September 19, 2011
http://www.singlepayeraction.org/blog/?p=3032
Progressive leaders led by Ralph Nader and Cornel West unveiled a proposal today to challenge President Obama in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries in 2012.
The proposal, which has been endorsed by over 45 distinguished leaders, seeks to have a slate of six candidates run against President Obama, each representing a field in which Obama has never clearly staked a progressive claim or where he has drifted toward the corporatist right.
“Without debates by challengers inside the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries, the liberal/majoritarian agenda will be muted and ignored,” said Ralph Nader.
“The one-man Democratic primaries will be dull, repetitive, and draining of both voter enthusiasm and real bright lines between the two parties that excite voters,” Nader said.
A letter is being sent to a list of distinguished elected officials, civic leaders, prominent members of academia and the NGO community who represent the fields of labor, poverty, military and foreign policy, health insurance and care, the environment, financial regulation, consumer protection, and civil, political and human rights/empowerment.
The list of potential candidates also includes progressive democrats who have held national and state office and have fought for progressive reforms.
“We need to put strong democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people” said Cornel West, author and Professor at Princeton University. “His administration has tilted too much toward Wall Street, we need policies that empower Main Street.”
The letter pronounces that without primary challengers, President Obama will never have to seriously articulate and defend his beliefs to his own party. Given the dangers our nation faces, that option is unacceptable.
“It’s time for the White House to get into the trench with organized labor and lend a hand. We know what we need, and we don’t need another campaign speech,” said Chris Townsend Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America. “The absence of discussion or debate about the failed strategies of this administration only emboldens the corporate onslaught.”
The letter points to numerous decisions that have drawn criticism from Obama’s own Democratic Party including his decision to bail out Wall Street’s most profitable firms while failing to push for effective prosecution of the criminal behavior that triggered the recession, escalating the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan while simultaneously engaging in a unilateral war in Libya, his decision to extend the Bush era tax cuts, and his acquiescence to Republican extortion during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.
“Robust debate on the crucial issues facing our nation, including global environmental devastation, should characterize all races for national public office and the Democratic presidential primaries are no exception,” said Brent Blackwelder, President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth. “The public needs to hear whether a second term Obama will be like the first term Obama, or perhaps more like the 2008 presidential candidate Obama or something else altogether.”
The list of prominent leaders receiving the letter is being kept private as a courtesy.
Here’s a partial list of endorsees:
James Abourezk
Former U.S. Senator, South Dakota
Gar Alperovitz, Professor University of Maryland, Co-Founder Democracy Collaborative
Norman Birnbaum
Professor Emeritus, Georgetown University Law Center
Dr. Brent Blackwelder
President Emeritus of Friends of the Earth
Ellen H. Brown
Lawyer and Author of Web of Debt
Edgar Stuart Cahn
Professor of Law, University of the District of Columbia
Co-founder Legal Services for the Poor
Pat Choate
1996 Reform Party Vice President Candidate
Charles Cray
Director of the Center for Corporate Policy
Peter Coyote
Actor, Author and Director
Ronnie Cummins, Executive Director, Organic Consumers Association
Charles Derber, Professor, Boston College
Ronnie Dugger
Founder, Alliance for Democracy
John Fullerton
President, Capital Institute
Rebecca and James Goodman, Northwood Farm
Randy Hayes
Director, Foundation Earth
Rainforest Action Network Founder
Chris Hedges
Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist of the New York Times and Author
Hazel Henderson,
Author of Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy
President, Ethical Markets Media, LLC.
Jean Houston
Psychologist, Anthropologist and Author of The Possible Human and The
Possible Society
Nicholas Johnson
Former Commissioner, Federal Communications Commission
Former Administrator, Federal Maritime Commission
Alan F. Kay
Author of Spot the Spin and Locating Consensus for Democracy
Harry Kelber
The Labor Educator
Andrew Kimbrell
Executive Director, Center for Food Safety&
International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA)
Jonathan Kozol
Educator, Author of Savage Inequalities
Lewis Lapham
Former Editor, Harper’s Magazine
Leland Lehrman, Partner, Fund Balance
Rabbi Michael Lerner
Editor, Tikkun Magazine
Chair, Network of Spiritual Progressives
Dr. Richard Lippin, MD
Physician Forecaster, Board Certified in Preventive Medicine and
Advocate for both Individual and Institutional Prevention
Robert D. Manning
Founder and CEO, Responsible Debt Relief Institute
Author of Credit Card Nation
Dr. Samuel Metz, MD
Mad As Hell Doctors, founding member
Physicians for a National Health Plan, member of Portland chapter
Carol Miller, Community Activist, New Mexico
E. Ethelbert Miller, Board Chair Institute for Policy Studies
Ralph Nader
Citizen Advocate
Michael Parenti
Author
John Passacantando
Former Executive Director, Greenpeace USA
Erich Pica
President of Friends of the Earth
Vijay Prashad
Author and Professor, Trinity College
Nomi Prins
Author and former Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
Marcus Raskin
Author of The Common Good and former White House Advisor
Andy Shallal
“Democracy’s Restauranteur” and Owner of Bus Boys& Poets
Michelle Shocked
Musician
David Swanson
Author, War is a Lie
Chris Townsend
Political Action Director, United Electrical, Radio and Machine
Workers of America (UE)
Gore Vidal
Author and Political Activist
Rabbi Arthur Waskow
Chair, The Shalom Center
Harvey Wasserman
Author of Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth
Cornel West
Professor and Author of Race Matters
Quentin D. Young MD
National Coordinator, Physicians for a National Health Program
Showing posts with label Cornel West. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cornel West. Show all posts
Saturday, September 24, 2011
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Zinn's "on Race" Traces Violence, Victories in Civil Rights Movement
Friday 12 August 2011
Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout | Book Review
http://truth-out.org/race/1313086585
"on Race" by Howard Zinn is the Truthout Progressive Pick of the Week. Receive it as a gift from Truthout for a minimum donation of $20.
"on Race"
by Howard Zinn, Introduction by Cornel West
Seven Stories Press, 2011, $14.95 paperback, 236 pages
Princeton professor Cornell West's tribute to the late Howard Zinn says it all: "Zinn was an activist intellectual who moved smoothly from the library to the street, from the office to the jail, from the lecture room to the political rally. Zinn had more influence and impact on the public than other intellectuals of his generation."
By all accounts, Zinn was a mensch, a man whose down-to-earth brilliance and rich sense of humor touched those he engaged, from students, to colleagues and comrades. His 2010 passing is still being mourned.
Fortunately, Zinn's 25 books and hundreds of articles and speeches provide a lasting testament to both his humanity and political savvy. In addition, Seven Stories Press, an independent book publisher based in New York City, has added to Zinn's legacy by releasing three new anthologies of his work - "on Race," "on History," and "on War." While many of the pieces in each collection were previously published, it is nevertheless exciting to read or reread Zinn's energizing words.
"on Race" begins with essays penned in the late 1950s and early '60s. As the white, Jewish chairman of the history department at Atlanta's Spelman College, the oldest historically black academy for women in the US, Zinn did not anticipate being a central player in the period's racial upheaval. But he was, and the 14 pieces in "on Race" bring the realities of segregation, and the moral outrage and rebellion it generated, into such vivid relief that readers will literally feel the era's passionate momentum. His stark descriptions offer a powerful rendering of what transpired and why. Never a dispassionate reporter, Zinn's account is the emotional outpouring of a participant.
Take "The Southern Mystique," penned in 1963. "The South is monstrous and marvelous at the same time. Every cliché ever uttered about the South, every stereotype attached to its people, white and Negro [sic], is true," he wrote. "Prejudice, discrimination, race hatred, are real problems, to the point of viciousness, even murder, but their mystery, for those who look hard is gone ... The most vicious thing about segregation - more deadly than its immediate denial of certain goods and services - is its perpetuation of the mystery of racial differences. Because there is not a magical and omnipotent dispeller of the mystery: it is contact. The Southern mystique vanishes when one sees whites and Negroes behave like human beings."
Zinn's upbeat spirit, his unwavering belief that progressive shifts are not just possible, but inevitable, is showcased in "A Quiet Case of Social Change," written in 1959. In it, he offers readers an inside peak at the desegregation of Atlanta's public libraries. Unlike lunch counter sit-ins, bus boycotts or demonstrations to contest bigotry, the campaign to desegregate city libraries was the result of dogged persistence.
In the first incident, Dr. Irene Dobbs Jackson, an African-American professor of French walked into the "white only" Carnegie Library and filled out a membership application, She was the first African-American to do so. Dr. Jackson's action was the start of a well-orchestrated campaign in which dozens of black people began to enter Carnegie and request books and articles. After being rebuffed - told that the materials could either be sent to a Negro reading room or perused in the dank basement of the Carnegie building, far from white eyes - these aspiring patrons let it be known that a lawsuit would be filed if the policy did not change.
In short order, the Library Board met and, at the behest of the mayor, city attorney and chief of police, extended library access to all city residents. Zinn notes that the shift "caused no great commotion. The director received a few angry letters. Dr. Jackson was kept awake one night by nasty telephone calls: "You that integratin' nigger? This is the KKK." And as she sat at the library table reading that first day, a man came by and slammed his books down hard on the table in voiceless protest. But the general reaction was an enormous silence. Lo and behold, this bolstered people's confidence in the power of community organizing; if people of all races could read and research together, what else might they achieve?
Zinn's optimism about multiracial unity is contagious. What's more, his homage to the many unheralded women and girls who, like Professor Jackson, buttressed the civil rights movement, is an important corrective to popular notions of male-led social activism. Similarly, he offers a critical appraisal of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson - too often championed for pushing legislation outlawing the most blatant expressions of prejudice - by pointing out how little they actually did to stymie racial hate mongering.
The Department of Justice comes in for particular criticism due to the agency's penchant for siding with police who claimed they were simply "maintaining order" when they attacked protesters.
Zinn recounts dozens of heinous abuses, among them:
•In July 1962, Mrs. Slater King, the pregnant wife of a prominent Georgia activist, drove to a jail in Mitchell County to deliver food to a young woman who had been arrested at a protest earlier that day. King's three children accompanied her. As she approached the jail a Deputy accosted her and told her to leave. "Mrs. King walked slowly to her car," Zinn writes. "A Deputy pointed her out, cursed her, threatened to arrest her if she didn't hurry.' She was subsequently kicked, hit on the head, and knocked unconscious."
•Several days later, a white Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee member, William Hansen, was jailed after leading a prayer session in Albany, Georgia. He was "beaten into senselessness as he sat on the floor reading. His jaw and several ribs were broken," Zinn continues. "Bleeding profusely from the mouth, he asked the jailer for medical aid and was told that was not within the jailer's jurisdiction."
•A Black attorney who went to check on Hansen was beaten by the Sheriff; he was so badly injured he required hospitalization.
All three incidents were reported to federal authorities, Zinn writes, but the government did nothing. Even worse, despite lip service about investigating the 1964 murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, the deaths went unsolved for 41 years.
"The civil rights movement illuminated the hypocrisy of the liberal promise," he concludes in "Solving the Race Problem." "It makes overt, and recorded on television for the world to see, an old daily fact of American life: that a Black person who protested his [sic] condition, or moved one step out of line, would be arrested, or beaten, or inundated with water hoses, or killed, and the government of the United States - the most powerful government in the world - would not act to save him." Secondly, it illustrated that white sympathizers would also be denied protection.
Zinn's rage is palpable as he slams government inaction and argues that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965 were small, if hard-won, victories to appease increasingly enraged people the world over.
"Will the hostility ever end?" Zinn asks. His answer: "Not until Black and white people discover together, the source of their long feud - an economic system which has deprived them and their children for centuries, to the benefit of, first, the Founding Fathers, and lately, the hundred or so giant corporations that hog the resources of this bountiful nation."
Here, here.
Zinn wasn't afraid to speak truth to power - whether it meant condemning capitalism or criticizing political elites. Heartfelt and thoughtful, "on Race" addresses both how far we've come and how far we've yet to go in achieving the colorblind society of which Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement dreamed. Lastly, the collection serves as a clear-eyed reminder that history is shaped by those who act.
Indeed, "on Race" is an inspiring celebration of community organizing and activism, a true championing of what el pueblo can do when we act together.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Eleanor J. Bader is a freelance writer, teacher and feminist activist from Brooklyn, New York. She writes for The Brooklyn Rail, ontheissuesmagazine.com, RHrealitycheck.org and other progressive blogs and publications.
Eleanor J. Bader, Truthout | Book Review
http://truth-out.org/race/1313086585
"on Race" by Howard Zinn is the Truthout Progressive Pick of the Week. Receive it as a gift from Truthout for a minimum donation of $20.
"on Race"
by Howard Zinn, Introduction by Cornel West
Seven Stories Press, 2011, $14.95 paperback, 236 pages
Princeton professor Cornell West's tribute to the late Howard Zinn says it all: "Zinn was an activist intellectual who moved smoothly from the library to the street, from the office to the jail, from the lecture room to the political rally. Zinn had more influence and impact on the public than other intellectuals of his generation."
By all accounts, Zinn was a mensch, a man whose down-to-earth brilliance and rich sense of humor touched those he engaged, from students, to colleagues and comrades. His 2010 passing is still being mourned.
Fortunately, Zinn's 25 books and hundreds of articles and speeches provide a lasting testament to both his humanity and political savvy. In addition, Seven Stories Press, an independent book publisher based in New York City, has added to Zinn's legacy by releasing three new anthologies of his work - "on Race," "on History," and "on War." While many of the pieces in each collection were previously published, it is nevertheless exciting to read or reread Zinn's energizing words.
"on Race" begins with essays penned in the late 1950s and early '60s. As the white, Jewish chairman of the history department at Atlanta's Spelman College, the oldest historically black academy for women in the US, Zinn did not anticipate being a central player in the period's racial upheaval. But he was, and the 14 pieces in "on Race" bring the realities of segregation, and the moral outrage and rebellion it generated, into such vivid relief that readers will literally feel the era's passionate momentum. His stark descriptions offer a powerful rendering of what transpired and why. Never a dispassionate reporter, Zinn's account is the emotional outpouring of a participant.
Take "The Southern Mystique," penned in 1963. "The South is monstrous and marvelous at the same time. Every cliché ever uttered about the South, every stereotype attached to its people, white and Negro [sic], is true," he wrote. "Prejudice, discrimination, race hatred, are real problems, to the point of viciousness, even murder, but their mystery, for those who look hard is gone ... The most vicious thing about segregation - more deadly than its immediate denial of certain goods and services - is its perpetuation of the mystery of racial differences. Because there is not a magical and omnipotent dispeller of the mystery: it is contact. The Southern mystique vanishes when one sees whites and Negroes behave like human beings."
Zinn's upbeat spirit, his unwavering belief that progressive shifts are not just possible, but inevitable, is showcased in "A Quiet Case of Social Change," written in 1959. In it, he offers readers an inside peak at the desegregation of Atlanta's public libraries. Unlike lunch counter sit-ins, bus boycotts or demonstrations to contest bigotry, the campaign to desegregate city libraries was the result of dogged persistence.
In the first incident, Dr. Irene Dobbs Jackson, an African-American professor of French walked into the "white only" Carnegie Library and filled out a membership application, She was the first African-American to do so. Dr. Jackson's action was the start of a well-orchestrated campaign in which dozens of black people began to enter Carnegie and request books and articles. After being rebuffed - told that the materials could either be sent to a Negro reading room or perused in the dank basement of the Carnegie building, far from white eyes - these aspiring patrons let it be known that a lawsuit would be filed if the policy did not change.
In short order, the Library Board met and, at the behest of the mayor, city attorney and chief of police, extended library access to all city residents. Zinn notes that the shift "caused no great commotion. The director received a few angry letters. Dr. Jackson was kept awake one night by nasty telephone calls: "You that integratin' nigger? This is the KKK." And as she sat at the library table reading that first day, a man came by and slammed his books down hard on the table in voiceless protest. But the general reaction was an enormous silence. Lo and behold, this bolstered people's confidence in the power of community organizing; if people of all races could read and research together, what else might they achieve?
Zinn's optimism about multiracial unity is contagious. What's more, his homage to the many unheralded women and girls who, like Professor Jackson, buttressed the civil rights movement, is an important corrective to popular notions of male-led social activism. Similarly, he offers a critical appraisal of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson - too often championed for pushing legislation outlawing the most blatant expressions of prejudice - by pointing out how little they actually did to stymie racial hate mongering.
The Department of Justice comes in for particular criticism due to the agency's penchant for siding with police who claimed they were simply "maintaining order" when they attacked protesters.
Zinn recounts dozens of heinous abuses, among them:
•In July 1962, Mrs. Slater King, the pregnant wife of a prominent Georgia activist, drove to a jail in Mitchell County to deliver food to a young woman who had been arrested at a protest earlier that day. King's three children accompanied her. As she approached the jail a Deputy accosted her and told her to leave. "Mrs. King walked slowly to her car," Zinn writes. "A Deputy pointed her out, cursed her, threatened to arrest her if she didn't hurry.' She was subsequently kicked, hit on the head, and knocked unconscious."
•Several days later, a white Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee member, William Hansen, was jailed after leading a prayer session in Albany, Georgia. He was "beaten into senselessness as he sat on the floor reading. His jaw and several ribs were broken," Zinn continues. "Bleeding profusely from the mouth, he asked the jailer for medical aid and was told that was not within the jailer's jurisdiction."
•A Black attorney who went to check on Hansen was beaten by the Sheriff; he was so badly injured he required hospitalization.
All three incidents were reported to federal authorities, Zinn writes, but the government did nothing. Even worse, despite lip service about investigating the 1964 murder of civil rights workers Andrew Goodman, James Chaney and Michael Schwerner, the deaths went unsolved for 41 years.
"The civil rights movement illuminated the hypocrisy of the liberal promise," he concludes in "Solving the Race Problem." "It makes overt, and recorded on television for the world to see, an old daily fact of American life: that a Black person who protested his [sic] condition, or moved one step out of line, would be arrested, or beaten, or inundated with water hoses, or killed, and the government of the United States - the most powerful government in the world - would not act to save him." Secondly, it illustrated that white sympathizers would also be denied protection.
Zinn's rage is palpable as he slams government inaction and argues that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the subsequent Voting Rights Act of 1965 were small, if hard-won, victories to appease increasingly enraged people the world over.
"Will the hostility ever end?" Zinn asks. His answer: "Not until Black and white people discover together, the source of their long feud - an economic system which has deprived them and their children for centuries, to the benefit of, first, the Founding Fathers, and lately, the hundred or so giant corporations that hog the resources of this bountiful nation."
Here, here.
Zinn wasn't afraid to speak truth to power - whether it meant condemning capitalism or criticizing political elites. Heartfelt and thoughtful, "on Race" addresses both how far we've come and how far we've yet to go in achieving the colorblind society of which Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement dreamed. Lastly, the collection serves as a clear-eyed reminder that history is shaped by those who act.
Indeed, "on Race" is an inspiring celebration of community organizing and activism, a true championing of what el pueblo can do when we act together.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Eleanor J. Bader is a freelance writer, teacher and feminist activist from Brooklyn, New York. She writes for The Brooklyn Rail, ontheissuesmagazine.com, RHrealitycheck.org and other progressive blogs and publications.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Awesome Quotes: Cornel West on Barack Obama
"It is very clear that President Obama caves in over and over again. He punts on first down. If you’re in a foxhole with him, you’re in trouble because he wants to compromise. He doesn’t have the kind of backbone he ought to have.”
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Tavis Smiley And Cornel West Spar With CNN's Carol Costello
Tavis Smiley And Cornel West Spar With CNN's Carol Costello About Obama, Poverty Jack Mirkinson
8/8/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/tavis-smiley-cornel-west-cnn-carol-costello-obama-poverty_n_921162.html
CNN's Carol Costello had a rather testy exchange with PBS host Tavis Smiley and Prof. Cornel West about their fierce criticism of President Obama.
Smiley and West have been two of President Obama's most high-profile African American critics. They are currently on a nationwide "Poverty Tour" to highlight what they say is the lack of attention given to poor people in America. Smiley and West appeared on "American Morning" Monday to discuss the tour. Smiley was blunt about what he saw as the damage done by Obama in the recent debt deal.
"I think this debt ceiling deal, Carol, was really a declaration of war on the poor," he said. "The Congress, the president, respectfully, have declared war on the poor...no unemployment extensions for poor people. No closing of a single corporate loophole, not one new tax, not one cent of new tax on the rich and the lucky."
Costello didn't seem to be buying this line of thinking. In response, she cited a Heritage Foundation study which, she said, claimed that poor Americans lived relatively comfortably.
"What are they complaining about?" she asked, and, citing the study again, continued, "[rich] people pay the taxes in America and the poor don't pay any." West called this a "lie," saying that "most of the taxes are paid by middle class. One out of four corporations don't pay a penny of taxes."
After Smiley ran through some of the things he would like President Obama to do to tackle poverty--including discussing the issue more and having a national conference on poverty--Costello asked another skeptical question.
"The president represents everybody in America," she said. "[He's] dealing with a lot of stuff right now so why concentrate on one segment of the population?"
"When the banks had a national emergency, they bailed out and found $700 billion," West shot back. "When we go to war, we find $1.3 trillion."
8/8/11
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/08/tavis-smiley-cornel-west-cnn-carol-costello-obama-poverty_n_921162.html
CNN's Carol Costello had a rather testy exchange with PBS host Tavis Smiley and Prof. Cornel West about their fierce criticism of President Obama.
Smiley and West have been two of President Obama's most high-profile African American critics. They are currently on a nationwide "Poverty Tour" to highlight what they say is the lack of attention given to poor people in America. Smiley and West appeared on "American Morning" Monday to discuss the tour. Smiley was blunt about what he saw as the damage done by Obama in the recent debt deal.
"I think this debt ceiling deal, Carol, was really a declaration of war on the poor," he said. "The Congress, the president, respectfully, have declared war on the poor...no unemployment extensions for poor people. No closing of a single corporate loophole, not one new tax, not one cent of new tax on the rich and the lucky."
Costello didn't seem to be buying this line of thinking. In response, she cited a Heritage Foundation study which, she said, claimed that poor Americans lived relatively comfortably.
"What are they complaining about?" she asked, and, citing the study again, continued, "[rich] people pay the taxes in America and the poor don't pay any." West called this a "lie," saying that "most of the taxes are paid by middle class. One out of four corporations don't pay a penny of taxes."
After Smiley ran through some of the things he would like President Obama to do to tackle poverty--including discussing the issue more and having a national conference on poverty--Costello asked another skeptical question.
"The president represents everybody in America," she said. "[He's] dealing with a lot of stuff right now so why concentrate on one segment of the population?"
"When the banks had a national emergency, they bailed out and found $700 billion," West shot back. "When we go to war, we find $1.3 trillion."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
