By William Rivers Pitt, Truthout — Anyone who cracked open the business pages of the major papers on Monday morning was confronted by an avalanche of self-congratulation from the CEO caste and its idolaters. The Business Roundtable (BRT) — a large cohort of massive businesses that has been bending the economy to its will since 1972 — announced that it is “rewriting how it views the purpose of a corporation,” according to The Washington…
By Danyelle Solomon — 2019 marks the 400th anniversary of Africans sold into bondage arriving on Virginia’s shores. It has been 156 years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, 55 years since the end of Jim Crow, and 51 years since the civil rights movement. All of these moments in U.S. history represent crossroads—moments where the country made a choice or where people demanded that the words on the pages of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights became more than words; that policies and practices were equitably distributed among all people, not just a select few…
Liberal policies are incoherent because Democrats have been polluted by these two failed world-views
By Keith A. Spencer, Salon — There are no hippies on Haight Street anymore. Along the eponymous road in the storied San Francisco neighborhood, arguable birthplace of the counterculture movement,…
By Julianne Malveaux — President Barack Obama and his team masterfully designed an economic recovery from the George W Bush-induced Great Recession of 2008. The man who now leads our…
Santiago, Chile – The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) expects economic growth in the region to continue to decline, due to an international context of greater uncertainty and complexity, and weak performance by investment, exports, and consumption. This is the outlooks of the annual Economic Survey of Latin America and the Caribbean 2019, announced this week by Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the United Nations regional…
Presentation by Jeffrey S. Lowe, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Texas Southern University for the Institute of the Black World 21st Century (IBW). National Emergency…
By Julianne Malveaux — The first week of July produced a somewhat positive Employment Situation report. While the unemployment rate ticked up just a bit, about 224,000 new jobs were…
Talking to the people in Youngstown, Ohio, that the national media usually ignores. By Henry Graber, The Slate — YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio—In 1984, Lewis Macklin stood up at a community meeting and argued that city officials should shut down his high school. It had been seven years since Black Monday—when Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced it was closing its largest factory, costing 5,000 people their jobs and setting off a chain of plant…
In a racialized economy, land trusts and cooperatives offer a lasting form of reparations, say activists. By Laura Flanders, Truthout — This year has already seen more Democrats talking about reparations than ever, including several running for the presidency. Now, rather than writing checks to individuals, more and more people are talking about collective strategies for repair and reparation. Community land trusts, cooperatives and mutual housing associations, for example, might…
The reggae icon would be embarrassed by his country’s attempts to rebrand a disastrous ideology. By Keston Perry, The Nation — The island nation of Jamaica holds a special, almost spiritual significance for many people of color, as well as for anyone concerned about advancing equality and justice in the world. It is the birthplace of the Rastafari movement, reggae, dancehall—and democratic socialism before it became popular in the United States.…
The disproportionate focus on corruption of national leaders distracts from the systemic theft of national wealth by multinational corporations By Celina della Croce — Every year, the vast majority of Ghana’s natural wealth is stolen. The country is among the largest exporters of gold in the world, yet—according to a study by the Bank of Ghana—less than 1.7 percent of global returns from its gold make their way back to the Ghanaian…
By Dr. Julianne Malveaux — Our nation’s 45th President is dead set on a trade war. He has increased tariffs on goods produced in China, and he has now indicated…