Stake at Tribune PublishingNewspaper unions express fear that Alden Global Capital “is looking to bleed its next chain of newspapers dry.” ournalists sounded the alarm Wednesday after Tribune Publishing’s largest shareholder sold his stake in the company to a hedge fund that’s been described as “a destroyer of newspapers.” In a joint statement, the newspaper unions of Tribune Publishing—representing workers at papers including the Chicago Tribune and Baltimore Sun—said that the news of Alden Global Capital purchasing Michael Ferro’s 25.2% stake in the company should not be seen as “simply another change in stock ownership” because “Alden is not a company that invests in newspapers so they succeed.” “They buy into newspaper businesses with the express purpose of harvesting out huge profits—well above industry standards—and slashing staff and burning resources,” the statement read. By Andrea Germanos
Economy:
This Chart Shows How the Fed Has Spooked the Commercial Paper Market Yesterday the Federal Reserve released the minutes of its Federal Open Market Committee meeting of October 29-30. The minutes show that the FOMC members were fingering their worry beads over plans for their longer-term handling of the hundreds of billions of dollars weekly that the New York Fed is pumping into the overnight and term repo markets. The worries center on whether the Fed is creating moral hazard and/or that the banks will “take on an undesirably high amount of liquidity risk.” We have news for the Fed: both of those horses have left the barn. The Fed enshrined moral hazard and liquidity risk among Wall Street banks when it funneled $29 trillion to the miscreant banks from 2007 to 2010 while intentionally hiding its footprints from the public until it lost its court battle and had to disclose the data. By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
World:
It’s Time For Real Change — Labour Party Manifesto 2019 This election will shape our country for a generation. It is your opportunity to transform our country, so that it works not just for a few, but for all of us. Our manifesto is the most radical, hopeful, people-focused, fully-costed plan in modern times. This is our chance to tackle the climate emergency, to end food bank Britain and to rewrite the rules of the economy so it works for everyone – not just the billionaires. This is our chance to deliver a million genuinely affordable homes and a million climate jobs across every region and nation of the UK.It’s our chance to do all of this, and so much more. Our manifesto sets out how a Labour government will deliver the transformative change Britain needs. Labour is on your side. Jump in and find out more
BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND – NOVEMBER 21: Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn poses with members of the shadow cabinet outside the campaign bus as he arrives to launch the party’s election manifesto at Birmingham City University on November 21, 2019 in Birmingham, England. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Labour’s Manifesto: Bold And Radical – But Can It Break The ‘Rigged System’? Jeremy Corbyn today launched Labour’s manifesto for this election. It contains a whole host of radical policies that will enthuse workers and youth. But will this programme be enough to provide the ‘real change’ that Labour is promising? By Rob Sewell, Editor Of Socialist
General Election will Provoke a New Phase of Class Struggle The announcement of a 12th December General Election has sparked off what will be the most significant campaign for decades. Never has a prime minister represented so few people and commanded such little respect and never has the opposition looked so ready for a fight. Since the Brexit vote, mainstream commentators, both liberal and conservative, have only been able to predict misery and many honest workers have been understandably demoralised. However, Marxists have consistently pointed out that beneath the surface, mass anger with explosive potential is building up. This General Election will release much of this anger and in doing so will propel us into a new period of class struggle. The Brexit crisis in Britain is just the political expression of a much wider crisis of world capitalism which was sparked off by the crash of 2008. Austerity packages have been opened all over the world and the working class has been forced to endure unemployment, uncertainty and misery. By Editorial, by Ross Walker, IMT EdinburghFrance: 5 December strike – what strategy and what programme? 5 December may mark a turning point in the development of the class struggle in France. Since the RATP and SNCF unions have made this day the starting point for a indefinite strike, calls are multiplying from trade unions in other sectors to join and strengthen this movement, including in the form of indefinite strikes. It is true that a union call is not always followed by a solid strike when the time comes. Over the last 20 years, there have been many “days of action” and “inter-professional strikes”, which in fact mobilised only a tiny minority of workers in the strike – and even only a small part of unionised employees. The fault lay not with the workers, but with the trade union leaders who issued the slogan of “inter-professional strikes” in a mechanical way, without preparation or a serious plan. It was more a hollow formula than a true slogan. Trade union leaders did not believe in their chances of success themselves – and workers even less. The routine repetition of “interprofessional strikes” led Nicolas Sarkozy to quip in 2008: “From now on, when there is a strike in France, nobody realises it”.Fierce struggle on the streets of Iran The protests sparked on 15 November by fuel rationing and increased prices in numerous cities spread across the country, affecting at least 100 cities and towns by 18 November. Since then, it has become increasingly difficult to follow developments, due to an almost total internet shutdown in the country. Amnesty International has confirmed that at least 106 people have been killed in 21 different cities across the country, but these are only fully named and confirmed victims. An official of the security police was quoted on Monday, claiming the number of fatalities to be around 200, with 3,000 wounded. Since then, the numbers have risen dramatically. A nurse in a very small hospital in Tehran told us recently that at least 30 wounded were brought to the hospital every day. Meanwhile, there are a growing number of arrests, estimated to in the thousands. It is clear that the security forces are targeting hospitals arresting all many of the wounded. Three members of the security police forces have been reported dead so far. By Kaveh Chai Chi
Health, Education, and Welfare:
The government of the United States can pass laws in a few days to spend tens of trillions of dollars for war and the bailout of Wall Street and the bankers. Yet, those who ‘govern’, pass universal healthcare for themselves, but they cannot spend even one trillion dollars for universal health for those who are ‘governed’! This is what is considered, by the powers the to be, a democracy and part of the democratic way. — Roland Sheppard, Let the People Vote on Healthcare
Moral Decay of Capitalism: Letting the Side Down: Prince Andrew, the Royal Family and Jeffrey Epstein The choking cloud of Jeffrey Epstein’s paedophilic legacy has been floating over the Atlantic for some time. It does its best (or worst) in matters of US and British celebrity, warts and all. It has not, for instance, exempted the British Royal Family, whose cupboard stocked with misbehaviours and raunchiness got just more crowded with the antics of the Duke of York. Prince Andrew’s performance on Saturday on the BBC’s Newsnightwas an object study of how not to self-exonerate. The prince had been thick with Epstein, though hardly a luminary when compared to that particularly chocked address book. The meetings between them were sufficiently frequent to warrant questions. Madeleine Aggeler reminds us: Mar-a-Lago in 2000; his presence at Epstein’s spacious abode in 2010; the foot massages from “two well-dressed Russian women” in 2013. By Binoy Kampmark
One Pound Capitalism, a Pinch of Democracy, and an Impeachment In February 2018 on Fox News, Laura Ingraham ended her interview with former CIA director James Woolsey by asking him if the United States continues to “mess around in other people’s elections.” To which Woolsey, as though tasting the tasty lie in his mouth, replied: “Welllllllll aummmm yum yum yum yum yum… only for a very good cause, in the interest of democracy.” The United States has been interfering in foreign elections since World War II. And our government’s foreign policy has always been about sabotaging other people’s lives and their environment in furtherance of its geopolitical interests. Policy has not been aimed at furthering a “good cause,” and it certainly has not been “in the interest of democracy.” By Priti Gulati Cox
Quotes of the Day:
Civil Rights/Black Liberation:
Black Agenda Report November 20, 2019
Public Housing as the Front Line of Green New Deal The AOC-Sanders initiative seeks to flip the racist script by revaluing public housing and its remaining occupants. “In the United States it is axiomatic that concentrations of poor Black people are bad, while high-rises full of affluent white people are good.”When Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced House and Senate bills to include what’s left of public housing in their sweeping Green New Deal environmental and economic salvation scenario , last week, the corporate media paid little attention. The Lords of Capital that own the press in the United States long ago consigned public housing to the dustbin of history, and have no intention of allowing the remaining 1.2 million units to escape privatization or demolition. Many cities now host only small remnants of public housing, having knocked the bulk of the buildings down and scattered their occupants – most of them to dwellings or sidewalks unknown – under the horrific Hope VI program and its successors. By Glen Ford , BAR executive editor
Freedom Rider: The Ukrainegate Farce The Democrats are hoping that Ukrainegate will succeed where Russiagate failed and they can win the presidency without helping their voters. “This spectacle is a get out the vote effort that doubles as anti-Russian propaganda.” Donald Trump is not a very smart man. His decision to fire FBI Director James Comey is proof. That rash act sparked the Robert Mueller investigation which lasted for two years and did great damage to his administration. Yet when all was said and done it ended with convictions for nothing except process crimes and Mueller looking foolish when grandstanding Democrats insisted that he testify even after he made clear that he didn’t want to do that. By Margaret Kimberley , BAR editor and senior columnist
Book Review: Learning From the Soviet Collapse to Ignite a Socialist Revival The rise of liberal capitalist tendencies in the Communist Party led to Perestroika and the eventual overthrow of Soviet socialism. “The legacy of the Soviet Union been shaped by lies and anti-communist smears.” Author and socialist Carlos Martinez has written an invaluable book for the struggle for socialism in the 21st century. The End of the Beginning: Lessons of the Soviet Collapse acknowledges what too few in the socialist movement today are willing to confront: that an understanding of socialism is impossible without a critical look into the rise and fall of the Soviet Union. There are many reasons for the virtual erasure of the Soviet Union from the consciousness of activists within socialist circles in the U.S. and West. The Soviet Union represented the first experiment with socialism in a thoroughly capitalist world. Just as Haiti has been punished non-stop by the imperial powers for being the first nation to overthrow the yoke of slavery and colonialism, so too has the legacy of the Soviet Union been shaped by lies and anti-communist smears. By Danny Haiphong , BAR contributor
Victoire Ingabire Walks a Knife Edge in Rwanda The mass murderer that the US helped put in power in Rwanda flew into a raging rant against the woman who symbolizes the hopes of that country’s majority. “Kagame seemed to threaten her personally, though not by name.” A “Google Alert” triggers emails alerting me to new headlines about Rwandan opposition leader Victoire Ingabire. Of late I’ve opened them with dread, fearing words like “prison,” “imprisoned,” “reimprisoned,” or worse yet, “murdered” or “assassinated.” So I was pleased to open one this week and learn instead that the Spanish Association for Human Rights is honoring her with one of their annual Human Rights Awards. Ingabire walks a knife edge; as her international profile rises, so does Rwandan President Paul Kagame’s rage. By Ann Garrison , BAR contributo
A War Criminal Chastises Children By BAR Poet-in-Residence Raymond Nat Turner
“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised
The Electoral College’s Racist Origins The nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College. “The three-fifths compromise was the foundation for the Electoral College.” Is a color-blind political system possible under our Constitution? If it is, the Supreme Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 did little to help matters. While black people in America today are not experiencing 1950s levels of voter suppression, efforts to keep them and other citizens from participating in elections began within 24 hours of the Shelby County v. Holder ruling and have only increased since then. By Wilfred Codrington III
BAR Book Forum: Nicholas Jones’s “Staging Habla de Negros: Radical Performances of the African Diaspora in Early Modern Spain” “Behaving, talking, and sounding too black”—will never be separate from larger issues and questions of language and race. “Black folks will always hack the systems of oppression and revel in black joy and wit.”In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Nicholas R. Jones . Jones is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Bucknell University. His book is By Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Zachary Casey’s A Pedagogy of “Anticapitalist Antiracism” Many antiracist practices in schools are almost immediately coopted, privatized, and rendered ineffective. “What does a white person confessing their privilege actually do, in a material sense, to combat white supremacy?” In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is Zachary Casey . Casey is Assistant Professor of Educational Studies at Rhodes College. His book is A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism: Whiteness, Neoliberalism, and Resistance in Education. By Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
Bolivian Coup Plotters Were Trained by US Military and Served as Attaches in FBI Police ProgramsCommanders of Bolivia’s military and police who helped plot the coup were educated for insurrection at the US military’s School of the Americas and FBI training programs. “The role of military and police officials trained by the US was pivotal in forcing regime change.” The United States played a key role in the military coup in Bolivia, and in a direct way that has scarcely been acknowledged in accounts of the events that forced the country’s elected president, Evo Morales, to resign on November 10. By Jeb Sprague
Final Declaration of the Afro-descendant International Congress Tribute to the Afro-Venezuelan Cimarron “Guillermo Ribas” Neoliberal globalization deepens exploitation, while imposing a cultural homogenization that does not know the history of peoples, their traditions and their identity. “The offensive of U.S. elites and their allies seeks to end the cycle of progressive governments to impose neo-colonial relations in the so-called ‘national interest’ of the United States.” The following resolutions were approved by the Afro-descendant International Congress, in the City of Caracas, Cradle of the Liberator Simón Bolívar and Capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on November 12, 2019. By Afro-descendants of Our America
When Even The FBI Can’t Hold Police Accountable, How Can Anyone Else? A brutal New Jersey police chief who routinely spouted racist slurs and threats was fingered by his own officers, but exonerated in court. “Nucera faced three counts: a federal hate crime charge, deprivation of civil rights under color of law and lying to the FBI.” In the barrage of endless breaking news, you wouldn’t be alone if you likely missed a recent important story: the federal hate crime trial of a former New Jersey police chief. For three weeks a jury in Camden, NJ, listened and deliberated over the fate of Frank Nucera Jr., who served as chief of the Bordentown Township Police Department until his resignation in 2017 upon learning of the FBI probe. Nucera faced three counts: a federal hate crime charge, deprivation of civil rights under color of law and lying to the FBI. Back in 2005, when Nucera was deputy chief, I tried to have this very same police department investigated for what I said was a culture of racism, negligence and corruption after my dad’s death. Too bad nobody listened then. By Nida Khan
Marker Now Calls 1898 Violence in Wilmington a “Coup,” Not a “Race Riot” White Democrats burned and killed their way to power in what’s viewed as the only successful coup d’etat in American history. “Black lives didn’t matter at that time in terms of reporting or documentation.” The state of North Carolina is moving away from using the phrase “race riot” to describe the violent overthrow of the Wilmington government in 1898 and is instead using the word “coup” on the highway historical marker that will commemorate the dark event. By Martha Waggoner
