On the show, Chris Hedges speaks with Ajamu Baraka, national organizer and spokesperson of the Black Alliance for Peace. They discuss journalist Glen Ford and the radical black press.
Glen Ford, who died in the summer of 2021, was one of the country’s most insightful political commentators and radical journalists. He appeared several times on this show. He spoke for the marginalized and excoriated the elites. Glen was the co-publisher of the radical Black Commentator. He late in 2006 co-founded Black Agenda Report with Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberley. Glen repeatedly called out the Black political elites, exposing for example New Jersey Senator Cory Booker’s close ties with right-wing organizations such as the Manhattan Institute and the Bradley Foundation and Booker’s advocacy of neoliberalism, austerity programs, school privatization and other initiatives that are at the forefront of the war on the poor, especially poor Blacks. He called the Black political leaders who sold their soul to corporations and America’s imperial projects the “Black misleadership class.” While many Black leftists betrayed the most basic tenants of their political beliefs to support Barack Obama following his election to the presidency in 2008, Glen saw through the charade. He lambasted Obama and Hillary Clinton as “political twins” and warned that the policies they advocated were deeply harmful to Black people. He saw Obama and the Democratic Party as not the lesser evil, but the more effective evil. The Democrats, he knew, were better at masking their subservience to corporations, the ruling elites and the military industrial complex while assiduously doing their bidding. Glen was also keenly aware that the evils of white supremacy and corporate plundering are the driving engine behind America’s imperial projects. He kept a close watch on the United States Africa Command, AFRICOM, and its expanding military footprint on the continent. A talented and brilliant writer, gifted with an acerbic sense of humor and uncompromising in his integrity and courage, he will be very hard to replace. Glen Ford's new book "The Black Agenda." https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-b... #QuestionMore #RTAmerica #OnContact
