Upstream - Righteous Indignation, Love, and Running for President w/ Dr. Cornel West

Episode Date: July 2, 2024

Righteous indignation, truth, justice, and, maybe most important, love. These are some of the pillars that support the work that Dr. Cornel West, today’s guest, has been committed to throughout his entire life. Dr. West, as you may likely already know,  is a longtime political activist, philosopher, theologian, and public intellectual. He is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary where he teaches courses in Philosophy of Religion and African American Critical Thought. He’s the former Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. Dr. West has written 20 books and has edited 13, and is best known for his classics, Race Matters and Democracy Matters. Dr. West is running for President of the United States with Vice Presidential candidate Melina Abdullah with the Justice for All Party. In this conversation, we explore what inspired Dr. West to take up the electoral path and take a stand against the corporate parties of our decaying empire—the Democrats and the Republicans. We talk about electoralism as a tool in a much larger toolkit of the left, a toolkit which includes trade union organizing, direct action, and building class consciousness. We talk about the importance of love and art in our movements as an antidote to capitalism’s totalizing, soul crushing hegemony in these dying years of the U.S. empire, and we discuss why it’s necessary to infuse our struggles here in the United States with an understanding of imperialism and the impact that the United States has on a global scale. Further resources: Cornel West 2024 Related episodes: Upstream: A Marxist Perspective on Elections with August Nimtz Upstream: The Political Economy of Jazz with Gerald Horne Upstream's Series on Electoralism Intermission music by Noname Cover art by Berwyn Mure Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.  

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, We've grown so powerful and grown so wealthy, but we've never grown up. We're still Disneyland-like in our conceptions of the world, which means we're cheaply Manichaean. We got all the purity, they got all the impurity. We got to have communists or terrorists as the villain, and we are the pure ones. You see, it's melodramatic in the most childish way. There's nothing adult about it in terms of tragic or comic in a very profound way. And that makes things even more dangerous because when you have the major empire that has a capacity to blow up the whole world and a fossil fuel companies that are so tied to short-term profit that they would have the whole planet go under rather than

them give up on their profit and yet view themselves as innocent rather we might not want to move into addiction but a little cognac might help at times just to keep us going with our righteous indignation and our full armor in regard to being forces for good and freedom fighters. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond.

Righteous indignation, truth, justice, and maybe most important, love. These are some of the pillars that support the work that Dr. Cornel West, today's guest, has been committed to throughout his entire life. Dr. West, as you may likely already know, is a long-time political activist, philosopher, theologian, and public intellectual. He is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses in philosophy of religion and African-American critical thought. He is a former professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University. Dr. West has written 20 books

and has edited 13 and is best known for his classics Race Matters and Democracy Matters. Dr. West is also running for President of the United States with Vice Presidential candidate Melina Abdullah with the Justice for All party. In this conversation, we explore what inspired Dr. West to take up the electoral path and take a stand against the corporate parties of our decaying empire, the Democrats and the Republicans. We talk about electoralism as a tool in a much larger toolkit of the left, a toolkit

which also includes trade union organizing, direct action, and building class consciousness. We talk about the importance of love and art in our movements as an antidote to capitalism's totalizing, soul-crushing hegemony in these dying years of the U.S. empire. And finally, we discuss why it's necessary to infuse our struggles here in the U.S. with an understanding of imperialism and the impact the United States has on a global scale. And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener-funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more, at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. You can also make a tax deductible recurring donation or a one

time donation through our website upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Through this support you'll be helping keep upstream sustainable and allowing us to keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Robert in conversation with Dr. West, it is a genuine pleasure to have you on the show. Brother, it's a blessing to be in conversation with you and I appreciate the work that you have done, are doing, and will do in the future, my brother. Thank you so much. That means a lot. And same to you, of course.

I'm sure most of our listeners know who you are, but just to give you some space here in your own words, I'm wondering if you could maybe just start by introducing yourself and maybe talking a little bit about how you came to do the work that you're doing. Well, I'm a mama's child and daddy's kid. I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, stayed a few weeks, ended up in Sacramento, California. And early on was deeply influenced by the legacy of Martin King, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, the legacy of Fannie Lou Hamer, and decided a long time ago, it's real calling and vocation, not just a career and profession, to try to be a force for good, and a force for good in

terms of speaking truths, no matter how painful, and pursuing justice, no matter who is pursuing that justice against various forces of domination and oppression, exploitation, degradation. And I've been at it now for 55 years, brother. It's still got a smile on my face, a lot of scars, wounds, bruises, but it's still got a smile on my face, my brother. I love that, yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that. And so I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit

about the process which led you to wanna run for the president of the United States as an independent candidate. What were some of the motivating factors and what sort of led you to make that decision? Well, I was convinced that the American empire had reached such a low point of spiritual decay and political corruption and moral bankruptcy that the tradition that produced me, which is a tradition that goes back over 400 years of Black people who have been so thoroughly hated, but keep dishing out love warriors every generation, terrorized,

traumatized, but keep dishing out freedom fighters and wounded healers every generation. I wanted to make that tradition as visible as possible. I tried to do that in the classroom, in the streets, going to jail and community centers and mosques and synagogues and churches, trade union contexts, variety of different social movements. So I've been running for justice for those 55 years. And I felt that given where we were now as an empire,

that it would be very important to spill over I felt that given where we were now as an empire, that it would be very important to spill over into electoral politics and allow that tradition to be more visible and more manifest. I think it's the best tradition that the American empire has actually produced. I really do. I think that trying to tell the truth about America

in terms of its imperial expansion, vis-a-vis indigenous brothers and sisters, the genocidal attacks and so on. Of course, the enslavement of undignified Africans, the subordination of women, the exploitation of workers of all colors, the marginalization of precious gays and lesbians and trans folk. All of those are forms of domination and suffering needs to be manifest. The condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak. So if you're a truth teller, you've got to zero in on those forms of suffering. And of course this is an international affair.

We're talking about an empire and therefore we're connecting with oppressed peoples all around the world. The wretched of the earth that the great Fennon, Franz Fennon talked about. So that was my motivation. And I've been at it now for almost a year. And we're on the move, I tell you. You're on the move. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I'm just thinking, and I'm going to ask you about this in more depth in a little

bit but one of your policy platform proposals is getting rid of the US Empire, which I think is a wonderful thing to put on your platform and a very important one. So I'm going to ask you about that as we move through here. But I think I'm going to start with the most annoying question. I think it's a pretty good one to sort of get out of the way early, which is, what is your response to people who say that this is the most important election of our lifetimes and that voting independent is essentially throwing your vote away or that it's a vote for Trump and that, independent is essentially throwing your vote away or

that it's a vote for Trump and that you know whether we like Biden or not what we have to do is hold our noses and vote for him because quote democracy is on the ballot. What would you respond to that with? One I would argue that it reminds me of me in the 1850s and having to choose between a liberal slaveholder and a conservative slaveholder. And if you really are an abolitionist and want the abolition of slavery, do you just so thoroughly, opportunistically compromise and vote for a slaveholder? And then argue that, oh, lo and behold, at least we held off the conservative one, the right-wing one. Well, here we are in 2024 with a choice between a bona fide gangster who is a fascist who is pushing

the country toward the second civil war. And people are saying, well, the only person who can stop this is a genocide denier, a genocide enabler who's pushing the world toward World War III, who has a long history of siding with oligarchs and plutocrats, who is the architect of a crime against humanity, which is a mass incarceration regime with devastating impact on poor and working people disproportionately chocolate disproportionately black and brown and it seems to me that we've got to be able to look at the world through a set of lens that do not confine our views to the status quo. And so the Liberty Party was created and established, of course, in the 1850s as a response to having

to vote between two slaveholders. It kind of morphed into the Free Soil Party and ended up the Republican Party with an Abe Lincoln himself, still highly problematic, but at least open to abolitionist insights, open to the pressure from the abolitionist movement. And for me, there's no way that I could see myself kowtowing and deferring to a war criminal of such high proportion as a Biden. And of course, the fascism of Trump is real and I understand people who disagree with me.

You know, I don't hate them. I think they have a plausible argument. It's just in no way persuasive. It's plausible only if you look at the world through the lens of the corrupt corporate duopoly and think the only choice is between those two evils. But we've got to be able to have a broader view of this thing or America will go fascist one way or the other no matter what. And there's no way that Biden is an authentic anti-fascist.

There's fascist policies, there's fascist elements shot through his past and his present practices and policies, you see, especially internationally. My God, look at what's going on in Africa, look what he's done in Latin America, look what's going on in Gaza. We can go on and on and on. Look at his complicity with Saudi Arabian monarchs. And we can go on and on and on in that regard. See, part of this has to do with the fact that even though we're in the American Empire, we're in the belly of the beast, that the global south is very much a part of the human race. And what we do in the United States affects our precious brothers and sisters and siblings

in the global south. And the global south, like any other subordinated peoples, are hungry for truth and hungry for justice. That's why our party is about justice for all. It's about truth. It's for justice. That's why our party is about justice for all. It's about truth, it's about justice, and it's about love, because I come out of revolutionary Christian tradition, and so love still means a whole lot to me.

You got love supreme here with one and only John Coltrane. You know, love ain't no plaything. It's real. It's real as a heart attack. And so that in that sense, you know, it's not just about the USA. It's really as a heart attack. So that in that sense, it's not just about the USA. It's really about the destiny of the species on the planet and of course the ecological crisis is the starting point to remind us of just how crucial that is. This is a podcast that folks can't see, but behind you there are a bunch

of album covers and one of them is John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. So yeah, I really appreciate that. I appreciate you pointing that out, my dear brother Robbie. Absolutely. And just a quick reflection on your points about US imperialism. And yeah, one thing that I think, and again, I'm going to ask you more specifically about this in a little bit, but both parties, Trump and Biden, the Republicans and the Democrats, have always been and continue to be pro-imperialist,

right? Like they can sort of talk around the margins about the minutia of this specific policy or that specific policy, but the ultimate aim is always in support of US imperialism. And that's just, that's not something that's on the ballot ever. That's exactly right. Indeed. I mean, it is with your campaign, of course, and, you know, other independent or third party candidates, but that's not something that's really on the menu as a main course. And you know, it's just not up for debate. And this is a bit out of left field,

but I think it's also very much related, I think. I remember some years ago coming across a story that you had told, I genuinely actually don't even remember where I read this, but just to set it up for a second and so you were actually involved with the the first Obama campaign and you know, you were fairly supportive of him running but after he got into office you were very critical of him and You know for me at the time I was pretty excited about the potentials for Obama's administration But you know, I think as many of us did, we became pretty disillusioned and it became pretty clear pretty quickly

that he wasn't going to deliver on most of what he promised, actually not even close to delivering. And, of course, one of those aspects was his continued support for US imperialism. And it was that moment for me, at least thinking back on it, where I was like, we're really not going to vote out imperialism. Like, we just we can't vote that out, can we? Yeah, I mean, going back, you see that I mean, I had supported Nader and the whole host of folk who were on the left, even before Obama. When I first talked to Obama, I'd been very critical of him because he had said that America was a magical place, and I said he's going to have

a Christopher Columbus experience and discover nothing magical about America at all. The only reason why we have rights working and poor people have because we had to fight it out and bloody battles and that's not magic That's that's that's labor that serious struggle and my first question to him was What is your relation to the legacy of Martin King Fannie Lou Hamer? Because when Martin King talked about poverty he talked about militarism and he talked about racism talked about materialism That for me is always a starting point. The militarism is tied to imperialism. The racism is tied to vicious legacies of white supremacy vis-a-vis indigenous peoples, black people, brown peoples, and so on. The materialism

is tied to obsession with profit, short-term profit, being the end all and be all. And of course the poverty is a result of the organized greed of predatory capitalist processes. And when Obama said, well, you know, I'm not as radical as that, I said, well, I know that. I'm just wondering what your attitude is, because if I come in as a critical and I accent that critical supporter I will be accenting that and the 65 or 70 events that I did I would always say that I'm supporting this particular brother vis-a-vis the conservative Republican but I'm going to be his major critic the next morning when he wins because the legacy of Martin King always sets the standard for me.

And so I ended up becoming, you know, one of the major critics as it were with Tavis Polly and I did what? We had a poverty tour because they wouldn't talk about poverty at all. I called him a war criminal. From the moment he dropped that drone and killed the innocent person I had called Bush a war criminal he had 45 drones Obama ends up having 546 of these what we can verify killing innocent people well those are war crimes that's part and parcel of what it is to be an empire part and parcel of what it is to

pursue imperial policies and so yes I was always a critical supporter in that regard. And the same was true of my dear brother Bernie. And Bernie, twice I supported him as a critical supporter because we would fight over the Middle East and we would fight over BDS. I supported, he did not, he didn't want to be too explicit about the apartheid-like conditions of West Bank. He didn't want to be too explicit about the apartheid-like conditions of West Bank. He didn't want to be explicit about the relation of Israel to other authoritarian nations all around the world, the kind of thing that Anthony Loewenstein talks about in terms of the spreading of the technology under other occupations, given the vicious

occupation that Israel was imposing upon Palestinians. But he was strong on Wall Street greed. That was his strong issue, very important. I was glad to be a part of that. So he was always a critical supporter of those within the two-party system, even though I had been supporting Nader and Stein and others outside of the two-party system on a number of occasions. Absolutely. Yeah, I appreciate you sharing about that. And that actually leads into the anecdote that I remember reading about, which was centered around your sort of your strong

criticisms around Obama, that he actually confronted you, or you confronted each other in an event? Yeah, we almost had an altercation, yeah. No, that's the truth. He had all this secret service there. I didn't wanna go street or ghetto on the brother, slap him upside his head. Nothing but the Holy Ghost held me back on that one, but I would have gone to jail, you know, it's an automatic seven year term if you hit a

president. So I'm glad that the Holy Ghost held me back in that sense. But it was an ugly encounter, but he was just, but it was provoked by him. He just made a direct, I'd given a speech at Urban League and he gave a speech at the Urban League and then right after he made a direct confrontation with me and I mean I'm a Christian but I'm not a pacifist you know what I mean right right yeah and so yeah he was angry about how critical you were of him. And I just remember after reading that account, I was just thinking, OK, so Dr. West is the real deal.

And it really makes sense now hearing you talking about the importance of speaking the truth, no matter about what and no matter to whom. And so I also love that, too, about being a Christian and not a pacifist. I mean, I do want to talk to you a little bit about how the radical or revolutionary traditions of Christianity have influenced you and your activism. And, you know, if there's anything that you want to share about that, I'd love to hear about your experiences and you know it's a question that's very active for Della and myself right now particularly as we're working actually on this documentary kind of behind the scenes that's going to look at religion so I would love to hear your experiences and thoughts on that and also just before I

forget to I wanted to make a quick note that you had mentioned Anthony Lowenstein and I just want to share a quick note that you had mentioned Anthony Lowenstein, and I just want to share that the book that you did reference, it's the Palestine Laboratory, How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World. I've heard it's an amazing book, and I haven't gotten around to it yet, but it's on my sort of ever-expanding list of must-reads. Yeah, but he and brother Norman, I mean, you want to read brother Norman Ficklstein's book

on Gaza, which is probably the best thing that we have right now, helping us understand the present situation. And then brother Anthony as well, there's other wonderful intellectuals, of course, Zaid's Edward Zaid is a towering Palestinian intellectual on this, even though he passed 21 years ago.

But you're absolutely right though, man, that, you know, the question in the end becomes, you know, how do we fortify ourselves and try to honestly confront the multiple catastrophes confronting the species, nations, our lives, our psyches, our spirits and still be strong enough and courageous enough to keep on going. A lot of people just selling out, man. So many people are giving up, are just caving in and it becomes very much a spiritual issue. That's why the fact that you're wrestling with this issue of the relation of religion and the left. You might recall in the monthly review, July August issue in 1984, I was blessed to sit down with the great Paul Sweezy and the great Harry Magdahl and do a whole issue on religion and the left. It was the first

time that monthly review in its long rich secular Marxist history had come to terms with religion. Raising these same kind of issues really 40 years ago, but as you know, you know, these issues are have long, long histories, very long histories, and most institutional religion accommodates itself to empire, accommodates itself to patriarchy, accommodates itself to capitalism and white supremacy and so on. But there's always prophetic religious figures who are on the margins of their religious traditions who play a very important role the Dorothy days, you know in the Martin Kings the rabbi Heschel's the Malcolm X's and

Bell Hooks was Buddhist but very very revolutionary. I was thinking of Ann Betker, you know the great Dalit Figure who was a converted to Buddhism, but was a very revolutionary figure who was converted to Buddhism but was a very revolutionary Hindu before he converted to become a revolutionary Buddhist. You've got these religious figures who speak to our hearts and souls as well as to issues of structural and institutional domination. And we need all we can get. I mean secular figures play an important role. Secular figures can be deeply spiritual as well. Certainly they can be moral, my God. The moral passion behind Karl Marx is just undeniable. He's in deep solidarity with working

in poor people and so on. So we need all that we can get. I'd love to ask you about sort of, like you mentioned earlier, your policy proposals and your whole sort of campaign and sounds like much of your ideology is rooted in the sort of three pillars of truth, justice and love. That's right. And it's so hard to not get overwhelmed with hate when we're looking at the world around us,

particularly when we're thinking about the Zionist and the Israeli assault and genocide on Gaza and the Palestinian people. It's so hard not to let hate just sort of overwhelm you. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about your experience with that balance and why centering love is something that is so important to you.

Yeah, I think, you know, hatred is such a powerful passion that it usually devours one's own soul because it's something that can easily take over. And hate usually is a parasite on the very thing that you hate. So that the very thing that you hate becomes the host, and the hatred becomes a parasite, and therefore the fundamental point of reference is the thing you hate, rather than the love which ought to be the motivation

for that which is positive and constructive. Now, righteous indignation is something else. I fundamentally believe in righteous indignation because righteous indignation allows for the compassion, empathy, and love to be the point of reference that generates unbelievable energy, vitality, and vibrancy against that which is standing in the way of fulfilling what you love or realizing what you love, be it a person or a cause or whatever you see. And so when you think of Jesus going into the temple and running out the money changes,

you know, this is the imperial temple, this is the biggest edifice west of Rome, 350 Roman troops protecting the temple. And he's got ragtag disciples upon which he has no reliability at all. They're not going to come through. Well, he goes through the temple anyway, but he's not motivated by hatred. He's motivated by a righteous indignation of the ways in which poor people are being

completely exploited by the money changers, by the oligarchs and plutocrats of that day, of the 1% of that day, who are hogging and hemorrhaging the wealth and not allowing poor people to have access to resources such that they can live lives of dignity. And of course, you know, that's the reason why Jesus is put on the cross and killed as a political criminal now He's not a Marxist. He's not a socialist. He's not a secular revolutionary He is a love warrior He's a love warrior you see so it's really all about the deep love he has but his point of reference Are the people? who are suffering. So that for example you can end up being a hater of capitalism and not a lover of working

people and you can have a Marxist analysis as a hater of capitalism but you don't really have a deep compassion for working people. You've got to have both. You've got to have your analysis of the organized greed and the unbelievable levels of exploitation and contempt that ruling class people often have for working people and poor people. But if you don't have the deep love and compassion for poor and working people, then something is still missing. And so in that sense, I think, and again, you don't have to have all of this in order to be religious. You know, some of the greatest figures that we know have

been secular figures, the Thomas Paines and the Diderot and so on. The Angela Davis, and Angela, of course, was shaped by a black church in Birmingham, but she's been a secular figure and a revolutionary in her own distinctive way for over 65 years. So that there's an overlap between the so-called secular and the so-called religious in terms of the righteous indignation and a historical analysis, a concrete critiques of political economies and critiques of imperialism as it's rooted in capitalist processes and so on. Just to follow up on that too, I'm curious, so as somebody such as yourself who's so immersed in the daily grind of the politics and the economic issues that we're facing and all of it, would you say

that your practice, which allows you to sort of carry this flame of love with you that helps keep this work sustaining for you, is religion? I guess I'm just sort of asking more broadly, like how do you maintain your capacity for love and carrying that with you through the muck that you're going through all the time, I'm sure, especially running for president of the United States? I mean, one is that you do have to have something that keeps you distant from the option of nihilism,

giving up on the capacity of human beings to be forces for good in any substantive way. So that nihilism and fatalism and cynicism are all toxic in terms of sustaining a righteous indignation that can be manifest through organizing and mobilizing and changing the world. Now in my particular case, all of us have in our own particular cases, in my particular case, all of us have our own particular cases. In my particular case, there's no doubt that it has so much to do with my family, Irene and Cliff, Mom and Dad, Cliff, Cynthia and Cheryl, my brothers and sisters.

It has so much to do with Shiloh Baptist Church, which was the legacy of Martin King was so strong. It's got a lot to do with the Black Panther Party that was right down the street from the church that I worked very closely with. Now they were mainly secular so I didn't join the party but I worked in the breakfast program, I worked in the prison program and the legacy of the Black Panther Party has always meant so much to me because they provided a way of looking at the world through the lens of poor and working people. That I may not already agree with every issue, but I just love the lens that they had and

the courage that they had in following through and being willing to die and live for something bigger than themselves. But you know some of the best examples that I know, it could be Stanley Aronowitz, it could be Noam Chomsky, it could be Edward Zaid. I mean, these are profoundly secular folk. Jeff Stout, my dear brother, I've taught for many years at Princeton, secular to the core, but still full of a righteous indignation and a moral compass. And so I've been, you know, inspired by a number of different folk out of a number of different traditions. It's just for me, it's always been rooted in what it means to follow a Palestinian Jew named Jesus that's tied to certain kinds of religious sensibilities.

You're listening to an upstream conversation with Dr. Cornell West. We'll be right back. How you get close to the love How you eliminate all your sadness when you're opening up How you make excuses for billionaires you broke on a bus I need niggas around me rolling up and smoking me up Because because my rainforest cries Everybody dies a little And I just wanna dance tonight And I just wanna dance tonight Ah yeah yeah, he my lil' baby Medusa, tipping the juice up I go back and forth in a Uber, travel for two months

On the emptyest hallelujah, open my chest up It's a rabbit inside my hat, angel all dressed up Lookin' a bless up at the milk and the honey gaze I make money for money's sake, I been right in the honey days Took the wretched out the earth and called it baby for nine I know my shoulder blades are shattered wings that carry me home I I said baby come on. You know this flesh is only temporary But a list bone, why don't you empty out your love for me then chisel the stone? These are ten black commandments a property long cuz every blade it grabs the earth

We don't actually own I am the I am says Sam and my the universe bleeds infinity. You got one life The universe bleeds infinity, you got one life How you get close to love? How you eliminate all your sadness when you opening up? How you make excuses for billionaires you broke on a bus? Sunny niggas around me rolling up and smoking me up Because, because when rain pours past Everybody dies in love And I just wanna dance tonight

I just wanna dance tonight I just wanna dance tonight If you think you love me then bury me when the sun up Faded with the homie, he purlin' another blunt up Talkin' to Muhammad like niggas don't really trust us Dying on stolen land for a dollar like that ain't fucked up It's fucked they money, I'ma say it every song Until the revolution come and all the feds start runnin'

Fuck a good will huntin, this is a brand new murder Revolutionary suicide, then clothes occur, and you ain't seen death I can hear the blood on the moon, these niggas put a flag upon it, all they do is consume Only animal to ravage everything in its path, they turned a natural resource into a bundle of cash Made the world anti-black, then divided the class Now the rich niggas is rich niggas with showbread Really bitch niggas with big figures Some cokeheads, these bitches is cokeheads

Man, fuck a billionaire, nigga How you get close to love How you eliminate all your sadness when you open it up How you make excuses for billionaires you broke on a bus Sunny niggas around me rolling up and smoking me up Because, because we're in boys' grass Everybody dies in love And I just wanna dance tonight That was Rainforest by No Name.

Now back to our conversation with Dr. Cornel West. So we're, you know, an economics podcast. I'll start with some of your economic justice proposals. I'm wondering if maybe you can just talk a little bit about what you feel are the most pressing economic challenges that we face here in the United States, you know, under our particular brand of US capitalism and some of the economic policies that you would like to implement to address those issues. And I know this is an incredibly broad question, so please feel free to attack it from any

angle that you feel fit. Well, I mean, one, I just appreciate the fact that you all zero in on economic issues because because there's no doubt that the class war that was declared on poor and working people going back to the years of Reagan, I remember Robert LaCottman's great book, Greed Is Not Enough. He and I were working in the DSA at the time. He was at Barnard. I was at Union Seminary and we'd spend time together. And that's still a classic book. It's the best thing on Reaganomics ever written. Now we know it goes far, far back all the way to the founding of the country, but if

we actually just look at the last 40 years, the neoliberalism, which was a class war against poor and working people, where it was very clear that a massive shift from wealth, actual and potential from poor and working people to the very, very well to do. And the deregulation of markets, the fetishizing, the idolizing of markets, all about not just profit but short-term profit because there's conceptions of capitalism Joseph Sean Patery and others have talked about this in which you can have long-term profits short-term profits short-term profits became the fundamental measure and it pushed out any weight of non-market values like justice or even

fidelity so you got a lot of internal struggles among the greedy themselves. Trust was pushed out. Common good and public interest was trashed in the name of whatever was private. And of course, privatizing usually goes hand in hand with militarizing because when you have the kind of rotest wealth inequality, you're gonna have to have more police and more security in order to deal with the overwhelming despair and despondency of the working people and poor people

who are constituted as either a threat or barbarians or savages or inborn criminals who are coming after your wealth and so forth. And so the democratic possibilities more and more were trumped. And of course we say that even before Trump becomes the We say that even before Trump becomes the bona fide neo-fascist Piper that he is. But once you begin to foreclose any democratic possibilities, we just say you shut down the voices being heard of poor and working people so that a class war takes the form of an attack on trade unions because it's a collective bargaining table. You want to make sure they are as weak, feeble as they can be.

So you want to infiltrate the national labor boards and so forth. You want to generate policy to make it more difficult for workers to join unions. You want to make sure, in fact, that black workers and white workers and brown workers are at each other's throats, rather than coming together

and confronting the most powerful. You want to make sure you scapegoat the most vulnerable and make sure those who are already vulnerable are scapegoating those who are more vulnerable than them. Be it immigrants from Mexico or be it Africans just coming in from Ethiopia or whatever and the same is true in terms of patriarchy I mean I won't go on and on but what happened was that for for 40 some years you ended up with this class war against poor and working people as the norm and both parties accepted it. And so what happens? Well, you have this level of inequality and this level of despair, then you need more police so you

end up with crime bills and three strikes you're out and super predators and of course that's the language of Biden, that's the language of Clinton as well as the language of the, that's the language of Clinton as well as the language of the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute and the Republican Party for the most part. And so you end up with very much the basic signs of an empire and overwhelming the despair, mind you, given in his great history of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. You got military overreach, so you're an imperial power obsessed with total dominance spectrum. 800 military units around the world, 130 special operations over 100 countries, thinking you've

got to dominate every move on the globe. Sixty-two cents for for every dollar discretionary budget is going to the military the war manufacturers are breakdancing to the bank because they're making high high profits with hardly any accountability levels of waste levels of efficiency hardly ever checked going to war with trillions of dollars spent Iraq Afghanistan and so forth and yet when it comes to satisfying the basic needs of ordinary people austerity we don't have a penny health care quality education available

quality housing so you end up with the richest nation in the history of the world with skid rows i was just there with master pastor cute just a few months ago you know thousands and thousands of precious folk were unhoused every major city so many precious folk unhoused, then the working class paying 40-50% of their hard earned wages on housing as the real estate industry undergoes its obsession with short-term profit tied to private equity companies, tied to hedge fund companies who are after more profit pushing poor and working people out. And of course you end up with just levels of corruption of elites, military overreach, impotence, powerlessness, hopelessness, increasing among poor and working people, drug addictions,

various other kinds of addictions, wondering whether any kind of organizing can make a difference. And then at the same time, in our time, of course, you have the ecological catastrophe taking place day in and day out. I mean, that's a hell of a time to be alive, especially for a young brother like you. See, I've been around a long time So, you know, I've already fortified myself. I'm not surprised by any evil. I'm not paralyzed by any despair That's Edgar and Shakespeare's King Lear, you know

Rightness is all and you know all the disguises that Edgar himself undergoes in that powerful play and he himself ends up more fortified than any other that's a very difficult Process of maturation to to acquire because lear couldn't pull it off and so could Most of the other characters could not Why because he himself knew? that he had to be well equipped in order to deal with the catastrophes coming his way and he is blessed to have some resources spiritual, moral as well as other resources to sustain it. So many of

the precious young folk these days, how did the gang asses spiritual, moral, intellectual resources? What kind of armor do they really have? How can they not fall into the pitfalls of nihilism, cynicism, fatalism? How could they not fall into forms of addiction because the pain is just so overwhelming? I mean, like you said, you pointed out brother Coltrane. Coltrane one of the greatest artistic geniuses spiritual giants but he had ten years of what? heroin addiction because he felt so intensely he had a sensitivity of

Adolphe Stravsky and he ended up having to respond to it during a certain period of his life by trying to get a little distance by means of drug addiction. You see, it's understandable. It's understandable. It's not justifiable, but it's thoroughly understandable. I've been blessed teaching prison for 51 years, and some of the best brothers I know have been in those prisons. They've been through all kinds of different addictions and some of them have done some things they shouldn't have done. Some of them are innocent and shouldn't have gone in but those individual acts do not exhaust their humanity and their bounce back is very, very strong. Umir Abu Jamal, good God, he's one of the great public intellectuals of our time. He's been incarcerated. H. Ralph Brown and Leonard Peltier, we can go on and on, these political prisoners. Thank God Brother Julian Assange is out. I was glad that I'd

been pulling and working and struggling and praying for him. Sister Stella, his beloved wife, two kids. I was blessed to meet him and talk with him in the Ecuadorian embassy in London a number of years ago and worked very closely with his father and his brother Gabriel when they came on their tour here. But I'm just thinking of those who still hold on to some possibility of being forces for good and sources of hope in a world that seems to be so overwhelmingly nightmarish. Yeah, I mean, you're really speaking to my soul here. I think that for generations that are older than my generation, I'm an elder millennial. I feel like you guys had a taste of life before.

And not that capitalism wasn't totalizing back then in many ways too, but just the sheer totalizing nature of capitalism right now, it's completely understandable that younger generations just, they don't see a way out. And the way that capitalism, and I'm not talking about it just in like a political economy sense, but the way that it infiltrates our souls and the way that outlooks on the world, it's so totalizing that I can understand as a young person,

like you just want out. And if that's addiction, if that's through substances, like it is understandable. Like you said earlier, it's not the right option because it's only gonna make things worse. But I mean, I completely get that. And I'm also sort of, I'm thinking of a quote from somebody who you know well, Chris Hedges.

Oh brother Chris, I see you there brother. Chris has been on the show as well. I'm very, very inspired. In fact, Chris Hedges is, he doesn't know this, but very responsible for my radicalization process. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. I recall him saying in a speech and he also wrote in one of his books, and I believe it

might be a paraphrase of Camus, I don't fight fascists because I think I'm going to win. I fight fascists because they're fascists. And it's this form of like radical optimism that I really carry with me because I don't like to talk about this aspect of it, but I I don't know that I have Faith that we as a society are going to overcome the challenges that we're facing It's like you can talk about, you know, political economy challenges You can talk about addiction all that and then all of a sudden you think about climate change They're looming above everything else and you're just's like, I don't know if it's possible yet is my action tethered to the outcome? Like, am I doing this because I think we're

going to be successful necessarily? Or am I doing this because this is just the right thing to do and I couldn't live my life otherwise. And I think about that like every day when I wake up basically. And I don't know if that's an experience that you've had or if you have any thoughts about anything that I just heard of. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

I mean, the great Samuel Beckett, who was a vanilla blues man and a literary giant, says, try again, fail again, fail better. Try again, fail again, fail better. It's echoes of the great Chekhov, who you probably know as my favorite literary artist of all of modern Europe, where for him, it's a matter of choosing integrity, honesty, decency, and courage against whatever odds in spite of whatever evidence there is because that's the kind of human being you choose to be in your short move from your mama's womb to tomb. Now that's an issue of both morality, spirituality, and political tenacity. Now you can project it and say, well, of course, we may not achieve

certain things in our lifetime, but at least we can keep alive a tradition and pass it on to the next generation, and they might, or the subsequent generation may be able to pull it off. That's true, very much so. But in the end I think it really comes down to a certain conception of integrity, don't we? What kind of human being you choose to be. It's like dealing with the sickness of your precious grandmama. And the doctor tells you, well, there's no guarantee that she's gonna make it. She's been through hell and high water, but you go to her house every day anyway.

You do all you can to support and love her anyway. Why? Because that's the kind of person you choose to be. Because she means so much to you, and she's poured a lot into you, and you want to be able to be because she means so much to you and she's poured a lot into you and you want to be able to be as supportive and be as strong for her as you can. Now she may end up living to be 109 and you die before she does. Okay, okay, that's the way, you know, a fire. But you went down with your integrity or she may end up dying that next week

Right and you did all you could and you had the funeral with tears flowing and say grandma I love you and this love was real as a heart attack And every day it was new as foam and every week it was as solid as a rock And I did all that I could but so it is for our struggles so it is like that but the poor and working people from Gaza to Philadelphia from the struggles in Tehran against the oppressive of Mullahs or it could be what's going on in Saudi Arabia with the monarchs who are unaccountable, or it could be patriarchs and xenophobes in Uganda who are not treating our gay brothers and lesbian sisters right.

But in the end, it's got to be anti-imperialist. It's got to be deeply, deeply critical of predatory capitalism. It's got to be deeply, deeply oppositional to vicious legacies of white supremacy and male supremacy, homophobia, transphobia. And we've got to also be in touch with the humanity of people, be they Arabs, Jews, Muslims, be they Poles, be they Guatemalans. I believe in a universalism that's rooted in one's own particular traditions. Yeah. Thank you so much.

What a beautiful response. I really appreciate everything that you just said. Bringing it back to US imperialism, which it's something that we've been focusing on on this show for the last few months, really taking a deep dive and looking at how imperialism – yes, I mean, there is the militarism of US imperialism, which is kind of hard to ignore, but we've also really been looking at the role that the Global South plays in US imperialism, which is kind of hard to ignore. But we've also really been looking at the role that the global south plays in US imperialism and the role that it plays in this whole world capitalist system. You know, Lenin talks about monopoly capitalism and imperialism being the highest stage of capitalism.

And I'm wondering, because I mean, I mentioned at the top, I absolutely love that literally dismantling the US empire is like, I think the top line of one of your policy proposal sections. And so I'm wondering if you can just talk a little bit about your conception of imperialism, how it manifests right now. I mean, it's impossible not to think immediately, obviously, of the ongoing US, and I call it specifically a joint US-Israel ethnic cleansing campaign against the Palestinian people, because I don't think, like, there are many people who believe that somehow the US

is beholden to Israel, or that the US is begrudgingly being pulled into this conflict, or that the US is begrudgingly being pulled into this conflict or that, you know, people even talk about maybe Mossad has some like blackmail material on Biden or something like that. Whereas I think that the reality is that this is part of US empire. As our last Patreon guest Max Ayl said, dead children are the fuel of this machine. And I'm wondering if you might be able to talk a little bit to that, how you conceive of US empire. Why is this at the top of your platform?

And if you could maybe unpack US imperialism, I know that's a huge question, and why you believe that it must be dismantled. Yeah, I mean, when you think of the different insightful thinkers, it could be William Appleton Williams, Empire as a Way of Life in America. It could be the great W.B. Du Bois, who became one of the great anti-imperial thinkers of the 20th century.

You might remember his essay, The Winds of Time, June 27th in the Chicago Defender 1945, right when he left the United Nations, he said the United Nations will be a platform for US hegemony, will lead toward a World War III with the American Empire trying to suppress Russia and have a stranglehold on China. Now Du Bois wasn't right on every issue in his life, but my God, when you have that kind of anti-imperial analysis and you begin to see what? What you begin to see on the economic front, it has to do, of course, with profits, with big corporations and monopolies. On the ideological front, it has to do with a certain kind of nationalism, which is geopolitical,

which allows your particular empire to gain access to control over resources, as well as persons and collaborators tied to both land but also profits. But then there's an ideological dimension that usually has something to do with racism and xenophobia. I mean, even given the vicious kinds of genocide that we see, I'm thoroughly convinced that even somebody like a Biden would have a different response if those precious Palestinian children were European children or if they were Israeli children that wouldn't make him an anti-imperialist but he would have an identification with those children that he does not have with Palestinians. It's just very clear he doesn't give a damn about Palestinians.

His major righteous indignation had to do when the international workers were attacked because he's got a certain kind of identification with them you see that his moral development is so curtail and truncated that even as an imperialist he would feel you know those those European babies shouldn't be killed 15,007 months we got to do something a little bit quicker. But being Palestinian babies or African babies or Muslim babies or Arab babies or indigenous babies, no. So that you got all three together. You've got that ideological thing, you've got the geopolitical dimension and of course you've got the economic one that is that's basic and that goes back to J.H. Hobson who himself of course was a liberal anti-imperialist or Hobhouse himself who

was a liberal anti-imperialist that Lenin pulled from and incorporated within the much more revolutionary Marxist analysis and Rosa Luxemburg and a whole host of others would take it even to higher heights. I think when you think of somebody like Harry Magdolf's book, The Age of Imperialism, who was my very, very dear brother, working with Paul Sweezy, that they're able to accent that economic dimension in terms of capitalism being manifest across national boundaries and tied to a certain kind of control over markets as well as land and peoples. But there are, American empire is distinctive among most empires. It's been roughly 70 empires, most historians say, since we emerged from the caves in Africa

as a species. And America is unique, America's number 68 but America is unique in some ways because it views itself as innocent. Now how can you be an empire which means you an authorizer of such massive devastation and you still absolve yourself of responsibility and accountability because you're so innocent. You see the Russian Empire, Ottoman Empire, Roman Empire, British Empire never viewed themselves as innocent now. They committed some vicious crimes and they

tell you that. But see the USA you know, we've grown so powerful and grown so wealthy but we've never grown up. You know, Matheson, F.O. Matheson used to say America would be unique among social experiments to move from perceived innocence to corruption without a mediating stage of maturity. That we've never grown up we're still Disneyland like in our conceptions of the world which means we're cheaply Manichaean we got all the purity they got all the impurity we got to have communists or

terrorists as the villain and we are the pure ones you see this it's melodramatic in the most childish way there's nothing adult about it in terms of tragic or comic in a very profound way and that makes things even more dangerous because when you have the major empire that has a capacity to blow up the whole world and a fossil fuel companies that are so tied to short-term profit that they would have the whole planet go under rather than Him give up on their profit and yet view themselves as innocent Rather We might not want to move into addiction, but a little cognac might help at times

Just to keep us going with our righteous indignation and our full armor in regard to being forces for good and freedom fighters. Yeah, I'm telling you. Absolutely. Cheers to that. So I think we could talk about Empire for pretty much like the entire show, but I want to be respectful of your time and I do really want to ask you a bit more about your thoughts on electoralism more broadly. A few months ago, we had Professor August Nims on the show to talk about electoralism from the perspective of Marks and Lenin during the lead up to the Bolshevik revolution. And he does a really, I think, a very beautiful job in

his book. It's called The Ballot, The Streets, or Both, demonstrating how the Bolsheviks use the electoral space as a tool to organize, as a tool to propagandize, as a tool to agitate. And we talked about this briefly at the top, but I'm wondering to get into a bit more depth here, why the electoral path? Like what are some of the benefits and advantages that you saw there on that route? And this question, I guess, it is somewhat meant for some of those comrades on the left who think that we need to just completely reject the entire electoral process. So I'm wondering how you would respond to that and yeah, why the electoral path?

Yeah, I think that you know backs are against the wall, which means we're looking for all forms of weaponry. I think Emma Goldman was right when she said that that the ruling class felt that one could create a revolution by means of voting. They would make voting illegal. revolution by means of voting, they would make voting illegal. That she's absolutely right about that. There's no way you can vote your way into the kind of fundamental social change and revolution I'm talking about. So that voting is just one particular form of weaponry among poor and working people, both in America and around the world.

You're going to have to have forms of organizing. You're going to have to have forms of creating infrastructures and structures over time. You're going to have to have forms of hitting the street and going to jail and constituting fundamental threats to the status quo. So that in that sense, I can understand left-wing comrades who say, look, you're wasting your time in electoral politics. You can never vote your way into the revolution. Well, they're right about that. And if they have a priority that says, look, we're going to focus on working class organization, trade union, or we're going to work,

focus on other kinds of issues that have to do with trying to generate revolutionary awakening, and I can understand that. But I just think that we have to have a ecumenical view about this to be open to all different forms of weaponry because we're already so weak and feeble anyway And we need all the different forms of Weaponry we can't spiritual moral political organizational and what-have-you In that regard for me's just a matter of being honest and candid enough to know that you can't

act as if one or two particular forms of weaponry are gonna be the sole or exclusive ones. We need musicians, we need poets. I mean, you were talking about what it was like to grow up in your childhood as opposed to mine. We had Nina Simone, we had Gil Scott-Harrin, we had Jimi Hendrix, we had James Brown, we had Aretha Franklin, we had Tower and The Last Poets, Crosby, Steele, Nash. We had Teddy Wilson, man, the communist on the piano in jazz.

The Marxists who played such beautiful piano. We ain't even got to Yusef Latif. We haven't even got to Max Roach's Freedom Songs and Abbey Lincoln, that long Coltrane. We had persons who were fusing the arts with the struggle for freedom in a courageous way. Now, what happens when that major popular cultural dimension gets flattened out by the market again? Or it gets dumbed down by short-term profit in the recording industry with the oligarchs and the plutocrats trying to ensure that there's no

revolutionary sound and Sentiments in most of the towering cultural and musical figures Curtis Mayfield we can go on and on that I have Now I know you had a number of them too and there's still some out there Don't get me wrong Jay Cole and them are for real in their own ways, but it's a whole different tip and vibe in popular culture now. Now that's not by accident, that's a form of cultural warfare, what Gramsci would call war position before the war of movement. So that the war position is to make sure, I know when I, when my album for example, that I put out, we would go to all the different labels and they would say, we don't want this political crap.

Well, we had Talib Kweli, we had Jill Scott, we had K.R.S. One, we had, I mean, all of these folks, all political. Never forget, you know, the third album that we put out. And we would go to, these are major recording labels, cause we had already put out two albums that did fairly well. And they'd say, we don't want political crap.

You're misleading people. No, you're the one misleading people. You want the G-string music. You want titillation and stimulation. You don't want no serious stories, narrative analysis, and drama of poor and working people organized to come forward. I mean, I thank God for Brother Macklemore. You know Macklemore threw out his jam. Having to do with Gaza took courage to do that. It should have been a zillion Macklemore's you know. In the

hip-hop world. Where are the voices in something like this right? In the 60s there would have been a whole wave of voices like that. Here comes Sly Stone and we can go on and on and on in this regard. There will be, I'm sure, an awakening. There will be a wave of these voices, you know, in the coming years because these things go back and forth you could never predict them but I just think that in the end you know we just have to make sure that we don't lose hope but a mature hope I mean a false hope is it's just cheap optimism cheap optimism never sustains anybody but to be a prisoner of a mature hope.

See, that's something else, though, brother. That's what the blues people specialize in. You see, sing about strange fruit, sing about American terrorism, sing about that black body swaying in the southern breeze that Billie Holiday sang about in the Jewish Brother, Barry Poe writing those beautiful lyrics. And by the time that song is over, you got tears, but you also got fortification of soul and mind and heart to fight against American terrorism and lynching. So that the song got a story in it man. It's got movement, it's got conflict that needs to be resolved, it's got resources that can sustain

you in your struggle. See that's what is required man when it comes to an overall conception of man when it comes to an overall conception of art politics spirit intellect solidarity organization and be true to a blues people with a little style and smile man you know you got what the Charlie Chaplin that wrote, Smile, that Nat King Cole sang about so beautifully. Smile, that's a profound song, man. Charlie, one of the greatest artists of the ball bearing 20th century. He said, if I got to write one song, this is what it's gonna be.

How I'm gonna keep this smile and preserve my style, my particular imprint on the world, my signature in space and time. See, that's the blues people right there, and that's where I come from, brother. I'm a blues man all the way down. Yeah, I really love that. And I think that you're so beautifully articulating

something that I think about a lot, but maybe not enough that these movements have such a hard time sustaining themselves so often, because there's like, there's not this cultural fabric that kind of weaves everything together with something more holistic, you know, I mean, I feel like that's such a profound element that we're really deficient of under capitalism as it's, you know, grown since the times you were talking about into this now like completely totalizing social order. And I think this goes back to what we were talking about a little bit earlier, how we can talk all day and I often, about the political and economic woes of this system, but just the way that it crushes our souls and limits our imaginations and deprives us of these essential nutrients that would sustain and strengthen and build our activism and organizing work, it's just like another front of assault, right? And I just wanna really appreciate your deep knowledge of and appreciation of music.

The second we got onto the recording app, I think we both noticed your background is a patchwork of all these wonderful jazz albums. We mentioned John Coltrane, and I've got my guitars hanging up on the wall behind me. And yeah, I just really appreciate your bringing the importance of art and music into the conversation, and especially weaving it

into the response to the electoralism question. Because you're right, I wouldn't have made that connection, but we need every tool we can get, and as you say, every weapon, right? And there are a lot of similarities, too, I think, between the musician and the political candidate because you've got the stage and you've got the rostrum that you're you're sort of preaching from and you're spreading a message through a platform like that. And

unfortunately, the only time that most Americans seem to pay attention to politics is during electoral cycles, specifically presidential ones. And so utilizing that wave of momentum, I think, to grab people's attention, to speak to people who may not otherwise be listening. That's very true. And that's a strong word to our comrades who would reject electoral politics, even

given their deep insights. I mean, Malcolm, when he raised the question of the ballot or the bullet, that he had the same struggle because he had basically rejected the ballot for so long and began to think that, of course, I'm still basically right, The ballot's not going to be able to really deliver the kind of freedom for black people that I want. Because no political party in America has been fundamentally committed to combatting the vicious legacy of white supremacy. They either support that legacy in various ways, or when they speak to it, it's electoral

political concern, which is window dressing just for them to stay in office you see and that's true in terms of any political party fundamentally committed to liberating the working class it's just that there's no such party that has any visibility that's committed to that or finally committed to poor people there's no such party. Now there's a particular individual who speaks to that, which is what I try to do with Malina Abdullah, my dear sister who's my running mate. I'm very blessed to be running with her. And our justice for all party now is an attempt to do that, absolutely. But even parties on the left, you know, it's

hard to find a party on the left that's fundamentally committed to zeroing in on the vicious legacy of white supremacy. You know what I mean? I mean the Green Party is a beautiful group of people and they've done some wonderful things but white supremacy has never been at the center of their concerns. They got anti-racist in the party who are against racism and against white supremacy, but the legacy of white supremacy has never been at the center of it. It's much more concerned with ecological issues and some trade union issues, but especially ecological ones and imperial ones, so that we have to be very honest and candid about

these things. Now, there's a lot of pre-party formations that are concerned about the issues that I'm talking about, but I'm talking about political parties. So again, I can understand the comrades who would say that you're wasting your time in electoral politics, you're wasting your energy, you need to be trying to organize on the ground. Grassroot organization is the only thing

that's going to do it. And you say, well, you gotta deal with the ground, grassroot organization is the only thing that's going to do it. And you say, well, you got to deal with the media, you got to deal with the cultural apparatus, you got to deal with how people's consciousness is shaped, you got to deal with the educational system and how it generates so many forms of miseducation. And of course, you got to deal with civic institutions. The churches and the mosque and the synagogues and the temples and civic infrastructures that were human beings spent a lot of their time and their consciousness is shaped, no doubt.

Absolutely, absolutely. So I know you've got a ton on your plate and your schedule is quite hectic right now, I'm sure. So I'm going to just ask one more question and then we can end there. How can people find out more about the campaign and if they want to dig into your platform and yeah, just how they can support you and how they might be able to get involved. Well, let me just say Cornell West 2024.com. Just to find out what platform is, any kind of support that people can give that has been

a challenge because as you can imagine when it comes to fundraising, you know, Democratic Party, Republican Party raise $140 million and $120 million every month. That's the, that 1% ruling class has a lot of resources. When it comes to what we do, we don't accept a penny from any corporation, we don't accept a penny from any PAC, and therefore we're dependent on poor people and working people and other people who have some kind of concern about our issues. And we've been on the move. You know, we're now on nine states.

I mean, we're the only ones who's really on the ascent. So many of the, even the third parties themselves, you know, they can start with 17 and end up now with 16. We started with zero, we ended up with nine. We're going to end up with a good 40 or so by October. We're trying to finish it up and surprise some people by the election, by November. But Alaska was the first state, they were very kind, the Aurora Party, and then the United Citizens Party, which was the Black Party in South Carolina, and then the Progressive Party, thank God for them in Oregon, and same is true, the Green Mountain Party, which is brother Bernie's party that he founded in Vermont

has just come our way. The United Citizens Party was partly founded by Clyburn when he was up against Jim Crow Democratic Party realities in South Carolina now they still around and come our way and he's part of the establishment. He's become so well adjusted to injustice like most politicians of any color with that system of legalized bribery and normalized corruption that constitutes so much of American politics. But the awakening is real. Colorado, I can go on and on. Utah, we got we're gonna have a wave of states. We're on the move in Delaware and other places. So that we really are turning the corner. We just need more serious fundraising and we need more visibility. Thank God that you're kind enough

to have this interview. You've been listening to an Upstream conversation with Dr. Cornell West. Dr. West is a long-time political activist, philosopher, theologian, and public intellectual. He is the Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses on philosophy of religion and African-American critical thought. He is also the former professor of the practice of public philosophy at Harvard University and professor emeritus at Princeton University. Dr. West has written 20 books and edited 13 and is best known for his classics Race Matters and Democracy Matters. Dr. West is also running for President of the United States,

with Vice Presidential candidate Molina Abdullah with the Justice for All party. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to No Name for the intermission music and to Berwyn Muir for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by Robert. Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways that you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more, at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. You can also make a tax deductible, recurring, or one-time

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