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Glen Ford Memorial – Saluting a Black Radical and a Journalistic Champion
By Michael Welch, Ajamu Baraka, and Ann Garrison
Global Research, August 07, 2021

Url of this article:
https://www.globalresearch.ca/glen-ford-memorial-saluting-a-black-radical-and-a-journalistic-champion/5752308

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“The Black Caucus has never – and should never – recover any vestige of dignity after putting the Democratic Party ahead of hundreds of thousands of poor and exiled Black people. They are still kissing Pelosi’s butt and draping her with kente cloth. Shameless and worthless, the vast bulk of the Black Caucus are totally in sync with their new leader’s racist politics and will not have to pretend to be soulmates with Old White Joe. In 2014, 80 percent of the Black Caucus voted to continue the Pentagon program to arm local police departments to the teeth, and in 2018 three out of four Blacks in the House supported making cops a “protected class.” They hate Black Lives Matter and its “defund the police” demand as much as Biden does, and have no solidarity with anyone except their own grasping, self-centered, hustling class.” 

Glen Ford (Dec, 17, 2020) [1]

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Funeral Services will be held on Saturday, August 7th at the Green Grove Cemetery located at 4062 Green Grove Road in Lumpkin, Georgia. The service begins at 12 p.m.

 

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Glen Ford, the outspoken Black Liberator and opponent of U.S. aggression from America’s streets to the devastated nations in the Global South, finally breathed his last on the morning of July 28, 2021. He was 71.

This is a sad month for many fans. His output on Black Agenda Report and on multiple news outlets prior to that media’s creation is distinct both in terms of its journalistic excellence and its devotion to the black radical tradition.

Circumstances that reward Black people that uphold racist positions whether it be typical law enforcement or supporting U.S. imperial policy and goals, or misrepresenting the true legacy of upheaval for which the very wealthy profit can definitely silence and strangle any remnant of resistance to the status quo. Consequently, Glen Ford and BAR definitely stood out for its content delivered with skill, intelligence and powerful repartee.

One notes in particular his remarks about Barack Obama as not the “lesser evil,” but rather the “more effective evil” neutralizing opposition to right wing policies. He also spoke often about the “Black Mis-Leadership Class,” people who form relationships with and support for the Democratic Party in return for achieving political gain:

“The Black supplicants are always betrayed, of course, but prefer a bad marriage to no relationship at all. Indeed, the Black misleaders and the Democrats have been locked in what Malcolm X would describe as a house Negro/slave master relationship for so long – certainly since the late Sixties – that the Black junior partner knows no other way to behave.”[2]

Global Research has long respected Ford’s work. We have featured a number of his essays on the site for over a decade. As a tribute, the Global Research News Hour does a full feature special on his life and legacy.

Beyond a written write-up of the man’s biography, we supply the voices of some of the people who had a friendly relationship with him who are now gutted by news of his death and share a bit of their stories with the wider public.

Jared Ball is a  professor of communication studies at Morgan State University in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. he is also an author, radio host and mixtape radio producer.

Ajamu Baraka is the national organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace and was the 2016 candidate for vice president on the Green Party ticket. Baraka serves on the Executive Committee of the U.S. Peace Council and leadership body of the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC). He is an editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report and contributing columnist for Counterpunch. He was recently awarded the US Peace Memorial 2019 Peace Prize and the Serena Shim award for uncompromised integrity in journalism.

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize  for promoting peace through her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. Please help support her work on Patreon . She can be reached on Twitter @AnnGarrison  and at ann(at)anngarrison(dot)com.

Elias Amare is an activist originally from Eritrea. He helped organize the Eritrean Festival in Oakland in 2012 which hosted Glen Ford as a speaker.

Dahoud André is a Brooklyn-based radio host and organizer with the Committee to Mobilize Against Dictatorship in Haiti

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Notes:

  1. https://blackagendareport.com/you-cant-shame-shameless-black-misleadership-class
  2. ibid
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