LATE GLEN FORD: 'OBAMA WAS NEVER PROGRESSIVE'

Many have praised the late Glen Ford (1949-2021) as an exemplary journalist on the Black left in the United States. He co-founded Black Agenda Report (@blkagendareport), a leading media outlet covering radical perspectives across the Pan-African world. However, he admitted to making a mistake in his career when he labelled Barack Hussein Obama a 'progressive' years before Obama became the first Black president.

In this video clip, @glenfordBAR explained Obama did not take an honest position on some of the most critical issues of the time: Healthcare, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the Iraq War. As early as 2003, Obama skirted around US imperialism, preferring to obfuscate his allegiances to the empire.

Revolutionary Indigenous Mexican Zapatista rebels denounced NAFTA as a 'death sentence' for Indigenous peoples and rural farmers. Many have seen the pact as a continuation of the US expansionist foreign policy known as the 'Monroe Doctrine.' And, while Barack Obama ended the Iraq War, he proliferated a new warfare strategy in the form of drone operations used to attack seven countries.

Ford is remembered for his sharp political analysis and pioneering journalism, co-launching, producing and hosting the first nationally syndicated Black news interview programme on US commercial television, 'America's Black Forum,' in 1977. May he rest in power.