Power To The People”: It’s About The People, Not The Leaders

Download Podcast

We are going to discuss “Power To The People: It’s About Movements of the People, Not Leaders or Vanguards.” The Black movement has been mystified and decimated over the issue of charismatic leadership and vanguard parties, rather than grassroots movements. We will talk about what a movement is, the role of leadership, and power to the people. We will also talk about mistakes of the past and present, and the real necessity of building a new grassroots movement in this period.

Unemployment and Poverty: The Road To Prison For Black People

Download Podcast 

Join us for a discussion with Free Alabama Movement prisoner activists Spokesperson Ray and Brother Kinnetik about how unemployment and poverty push thousands and thousands of black people into slavery in America's prisons and how to organize against it.

Black Autonomy Federation Radio is an extension of the Memphis, Tennessee based Black Autonomy Federation. BAF Radio advocates building Black Liberation from below centered within the Black poor & unemployed and working-class. This assessment is based on the present social/political in the 21st Century.

Contact Black Autonomy Federation: P.O. Box 16382, Memphis, TN 38186-0382 or organize.the.hood@gmail.com

From Plantation “Paddy Rollers” To Paramilitary Cops An Occupying Army In the Black Community

Download Podcast

During the enslavement of Africans in America, private armies of southern white men formed slave patrols, who were charged with stopping the many revolts that took place on plantations. These so-called “paddy rollers,” who also captured and returned runaway slaves to their owners, were the precursor to the modern police departments in America. After the Civil War, paddy rollers evolved into modern police departments. In the South, these cops became key enforcers of the new Jim Crow laws that were passed to strip the freed slaves of their civil and human rights.

During the Civil Rights Era, southern police brutally beat and killed civil rights organizers. In other parts of the USA, urban police used paramilitary police teams (SWAT) to attack the offices of the Black Panther Party and other radical tendencies during the 1960’s and 1970’s.

Now, we have racial profiling, no-knock raids, and paramilitary policing, which were put in place for the last 35 years, purportedly to combat crack cocaine and drug dealing gangs. It was later discovered that the government itself helped drugs flow into the black community as part of a chemical warfare program. Paramilitary policing has cost the lives of tens of thousands and put millions in prison. The War on Drugs has destroyed many viable black neighborhoods, threatening the civil liberties of all people in the USA.