The Black Agenda

"In this stunning overview, Ford draws from his work for Black Agenda Report, one of the most incisive and perceptive publications of the progressive left, to examine competing struggles for class power and identity in the Black movement. In a survey stretching from the violent gentrification of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, through the engineered bankruptcy of Detroit, to the "more effective evil" of the Obama presidency, Ford casts a caustic eye on the empty posturing and corruption of the Democratic Party. This, he insists, depends on a Black constituency for electoral success, while using a co-opted "Black misleadership class" to sell out working people's interests. Profiling along the way storied Black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Brown (for whom Ford once worked), The Black Agenda looks, too, beyond American shores, at US intervention in Libya, the Congo and the Middle East, showing how these are imbricated with racism at home. Ford concludes with a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement, setting out both its pitfalls and potentialities."--Provided by publisher.

List of contents

INTRODUCTION

PART I—Thanksgiving

No More American Thanksgivings (November 27, 2003)

PART II—Bush and Katrina

They Have Reached Too Far: Bush’s Road Leads to Ruin for Himself and His Pirates (March 20, 2003)

No Black Plan for the Cities, Despite the Lessons of Katrina (May 9, 2007)

The Age of Katrina—Not Obama (August 26, 2008)

PART III—DLC and Black Misleadership

Katrina, War, Impeachment, and the Black Gulag (August 22, 2007)

The “Obscene Fourteen” House NSA Negroes (July 13, 2013)

Detroit Is the Nexus of the New American Apartheid (September 18, 2013)

The Siege of Detroit: A War of Black Urban Renewal (July 23, 2014)

The Democratic Road to Black Ruin (March 23, 2016)

The Validity and Usefulness of the Term “Black Misleadership Class” (January 4, 2018)

PART IV—Duopoly

Both Major U.S. Parties Are Plagues on Humanity (July 1, 2015)

Vector of Fear: Blacks and the Democratic Party (February 3, 2016)

Throw Off the Dead Weight of the Democratic Party (February 11, 2016)

Hillary Stuffs Entire U.S. Ruling Class Into Her Big, Nasty Tent (August 10, 2016)

Clinton’s Basket of Deplorables (September 14, 2016)

Fascism with a Democratic Party Face (November 30, 2016)

Facebook Is Not Your Friend (October 17, 2018)

PART V—Obama

The Great Black Hajj of 2009 (January 27, 2009)

Obama’s Emerging Legacy: Wars, Bankers, and For-Profit Healthcare (June 24, 2009)

What Part of “We Needs Jobs” Does Obama Not Get? (December 22, 2009)

First Black Presidency Has Driven Many African Americans Insane (July 6, 2010)

Gridlock Is a Blessing: To Hell with Obama and his Van Joneses (November 23, 2011)

Why Barack Obama Is the More Effective Evil (March 2012)

Fletcherism and Fakery: Guarding Obama’s Left Flank (August 22 2012)

What Obama Has Wrought (September 5, 2012)

Angela Davis Has Lost Her Mind Over Obama (March 28, 2012)

Black America More Pro-War Than Ever (September 18, 2013)

Black Madness Under Obama: African Americans More Pro-NSA, Anti-Snowden Than Whites and Hispanics (January 22, 2014)

Gridlock (Once Again) Rescues Social Security from Obama and the GOP (February 26, 2014)

Obama’s Last Presidential Lies (January 1 2017)

The Obama Legacy (January 19, 2017)

PART VI—Wars in Africa and the Middle East

The Shrinking American Empire (July 8, 2009)

Race and Arab Nationalism in Libya (March 9, 2011)

Western Mercenaries and Corporations Pouring Into Libya (November 1, 2011)

A Second Wave of Genocide Looms in the Congo, with Susan Rice on Point (November 28, 2012)

Obama’s Humiliating Defeat (September 11, 2013)

Rwanda’s Formula For Success: Murder Your Neighbors and Steal Their Wealth (March 26 2014)

There Is No U.S. War Against ISIS; Instead, Obama Is Protecting His “Assets” (June 2 2016)

Yes, Obama and Clinton Created ISIS—Too Bad Trump Can’t Explain How It Happened (August 17, 2016)

PART VII—Foundational Leaders: James Brown, Malcolm X, and MLK

James Brown: The Man Who Named a People (January 10, 2007)

Dragging Malcolm X to Obamaland (April 27, 2011)

MLK and Obama: Two Diametrically Opposed Legacies (April 5, 2017)

PART VIII—Today’s Leaders: Trump, Biden, Sanders

None of Them Has Ever Been My President (November 16, 2016)

Criminal Nation: Obama and Trump Should Both Be Jailed for War Crimes (May 10, 2017)

Bernie Sanders Can’t Shake His Imperial Piggishness (September 28, 2017)

How Donald Trump Rode in on “Dark Money” (January 31, 2018)

Mass Manufacturers of Slander and Lies (April 3, 2019)

Sanders vs. the Endless Austerity Regime (July 10, 2019)

The Issue-Less Impeachment: The Corporate Democrats Stand for Nothing, So They Impeach for Nothing (December 11, 2019)

The Corporate Democrats’ (and Alicia Garza’s) Get-Sanders Slanders (October 2, 2019)

Trump Is a Criminal but the Democrats Belong to the Same Mafia (January 9, 2020)

Shaky Joe Biden, Billionaire Bloomberg, and the Global Race to the Bottom (January 23, 2020)

Fear Pervades Black Politics, and Makes Us Agents of Our Own Oppression (March 4, 2020)

PART IX—COVID-19 and Lockdown

Time of Plague and Meltdown: Mass Murder by Corporate Duopoly (March 25, 2020)

Resistance Growing to COVID-Capitalism (April 8, 2020)

Indict and Punish the Perpetrators of COVID Mass Death (May 20, 2020)

PART X—Black Lives Matter, Reparations, and a New, Authentic Left

The Black-Latino Future: Finding a Way to Solidarity (October 25, 2006)

Occupy Wall Street Joins Occupy the Dream: Is it Co-optation, or Growing the Movement? (January 11, 2012)

#BlackLivesMatter and the Democrats: How Disruption Can Lead to Collaboration (August 12, 2015)

#BlackLivesMatter Performs a Self-Humiliation at Hillary Clinton’s Hands (August 19, 2015)

#BlackLivesMatter Hurts Democrats’ Feelings (September 2, 2015)

Garza vs. Mckesson: The Great Debate Over How the Democratic Party Will Liberate Black People (October 30, 2015)

“Black Lives Matter” Groups Hoping for a Big Payday (November 18, 2015)

Nationalizing the Banks Is a Popular Demand, So Let’s Demand It (June 6, 2018)

Black Lives Matter Founder Launches Huge Project to Shrink Black Lives (June 5, 2019)

We Are Already Late to the Great Black Reparations Debate (June 25, 2019)

Community Control of the Police—And a Whole Lot More (June 17, 2020)

About the author

Glen Ford, who died in July 2021, was executive director of Black Agenda Report and was previously co-founder of BlackCommentator.com. He had extensive experience in radio and television, where he launched influential programming such as America’s Black Forum, the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television, and Rap It Up. Ford was national political columnist for Encore American & Worldwide News magazine and the author of The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media

Summary

Black politics are key to recognizing the most important social dynamics of the United States. Over the past forty years, no commentator has been as deeply insightful about the paradoxes and personalities of Black American public life as the journalist and radio host Glen Ford.

In this stunning overview, Ford draws from his work for Black Agenda Report, one of the most incisive and perceptive publications of the progressive left, to examine competing struggles for class power and identity in the Black movement. In a survey stretching from the violent gentrification of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, through the engineered bankruptcy of Detroit, to the “more effective evil” of the Obama presidency, Ford casts a caustic eye on the empty posturing and corruption of the Democratic Party. This, he insists, depends on a Black constituency for electoral success, while using a co-opted “Black misleadership class” to sell out working people’s interests.

Profiling along the way storied Black leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Brown (for whom Ford once worked), The Black Agenda looks, too, beyond American shores, at US intervention in Libya, the Congo and the Middle East, showing how these are imbricated with racism at home. Ford concludes with a discussion of the Black Lives Matter movement, setting out both its pitfalls and potentialities.

Foreword

Reviews likely: The New York Review of Books, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New Republic, Jacobin, CounterPunch
Interviews likely: Jacobin, On Contact with Chris Hedges, The Black Agenda Report


Excerpts likely: Jacobin, In These Times, Africa Is a Country, The Black Agenda Report

Book launch in New York

Additional text

“Glen Ford is the most brilliant, courageous and consistent writer and journalist in the Black radical and independent tradition, of his generation – from the Sixties until now.” —Cornel West
“Glen Ford Carves Up the American Empire” — CounterPunch
“Deeply impressive.... Worth reading for the fascinating final section alone, which addresses Black Lives Matter, reparations and the American Left to bracing effect” — Tortoise 

“A fearlessly honest truthteller… Glen wrote with unmatched erudition and knowledge” — Let’s Try Democracy

Product details

• Authors: Glen Ford, Ford Glen
• Assisted by: Margaret Kimberley (Foreword)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 10.05.2022
• EAN: 9781682192900
• ISBN: 978-1-68219-290-0
• No. of pages: 344
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Ethnology > Folklore; HISTORY / Social History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Corruption & Misconduct, Social and cultural history, United States of America, USA, Ethnic groups and multicultural studies, Politics and government, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Social Classes & Economic Disparity, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Discrimination, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Race & Ethnic Relations, Relating to African American / Black American people