Greatest respect for Dr. Cornel West

Love to hear this man talk. Especially in interviews.

Brother Cornell at the Green Party Convention

In Houston, of all places.

"Indifference to evil is worse than evil itself."

"Don't let anybody tell you that somehow because you are voting for your vision, your principle, integrity, honesty, decency, and courage, that  [...] if you don't vote for one party as opposed to the other party, you're responsible for the catastrophe.  We understand the difference between a neo-fascist catastrophe and a neoliberal disaster."

Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?

Julian Assange also made an appearance via video connection from the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

“It’s very important not to allow the political process to suffer from extortion or even yourself to be susceptible to extortion… It’s important for those people who feel their principles have been violated in the way the Democratic primary process has been run or how Chelsea Manning been in prison for 35 years… to go OK, there’s a cost to violating principles, even if there’s also a cost to yourself, even if you don’t like the risk that Donald Trump becomes President. One has to have a line somewhere, otherwise as each election cycle proceeds you’re pushed further and further into the corner.

[...]

"Wha the Clinton campaign is doing at the moment is trying to say, 'Yes, maybe we're connected to arms dealers and to Saudi Arabia, and yes maybe we subverted the integrity of the Democratic primary, etc., etc., but you'll just have to swallow that or else you’ll get Donald Trump. That’s a form of extortion.

[...]

“What is happening now with the Green party and Gary Johnson and Bernie Sanders’ campaign is very important but it must be seen past the moment, past this political moment… (This is a) moment to build a movement and build pressure. Having built it, then, one can … hold accountable and check the abuses of government during the next four years… (Clinton and Trump) are two (of) the most unpopular pair of presidential candidates in U.S. history. … They are going to continue to generate oversight and resistance which will not only create a fertile field for Gary Johnson and Jill Stein to grow their support, but will create a very fertile field to understand and hold the government to account.

[...]

"I’ve just seen the attacks have started to ramp up on Jill Stein. They are going to go thru the roof. Those attacks are going to be ferocious… You’ll learn lessons from that on how the media works.

[...]

“Become your own media in practice in small ways and big ways… Keep your principles and sense of clarity on those principles.”
  Heavy.com

The Green Party and Black Voters

To shake loose a good percentage of the black vote, Sanders would have had to go to war against black congressmen, black mayors and the entire black political establishment, all of the Democrats, in a Democratic primary election. That was never going to happen. Not ever, not insde the Democratic party. Such a campaign can only be waged OUTSIDE the Democratic party and outside the bonds of fake black unity which prevail inside it.

[...]

The Sanders campaign is over now, except for the efforts of staffers to herd followers, activists and contributors behind Hillary Clinton. The campaign of Jill Stein and the Green Party is now the only one that even wants to build support among African Americans. To do that, Greens will have to do what the Sanders campaign was unwilling and unable to do. They and their black supporters will have to interrogate black allegiance to an entrenched black leadership that serves only itself. They’ll have to find and cultivate relationships with forces not tied to those leaders, and develop stands on issues with them.

On issues, Jill and the Greens will have to do more of what Sanders didn’t do.

They’ll have to get far out ahead of what Democrats are talking in the area of responses to racist policing, way beyond body cameras, sensitivity training and proceduralism, and into demanding the abolition of “police bills of rights” and police contract provisions that shield cops from effective investigations. They’ll have to demand effective local and democratic control over policing and police practices, something that exists nowhere in the US.

[...]

And most especially, Jill’s black supporters will have to openly break with traditional black leadership and their top-down methods, and openly question their right wing alliances. Jill Stein rightly says that you cannot build a revolution inside a counter revolutionary party. You also cannot expect a counter revolutionary elite to support your revolution. It’s not like any black mayors, CBC members or prominent black Democrats or black megachurch preachers are about to go Green.

[...]

I'm betting that, within the limited time frame of this campaign, the people running Jill Stein's campaign will find a way to do exactly that. On a longer time horizon I am betting that the Green Party will be able to transform itself into a more internally accountble and small-d democratic organization that can build effective political campaigns and a permanent presense in black constituencies. Some of us are on that case.

Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a co-chair of the Georgia Green Party.

  Black Agenda Report: Bruce Dixon

To read more, click here.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

The Liberals vs the Neoliberal

Cornel West and James Zogby vs. Robert Wexler at the committee debate.



If it weren't for Bernie, this would not even be a question at the Dem Platform Committee.

Cornel West at the DNC

Check the guy next to him trying not to be.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Here We Go

What's with the dismissive quotes around the word occupation, New York Times? That's what it is.

Dr. West said that while he recognized the necessity to provide for the security of Jews, who for thousands of years have been a “hated people,” he thought that the platform needed to bring more balance to “the plight of an occupied people.”  NYT

Whoa! Radical.

Dr. West accused the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, of “war crimes” and said that “the role of money and lobbies makes it difficult for there to be a candid dialogue” on Israel.

[...]

“I have always and will always be 100 percent supportive of Israel’s right to exist and live in peace and security,” [presidential candidate] Sanders wrote in a statement. “I also believe that lasting peace in the region will not occur without fair and respectful treatment of the Palestinian people. I believe that most Democrats agree with that position and that a strong consensus will be achieved at the Democratic National Convention.”

[...]

As a candidate, Mrs. Clinton has been less inclined to criticize Israel, emphasizing that it had a right to defend itself.

As a candidate, Mrs. Clinton has been "less inclined to criticize" Israel, emphasizing that it had a right to defend itself. There. I fixed that for you.

Three of his five choices for the platform committee strongly suggest that Bernie has made the Israel-Palestine issue central to his desires for the Democratic party platform.  Very upsetting to the Democratic party ruling class.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said  [...] that the presence of other representatives of Mr. Sanders on the platform committee, including Representative Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Muslim who has supported the rights of Palestinians, raised concerns that the party could “adopt positions that could be seen as hostile to Israel.”

Malcolm Hoenlein warned the Jewish alliance in the US and Israel will make sure it will be seen as hostile to Israel.

There. Fixed that for you, too.

Dr. Zogby dismissed such critiques as emanating from the “sky is falling” crowd. He then noted, “They are not on the platform committee.”

[...]

The presence of Dr. Zogby and Dr. West on the 15-member panel, which also has six appointees of Hillary Clinton and four from the party chairwoman, does not guarantee their views will prevail. But it raises the prospect that one of the party’s most sensitive issues will be open to public debate while Mrs. Clinton is in a fight to unify her party and appeal to voters turned off by Donald J. Trump.

Ain't that a bitch? And The Trump is (currently) more in line with Dr. West on the issue.  And, not just The Trump.

According to a Pew Research Center survey in April, self-described liberal Democrats were twice as likely to sympathize with Palestinians over Israel than they were only two years ago. Forty percent of liberals sympathized more with Palestinians, the most since 2001, while 33 percent sympathized more with Israel.

Hillary's looking more backward all the time. What will she do? My guess: whatever it takes, which includes making a left turn on the campaign trail and then, if "elected", turn back hard right.

Now, that's how you properly use the quote marks around a word in a sentence, NYT.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway..

UPDATE 6PM:

article

Probably because a lot of people follow Glenn Greenwald these days.

Cornel West Changes His Tune

At Bernie Sander's initial entry as a presidential candidate, Dr. Cornel West spoke with doubt about Bernie's true intentions. He's certainly changed his story to now a super supporter.

 

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ferguson

After a relatively peaceful “Weekend of Resistance” in St. Louis…

At least 42 people, including author Cornel West, were arrested in Ferguson, Missouri on Monday as activists continued to protest police brutality.

[...]

West – a renowned academic and former Harvard professor – was among a group of protesters engaged in an organized act of civil disobedience Monday afternoon outside the Ferguson Police Department. Several members of Christian, Jewish and Muslim clergy were also arrested alongside West, according to AP.

  RT

American Blues in the 21st Century

Salon's Thomas Frank talks to Cornell West.

 

Cornel West, professor at Union Theological Seminary 

[H]ow do you feel things have worked out since [the last time we were together], both with the economy and with this president? That was a huge turning point, that moment in 2008, and my own feeling is that we didn’t turn.

No, the thing is he posed as a progressive and turned out to be counterfeit. We ended up with a Wall Street presidency, a drone presidency, a national security presidency. The torturers go free. The Wall Street executives go free. The war crimes in the Middle East, especially now in Gaza, the war criminals go free. And yet, you know, he acted as if he was both a progressive and as if he was concerned about the issues of serious injustice and inequality and it turned out that he’s just another neoliberal centrist with a smile and with a nice rhetorical flair.

[...]

The personal confrontation you had with him is kind of famous. He got angry at you because you were saying he wasn’t progressive enough.

I just looked at him like “C’mon, man. Let the facts speak for themselves. I’m not into this rhetorical exchange.”

Is there anybody who thinks he’s progressive enough today?

Nobody I know.

[...]

What I hear is that, “He pimped us.” I heard that a zillion times. “He pimped us, brother West.” That’s another way of saying “we got played.”

[...]

There’s one law for us and another law if you work on Wall Street.

That’s exactly right. Even with [Attorney General] Eric Holder. Eric Holder won’t touch the Wall Street executives; they’re his friends. He might charge them some money. [...] This money is just a tax write-off for these people. There’s no accountability. No answerability. No responsibility that these people have to take at all. The same is true with the Robert Rubin crowd. Obama comes in, he’s got all this populist rhetoric which is wonderful, progressive populist rhetoric which we needed badly. What does he do, goes straight to the Robert Rubin crowd and here comes Larry Summers, here comes Tim Geithner, we can go on and on and on, and he allows them to run things. You see it in the Suskind book, The Confidence Men. These guys are running things, and these are neoliberal, deregulating free marketeers—and poverty is not even an afterthought for them.

[...]

[Obama's] success has been predicated on finding that middle ground. “We’re not black. We’re not white. We’re not rich. We’re not poor. There’s no classes in America. We are all Americans. We’re the American family.” He invoked the American family last week. It’s a lie, brother. You’ve got to be able to tell the truth to the American people. We’re not a family. We’re a people. We’re a nation. And a nation always has divisions. You have to be able to speak to those divisions in such a way that [...] you’re able to somehow pull out the best of who we are, given the divisions.

[...]

When they rolled out the militarized police [in Ferguson, Missouri], it frightened people. Something is going on here. It’s not breaking down the way it usually does. People are reacting to this in a different way.

That’s true. It’s a great moment, but let me tell you this though. Because what happens is you got Eric Holder going in trying to create the calm. But you also got Al Sharpton. And when you say the name Al Sharpton, the word integrity does not come to mind. So you got low-quality black leadership. Al Sharpton is who? He’s a cheerleader for Obama. [...] He meets with the president regularly. On his show on MSNBC. [...] Sharpton said explicitly, I will never say a critical word about the president under any condition. That’s why he can’t stand what I’m saying. He can’t stand what I do because, for him, it’s an act of racial traitorship to be critical of the president. [...] He poses, he postures like he’s so radical. But he is a cheerleader for the Obama administration which means, he’s going to do what he can to filter that rage in neoliberal forms, rather than for truth and justice.

[...]

What comes next?

I think a post-Obama America is an America in post-traumatic depression. Because the levels of disillusionment are so deep. Thank God for the new wave of young and prophetic leadership, as with Rev. William Barber, Philip Agnew, and others. But look who’s around the presidential corner. [...] Hillary herself is coming around the corner. It’s much worse.

[...]

[We] are an empire in decline. A culture in decay with a political system that’s dysfunctional, youth who are yearning for something better but our system doesn’t provide them democratic venues, and so all we have are just voices in the wilderness and certain truth-tellers just trying to keep alive some memories of when we had some serious, serious movements and leaders.

[...]

[I]f things go the way they look like they’re going to go and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee and then wins a second term, the next time there’ll be a chance for a liberal, progressive president is 2024.

It’d be about over then, brother.

[...]

It’s not pessimistic, brother, because this is the blues. We are blues people. The blues aren’t pessimistic. We’re prisoners of hope but we tell the truth and the truth is dark. That’s different.

  Salon

Black Agenda Report Managing Editor Bruce Dixon Takes TV "Journalists" to Task

Bruce Dixon is at the 20 minute mark.  (You might also care to listen to the first part of the cast, with BAR editor Glen Ford interviewing Cornell West.)