Category: The African World

Although the Obama administration condemned the coup against Honduran President Zelaya, its overall response has been quite anemic. The Honduran coup people have resisted all efforts at genuine mediation and seem to be playing a waiting game hoping to drag things out until the scheduled Honduran election or until everyone goes to sleep. The failure…

The Pittsburgh convention of the AFL-CIO (the largest of the union federations in the USA) made it official: Richard Trumka, Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO under John Sweeney, and formerly President of the United Mine Workers of America, was elected to their top office. Trumka takes over as President of the AFL-CIO at one of the…

Last week’s announcement of the discovery of a previously unknown but suspected nuclear research and production site became a major story in the Western media. The Obama administration, along with its allies in Europe, saw this as evidence of Iranian duplicity on the matter of its nuclear intentions. Though Iran admitted the existence of this…

Sometimes an organization is faced with a crisis of such proportions that it calls into question its integrity and relationship with the public. In the corporate world, one can think of the airline ValuJet which, after the disastrous crash into the Everglades of one of its planes, so lost the confidence of the public that…

Roderick Bush, The End of White World Supremacy: Black Internationalism and the Problem of the Color Line (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 258 pps. St. John’s University Professor Roderick Bush has offered a very thought-provoking and challenging examination of the construction of racial capitalism (in the USA and globally) and the Black radical currents that…

Let me be clear from the outset: I believe in redemption. I believe that most human beings have the capacity to rise above errors and crimes that they have committed and find a new path. As such, I believe that now Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick has paid for his crime of engaging in the…

Over the last number of months, as the political Right has intensified its vicious campaign against President Obama and some of his reform efforts, there has been increasing frustration in progressive circles with the failure of the Administration to regain its stride and move a counter-offensive. A Washington Post op-ed by Peter Dreier and Marshall…

On July 22nd when President Obama spoke publicly about the stupid manner in which the Cambridge, MA police handled the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, many of us breathed a sigh. In that moment it was clear that the President understood and verbalized the anxiety that most African Americans feel in encounters with law…

July 20, 1969 I was in Hyannis, Massachusetts. I was watching all the coverage of the moon landing and was positively thrilled. Yes, I was aware, as the Black Panther Party warned at the time, that this moon landing could be the harbinger of an expansion of imperialism into outer space, but I saw in…

Most knowledgeable commentators will suggest that the Honduran military coup against democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya probably should have lasted less than 48 hours; that is, had the US government made it perfectly clear that the coup was unacceptable. While the response to the coup by the Obama administration was at first glance admirable, i.e.,…