My hero,Dr. Cornel West,on Bush,and current Obama administration

w8liftinglady

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Fri Nov-19-10 03:43 PM
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My hero,Dr. Cornel West,on Bush,and current Obama administration

Edited on Fri Nov-19-10 03:43 PM by w8liftinglady

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/19/cornel_west_on_charles_rangel_bush

above is the live link

Cornel West, Professor of religion and African American studies at Princeton University and the author of numerous books on race. His memoir is Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud.

small part of interview

CORNEL WEST: And I would say that even about the Obama administration. The Obama administration seems to have very little concern about poor people and their social misery. Look at the policies vis-à-vis Wall Street downplaying Main Street. Look at the policies of black farmers, a settlement already in place but they don’t want to executed because they don’t want to be associated with black folk too explicitly. Look at the dilapidated housing. We can go across the board. Look at the New Jim Crow system: the Prison Industrial Complex. We’re not talking just about individual presidents. We’re talking about a system that is tilted against poor people, against working people, disproportionately black and brown and red.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Cornel West, you’ve been especially critical in recent speeches about the first two years of the Obama administration. What do you think are the influences on him and the decisions he is making that have basically tried to relegate to the margins these issues of poverty, there prison industrial complex, and the state of Black America in general?

CORNEL WEST: Exactly! There is simply no mention of poor people’s plight. Look, for example, at juvenile justice. We just had a wonderful meeting, The Coalition of Juvenile Justice. The Juvenile Justice and Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Act of 1974 needs to be reauthorize. It has been two years now, no re-authorization either from Obama administration or public bureaucracy. Even our dear brother Eric Holder doesn’t seem to want to move on it. Meaning what? Low priority for those young people- disproportionately poor black and brown and red- who are getting locked into a system that leads toward the Prison Industrial Complex. Why is it such a low priority? It’s very clear that the people around President Obama, the economic team, pro-Wall Street, pro-oligarchy, pro-plutocracy in terms of preoccupation with investment bankers, very little concern about jobs for It is very little concern about jobs for every day people come a very little concern about homes for everyday people, very little concern about homes for everyday people, very little concern about transforming conditions that deal with some of the crime out here with all of this terrorism taking place between poor people and other poor people. Young folk being killed every day in Chicago, Los Angeles and so forth. It is a national emergency. It’s a matter of national security as much as Afghanistan but there is very little talk about it. So we’re talking not just about individuals, we’re talking about a particular arrangement of privilege, plutocracy and oligarchy that downplay working people and poor people and those of us who love poor people and working people will not put up with it.

I have always been a huge West follower.This was sobering...but true.Please listen and watch.