Category: Cover Story

Georgia Democrats did the rest of the damage to themselves, by embracing the Bill Clinton/Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) brand of dollar-politics. This fatal, corporate-financed strategy encouraged white and Black Democrats to adopt watered down Republican positions in an ever-rightward search for white “swing” voters.” Georgia’s governor is a former elected white Democrat, and each election…

We have arrived at, and long passed, the juncture in Black politics when we can afford a false unanimity. Although there does exist an overwhelming consensus of progressive opinion among African Americans at-large, there is a deep and widening chasm between the people and those who purport to represent the masses – such as has…

There is nothing clearer than the need for “bright lines” to guide and delineate Black political conduct in America. The cumulative processes of corporate consolidation and concerted efforts to co-opt some Black leadership, while creating phony “alternative” African American leaderships answerable to the corporate class, have created a crisis that almost precludes Blacks from recreating…

Black History Month 2006 ended on a jarring note. Andrew Young, a former member of Dr. King’s inner circle at SCLC, who went on to serve three terms in Congress, a stint as UN ambassador and two terms as mayor of Atlanta before cashing out his Freedom Movement chips for a lucrative career as an…

The national Black infrastructure has failed utterly to respond to the Katrina crisis – the wiping out of a majority Black city. The Congressional Black Caucus, which claims to be the “conscience of the congress,” has shown itself to be an appendage of the white House leadership. They slavishly followed Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s command…

How does one describe – much less defeat – the phenomenon that is Wal-Mart? A “Death Star” that destroys all other economic activity in its path? A tsunami that permanently alters the social and physical landscape of every region it washes upon? The lead horseman in an apocalyptic worldwide Race to the Bottom? Wal-Mart is…

The cohort of black business people and politicians who pass for African American leadership is at an impasse, and so is the rest of black America. Our leaders have failed to produce economic development models for inner cities and poor black enclaves that benefit the people who live there now. Not only is the black…

The second biannual Congressional Black Caucus Monitor Report Card shows that a handful of “derelicts” in the CBC remain far outside of the African American political consensus – worthless to the Black constituents that voted them into office. Yet 81 percent of the 42 African American House members (34) scored 80 percent or higher on…

Back in 1972, it was “Nation Time!” in Gary, Indiana, at the historic convening of the National Black Political Assembly. In 2006, it’s time for another mass political gathering, “to bring together the collective wisdom, creativity and resources in our community to map out a bold economic agenda that can unite us and be a…

“I don’t think it’s right that you take our properties. Over my dead body. I didn’t die with Katrina.” – Lower 9th Ward resident Caroline Parker. “Joe Canizaro, I don’t know you, but I hate you. I’m going to suit up like I’m going to Iraq and fight this.” – New Orleans East resident Harvey…