Boston lost its Lion King in March with the passing of Melvin H. King at the age of 94. It is impossible to summarize the impact that Mel’s life had on the city, and on the people who endeavor to do justice to his life and vision. State Senator Lydia Edwards put it this way: …
Continue reading Mel King, Rest in Peace / Rest in Power / Rest in Love.Important and timely words from Langston Hughes. It is chilling how Trump’s slogan is almost a complete rip-off. Let America Be America Again Langston Hughes, 1902 – 1967 Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he …
Continue reading Let America Be America Again[Ed. note: for all the power and inspiration that came out of the NCMR, it did feel incredibly white and timid]
From Black Agenda Report
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR editor and columnist Jared A. Ball
4/26/2011
The Media Reform Conference and Democracy Now! share common characteristics: they are the best that the white left has to offer, and profoundly inadequate. Democracy Now! doesn’t just shortchange people of color, but unions as well. And the politics of periodic Media Reform conferences are as blindingly white as the corporate variety.
Race, Class, Unions and Media “Reform”
There is truly good reason for friends to remind me of my having gone back on a previously made promise to stop attending the very white and liberal National Conference for Media Reform [6]. Again the conference gathered, this year in Boston a couple of weeks ago, and again nearly all of the Black and Brown people I spoke to expressed disappointment at being present but not so much heard. One friend promised to smack me and anyone else he hears about coming back in the future. Another more prominent Black woman within this and other related political struggles whose experience and work truly deserves more credit and attention than she gets simply raised her tired eyes above her glasses and asked me with all the frustration and fatigue in the world, “Jared, why do you come here?”
Continue reading Race, Class, Unions, and Media “Reform”Quoting from Peter Vickery’s December 15 2009 post on the Mass Greens blog, describing the growth of the formerly tiny Liberal Democratic Party in the United Kingdom.
“How did the they do it? Partly by luck, of course, like so much else in politics. But also as a result of planning and foresight: by campaigning around issues their grassroots supporters were passionate about about, from the apparently mundane to the almost esoteric; by building up their base in diverse communities, from blighted inner cities to middle-class suburbs and far-flung Scottish islands; by targeting their resources on winnable seats; by forging electoral non-compete agreements with allied parties; and, above all, by taking the long view.”
Continue reading How to grow a grass roots party? From the bottom up. Local and statehouse candidates needed(and now that we know that Blackwater is operating in Pakistan, it’s a pretty safe bet he doesn’t care about Pakistani, Afghani, or Iraqi people either)
As times goes by, it sounds more and more like the US government’s response to the crisis in Haiti suffers from the same cold-hearted ignorance, arrogance, and ineptitude that defined its response to Katrina. Kanye West’s famous “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” line during a fundraising telethon seems sadly apropos to our new “post-racial” President.
Read this synopsis by Slate’s Ben Ehrenreich if you can stomach it.
Continue reading Barack Obama Doesn’t Care About Black People