New Abolitionists Radio – Human and civil rights activist Kevin Alexander Gray

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (0.2KB) | Embed

Subscribe: Email | TuneIn | RSS | More

[jwplayer mediaid=”13033″]

Download Podcast

Today we are joined by a prestigious guest Kevin Alexander Gray.
Kevin Alexander Gray is a multi-published author, a human and civil rights activist, a political organizer, a writer and a speaker based in Columbia, South Carolina. God willing, after tonight, he’ll add abolitionist to that list.

His works include:

-Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of
Black Politics (AK Press) & the anticipated ~ The Decline of Black Politics – From Malcolm X to Barack Obama (Verso).
Gray’s latest book is, Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence (co-edited with JoAnn Wypijewski and Jeffrey St. Clair).

Gray’s essay on race & politics have appeared in The Harvard Journal of African American Public Policy – “The Intensification of Racial Solidarity in the 1990s under the guise of Black Nationalism” (1996); The Washington Post Outlook Section, Emerge, One Magazine, The American University Graduate Review & numerous other national, regional & local publications. His work can also be found online at The Black Agenda Report, The Nation and other outlets.

Our stories today include:

• A published report says most Chicago police officers accused of misconduct aren’t found to be at fault and when they are face minor infractions with little punishment. We’ll give you the details.

• Willacy County officials Thursday said the federal government was partly to blame for the tent-city prison’s closure. A prison built for 800 that housed 2000 with most of them on work schedules. The talking heads are complaining that state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. has failed to address the loss of hundreds of jobs and a county shortfall of as much as $2.7 million a year coming from the prison. But here at New Abolitionists radio we found a deeper and more insidious connection between the GEO group, The Vanguard group, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez and Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr. highlighting their corrupt involvement in prison for profit.

• Clients of a California marijuana dispensary filed a lawsuit Monday accusing police officers of excessive and unconstitutional actions during a raid last month. On video the police can be seen getting high, joking about a disabled woman and causing $100,000 in damages as they unsuccessfully tried to destroy all the interior cameras to hide their crimes.

• In our #Ferguson is America series, today we focus on the state of Illinois. Week after week the patterns and practices become clearer and clearer. America is Ferguson.

• This week’s Rider of the 21st Century Underground Railroad is George Stinney Jr., a black teen boy who was convicted of beating two young white girls to death in the small town of Alcolu in 1944. In December of 2014, Seventy years after South Carolina executed this 14-year-old child who was so small he sat on a book in the electric chair, a circuit court judge threw out his murder conviction and declared him… innocent.

• Our Abolitionist in profile is Mary Edmonson (1832–1853) and Emily Edmonson (1835–1895) The Edmonson Sisters. “two respectable young women of light complexion”, were African Americans who became celebrities in the United States abolitionist movement after gaining their freedom from slavery.

On April 15, 1848, they were among the seventy-seven slaves who tried to escape from Washington, DC on the schooner The Pearl to sail up the Chesapeake Bay to freedom in New Jersey.