Blogs

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Democrats lost almost everywhere this midterm, and where they won it wasn't good news for the 99%. Pension-cutting, privatizing, mass incarcerating tax-the-poor and coddle-the-rich Democrats like the incumbent governors of California and New York are pretty hard to tell from Republicans. Both are part of a zombie consensus, animated by something other than the will of the people.

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo loves to show his disdain for the left, including the fake left represented by the Working Families Party (WFP). Cuomo “expanded the number of charter schools and bragged about giving tax relief to corporations and wealthy people.” When the gutless WFP endorsed him, anyway, Cuomo created an even more bogus “party” to compete with them. Amid all this fakery, the only left choice was the Greens.

By the Real News Network

by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

Activist Kenny Nero, Jr., of the DC Ferguson Movement, wants to “stand in solidarity with the victims of violence in Ferguson while standing in solidarity with victims of police brutality, harassment, terror or other misconducts.” That means fighting for community control of police – and much more. “The challenge of my generation is to revolutionize society in order to experience civilization.”

by Raymond Nat Turner

Taking up some slack
Resisting an attack
Off the mule’s back
Out the cul-de-sac
Trane back on track—
BLACK IS BACK!

By Roberto Lovato

The first black president never explicitly promised blacks ANYTHING, the logic of some apologists goes, so we're foolish to expect anything. But what of the Latino community, to whom he promised a road to citizenship and delivered instead a vicious policy of 2 million deportations and counting, shattering families and communities on an unheard of scale?

by Reverend Reynard N. Blake, Jr.

See harmful loan schemes and tricks black folks go through
Criminal justice makes prison work fruitful
Sentence black guys with the long stints they’ll bring
Greenbacks accrue from high speculating

by August H. Nimtz

There is nothing inevitable about the Ebola epidemic now devastating parts of Africa. Colonial rule left and neoliberal western domination left Africa largely bereft of public health services. Liberia, a semi-colony of the U.S., is “one of the world’s leading rubber producers,” yet “there are not enough rubber gloves to protect its citizens from the scourge.”

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

The United Nations’ yearly vote against the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba has evolved into a “singular opportunity for all the world body’s members to chastise the superpower that seeks full spectrum domination of the planet.” The Cuban model of behavior in the world – exemplified in the fight against Ebola – was ceremonially saluted, while “the world’s biggest economic and military power could neither buy nor bully a single ally” except Israel.

by BAR editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley

For Black people in America, getting justice has little or nothing to do with facts or evidence or common sense. White supremacy trumps all, even if the president and the top federal lawman are Black. “Obama and attorney general Eric Holder have no intention of prosecuting police murder, no matter what videos or other evidence show.”

by BAR editor and columnist Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo

“The St. Louis police department is engaged in a massive cover-up, falsifying documents, perhaps tampering with materials and iniquitous lying” in the death of 18-year-old Vonderrit Myers. Nevertheless, the police version of events is rapidly falling apart, with the evidence showing Myers was shot six times in the back while running away.

by BAR poet in residence Raymond Nat Turner

Once upon a time the CBC called itself the "conscience of the congress". That, observers our poet in residence, was a long time ago indeed. CBC stands for something quite different these days.