Social Justice

Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders: Sheepdogging for Hillary and the Democrats in 2016

Black Agenda Report by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon May 6, 2015 “The sheepdog is a card the Democratic party plays every presidential primary season when there’s no White House Democrat running for re-election.” Spoiler alert: we have seen the Bernie Sanders show before, and we know exactly how it ends. Bernie has zero likelihood of winning the Democratic nomination for president over Hillary Clinton. Bernie will lose, Hillary will win. When Bernie folds his tent in the summer of 2016, the money, the hopes and prayers, the year of activist zeal that folks put behind Bernie Sanders’ either…


US Greens speak out against TPP, TTIP

Global Greens by Scott McLarty May 4, 2015 The US Congress is preparing to vote on fast-track authority for President Obama, in support of a quick approval for the President to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). On April 22, Senate Finance Committee approved fast-track legislation. The following day, fast track passed in the US House Ways and Means Committee after ten hours of debate. The next step will be a vote in House. (“Fast track” is a mechanism allowing the President to sign trade deals before Congress votes on them; when the vote eventually happens it must be a simple…


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Eugene Puryear: A Revolutionary Perspective on Why the Left Should Engage in Electoral Politics

Black Agenda Report by Marsha Coleman March 25, 2015 “Building political instruments that people most oppressed by this system can believe in is a precondition for actual change.” Eugene Puryear, a 29 year-old African-American activist, was the vice presidential nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) in the 2008 election. He recently ran for an At-Large seat in the DC Council with the D.C. Statehood Green Party. Puryear is the National Organizer of the anti-war ANSWER coalition and has helped organize large protests against the Israeli blockade of Gaza. Puryear and the ANSWER coalition were involved in the…


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Red My Lips: A Simple Act Of Outright Defiance

February 11, 2015 by Anita Stewart for Challenging the Rhetoric and Wise Women Media Violence against women continues even though we as women think “we can bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan,” to quote the old Enjoli perfume commercial from years ago. We would like to think we are liberated and free. Well, I don’t want to be a “Debbie Downer” but nothing could be further from the truth. Even the Equal Rights Amendment did not make us equal to men as it is not yet law in the US as it needs to be…


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A Green State of State Message on MLK Day

by Howie Hawkins New York Governor Cuomo’s State of the State address comes as we are celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday. Unfortunately, half a century after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, the dream of equality and prosperity for all remains unrealized. Income inequality in New York is the highest in the nation, with one-sixth of New Yorkers living below the poverty line. In upstate cities, more than half of all children live in poverty. New York has the most segregated housing and schools in the country, worse than Mississippi or Alabama. More than a million New Yorkers…