By Herb Boyd — “First you say you do/ Then you don’t. Then you say you will/Then you won’t/ You’re undecided now/ So what are you gonna do.” This indecision may work well in a popular song of yore, but it does little to end the 35 years former Black Panther and radio commentator Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent behind bars. On Thursday a Philadelphia Common Pleas judge ruled that Abu-Jamal who…
By Kevin Zeese, Popular Resistance — There was a major court victory for Mumia Abu-Jamal, on December 27, 2018. In a ruling on an appeals petition for Mumia Common Pleas Court, Judge Leon Tucker found that former Justice Ronald Castille should have recused himself because of statements he made as a prosecutor about police killers that suggested a potential bias. They included campaign speeches and letters advocating the issuance of…
By Nicolas Niarchos, The New Yorker — For the past forty years, tens of thousands of Moroccan soldiers have manned a wall of sand that curls for one and a half thousand miles through the howling Sahara. The vast plain around it is empty and flat, interrupted only by occasional horseshoe dunes that traverse it. But the Berm, as the wall is known, is no natural phenomenon. It was built…
And how black people in Indian Territory were denied their rights even after their emancipation. By Alaina E Roberts, Al Jazeera — Last week marked the 153rd anniversary of the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution in 1865. Rightly celebrated as a milestone for the black American community, the 13th Amendment led to the eventual liberation of all African Americans enslaved in the United States of the late…
Slavery and the Legacy of White Supremacy. By Annette Gordon-Reed, Foreign Affairs — The documents most closely associated with the creation of the United States—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—present a problem with which Americans have been contending from the country’s beginning: how to reconcile the values espoused in those texts with the United States’ original sin of slavery, the flaw that marred the country’s creation, warped its prospects, and eventually…
By Astead W. Herndon, The New York Times — BALTIMORE — The first “Amen!” rang out after a couple of minutes, as Senator Elizabeth Warren, speaking to an almost all-black…
By William K. Alcorn, The Vindicator — Ron Daniels, former Youngstown community activist and television personality, introduced as one of the founders of Youngstown Kwanzaa 50 years ago, paid a surprise visit to the first day of this year’s weeklong event that celebrates African heritage in African-American culture. “When we started Kwanzaa here in the former West Federal Street YMCA, we were among the first in the United States to celebrate…
December 24th Pre-Kwanzaa Edition of Vantage Point Topics Information and Perspectives on Kwanzaa Guests Dr. Segun Shabaka Assemblyman Charles Barron Ways to listen Vantage Point Radio with Dr. Ron Daniels,…
Inside a raging debate that has split the country’s most exciting new political movement. By Miguel Salazar, The New Republic — On an afternoon in July, nearly 200 people packed into the ballroom of a local community center in northern Oakland for a general meeting of the East Bay chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). As they settled into folded chairs on the room’s faded wooden floors, the…
Once a thriving, glamorous city, Venezuela’s capital is buckling under hyperinflation, crime and poverty By Tom Phillips, The Guardian — A portrait of Hugo Chávez and a Bolivarian battle cry greet visitors to the Boyacá viewpoint in the mountains north of Caracas. “It is our duty to find one thousand ways and more to give the people the life that they need!” But as Venezuela buckles, Chávez’s pledge sounds increasingly…
The region’s inequality and violence, in which the US has long played a role, is driving people to leave their homes By Julian Borger, The Guradian — Jakelin Caal Maquín,…
Two new reports released by the Senate Intelligence Committee underscore how much the Internet Research Agency targeted African Americans—echoing efforts by the campaign. By David A. Graham, The Atlantic — Perhaps…