Linked with The Black Agenda Report, with The Lords of Capital Decree Mass Death by Starvation, and with Obama’s Race Neutral Strategy Unravels of its Own Contradictions.
The son of famed disc jockey Rudy The Deuce Rutherford, the first Black man to host a non-gospel television show in the Deep South, Columbus, Georgia, 1958, Glen was reading newswire copy on-the-air at age eleven. Glen’s first full-time broadcast news job was at James Brown’s Augusta, Georgia radio station WRDW, in 1970, where The Godfather of Soul shortened Glen’s surname to Ford. Glen Ford worked as a newsperson at four more local stations: in Columbus, Georgia, Atlanta, Baltimore, where he created his first radio syndication, a half-hour weekly news magazine called Black World Report, Washington, DC. In 1974, Ford joined the Mutual Black Network, 88 stations, where he served as Capitol Hill, State Department and White House correspondent, and Washington Bureau Chief, while also producing a daily radio commentary. In 1977, Ford co-launched, produced and hosted America’s Black Forum ABF, the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. … (full text).
Historic « firsts, » « mosts, » and « onlys » are the hallmarks of Glen Ford’s long career.
He says: « The consequences of vast and growing U.S. economic disparities are fatal for the poor – and getting worse. In the space of 20 years, affluent Americans have increased their longevity relative to the poor, and may have reaped most of the benefits of the medical knowledge accumulated during that era … The poor die quicker, as audio (click on link), or read it on the page (watch the whole radio archive of The Black Agenda Report, in audio AND as text).
Corporate Reporters Tell Lies for a Living, 23 April 2008.
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Sorry, I found no photo of Glen Ford, USA, certifying it’s the one of the Black Agenda Report .
His commentary: The state with the harshest record for putting African Americans behind bars has become the first to pass a law that would assess the impact of new criminal justice legislation on minorities. Iowa imprisons Blacks at 13 times the rate of whites – more than twice the national average of racial disparity in incarceration. Prison activists have long called for impact statements at every stage of the criminal justice system, so that gross racial biases could be systematically eliminated. If there is to be a national dialogue on race, it should begin with the Black American Gulag, which comprises nearly half of what is by far the world’s largest prison system. Click the flash player to hear this Black Agenda Radio commentary.
Bigger Than Hip Hop, a look at the state of black political leadership.
He writes: Tavis Smiley never wanted to pick a fight with Barack Obama. In point of fact, it is not in the media entrepreneur’s nature to pick fights with persons of power or popularity. But Obama’s zealots do not accept anything less than abject, unqualified loyalty to their leader, whom they treat more as a messiah than a Chicago politician with close ties to Wall Street … (full text).
Cancer in the Congressional Black Caucus CBC as that body has become increasingly Pro-Corporate and Anti-Community, by Glen Ford, Black Agenda Report.
ALSO, there appears to be some growing dissatisfaction with Barack Obama among some African-Americans who feel he’s wrapped up the black vote without making any promises about improving the lives of people of color. Glen Ford of the Blackagenda Report writes that Obama « never lied to Black America » because the candidate hasn’t promised blacks anything: « Without really trying, in fact, without committing a single purposeful act, Black America has succeeded in rendering itself totally irrelevant this election season, » writes Ford. « About 90 percent of Black America has allied itself with a candidate that never promised them a damn thing. » Ford goes on to say Black America has become ‘irrelevant’ in this election. It’s pretty provocative stuff … (full text).
American History, Black History and the the Right to Bear Arms, April 19, 2008.
He says: … For just one small example of what stripping corporations of personhood would mean: Corportions would no longer have their own free speech rights. That’s at the heart of the struggle to control campaign spending, or better put, to roll back corporate domination of the entire electoral process, which has nullified democracy in even the weak American sense of the term.
Senator in the Fog: Barack Obama and the Winds of War, November 29, 2006.
Regarding the white Left: It is they who have no real solidarity with the other groups, primarily Blacks, who make up the majority of what is left in the United States. I told the board and staff of The Nation as much, when I spoke before them in early 2005. Solidarity means, at the very least, sharing resources. Because of historical white privilege, even the white Left has vastly more resources than African Americans, whose politics are the most consistently progressive of any group in the nation. That’s why the white Left have The Nation, In These Times, Mother Jones, The Progressive, and lots of other political publications, and Blacks have…none. This extreme dispartiy weakens the left as a whole, creating vast imbalances. We, Blacks, vote left in concentrated numbers that equal or surpass the white Left’s scattered electoral presence. Yet the white Left actually believes that they are at the center of the action. What Eurocentric madness!! More than a decade ago, The Nation did a cover story purporting to show a political map of the U.S. Left. There were all kinds of alternative white tendencies, from organic food boosters to open-source computer tinkerers to gender groups of all kinds … the whole counterculture. But no Blacks. I knew then that whoever commissioned the cover story was out of his/her mind, hopelessly caught up in alternative Whiteness, and not a progressive at all … (full long interview text).
Putting Black Faces on Imperial Policies.
Executive Editor Glen Ford: A Certified Elder of the Black Journalism Tribe: … In addition to his broadcast and Internet experience, Glen Ford was national political columnist for Encore American Worldwide News magazine; founded The Black Commentator and Africana Policies magazines; authored The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion (IOJ, 1985); voiced over 1000 radio commercials (half of which he also produced) and scores of television commercials; and served as reporter and editor for three newspapers (two daily, one weekly). Ford was a founding member of the Washington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ); executive board member of the National Alliance of Third World Journalists (NATWJ); media specialist for the National Minority Purchasing Council; and has spoken at scores of colleges and universities … (full text).
… If black Americans set themselves against white Americans, they will lose – economically, politically, and socially. Ford ignores the rising black middle class, may of whom don’t even go to church. If black nationalism (as articulated by Rev. Wright) is going to trump American nationalism and black leaders think they can forever get political mileage and economic gain by playing victim, hating whites, and playing upon white liberal guilt, they will lose – first, sympathy, then good will, then political power, and then things could really go down hill fast. I suspect that of those in the 12% minority, few are black separatists and nationalists like Rev. Wright and black separatists like Mr. Ford, and most of those who are pay a very heavy price and create a self-fulfilling prophecy of poverty and degradation through self-segregation … (full text).
links:
The Speech That Might Have Been;
ChickenBones, A Journal for Literary & Artistic African-American Themes;