Category: Commentary

In a few days the voters of overwhelmingly Black and Hispanic Newark, New Jersey, will either blunt the Hard Right’s first serious drive for urban political power, in blackface, or be overwhelmed by it. Cory Booker, the 32 year-old first term councilman whose short career embodies the betrayal of Black America’s historical sacrifices and dreams,…

Dr. Martin Kilson, Guest Commentator When Cory Booker emerged as a real contender for Mayor of majority Black Newark, New Jersey, some African American intellectuals sounded the alarm. Among them was Harvard’s Dr. Martin Kilson, a research professor of political science who was the first African American to be granted full tenure at the college,…

“Out of the lands thus confiscated each liberated slave who is a male adult, or the head of a family, shall have assigned to him a homestead of forty acres of land, (with $100 to build a dwelling), which shall be held for them by trustees during their pupilage.” –Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, speaking to the…

In the streets of the megalopolis that stretches from the Chesapeake Bay to New York Harbor, janitors chant, “Puedo si” (Yes, I can!), demanding decent wages to clean the office towers of the New Economy. On the West Coast, home care workers celebrate their hard fought victories in a score of languages. In majority Black…

Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s Statement On The Events of September 11 On March 25, Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney appeared on a public radio program in Berkeley, California. She shared her thoughts on the September 11 bombings, including her belief that some U.S. agencies had prior knowledge that attacks were planned. McKinney pointed out that individuals and…

FROM: Co-Publisher Glen Ford TO: Our Readers Re: Condoleezza & Geraldo Dear Reader: It’s as good a time as any to gauge how Condoleezza Rice is measuring up to her Image Award. Ever since the televised presentation back in March, lots of us have wondered how NAACP executive director Kweisi Mfume had come to the…

Fruit of the Poisoned Tree The Hard Rights Plan to Capture Newark NJ “Vouchers are a pernicious, steal-from-the-poor-and-give-to-the-rich scheme. They take money from our public school students, give it instead to private schools, and abandon many of our children in the process” – NAACP executive director Kweisi Mfume “The privatization of schooling would produce a…

MAKE THE AMENDMENT HOW TO GET THE U.S. GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE INTERNATIONAL DRUG TRADE “Look out, heroin is on its way Big Time, because we’re going to allow those who we are allied with to get away with it.” – U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA), November 2001 “Our main mission was to do as…

Hungary’s beleaguered Gypsies, or Roma, constitute 5% of the population but account for around 60% of the nation’s male prison inmates. The penal system of Romania, home to the world’s largest concentration of Gypsies, appears to have been designed mainly for the purpose of keeping the Roma out of circulation. In Spain, the descendants of…

Racists have some slippery ways of denying their guilt. When charged with administering job or school application tests that are culturally biased, they claim the tests are “merit-based.” When racist cops stop and search an innocent young Black man driving through a white neighborhood, they cite crime statistics to back up their actions. And when…