Category: Cover Story

“Democracy… does not come from the government, from on high, it comes from people getting together and struggling for justice.” – Howard Zinn, Spelman College commencement address, Atlanta, 2005. Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws…

As we move toward an historic national Black convention in the first quarter of 2006 – “Going back to Gary,” as convener William Lucy, President of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists phrased it, referring to the 1972 National Black Political Convention in that Indiana city – it is imperative that we reexamine the language…

Why are some Black folks so happy to hear an apology from people who don’t mean it? There are nearly a million African Americans in prison – one out of eight inmates on the planet – a gulag of monstrous proportions, clearly designed to perpetuate the social relations that began with slavery. We demand an…

Recent efforts by various groups to shift the U.S. health care system to one that provides health coverage for all should be of vital concern to African Americans, other racial and ethnic minorities, and lower income families. After all, it is in the area of healthcare where we can clearly see evidence of the “separate…

“We have no quarrel with any union or individual, unless they question our right to be in the room.” – William Lucy, President, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) “I sit on the AFL-CIO Council. Those boys don’t ask me anything.” – Clayola Brown, Executive Council, AFL-CIO and CBTU We must build an independent political…

For the first time since one faction of the AFL-CIO declared war on the other nearly a year ago, Black trade unionists from across the U.S. and Canada will gather later this month in an attempt to force the contenders for control of the labor federation to recognize the interests of African Americans. “We…have a…

“There’s no question that it was well planned and, to be honest with you, well executed.” Davis was a beneficiary of the mid-Nineties corporate decision to change the political complexion of Democratic Black America. The scheme became operational in 2002, unseating Hilliard and Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney, and installing David Scott in a new district…

The GOP Judicial Theater of the Absurd is on the road, this time with a biblical theme, starring Janice Rogers Brown and Priscilla R. Owen, Supreme Court Justices in their home states of California and Texas, respectively. The two were among ten Republican nominees given the hook in George Bush’s first term, through threats of…

A crack has opened in the historical Black continuum. 2005 will be recorded as the year that the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) came apart at the seams, the victim of an unprecedented rightwing money and media offensive in Black America, rank treachery by a hardcore handful of Caucus members, and the indiscipline and gross irresponsibility…

The corporate Right has succeeded in establishing a “coalition of the willing” within the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), as shown by last week’s votes on bankruptcy and estate tax legislation. The defection of ten of 41 voting CBC members to the Republicans on bankruptcy, and eight on repeal of the estate tax signals that corporate-controlled…