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As the threat of MAGA fascism grows, the Democratic establishment’s Black elders and seniors—like James Clyburn and Hakeem Jeffries—continue to side with the status quo, even when it means blocking progressive change and working alongside Republicans. This episode, Benjamin Dixon is joined by Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report to break down the generational divide within Black politics, call out the Congressional Black Caucus, and spotlight the fight for real progress in New York, where Zohran Mamdani stands as a true alternative. It’s an honest, urgent look at why Black leadership must do more than simply survive—they must fight for the future. Become a patron!
As the threat of MAGA fascism grows, the Democratic establishment’s Black elders and seniors—like James Clyburn and Hakeem Jeffries—continue to side with the status quo, even when it means blocking progressive change and working alongside Republicans. This episode, Benjamin Dixon is joined by Margaret Kimberley of Black Agenda Report to break down the generational divide within Black politics, call out the Congressional Black Caucus, and spotlight the fight for real progress in New York, where Zohran Mamdani stands as a true alternative. It’s an honest, urgent look at why Black leadership must do more than simply survive—they must fight for the future. Become a patron!
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
The Benjamin Dition Show is only possible when listener is important.
Go to Patreon dot comcast VPD show, which report the
Benjamin Chen Show.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We are living in a moment where the threat of
fascism is real and rising, embodied by MAGA and Donald Trump,
whose movement endangers every step of progress made in this
country for all people, but especially for Black Americans. But
as we focus on the dangers from the right, there
(00:38):
is a more insidious and more subtle threat inside of
the soul called resistance. Black leaders and Democrats entrusted to
defend our interests are increasingly complicit in protecting the status quo,
even if that means aligning with maga interest or blocking
genuine progress from within their own ranks. I need to
(01:02):
say that again, even if that means aligning with maga's
interests or blocking genuine progress from within their own ranks.
This is happening right now in New York City, where
establishment Democrats, including powerful black politicians, have lined up alongside
(01:23):
Republicans to oppose the Democratic nominee Zoran Memdani in favor
of Eric Adams. This kind of bipartisan sabotage isn't just
about party rivalry. It's about power, resources and who gets
left behind. Now, we can't ignore the generational divide either.
(01:44):
Older Black Americans and voters often cling to the party
establishment out of habit or history or survival. But Black
millennials and gen z have seen through the illusion because
for them, affordable college, stable jobs, and secure housing are
vanishing dreams. History is clear collaboration with empire, no matter
(02:09):
the intention, no matter the cause, never ends well for
the oppressed. So today we're examining not just the dangers outside,
but the betrayals from within, and how the fear of
socialism and comfort within the Democratic Party have turned survival
into complicity, costing us real tangible progress. Welcome, ladies, gentlemen,
(02:34):
and gender non conforming individuals to another episode of The
Benjamin Dixon Show. I am, of course your host Benjamin Dixon.
Joining me today is Margaret Kimberly, executive editor and senior
columnists at The Black Agenda Report, a fearless critic of
US empire and the black political establishment, and the author
of the essential book, Prejudential, Black America and the Presidents,
(02:58):
which exposes the often untold truth about every president's relationship
with Black America. Margaret, thank you so much for joining me.
Would you tell us about your journey in terms of
your background, your training, your education, your ancestral roots, whatever
angle you want to speak of it from. But I
(03:18):
am interested in how your journey led you to the
Black Agenda Report as well.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Okay, thank first, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be with you. My parents were
born in Ohio. Their parents immigrated in the first wave
of the Great Migration in the twenties from Alabama and Arkansas.
We moved around a lot. My father did a lot
of different things, but we settled in New York New Rochelle,
(03:44):
New York, a suburb just north of New York City. Politically,
I think my parents were typical of black people. They
were as a lot of black people. In the fifties,
they were Republicans, lest we forget, the Democrats were the
party of the segregated South. But of course they made
that switch in the mid sixties. I remember being I
(04:10):
was a kid. I'm sixty five. I remember being a
kid during the Vietnam War. My parents were adamant that
the war was wrong. They always voted for Democrats. I
think typical of most black people on the left leaning
side of the Democratic Party, of course, strong supporters of
(04:34):
the movement. My father worked at There were a lot
of new agencies during the War on Poverty, Great society programs.
He was at one point the head of the Human
Rights Commission in the state of Minnesota. So those are
That was my political foundation. And I thought I was
(04:57):
a leftist until I encountered Glenford, but he rest in peace,
the man who was the driving force behind Black Agenderreport
dot com. Uh. He and Bruce Dixon were the other
co founders. They both passed sadly, and they were socialists,
both of them. They were both members of the Black
(05:19):
Panther Party in their youth. And so it was a
learning experience, a growing experience for me to be exposed
to people who were socialists, not just you know, Democrats
who preferred the most liberal person. And that was an
eye opening experience for me. And I encourage everyone to
(05:44):
encounter and have experiences with people whose political outlooks are
very maybe very day different from your own.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
It's a way of learning so many things. I you know,
I thought, as I said, I thought I was leftist.
That I found out I wasn't. I was just a liberal,
like most people, had a eurocentric, US centric education, didn't
know enough about the global South, about the history of colonialism.
And so when I look back at the things I
(06:18):
first wrote and what I write now, it's a world
of difference being introduced to radical politics and the black
radical tradition of this country. So I think that sums
up my life and my journey to date.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
No, it's actually really insightful. I'm glad to hear that
arc because I think a lot of black folks are
terrified of that transition from the comfort of liberalism to
the realities of something other than liberalism and capitalism. I
(06:56):
was a leftist, and I'll I would be cute youre's
to see your division on how you parse between being
a leptist and a socialist. Obviously one's an economic paradigm,
but I think a lot of leftists would think that
they were socialists as well, because I thought being a
leptist and embracing socialism, you know, they became kind of
synonymous to me, as democracy and capitalism are kind of conflated.
(07:23):
But I would be curious to hear more about your
division there. But I think I think you kind of
just already went directly to something that's really important, the
journey of awakening your understanding of our position as black
people in the belly of the beast, in the empire,
completely cut off from not only our history, but the
(07:44):
realities of what the empire is doing globally. Then the
source of that drive racial capitalism, Cedric, his name escapes me,
the theorists behind that racial capitalism, and the counterbalance to it,
at least the best that we have right now would
be something along the lines of socialism, and in context
(08:08):
of how many black folks today will would fight against
the idea of socialism, which to me is kind of
really kind of ridiculous when you're on this side of
the journey, but then being on that side of the
journey too, I can't I can't speak so so much
with Bravado because I was there at one time as well.
Would you just speak to that.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, Robinson, is it Cedric Robinson?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Robinson, Yes, ma'am, Yes, So the term it's.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So funny in this country, the terms left and right.
As politics have moved further and further and further to
the right. Socialists are leftists, but socialists are I define
it as being anti capitalist, anti imperialist. UH and socialists
(08:53):
traditionally believe the people should be in charge of the
means of production. I'm thinking about China, which is socialist
as a socialist government, but they also have private ownership.
They're large corporations. Some of the biggest corporations, the biggest
(09:13):
banks in the world are in China. But what happens
there is the government tells them what to do, not
like here, where capital tells the government what to do.
So to the point where we don't even have our
own government anymore. Democracy was always a tenuous thing, and
now this new what's trump big beautiful, beautiful bill whatever
(09:39):
they're One of the components of that bill is it
makes it illegal for states to regulate artificial intelligence at all. So,
you know, the Congress in the past has said the
government cannot help people pay for their prescriptions, because that
was always a p Maybe the government can pay for pharmaceuticals.
(10:04):
That's illegal, and that's because of control of capital. So
I would say, you know when and so it's difficult people.
Just being a Democrat does not put you on the
left because the Democratic Party goes further and further to
the right here in New York where I am. We're
(10:25):
having this very contentious mayoral election. The winner of the
Democratic primari zarn Mamdani, is a he's dsa Democratic Socialist
and he's he's put forward some very modest proposals and
people have lost it. He's communist, he's a you know,
(10:47):
Trump says he's a communist, is going to take all
the money out of the city. If he wins, he
should lose his citizenship. We've had elected officials saying, uh,
he can't win. He was a the big money people,
and they've been very obvious about it. We're behind Andrew Cuomo,
former governor who resigned in scandal a few years ago,
(11:09):
but he had rich friends and they put him forward
in the Democratic primary, although he's also still on the
ballot as an independent. The current mayor, Eric Adams is
on the ballot as an independent, so Zara and Mamdani
will be running against both of them. There's a billionaire,
Bill Ackman, very public. He's on Twitter saying that he's
(11:30):
going to back Adams, he's not going to back Cuomo
and saying he wants to stop Mamdani and Mam Donnie
has said, for example, buses should be free. Well, buses
were free during the pandemic. Rudy Giuliani. Nobody mentions this
anymore because he wanted to cement support on Staten Island,
made the Staten Island ferry free. Everybody forgets about that now.
(11:53):
So Mam Donnie says, well, maybe because they are food
deserts in New York City, as there are in many
urban areas, and he has said, well, maybe the city
can run some supermarkets. People's that, Oh my god, it's stalinism,
you know. Do you want your supermarket to run like
the Department of Motor Vehicles, Which actually is funny because
in New York DMV has improved quite a lot and
(12:13):
it runs very well. But that's an example of also
why people are afraid of if you ask people about
proposals like I'm thinking of Bernie Sanders, that's something more
people are familiar with. When he first ran against Hillary
Clinton in that primary in twenty sixteen, he talked about
(12:40):
Medicare for all goes by many names, but it's basically
having a single payer healthcare system. It doesn't put us
at the whims of private corporations, so we can live. Now,
that's something most people want, but there were people who
were afraid of the word socialist, which Bernie really is not.
And then there were people, especially black people, who were
(13:02):
told he can't win. It doesn't matter if he's talking
about things you want. He was talking about public universities
being free. Who needs that more than black people, who
if we decide to go to college or drowning in
debt for the rest of our lives. But we were
told he's not going to win or white people aren't
going to vote for him. So you people hear about
(13:26):
issues that are supported by leftists and they want those things,
but if they've either been demonized about the words socialism,
or they're afraid of what it means, or they're afraid
that people can't get into office. So it's funny. People
often talk about Republicans voting against their interests, but Democrats
(13:49):
end up doing the same.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Thing, especially black Democrats. Yes, which is kind of funny
to me. This is just a forgive me for its
entering myself for the split second, But it's so funny
when folks like Dixon, you're a Democratic shield and you know,
I'm blocked by so many black Democrats because of the
(14:11):
technique that they use, especially when it comes to getting
even a modicum of progress. Like you said, with Bernie Sanders,
it wasn't it wasn't radical socialism at all, or in fact,
it wasn't even further to the left in Europe, most
developed nations in Europe. They're doing the same thing now
with Zora on Mondami in New York. They're lining up
(14:34):
behind the establishment that is promising them to not only
keep the status quo, but to bring back the worst
of the status quo, like Eric Adams is doing in
New York City with stopping frisk and becoming the blackface
of the police force of the Empire. And then you
have clowns like Jim Clyburn who gallivants around the country,
(14:55):
fancies himself as a negro king maker of white folks,
and he constant appears just in time to sabotage the
progress that we could have. And yet and still there
seems to be so many black folks who follow behind
that nonsense.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
And I get it.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
You know, it's their own survival instinct, it's their own
comfort level. Because many of them are beyond survival. Some
of them are at nice comfortable levels. And then we
see throughout history, people get power people and when they
get power, they get compromised. It's not only just politics,
it's in the black churches, everywhere we're surrounded. What I'm finding, though,
(15:33):
is there's a generational divide, which is one of the
key reasons why I wanted to speak to you on
this issue, because there seems to be a divide with
our elders who are saying, no, the socialism, that's scary,
that we don't want that God bless America using talking
points and framing of MAGA, whether they know it or not,
and then the younger generation who's like, hey, we've had it.
(15:54):
We can't even afford, we can't even afford to live anymore.
But then I see and here you're voice, and I'm
reminded of Glenn Ford and Bruce Dixon as much as
God blessed them back in two thousand and eight when
they would not give Barack Obama a chance. I was
still a good Liberal and I was still a good Democrat.
(16:16):
They used to irritate the devil out of me, and
then come to find out and realize in retrospect they
were right all along, which tells me that it's not
just a generation. It's not so much a generational divide,
because there's plenty of seasoned and elder black folks who
get it, but speak to that entire arc that I
just gave you, including James Clyburn, but also the presence
(16:40):
of elders who get it, and they get it in
the very clear not even academic, but almost at a
visceral level. And I imagine it has to tie back
to the experiences of the of the Civil rights era
or further, I don't know, what do you think.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Well, let's start talking about James Clyburn. It's very funny
to me. It seems that he believed his own, uh,
believed his own hype about him. We were told he
was this king maker. Democrats made a big deal about
South Carolina being a pivotal state in primaries and he
being a he was the whip I believe of the
(17:19):
how he was a leader of Democrats in the House
and his endorsement was key. Now in South Carolina other
southern states, most Democrats are black, So so they set
this up, making South Carolina key, but also using it
(17:41):
to shut down any discussion of the issues that the
Democratic Party, oligarchs, the rich people who's uh, Lets we
forget the Democrats raise a billion dollars every presidential election year.
First of all, making sure you get somebody they want.
So Bernie Sanders or somebody else will come along and
(18:04):
say what people want to hear, but they make sure
that in the case of black people, it was so
cynical telling black people, white people aren't going to vote
for him. He can't win, so vote against your own interests.
But so Cliburn believed the hype about him being this kingmaker.
(18:26):
I mean, a kingmaker would be somewhat independent, would not
be a leader in the Democratic Party. Also, there was
I don't know if it's still true, but there was
a time Cliburn got more money from Big Pharma than
any other member of Congress. Is four thirty five right,
four hundred thirty five people. He got more money from
Big Farmer than anybody. What does that tell you? Of
(18:47):
course he's not for And then I remember he said, well,
Bernie didn't even ask for my endorsement, which Bernie should
have done. However, was the guy who gets more money
from Big Farmer going to endorse the I known for
Medicare for All? No, that wasn't going to happen so
Cliber and I don't know if he really believed himself
as this kingmaker, but they and to your point here
(19:10):
in New York, suddenly he came in that last week
and endorsed Andrew Cuomo. Now Cuomo got most of the
Black vote, which also speaks to the generational divide and
this decision making of fear I believe he did. First
of all, it's name recognition. His father was governor, he
(19:30):
was governor, and there's just this inertia. Yeah, yeah, I've
heard of him, Mom Donnie. I never heard of him.
So a lot of black neighborhoods he Cuomo won. He
won decisively over Mom Donnie. But younger people felt differently
and voted for him. And I think it's a couple
(19:51):
of things. Young people are having starkly different life experiences
than their parents and grandparents. Their parents could go to
college for very little money in New York City had
a free university system up until the seventies, and public
colleges were so cheap as to be almost free. So
(20:12):
if you're in your fifties or sixties, you could get
an education without being in debt, pee andage for your
whole life. You knew you would get a job, a
full time job with benefits, and if you played your
card right, cards right, you could buy a house. You
could have all of those creature comforts that we associate
with having a quote unquote middle class life. In the US,
(20:38):
young people have none of that. They can't afford college.
They if they get through it, and they're in debt
up to their next even if they just get a
bachelor's degree. Do they get jobs. No, we have this
gig economy, part time work, low wage work, and now
(20:59):
we have a taking jobs all together. So can they
get in a you know, like when I was young
getting out of college in the eighties, you could get
your first job, get a little apartment, maybe I have
a roommate. Little by little, you could move up in
the world. They don't have any hope of doing any
of those things. Buy a house. The median price of
(21:22):
a house in Brooklyn, New York, is now nine hundred
thousand dollars. And so we have seen a replacement black
people leaving, white people coming in. And so we see this,
you know, everybody's like a rat in a maze. So
I'll leave New York and go to North Carolina. Or
Georgia or Florida. Maybe I can buy a house there,
(21:45):
but there's gentrification there too. Maybe their jobs in this
or that place, but AI is taking the jobs. So
by definition, just to survive, young people are willing to
go outside of the political box. In general, I would
say black people are risk averse and vote out of fear.
(22:09):
So you would vote for Cuomo instead of this guy
that even if you like what he says, you're not
sure he can win in presidential politics. Who can even
with Obama, I don't know if you remember, there were
a lot of questions about him until he won the
Iowa caucuses and it was clear that white people would
(22:31):
vote for him, which meant he could win. And then
black people did a collective one pint eighty and all
got behind him, but didn't get behind them until they
were convinced he would be able to win. But that's
the politics of fear. And then, of course we have
to think about how much elections really matter. So what
(22:54):
happens if a Democrat gets in Now with Trump, that's
a can seem to be a hard or argument to
make because he's moved so far to the right and
Ice is snatching people up and all kinds of things.
But people are fearful and afraid, afraid to make any change,
(23:18):
afraid of things they don't know much about. Americans are very,
very propagandized. We don't know what socialism is. We don't
know the history of this country. The corporate media is
I call it state controlled, because all they do is repeat.
If you read the New York Times or Washington Post
(23:40):
on foreign policy, it's like reading a State Department press release.
They don't tell you anything new. And oh, while I
just reminded myself of something, and I hope I know
I'm digressing a bit. The New York Times was so
eager to smear Zorn Mamdani. They a right wing Actually
(24:03):
man's a white supremacist. His name is Jordan Lasker. He
went by this name of Crimu, and they had this
story that Donnie when he applied to Columbia as a
high school student Columbia University, where he was not admitted,
he checked off the box African American in addition to Asian. Now,
he was born in Uganda, a country where there were
(24:25):
many South Asian people, so technically that's African American. But
African Americans usually means us, and I think it's a
legitimate debate. I would say he should not have done it.
But then we find out that this person the New
York Times gave anonymity to is a white supremacist. Black
people have lower iq, have smaller brains, the whole nine yards,
(24:49):
and they tried to backtrack, and actually it's very funny.
So this issue that one could debate has now been
forgotten because people are saying, wait a minute, you didn't
do a Google search on this guy. You were so
eager to smear him, you didn't check, or you knew
but thought you could get away with it anyway. But
that's an example of corporate media and how they work
(25:12):
with They represent the ruling class, and so people don't
have the information they want. You know, in general, you've
got to you've got to look for yourself. You can't
depend on the educational system, You can't depend on the
media in order to find out the things you need
(25:32):
to know to find out, Well, what does socialism mean?
What are socialist countries like? What is the US doing
around the world? What are we doing domestically? What are
they doing domestically? I should put it that way. So
I think I rambled and digressed a little bit, but
I hope I was answered all question.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
No, what I've come to realize and learn is that
digression is kind of like improvisation and jazz is where
the most most i hordant insights and structures of conversations
lead to because you led me right to where we
kind of need to be, and it brings to my remembrance.
(26:12):
This is the importance of remembrance. Elon Musk and MAGA
had a field day last year calling him an African American.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
They were rubbed it in our faces.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I never forget Ron de Santis down in the state
of Florida was rubbed in Black America's faces and oh
he's African American, our favorite African American.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Now again, I agree with you. I think Zoron.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Should have thought a little better of that, But he
is from Africa and he was naturalized as an American.
I don't like that game personally. But if MAGA was
really concerned about that, then why did they just play
that game with us, except to of course trigger the
collective black consciousness here in the United States of America.
Now they've inverted that and said, oh no, that's something
wrong there. He shouldn't have done that. Right, that's the
(26:59):
game that they played. But that brings us like full
circle to the entire conversation. Right, it's it's the need
for black folks to see ourselves through an international lens.
Because if we don't see ourselves through an international lens,
and this is honestly one of the things I picked
up reading Black Agenda Report over the years and listening
to the broadcast, if we don't see ourselves through that lens,
(27:19):
then we end up only having the education given to
us by the empire that we are still exiled in. Right,
we only have the understanding and the knowledge that they
share with us. And now we've seen this arc, this
arc of blackness, this arc of black liberation, and I
would even go as far as saying this arc of
(27:40):
black liberation theology where we've come to a generation where
we're not only fighting against white supremacy, but we're fighting
against this mutated version of blackness where you have on
the one side, you have the James Clyburns who has
a form of blackness but denies the power thereof. But
you have all so now you have the entirety of
(28:02):
black maga. But you also have now black and it
used to be prosperity gospel, but it's something in totally
different now. It's like the bastard child of prosperity gospel,
where they don't even preach the gospel anymore. They just
preach capitalism in the pulpit. And then you even have
the antithesis of black liberation theology. You have these black
preachers out here now who are swearing that Jesus wasn't black,
(28:24):
and that becomes their platform to preach from. It's like
we're dealing with this manifestation of the very worst of blackness,
which is blackness married to empire. But you can't be
married to empire unless you're honestly willing to subvert and
sabotage blackness.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Will be that with more benj you even get your
show right after this.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Hey, everybody, this is pastor Ben and we need your support.
Go to patreon dot com forward slash the bp D
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That's right.
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Speaker 1 (32:30):
Welcome back to the Benjamin Show.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
It's like we're dealing with this manifestation of the very
worst of blackness, which is blackness married to empire. But
you can't be married to empire unless you're honestly willing
to subvert and sabotage blackness. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Well, you're absolutely right, and I'm seeing something else happening now,
this idea that black people should not be active at all.
Other people step up these memes that you know, black
people are dancing even the World War three is about
to start, which is I don't know why people think
that's a flex but anyway they do.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
After Kamala Harris lost, it's like it's somebody else's turn.
We shouldn't be on the front lines. I think it's
interesting because a lot of people saying this, we're never
on any line, the front line or the second or
the third, and you know now when to act like
they were.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
But this idea that the only that black people have
no can play no role politically, That the only because
due to our disappointments and the failures of the system
on our behalf, we we're out.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
That's it. That's all we can do. As if climate
change won't hit us, as if you know Trump and
Netan Yahoo's in Washington or coming to Washington. He and
Trump are trying to restart a war with Iran. That's
not going to impact us, really it won't. So all
of these So that's the newest thing I find, frankly
(34:16):
very disturbing. But yes, we need to know our history,
and our history was and it didn't start with Trump,
you know, changing websites and taking black people's pictures out.
This has been going on for a long times. There
(34:38):
was a counter revolution to the liberation movement and for
more than fifty years, and that was done in a
variety of ways. You create a buffer class of people
like me who had the chance to go to colleges
you might not otherwise have gone to, giving opportunity to some,
(35:01):
but moving to the right further and further to the
right all the time. So that Bill Clinton, what did
Bill Clinton do? Bill Clinton, his crime bill put thousands
of black people in jail across the country. Bill Clinton
is responsible for the loss of our media, media consolidation.
(35:24):
It used to be you couldn't own a TV station
and a newspaper in the same city. Well, if that
were true, Rupert Murdoch couldn't own Fox and the New
York Post. But he does. That's because of Bill Clinton.
Remember there were so many black radio stations. Well now
there I think there's six or seven corporations that control
everything almost everything we see and read and hear in media.
(35:50):
And those were attacks on us. These were the liberation
movement was successful. It changed the way we saw ourselves.
It changed the way everybody in the country saw themselves.
There would be no medicare or medicaid if not for
the civil rights movement. Nobody would have had any of
those things. And this is terrifying to the oligarchy, and
(36:13):
they have made sure that there's no talk of any
of that ever. Again, So We've been dealing with this
counter revolution which destroyed our distorted our own memories. We're
talking about gentrification. You know, remember Washington, d C. Was
Chocolate City. Well that's Cafe o Many City. And we
(36:36):
have black so called leadership. We have a black mayor
here in New York City, but all he talks about
is how he used to be a cop. Adams has
he brought back Bloomberg stopping frisk his police department. They
used to at least fire cops who killed people. Adams
does not discipline. There's a civilian complaint review board. It
(36:57):
doesn't do very much, but they would recommend that a
cop be fired for misconduct. Adams doesn't even do that.
So that's where we are so called black leadership who
owe their positions to rich white people and the people
we mentioned, you know, who have passed away and that memory,
(37:19):
those memories and experiences are gone with them. And you
have to make, as I said, a consertive, concerted effort
on your own to learn history outside of the box,
to learn about the rest of the world. So I
(37:40):
think it's important for people to know this did not
happen accidentally. This is very deliberate and we have to
make sure that we know that. So, there were a
handful of black people in Congress in the early seventies,
the first members of the Congressional Black Caucus. I think
there were ten of them. Now they're more than forty.
But so, what what do they do? What do they
(38:01):
do for us? They owe their positions to rich white people,
and if any of them step out of line, they
get rid of Corey Bush, Jamal Bowman. They spent millions
of dollars on primaries to get them out, just to
make sure in case anybody had any big ideas about
being really progressive, that they got over themselves and they
(38:24):
got their minds right, and just to make sure that
nobody thought about actually proposing any kind of meaningful change.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What you are saying is somewhat triggering to me, right
because of the intentionality of every step and the fact
that black folks we have not been able to see
at scale. There've always been prophetic voices. And when I
say prophetic, I don't mean in the pulpit, I mean
in the streets. I mean in media and in the pulpit.
(38:55):
But there have always been voices who've seen it but
not allowed to get the asses of black folks to
see it, which part of the question is about Black
Agenda Report, and you all carrying on that legacy and
extending that legacy and your readership and your reach. But
then I got to I have to go in a
little bit further here, because I wonder if this Black
(39:17):
Misleadership class trademark Black Agenda Report right at least that's
where I first heard it and only heard it. I
wonder if they realize how this plays out throughout history
for collaborators with empire, it never plays out well for
them in the end, whether it be the Sanhedrin Council
(39:38):
in the Roman Empire in Jesus's day, whether it be
the African tribes who collaborated with colonizers and enslavers who
ended up getting enslaved themselves because they thought that they
could work out a deal with white folks within the day.
It never did work out well for them, whether it
be any version of that. There's always a class of
people who think that they can get over collaborating with
(40:01):
empire instead of fighting and resisting empire. And then I
want to ask black folks, also you mentioned net and Yahoo,
if they don't realize the trajectory that we're on right now.
But that's white folks in this country who would love,
salivated the chance to do to us what Zionists are
doing to Gaza, and how they think it's a safe path,
(40:25):
maybe for them because they think that they'll die soon
enough and don't have to live with it, but for
their children and their grandchildren, their black grandchildren who have
to live in the world that they created by collaborating
with Empire. That's the breath. That's the death and breath
of it. I'll let you take it from there.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Well, you know, it depends. There are people who are
cynical and they just don't care. They don't care what
comes after them. There are people who are in denial
who convince themselves it's going to be different for them,
or they say, well, I'm gonna get mine while I can,
and maybe I can help the next generation. So they're
all kinds of ways people excuse being a part of
(41:07):
this class that that is used used to hurt all
of us. So I'm sure if you talk to you know,
one hundred different blackness leaders, you might get one hundred
different answers. But the most important thing is for the
rest of us to know that many of these people
are our enemies. The black face in a high place
(41:30):
is not only not necessarily our friend, but many times
they are our enemies. And it's important whatever they think
of themselves and what they're doing, it's important for us
not to be fooled about where things are headed. And
I just want to say too, this is all very frightening.
(41:52):
This is a very frightening moment. People worry about where
they can live, of how they can live. When I
see homeless people on the street, and by the way,
I don't know about where you are, but here in
New York people living on the street are almost all black,
almost all of them, and people living very precarious lives.
(42:17):
This fear is that going to be me? We have
a and that's not an I want to I'm going
to digress a tighty bit. One of my siblings was
she was a social worker in the psychiatric hospital and
when she started her job, she said they had almost
nine hundred beds. When she retired twenty years later, they
(42:41):
had three hundred beds. So why is anybody surprised that
there are mentally ill homeless people on the streets and
in jails. That's called austerity. It's called that was Andrew Cuomo,
by the way, who was in charge of that. But
that's all over the country, the government doing less and
less to the demands of this ruling class and so
(43:04):
all of them, there's less for people to be secure
in and it's making people personally self destructive. I'm seeing
behaviors and I always say it's capitalism. Capitalism is ruining
people's lives, ruining our psychological health, our physical health, and
(43:26):
and that's that's where that's where we are right now.
And the misleaders have assisted this. They have played their role.
We had a congressman in New York was a chair
of Foreign Foreign Relations. Oh my God, from Queen's Why
(43:48):
am I? I can see his face. I'm telling you
it's a senior moment. Every meets Gregory Meets is the
ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee. Uh, giving
money to Ukraine, defending Israel, all of them, everybody and
Zionists here in New York. If you want to run
for a city council seat in a neighborhood with no
(44:10):
Jewish people, you had better say you're going to support Israel.
If not, you'll find yourself you'll suddenly someone will appear
with a lot of money running against you, and it's
important for us to say that. And do people care?
Do they not care? I don't know. It doesn't In
(44:30):
the end, it doesn't matter because we see the end result.
You know, police departments here in the United States send
cops to Israel to be trained so they can treat
people here the way people in Gaza are treated. Billions
of dollars our money, while we're told no for everything
we need. No. Can we have more money for schools? Nope?
(44:54):
Can we have more money for hospitals, nope. They just
took this big, beautiful bi bill cuts Medicaid, so rural
hospitals in southern States where most black people live are
going to close because of these people and the misleaders.
Hakim Jeffries is complete, a waste of humanity. I'll just
(45:16):
say it. Corny Booker with his longs twenty five talking
for twenty five hours for what who needed him to
talk for twenty five hours? He didn't even use that
time to oppose any legislation. Hakim Jeffries is so he
can't even pretend. I mean, it's horrible that he can't speak.
(45:37):
He and other Democrats have said they won't endorse mom Donnie.
He won the Democratic primary, you should endorse him, but
the oligarch said no, and so he won't. And they
don't propose any When you think about if the Democrats
were really an opposition party, wouldn't you just, off the
top of my head, wouldn't you send people out all
(46:00):
over to the Red States and say, you know you're
going to lose your rural hospital, you know you're going
to lose your medicaid. Nope, because they don't. They just
want to get back in. They want a few different slogans,
and they're hoping they don't have to really do anything
or fight and they can get back into power, which
(46:20):
may not even work for them, even though that's worked
in the past. So these miss haking Jeffries, he's no
how is any better than Trump if he doesn't fight Trump.
I mean not even rhetorically, I mean nothing. Nothing. So
that's where we are with these misleaders. These people are
(46:42):
dangerous to us. They are our enemies and they should
be seen that way. And I think it's important for people,
even if you're not sure what action to take, I
think it's important to know where you stand and where
these people stand and it's not with you.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Absolutely. Let's talk about the Black Agenda Report. How many
years strong are you all there since its founding and
how many years have you been there? Tell us about
your readership and the reach and the broader community, because
it's been I mean again, I first found out about
it back just before Barack Obama started running for president,
(47:20):
to be honest with you, but I know that they
were there longer than that.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Two thousand and six. We started. First, we were with
a site called Black Commentator starting in like two thousand
and two or two thousand and three. We decided to
break out on our own, Glenn Bruson myself in two
thousand and six. So the first issue of Black Agenda
Report dot Com was in October of two thousand and six,
and I remember Glenn had an article called let the
(47:46):
Black Caucus Be Black, and he was talking about Nancy
Pelosi controlling Charlie Wrangel and John Conyers, who had been
these progressive stalwarts for years, but she stopped them at
every turn. And I think that that's a great example
of our work, revealing analysis from a black left perspective.
(48:10):
That's what we say domestically. Internationally, We've had, of course
changes over the years. There always are. We have a
good team of regular contributors. We reprint from other publications,
and we're planning on doing some new stuff in the
next few months to expand our reach, which is national
and international. I'm always surprised, maybe I shouldn't be that
(48:33):
people all over the world make reference to Black Agenda Report,
invite us to speak to travel and I think it's
because we have that perspective of real leftism being anti capitalist,
being anti imperialists, and always tying that to black people.
(48:54):
I always say of Glenn Ford, he was the blackest
person I knew. He was a red diaper, grew up
as a socialist, but also grew up in the segregated South,
was in the military and the Vietnam era black panther,
so all of those experiences. He put black people first,
and everything he wrote and talked about how will this
(49:15):
impact us? And everything impacts us. So these people who
there's nothing for us to do, We're just gonna stand back.
Let know that that's not You can try that if
you want, but that's just being in denial, which is
not a river in Egypt. So that is our work
at Black Agenda Report dot com. We publish every articles
(49:36):
every Wednesday, and I have interviews Black Agenda Radio every Friday,
which can be heard on PACIFICA stations like WBAI and
New York WPFW in Washington.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah. No, absolutely, So you've been there from day one,
square one. Yeah, that is so awesome.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I have so many, so many things that we can
dig into and talk about, but I do want to
honor in your time.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
I'll come back.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Oh no, absolutely, and listen this. I'm gonna do a
shameless plug here. I'm getting ready to drop an article
on why Christians, Bible based Christians cannot be capitalists, and
I'm exegeting that thing from top to bottom. It is.
It is just and I don't have a place to
put it. I don't know if that fits over there
at Black Agenda Report, but if it doesn't, I have
(50:24):
some other stuff I would love to share with you.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Okay, sure, sure. And speaking of shameless plugs, I'm absolutely
not as good as I should be promoting myself. I
wrote a book Prejudential Black America and the Presidents in
twenty twenty. I'll just hold it up so you can
see it prejudential Black America and the presidents I go through,
from George Washington to the first Trump administration, talking about,
(50:48):
in a way, what we've been talking about all this time,
the foundations of this country, how president's slaveholders, segregationists have
impacted our life to this day. It's published by Steerforth Press,
but you can get it from all the sites, Barnes
and Noble, Amazon, get it from your local bookstore. And
I think folks would
The Benjamin Dition Show is only possible when listener is important.
Go to Patreon dot comcast VPD show, which report the
Benjamin Chen Show.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We are living in a moment where the threat of
fascism is real and rising, embodied by MAGA and Donald Trump,
whose movement endangers every step of progress made in this
country for all people, but especially for Black Americans. But
as we focus on the dangers from the right, there
(00:38):
is a more insidious and more subtle threat inside of
the soul called resistance. Black leaders and Democrats entrusted to
defend our interests are increasingly complicit in protecting the status quo,
even if that means aligning with maga interest or blocking
genuine progress from within their own ranks. I need to
(01:02):
say that again, even if that means aligning with maga's
interests or blocking genuine progress from within their own ranks.
This is happening right now in New York City, where
establishment Democrats, including powerful black politicians, have lined up alongside
(01:23):
Republicans to oppose the Democratic nominee Zoran Memdani in favor
of Eric Adams. This kind of bipartisan sabotage isn't just
about party rivalry. It's about power, resources and who gets
left behind. Now, we can't ignore the generational divide either.
(01:44):
Older Black Americans and voters often cling to the party
establishment out of habit or history or survival. But Black
millennials and gen z have seen through the illusion because
for them, affordable college, stable jobs, and secure housing are
vanishing dreams. History is clear collaboration with empire, no matter
(02:09):
the intention, no matter the cause, never ends well for
the oppressed. So today we're examining not just the dangers outside,
but the betrayals from within, and how the fear of
socialism and comfort within the Democratic Party have turned survival
into complicity, costing us real tangible progress. Welcome, ladies, gentlemen,
(02:34):
and gender non conforming individuals to another episode of The
Benjamin Dixon Show. I am, of course your host Benjamin Dixon.
Joining me today is Margaret Kimberly, executive editor and senior
columnists at The Black Agenda Report, a fearless critic of
US empire and the black political establishment, and the author
of the essential book, Prejudential, Black America and the Presidents,
(02:58):
which exposes the often untold truth about every president's relationship
with Black America. Margaret, thank you so much for joining me.
Would you tell us about your journey in terms of
your background, your training, your education, your ancestral roots, whatever
angle you want to speak of it from. But I
(03:18):
am interested in how your journey led you to the
Black Agenda Report as well.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Okay, thank first, thank you so much for having me.
It's a pleasure to be with you. My parents were
born in Ohio. Their parents immigrated in the first wave
of the Great Migration in the twenties from Alabama and Arkansas.
We moved around a lot. My father did a lot
of different things, but we settled in New York New Rochelle,
(03:44):
New York, a suburb just north of New York City. Politically,
I think my parents were typical of black people. They
were as a lot of black people. In the fifties,
they were Republicans, lest we forget, the Democrats were the
party of the segregated South. But of course they made
that switch in the mid sixties. I remember being I
(04:10):
was a kid. I'm sixty five. I remember being a
kid during the Vietnam War. My parents were adamant that
the war was wrong. They always voted for Democrats. I
think typical of most black people on the left leaning
side of the Democratic Party, of course, strong supporters of
(04:34):
the movement. My father worked at There were a lot
of new agencies during the War on Poverty, Great society programs.
He was at one point the head of the Human
Rights Commission in the state of Minnesota. So those are
That was my political foundation. And I thought I was
(04:57):
a leftist until I encountered Glenford, but he rest in peace,
the man who was the driving force behind Black Agenderreport
dot com. Uh. He and Bruce Dixon were the other
co founders. They both passed sadly, and they were socialists,
both of them. They were both members of the Black
(05:19):
Panther Party in their youth. And so it was a
learning experience, a growing experience for me to be exposed
to people who were socialists, not just you know, Democrats
who preferred the most liberal person. And that was an
eye opening experience for me. And I encourage everyone to
(05:44):
encounter and have experiences with people whose political outlooks are
very maybe very day different from your own.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (05:55):
It's a way of learning so many things. I you know,
I thought, as I said, I thought I was leftist.
That I found out I wasn't. I was just a liberal,
like most people, had a eurocentric, US centric education, didn't
know enough about the global South, about the history of colonialism.
And so when I look back at the things I
(06:18):
first wrote and what I write now, it's a world
of difference being introduced to radical politics and the black
radical tradition of this country. So I think that sums
up my life and my journey to date.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
No, it's actually really insightful. I'm glad to hear that
arc because I think a lot of black folks are
terrified of that transition from the comfort of liberalism to
the realities of something other than liberalism and capitalism. I
(06:56):
was a leftist, and I'll I would be cute youre's
to see your division on how you parse between being
a leptist and a socialist. Obviously one's an economic paradigm,
but I think a lot of leftists would think that
they were socialists as well, because I thought being a
leptist and embracing socialism, you know, they became kind of
synonymous to me, as democracy and capitalism are kind of conflated.
(07:23):
But I would be curious to hear more about your
division there. But I think I think you kind of
just already went directly to something that's really important, the
journey of awakening your understanding of our position as black
people in the belly of the beast, in the empire,
completely cut off from not only our history, but the
(07:44):
realities of what the empire is doing globally. Then the
source of that drive racial capitalism, Cedric, his name escapes me,
the theorists behind that racial capitalism, and the counterbalance to it,
at least the best that we have right now would
be something along the lines of socialism, and in context
(08:08):
of how many black folks today will would fight against
the idea of socialism, which to me is kind of
really kind of ridiculous when you're on this side of
the journey, but then being on that side of the
journey too, I can't I can't speak so so much
with Bravado because I was there at one time as well.
Would you just speak to that.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah, Robinson, is it Cedric Robinson?
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Robinson, Yes, ma'am, Yes, So the term it's.
Speaker 3 (08:32):
So funny in this country, the terms left and right.
As politics have moved further and further and further to
the right. Socialists are leftists, but socialists are I define
it as being anti capitalist, anti imperialist. UH and socialists
(08:53):
traditionally believe the people should be in charge of the
means of production. I'm thinking about China, which is socialist
as a socialist government, but they also have private ownership.
They're large corporations. Some of the biggest corporations, the biggest
(09:13):
banks in the world are in China. But what happens
there is the government tells them what to do, not
like here, where capital tells the government what to do.
So to the point where we don't even have our
own government anymore. Democracy was always a tenuous thing, and
now this new what's trump big beautiful, beautiful bill whatever
(09:39):
they're One of the components of that bill is it
makes it illegal for states to regulate artificial intelligence at all. So,
you know, the Congress in the past has said the
government cannot help people pay for their prescriptions, because that
was always a p Maybe the government can pay for pharmaceuticals.
(10:04):
That's illegal, and that's because of control of capital. So
I would say, you know when and so it's difficult people.
Just being a Democrat does not put you on the
left because the Democratic Party goes further and further to
the right here in New York where I am. We're
(10:25):
having this very contentious mayoral election. The winner of the
Democratic primari zarn Mamdani, is a he's dsa Democratic Socialist
and he's he's put forward some very modest proposals and
people have lost it. He's communist, he's a you know,
(10:47):
Trump says he's a communist, is going to take all
the money out of the city. If he wins, he
should lose his citizenship. We've had elected officials saying, uh,
he can't win. He was a the big money people,
and they've been very obvious about it. We're behind Andrew Cuomo,
former governor who resigned in scandal a few years ago,
(11:09):
but he had rich friends and they put him forward
in the Democratic primary, although he's also still on the
ballot as an independent. The current mayor, Eric Adams is
on the ballot as an independent, so Zara and Mamdani
will be running against both of them. There's a billionaire,
Bill Ackman, very public. He's on Twitter saying that he's
(11:30):
going to back Adams, he's not going to back Cuomo
and saying he wants to stop Mamdani and Mam Donnie
has said, for example, buses should be free. Well, buses
were free during the pandemic. Rudy Giuliani. Nobody mentions this
anymore because he wanted to cement support on Staten Island,
made the Staten Island ferry free. Everybody forgets about that now.
(11:53):
So Mam Donnie says, well, maybe because they are food
deserts in New York City, as there are in many
urban areas, and he has said, well, maybe the city
can run some supermarkets. People's that, Oh my god, it's stalinism,
you know. Do you want your supermarket to run like
the Department of Motor Vehicles, Which actually is funny because
in New York DMV has improved quite a lot and
(12:13):
it runs very well. But that's an example of also
why people are afraid of if you ask people about
proposals like I'm thinking of Bernie Sanders, that's something more
people are familiar with. When he first ran against Hillary
Clinton in that primary in twenty sixteen, he talked about
(12:40):
Medicare for all goes by many names, but it's basically
having a single payer healthcare system. It doesn't put us
at the whims of private corporations, so we can live. Now,
that's something most people want, but there were people who
were afraid of the word socialist, which Bernie really is not.
And then there were people, especially black people, who were
(13:02):
told he can't win. It doesn't matter if he's talking
about things you want. He was talking about public universities
being free. Who needs that more than black people, who
if we decide to go to college or drowning in
debt for the rest of our lives. But we were
told he's not going to win or white people aren't
going to vote for him. So you people hear about
(13:26):
issues that are supported by leftists and they want those things,
but if they've either been demonized about the words socialism,
or they're afraid of what it means, or they're afraid
that people can't get into office. So it's funny. People
often talk about Republicans voting against their interests, but Democrats
(13:49):
end up doing the same.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
Thing, especially black Democrats. Yes, which is kind of funny
to me. This is just a forgive me for its
entering myself for the split second, But it's so funny
when folks like Dixon, you're a Democratic shield and you know,
I'm blocked by so many black Democrats because of the
(14:11):
technique that they use, especially when it comes to getting
even a modicum of progress. Like you said, with Bernie Sanders,
it wasn't it wasn't radical socialism at all, or in fact,
it wasn't even further to the left in Europe, most
developed nations in Europe. They're doing the same thing now
with Zora on Mondami in New York. They're lining up
(14:34):
behind the establishment that is promising them to not only
keep the status quo, but to bring back the worst
of the status quo, like Eric Adams is doing in
New York City with stopping frisk and becoming the blackface
of the police force of the Empire. And then you
have clowns like Jim Clyburn who gallivants around the country,
(14:55):
fancies himself as a negro king maker of white folks,
and he constant appears just in time to sabotage the
progress that we could have. And yet and still there
seems to be so many black folks who follow behind
that nonsense.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
And I get it.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
You know, it's their own survival instinct, it's their own
comfort level. Because many of them are beyond survival. Some
of them are at nice comfortable levels. And then we
see throughout history, people get power people and when they
get power, they get compromised. It's not only just politics,
it's in the black churches, everywhere we're surrounded. What I'm finding, though,
(15:33):
is there's a generational divide, which is one of the
key reasons why I wanted to speak to you on
this issue, because there seems to be a divide with
our elders who are saying, no, the socialism, that's scary,
that we don't want that God bless America using talking
points and framing of MAGA, whether they know it or not,
and then the younger generation who's like, hey, we've had it.
(15:54):
We can't even afford, we can't even afford to live anymore.
But then I see and here you're voice, and I'm
reminded of Glenn Ford and Bruce Dixon as much as
God blessed them back in two thousand and eight when
they would not give Barack Obama a chance. I was
still a good Liberal and I was still a good Democrat.
(16:16):
They used to irritate the devil out of me, and
then come to find out and realize in retrospect they
were right all along, which tells me that it's not
just a generation. It's not so much a generational divide,
because there's plenty of seasoned and elder black folks who
get it, but speak to that entire arc that I
just gave you, including James Clyburn, but also the presence
(16:40):
of elders who get it, and they get it in
the very clear not even academic, but almost at a
visceral level. And I imagine it has to tie back
to the experiences of the of the Civil rights era
or further, I don't know, what do you think.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Well, let's start talking about James Clyburn. It's very funny
to me. It seems that he believed his own, uh,
believed his own hype about him. We were told he
was this king maker. Democrats made a big deal about
South Carolina being a pivotal state in primaries and he
being a he was the whip I believe of the
(17:19):
how he was a leader of Democrats in the House
and his endorsement was key. Now in South Carolina other
southern states, most Democrats are black, So so they set
this up, making South Carolina key, but also using it
(17:41):
to shut down any discussion of the issues that the
Democratic Party, oligarchs, the rich people who's uh, Lets we
forget the Democrats raise a billion dollars every presidential election year.
First of all, making sure you get somebody they want.
So Bernie Sanders or somebody else will come along and
(18:04):
say what people want to hear, but they make sure
that in the case of black people, it was so
cynical telling black people, white people aren't going to vote
for him. He can't win, so vote against your own interests.
But so Cliburn believed the hype about him being this kingmaker.
(18:26):
I mean, a kingmaker would be somewhat independent, would not
be a leader in the Democratic Party. Also, there was
I don't know if it's still true, but there was
a time Cliburn got more money from Big Pharma than
any other member of Congress. Is four thirty five right,
four hundred thirty five people. He got more money from
Big Farmer than anybody. What does that tell you? Of
(18:47):
course he's not for And then I remember he said, well,
Bernie didn't even ask for my endorsement, which Bernie should
have done. However, was the guy who gets more money
from Big Farmer going to endorse the I known for
Medicare for All? No, that wasn't going to happen so
Cliber and I don't know if he really believed himself
as this kingmaker, but they and to your point here
(19:10):
in New York, suddenly he came in that last week
and endorsed Andrew Cuomo. Now Cuomo got most of the
Black vote, which also speaks to the generational divide and
this decision making of fear I believe he did. First
of all, it's name recognition. His father was governor, he
(19:30):
was governor, and there's just this inertia. Yeah, yeah, I've
heard of him, Mom Donnie. I never heard of him.
So a lot of black neighborhoods he Cuomo won. He
won decisively over Mom Donnie. But younger people felt differently
and voted for him. And I think it's a couple
(19:51):
of things. Young people are having starkly different life experiences
than their parents and grandparents. Their parents could go to
college for very little money in New York City had
a free university system up until the seventies, and public
colleges were so cheap as to be almost free. So
(20:12):
if you're in your fifties or sixties, you could get
an education without being in debt, pee andage for your
whole life. You knew you would get a job, a
full time job with benefits, and if you played your
card right, cards right, you could buy a house. You
could have all of those creature comforts that we associate
with having a quote unquote middle class life. In the US,
(20:38):
young people have none of that. They can't afford college.
They if they get through it, and they're in debt
up to their next even if they just get a
bachelor's degree. Do they get jobs. No, we have this
gig economy, part time work, low wage work, and now
(20:59):
we have a taking jobs all together. So can they
get in a you know, like when I was young
getting out of college in the eighties, you could get
your first job, get a little apartment, maybe I have
a roommate. Little by little, you could move up in
the world. They don't have any hope of doing any
of those things. Buy a house. The median price of
(21:22):
a house in Brooklyn, New York, is now nine hundred
thousand dollars. And so we have seen a replacement black
people leaving, white people coming in. And so we see this,
you know, everybody's like a rat in a maze. So
I'll leave New York and go to North Carolina. Or
Georgia or Florida. Maybe I can buy a house there,
(21:45):
but there's gentrification there too. Maybe their jobs in this
or that place, but AI is taking the jobs. So
by definition, just to survive, young people are willing to
go outside of the political box. In general, I would
say black people are risk averse and vote out of fear.
(22:09):
So you would vote for Cuomo instead of this guy
that even if you like what he says, you're not
sure he can win in presidential politics. Who can even
with Obama, I don't know if you remember, there were
a lot of questions about him until he won the
Iowa caucuses and it was clear that white people would
(22:31):
vote for him, which meant he could win. And then
black people did a collective one pint eighty and all
got behind him, but didn't get behind them until they
were convinced he would be able to win. But that's
the politics of fear. And then, of course we have
to think about how much elections really matter. So what
(22:54):
happens if a Democrat gets in Now with Trump, that's
a can seem to be a hard or argument to
make because he's moved so far to the right and
Ice is snatching people up and all kinds of things.
But people are fearful and afraid, afraid to make any change,
(23:18):
afraid of things they don't know much about. Americans are very,
very propagandized. We don't know what socialism is. We don't
know the history of this country. The corporate media is
I call it state controlled, because all they do is repeat.
If you read the New York Times or Washington Post
(23:40):
on foreign policy, it's like reading a State Department press release.
They don't tell you anything new. And oh, while I
just reminded myself of something, and I hope I know
I'm digressing a bit. The New York Times was so
eager to smear Zorn Mamdani. They a right wing Actually
(24:03):
man's a white supremacist. His name is Jordan Lasker. He
went by this name of Crimu, and they had this
story that Donnie when he applied to Columbia as a
high school student Columbia University, where he was not admitted,
he checked off the box African American in addition to Asian. Now,
he was born in Uganda, a country where there were
(24:25):
many South Asian people, so technically that's African American. But
African Americans usually means us, and I think it's a
legitimate debate. I would say he should not have done it.
But then we find out that this person the New
York Times gave anonymity to is a white supremacist. Black
people have lower iq, have smaller brains, the whole nine yards,
(24:49):
and they tried to backtrack, and actually it's very funny.
So this issue that one could debate has now been
forgotten because people are saying, wait a minute, you didn't
do a Google search on this guy. You were so
eager to smear him, you didn't check, or you knew
but thought you could get away with it anyway. But
that's an example of corporate media and how they work
(25:12):
with They represent the ruling class, and so people don't
have the information they want. You know, in general, you've
got to you've got to look for yourself. You can't
depend on the educational system, You can't depend on the
media in order to find out the things you need
(25:32):
to know to find out, Well, what does socialism mean?
What are socialist countries like? What is the US doing
around the world? What are we doing domestically? What are
they doing domestically? I should put it that way. So
I think I rambled and digressed a little bit, but
I hope I was answered all question.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
No, what I've come to realize and learn is that
digression is kind of like improvisation and jazz is where
the most most i hordant insights and structures of conversations
lead to because you led me right to where we
kind of need to be, and it brings to my remembrance.
(26:12):
This is the importance of remembrance. Elon Musk and MAGA
had a field day last year calling him an African American.
Speaker 3 (26:23):
They were rubbed it in our faces.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
I never forget Ron de Santis down in the state
of Florida was rubbed in Black America's faces and oh
he's African American, our favorite African American.
Speaker 3 (26:34):
Now again, I agree with you. I think Zoron.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Should have thought a little better of that, But he
is from Africa and he was naturalized as an American.
I don't like that game personally. But if MAGA was
really concerned about that, then why did they just play
that game with us, except to of course trigger the
collective black consciousness here in the United States of America.
Now they've inverted that and said, oh no, that's something
wrong there. He shouldn't have done that. Right, that's the
(26:59):
game that they played. But that brings us like full
circle to the entire conversation. Right, it's it's the need
for black folks to see ourselves through an international lens.
Because if we don't see ourselves through an international lens,
and this is honestly one of the things I picked
up reading Black Agenda Report over the years and listening
to the broadcast, if we don't see ourselves through that lens,
(27:19):
then we end up only having the education given to
us by the empire that we are still exiled in. Right,
we only have the understanding and the knowledge that they
share with us. And now we've seen this arc, this
arc of blackness, this arc of black liberation, and I
would even go as far as saying this arc of
(27:40):
black liberation theology where we've come to a generation where
we're not only fighting against white supremacy, but we're fighting
against this mutated version of blackness where you have on
the one side, you have the James Clyburns who has
a form of blackness but denies the power thereof. But
you have all so now you have the entirety of
(28:02):
black maga. But you also have now black and it
used to be prosperity gospel, but it's something in totally
different now. It's like the bastard child of prosperity gospel,
where they don't even preach the gospel anymore. They just
preach capitalism in the pulpit. And then you even have
the antithesis of black liberation theology. You have these black
preachers out here now who are swearing that Jesus wasn't black,
(28:24):
and that becomes their platform to preach from. It's like
we're dealing with this manifestation of the very worst of blackness,
which is blackness married to empire. But you can't be
married to empire unless you're honestly willing to subvert and
sabotage blackness.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Will be that with more benj you even get your
show right after this.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Hey, everybody, this is pastor Ben and we need your support.
Go to patreon dot com forward slash the bp D
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(29:20):
or your money back.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
That's right.
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What we're getting ready to do not only through this channel,
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(29:47):
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(30:11):
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In nineteen twenty six, Carter G. Woodson gave us Black
History Week. Now, almost one hundred years later, many of
us are still stuck in the month of February. But
our legacy, it doesn't just fit into twenty eight days.
(30:34):
The Black heritage Day app is here to change all
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Speaker 4 (30:57):
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for each of the eleven Confederate States to own our ancestors.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
To connect with your roots, to teach your children the
truth they won't get in school, and.
Speaker 4 (31:11):
Total He is credited with twenty eight other inventions, but
as a black inventor, he struggled.
Speaker 2 (31:18):
To game learn why New Year's Day was once considered
the most dreaded day of the year.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Aarons were separated from their children's siblings separated, and spouses
separated from one another. And today America has the nerve
to lecture us about the status of the black families.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Understand the political journey of Black America from the Republican
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Speaker 4 (31:40):
It marked the beginning of Black's departure from the Republican
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Dive into culture and trialm like Sidney Portier's blockbuster film
success and so much more From Heartbreak to Trium from
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(32:10):
Download the Black Heritage Day app for free in the
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isn't just an app. It is a daily celebration of
who we are.
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Welcome back to the Benjamin Show.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
It's like we're dealing with this manifestation of the very
worst of blackness, which is blackness married to empire. But
you can't be married to empire unless you're honestly willing
to subvert and sabotage blackness. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 3 (32:54):
Well, you're absolutely right, and I'm seeing something else happening now,
this idea that black people should not be active at all.
Other people step up these memes that you know, black
people are dancing even the World War three is about
to start, which is I don't know why people think
that's a flex but anyway they do.
Speaker 1 (33:16):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
After Kamala Harris lost, it's like it's somebody else's turn.
We shouldn't be on the front lines. I think it's
interesting because a lot of people saying this, we're never
on any line, the front line or the second or
the third, and you know now when to act like
they were.
Speaker 5 (33:34):
But this idea that the only that black people have
no can play no role politically, That the only because
due to our disappointments and the failures of the system
on our behalf, we we're out.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
That's it. That's all we can do. As if climate
change won't hit us, as if you know Trump and
Netan Yahoo's in Washington or coming to Washington. He and
Trump are trying to restart a war with Iran. That's
not going to impact us, really it won't. So all
of these So that's the newest thing I find, frankly
(34:16):
very disturbing. But yes, we need to know our history,
and our history was and it didn't start with Trump,
you know, changing websites and taking black people's pictures out.
This has been going on for a long times. There
(34:38):
was a counter revolution to the liberation movement and for
more than fifty years, and that was done in a
variety of ways. You create a buffer class of people
like me who had the chance to go to colleges
you might not otherwise have gone to, giving opportunity to some,
(35:01):
but moving to the right further and further to the
right all the time. So that Bill Clinton, what did
Bill Clinton do? Bill Clinton, his crime bill put thousands
of black people in jail across the country. Bill Clinton
is responsible for the loss of our media, media consolidation.
(35:24):
It used to be you couldn't own a TV station
and a newspaper in the same city. Well, if that
were true, Rupert Murdoch couldn't own Fox and the New
York Post. But he does. That's because of Bill Clinton.
Remember there were so many black radio stations. Well now
there I think there's six or seven corporations that control
everything almost everything we see and read and hear in media.
(35:50):
And those were attacks on us. These were the liberation
movement was successful. It changed the way we saw ourselves.
It changed the way everybody in the country saw themselves.
There would be no medicare or medicaid if not for
the civil rights movement. Nobody would have had any of
those things. And this is terrifying to the oligarchy, and
(36:13):
they have made sure that there's no talk of any
of that ever. Again, So We've been dealing with this
counter revolution which destroyed our distorted our own memories. We're
talking about gentrification. You know, remember Washington, d C. Was
Chocolate City. Well that's Cafe o Many City. And we
(36:36):
have black so called leadership. We have a black mayor
here in New York City, but all he talks about
is how he used to be a cop. Adams has
he brought back Bloomberg stopping frisk his police department. They
used to at least fire cops who killed people. Adams
does not discipline. There's a civilian complaint review board. It
(36:57):
doesn't do very much, but they would recommend that a
cop be fired for misconduct. Adams doesn't even do that.
So that's where we are so called black leadership who
owe their positions to rich white people and the people
we mentioned, you know, who have passed away and that memory,
(37:19):
those memories and experiences are gone with them. And you
have to make, as I said, a consertive, concerted effort
on your own to learn history outside of the box,
to learn about the rest of the world. So I
(37:40):
think it's important for people to know this did not
happen accidentally. This is very deliberate and we have to
make sure that we know that. So, there were a
handful of black people in Congress in the early seventies,
the first members of the Congressional Black Caucus. I think
there were ten of them. Now they're more than forty.
But so, what what do they do? What do they
(38:01):
do for us? They owe their positions to rich white people,
and if any of them step out of line, they
get rid of Corey Bush, Jamal Bowman. They spent millions
of dollars on primaries to get them out, just to
make sure in case anybody had any big ideas about
being really progressive, that they got over themselves and they
(38:24):
got their minds right, and just to make sure that
nobody thought about actually proposing any kind of meaningful change.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What you are saying is somewhat triggering to me, right
because of the intentionality of every step and the fact
that black folks we have not been able to see
at scale. There've always been prophetic voices. And when I
say prophetic, I don't mean in the pulpit, I mean
in the streets. I mean in media and in the pulpit.
(38:55):
But there have always been voices who've seen it but
not allowed to get the asses of black folks to
see it, which part of the question is about Black
Agenda Report, and you all carrying on that legacy and
extending that legacy and your readership and your reach. But
then I got to I have to go in a
little bit further here, because I wonder if this Black
(39:17):
Misleadership class trademark Black Agenda Report right at least that's
where I first heard it and only heard it. I
wonder if they realize how this plays out throughout history
for collaborators with empire, it never plays out well for
them in the end, whether it be the Sanhedrin Council
(39:38):
in the Roman Empire in Jesus's day, whether it be
the African tribes who collaborated with colonizers and enslavers who
ended up getting enslaved themselves because they thought that they
could work out a deal with white folks within the day.
It never did work out well for them, whether it
be any version of that. There's always a class of
people who think that they can get over collaborating with
(40:01):
empire instead of fighting and resisting empire. And then I
want to ask black folks, also you mentioned net and Yahoo,
if they don't realize the trajectory that we're on right now.
But that's white folks in this country who would love,
salivated the chance to do to us what Zionists are
doing to Gaza, and how they think it's a safe path,
(40:25):
maybe for them because they think that they'll die soon
enough and don't have to live with it, but for
their children and their grandchildren, their black grandchildren who have
to live in the world that they created by collaborating
with Empire. That's the breath. That's the death and breath
of it. I'll let you take it from there.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Well, you know, it depends. There are people who are
cynical and they just don't care. They don't care what
comes after them. There are people who are in denial
who convince themselves it's going to be different for them,
or they say, well, I'm gonna get mine while I can,
and maybe I can help the next generation. So they're
all kinds of ways people excuse being a part of
(41:07):
this class that that is used used to hurt all
of us. So I'm sure if you talk to you know,
one hundred different blackness leaders, you might get one hundred
different answers. But the most important thing is for the
rest of us to know that many of these people
are our enemies. The black face in a high place
(41:30):
is not only not necessarily our friend, but many times
they are our enemies. And it's important whatever they think
of themselves and what they're doing, it's important for us
not to be fooled about where things are headed. And
I just want to say too, this is all very frightening.
(41:52):
This is a very frightening moment. People worry about where
they can live, of how they can live. When I
see homeless people on the street, and by the way,
I don't know about where you are, but here in
New York people living on the street are almost all black,
almost all of them, and people living very precarious lives.
(42:17):
This fear is that going to be me? We have
a and that's not an I want to I'm going
to digress a tighty bit. One of my siblings was
she was a social worker in the psychiatric hospital and
when she started her job, she said they had almost
nine hundred beds. When she retired twenty years later, they
(42:41):
had three hundred beds. So why is anybody surprised that
there are mentally ill homeless people on the streets and
in jails. That's called austerity. It's called that was Andrew Cuomo,
by the way, who was in charge of that. But
that's all over the country, the government doing less and
less to the demands of this ruling class and so
(43:04):
all of them, there's less for people to be secure
in and it's making people personally self destructive. I'm seeing
behaviors and I always say it's capitalism. Capitalism is ruining
people's lives, ruining our psychological health, our physical health, and
(43:26):
and that's that's where that's where we are right now.
And the misleaders have assisted this. They have played their role.
We had a congressman in New York was a chair
of Foreign Foreign Relations. Oh my God, from Queen's Why
(43:48):
am I? I can see his face. I'm telling you
it's a senior moment. Every meets Gregory Meets is the
ranking Democrat on the House Foreign Relations Committee. Uh, giving
money to Ukraine, defending Israel, all of them, everybody and
Zionists here in New York. If you want to run
for a city council seat in a neighborhood with no
(44:10):
Jewish people, you had better say you're going to support Israel.
If not, you'll find yourself you'll suddenly someone will appear
with a lot of money running against you, and it's
important for us to say that. And do people care?
Do they not care? I don't know. It doesn't In
(44:30):
the end, it doesn't matter because we see the end result.
You know, police departments here in the United States send
cops to Israel to be trained so they can treat
people here the way people in Gaza are treated. Billions
of dollars our money, while we're told no for everything
we need. No. Can we have more money for schools? Nope?
(44:54):
Can we have more money for hospitals, nope. They just
took this big, beautiful bi bill cuts Medicaid, so rural
hospitals in southern States where most black people live are
going to close because of these people and the misleaders.
Hakim Jeffries is complete, a waste of humanity. I'll just
(45:16):
say it. Corny Booker with his longs twenty five talking
for twenty five hours for what who needed him to
talk for twenty five hours? He didn't even use that
time to oppose any legislation. Hakim Jeffries is so he
can't even pretend. I mean, it's horrible that he can't speak.
(45:37):
He and other Democrats have said they won't endorse mom Donnie.
He won the Democratic primary, you should endorse him, but
the oligarch said no, and so he won't. And they
don't propose any When you think about if the Democrats
were really an opposition party, wouldn't you just, off the
top of my head, wouldn't you send people out all
(46:00):
over to the Red States and say, you know you're
going to lose your rural hospital, you know you're going
to lose your medicaid. Nope, because they don't. They just
want to get back in. They want a few different slogans,
and they're hoping they don't have to really do anything
or fight and they can get back into power, which
(46:20):
may not even work for them, even though that's worked
in the past. So these miss haking Jeffries, he's no
how is any better than Trump if he doesn't fight Trump.
I mean not even rhetorically, I mean nothing. Nothing. So
that's where we are with these misleaders. These people are
(46:42):
dangerous to us. They are our enemies and they should
be seen that way. And I think it's important for people,
even if you're not sure what action to take, I
think it's important to know where you stand and where
these people stand and it's not with you.
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Absolutely. Let's talk about the Black Agenda Report. How many
years strong are you all there since its founding and
how many years have you been there? Tell us about
your readership and the reach and the broader community, because
it's been I mean again, I first found out about
it back just before Barack Obama started running for president,
(47:20):
to be honest with you, but I know that they
were there longer than that.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Two thousand and six. We started. First, we were with
a site called Black Commentator starting in like two thousand
and two or two thousand and three. We decided to
break out on our own, Glenn Bruson myself in two
thousand and six. So the first issue of Black Agenda
Report dot Com was in October of two thousand and six,
and I remember Glenn had an article called let the
(47:46):
Black Caucus Be Black, and he was talking about Nancy
Pelosi controlling Charlie Wrangel and John Conyers, who had been
these progressive stalwarts for years, but she stopped them at
every turn. And I think that that's a great example
of our work, revealing analysis from a black left perspective.
(48:10):
That's what we say domestically. Internationally, We've had, of course
changes over the years. There always are. We have a
good team of regular contributors. We reprint from other publications,
and we're planning on doing some new stuff in the
next few months to expand our reach, which is national
and international. I'm always surprised, maybe I shouldn't be that
(48:33):
people all over the world make reference to Black Agenda Report,
invite us to speak to travel and I think it's
because we have that perspective of real leftism being anti capitalist,
being anti imperialists, and always tying that to black people.
(48:54):
I always say of Glenn Ford, he was the blackest
person I knew. He was a red diaper, grew up
as a socialist, but also grew up in the segregated South,
was in the military and the Vietnam era black panther,
so all of those experiences. He put black people first,
and everything he wrote and talked about how will this
(49:15):
impact us? And everything impacts us. So these people who
there's nothing for us to do, We're just gonna stand back.
Let know that that's not You can try that if
you want, but that's just being in denial, which is
not a river in Egypt. So that is our work
at Black Agenda Report dot com. We publish every articles
(49:36):
every Wednesday, and I have interviews Black Agenda Radio every Friday,
which can be heard on PACIFICA stations like WBAI and
New York WPFW in Washington.
Speaker 2 (49:49):
Yeah. No, absolutely, So you've been there from day one,
square one. Yeah, that is so awesome.
Speaker 3 (49:55):
Listen.
Speaker 2 (49:55):
I have so many, so many things that we can
dig into and talk about, but I do want to
honor in your time.
Speaker 3 (50:02):
I'll come back.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Oh no, absolutely, and listen this. I'm gonna do a
shameless plug here. I'm getting ready to drop an article
on why Christians, Bible based Christians cannot be capitalists, and
I'm exegeting that thing from top to bottom. It is.
It is just and I don't have a place to
put it. I don't know if that fits over there
at Black Agenda Report, but if it doesn't, I have
(50:24):
some other stuff I would love to share with you.
Speaker 3 (50:26):
Okay, sure, sure. And speaking of shameless plugs, I'm absolutely
not as good as I should be promoting myself. I
wrote a book Prejudential Black America and the Presidents in
twenty twenty. I'll just hold it up so you can
see it prejudential Black America and the presidents I go through,
from George Washington to the first Trump administration, talking about,
(50:48):
in a way, what we've been talking about all this time,
the foundations of this country, how president's slaveholders, segregationists have
impacted our life to this day. It's published by Steerforth Press,
but you can get it from all the sites, Barnes
and Noble, Amazon, get it from your local bookstore. And
I think folks would
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