{ West is not responsible for Biden’s low approval rating among likely Democratic voters.

It is fanciful to think that those voters will vote for Biden in large numbers if West is not on their ballot as the Green Party presidential candidate in 2024. A convenient fanciful notion is — wait for it — fanciful, no matter how much we might enjoy it. The fact that it is convenient, or even desirable, does not make the notion credible, let alone persuasive.

Voters who hold lukewarm views about Biden’s presidency have several options. Some will vote for him anyway. Others might vote for a third-party candidate (such as West) with whom they more strongly agree. Some voters might decide to “stay home.”

People concerned about West’s Green Party campaign for the U.S. presidency do not think that disgruntled and lukewarm Democratic voters are likely to vote for Trump, or for any of the other politicians currently campaigning to be chosen as the Republican Party nominee in 2024. They fear that Trump’s right-wing base of white religious nationalists, neofascist imperialists, military adventurist and free market capitalists will vote Trump back into power unless disgruntled and lukewarm Democratic voters re-elect Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

But if Biden cannot persuade voters that he deserves their votes, no one should blame West. Instead, we should admit that those voters are free to vote for a presidential candidate whose record squares with their views and values.

They owe Biden no political fealty and are not required to serve the interests of the neoliberal capitalists who run the Democratic Party, whether West runs for president or not. Their voting preferences should be based on their realities, their histories and their hopes. }

you can download the video here https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1693057136001974272/pu/vid/640x360/gEAO1AYrtEnTDASo.mp4?tag=12

"For the past 50 years, I have been facing heavy financial responsibilities to family and friends. I have always made my priceless children a high priority - even with lavish treatments that are not in the records. The wave of IRS audits, fees, liabilities, levees, and liens have always been and are now resolved based on agreements set in place years ago. I do believe that we all should pay our fair share of taxes, especially the top 1%! Like the 63% of my hard-working fellow citizens, I live paycheck to paycheck with dignity and determination!#PeopleOverProfits" https://nitter.net/CornelWest/status/1693672094910058679#m

Interesting Clip, the Biden team are counting on Trump being the nominee, Looking for "Rematch" of 2020, don't want any "Variables"

This Is why Americans don't have Healthcare

map taken from here https://www.basenation.us/maps.html

read more on US military bases around the world

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/9/10/infographic-us-military-presence-around-the-world-interactive

Biden could end the embargo of Cuba with a stroke of the pen, but he won't.

This is a thread for everything that exposes Joe Biden for the White Supremacist Corporate Sex Pest that he is.

Please, Keep it factual i.e. from as reputable sources as possible: No Conspiracy Theories.

This quote is from a 93 speech pushing his crime bill, Full transcript here and partial video here

>The consensus is: A) We must take back the streets. It doesn't matter whether or not the person that is accosting your son or daughter, or my son or daughter, my wife, your husband, my mother, your parents - it doesn't matter whether or not they were deprived as a youth. It doesn't matter whether or not they had no background that would enable them to have, to become, uh, to become, uh, become socialized into the fabric of society. It doesn't matter whether or not they're the victims of society. The end result is they're about to knock my mother on the head with a lead pipe, shoot my sister, beat up my wife, take on my sons.

> So I don't want to ask, "What made them do this?" They must be taken off the streets! That's number one. There's a consensus on that! The Democratic Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, the Democratic President of the United States of America, the Democratic Attorney General, the Republican Leader, the Republican leader of this effort, Senator Hatch, the Republican Senator from Texas, we all agree on that.

> Now we can find some “fringe folks” in the study groups on the right wing and left wing, Libertarians and, uh, uh, and “left wingers” in my party who say, "No. That's not what we should do," but politically that consensus has been arrived at. I acknowledge there was not that consensus in the Sixties. There is today.

This thread if for posting interviews; either in video, audio or written format. I'm making this for or the sake of not spamming up up the sub/server

Partial or Full Transcripts of videos/audio is also needed so we can make memes with them 🖌

Rules:

1. Full length or longish videos preferred, but any length ( from tiktok etc. ) is okay
2. Include a few notes / description and maybe a standout quote, maybe link to transcript
3. No Reaction or Commentary Videos, this is for raw unmediated Cornel West

Post What You Got

i hope Disney sues me for this shit 🖕 🤣 🖕

...by a landslide

tldr: The DNC argued in court that they have the right to rig their primaries, and in the end the courts sided with them: the DNC is legally entitled to rig their primaries

{ Jared Beck, the attorney representing Sanders supporters in the class action lawsuit [said this in court]

“People paid money in reliance on the understanding that the primary elections for the Democratic nominee—nominating process in 2016 were fair and impartial,” Beck said. “And that’s not just a bedrock assumption that we would assume just by virtue of the fact that we live in a democracy, and we assume that our elections are run in a fair and impartial manner. But that’s what the Democratic National Committee’s own charter says. It says it in black and white. And they can’t deny that.” He added, “Not only is it in the charter, but it was stated over and over again in the media by the Democratic National Committee’s employees, including Congresswoman Wassermann Schultz, that they were, in fact, acting in compliance with the charter. And they said it again and again, and we’ve cited several instances of that in the case.”

Later in the hearing, attorneys representing the DNC claim that the Democratic National Committee would be well within their rights to “go into back rooms like they used to and smoke cigars and pick the candidate that way.” By pushing the argument throughout the proceedings of this class action lawsuit, the Democratic National Committee is telling voters in a court of law that they see no enforceable obligation in having to run a fair and impartial primary election.

The DNC attorneys even go so far as to argue that the words “impartial” and “evenhanded”—used in the DNC Charter—can’t be interpreted by a court of law. Beck retorted, “I’m shocked to hear that we can’t define what it means to be evenhanded and impartial. If that were the case, we couldn’t have courts. I mean, that’s what courts do every day, is decide disputes in an evenhanded and impartial manner]

if you're wondering how the case turned out here's the wikipedia:

{ Their suit was dismissed by Judge William Zloch of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida for lack of standing.[1] The judge found that none of the plaintiffs had claimed to have donated to the DNC on the basis of promises contained in the DNC charter, and therefore the plaintiffs could not claim to have incurred damages.[1] The court held that "To the extent Plaintiffs wish to air their general grievances with the DNC or its candidate selection process, their redress is through the ballot box, the DNC’s internal workings, or their right of free speech — not through the judiciary." }

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilding_v._DNC_Services_Corp.

see also: https://observer.com/2017/08/court-admits-dnc-and-debbie-wasserman-schulz-rigged-primaries-against-sanders/

okay, last one for today

Image Description: A photo of striking Writers, the text reads: "With these strikes going on: Amazon, Hollywood, UPS,etc. I'm in full scale solidarity with Trade Union Workers even when the Leadership is racist and sexist and often side with the bosses. I'm about workers unionism rather than business unionism...

...but when you call a strike you gotta draw a line: Which Side Are You On? Democrats and Republicans all walking on the bosses side, the same with Cop City..."

I hope ya'll downvoters know you're only motivating me to do more 😄

Image Description: A thinking alien on black background, text reads: If Democrats are So worried about Spoilers? Why don't they support Ranked Choice Voting?

{ But all of this is not the point. Because there is a simple solution to resolve this issue and eliminate the spoiler effect entirely, which the Democrats have seemingly never mentioned, let alone tried to enact. The solution is to abolish the electoral college and move toward a ranked-choice popular vote. This would mean that people who want to put Green as their first choice could then (if, unlike me, they would want to) put the Democrat as their second choice. Under ranked-choice voting, there are several rounds of vote counting. If no candidate gets over 50% of the popular vote, then candidates lower down the vote count are eliminated and their votes get added to the tally of their second choice. }

This article is from 2000 that's destroys a lot of the anti 3rd party talking points coming from the DNC Lately

After pointing all all the bullshit with the uncounted votes and the courts which clear was the deciding factor;

{ The media pontificates about whether the new president can be considered "legitimate" after the counts, recounts, non-counts and court cases in Florida. But there is a deeper question of legitimacy than that posed by a few hundred votes. Neither Bush nor Gore can claim to be the people's choice, for the only clear finding of this election is that Americans didn't want either of them. The close popular and electoral votes were not a reflection of evenly divided support, but of which guy people would vote to throw off the island first. Both "won" this negative contest. Let's do the math:

• 52 percent of eligible voters either did not vote or voted for third-party candidates.

• Among the 48 percent of Americans who cast ballots for Bush or Gore, there was an even split, giving each roughly 24 percent of eligible voters.

• But wait -- a good half of these voters were not actually choosing the candidate they checked on their ballots, but rather voting against the other guy.

This means that neither Bush nor Gore could muster the support of more than 12 percent of the electorate. This is the real crisis for our democracy.

How is the Democratic Party establishment dealing with this crisis of legitimacy and its own declining numbers? By blaming Ralph Nader. Partisans wail that Nader denied Gore the few hundred votes he needed to prevail on election night. Indeed, Nader polled some 95,000 votes in Florida, which prompted New York socialite and Hillary Clinton moneyman Harry Evans to blurt angrily, "I want to kill Ralph Nader."

(...)

1. Seniors. By a 51-47 percent margin, Gore lost the over-65 vote in Florida. Bush got 67,000 more senior votes than Gore did, even after all the Democratic scare talk about vanishing Social Security benefits. Had Gore simply broken even with this constituency, he would have won.

2. White Women. This group typically votes Democratic in Florida, or splits evenly. Gore lost them to Bush by 53-44 percent. Had he gotten 50 percent of these votes, he'd have added 65,000 votes to his total -- plenty enough to have put the state in his column election night.

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader's votes wouldn't have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader.

Why would Democrats and liberals vote for (gag) Bush? Some Democrats may have been so appalled by Clinton's personal behavior and Gore's fundraising escapades that they flipped all the way to Bush, while others found no defining economic difference between Gore and Bush, so they voted on the basis of George W.'s (false) claim to be the integrity candidate. Some liberals noted that Bush actually has proposed less of an increase in the Pentagon's already-bloated budget than Gore did, and some were so angered by the vice president's atrocious record of selling out working families, environmentalists and farmers that they wanted to give him the double-whammy of taking a vote from him and giving it to Bush. In any event, Gore failed to close the deal with these voters -- a fact that has nothing to do with Nader. }

{ As primary season comes to a close Tuesday, Democrats have spent more than $53 million to boost far-right Republican primary candidates in nine key states as part of a controversial election strategy — despite publicly screaming about the threat posed to the US by such would-be officeholders.

In some races, Democrats have spent more than 30 times what the GOP candidates were able to scrape together themselves, according to a Washington Post analysis.}

It should be pointed out this is the Same Logic that led Hillary Clinton to tell her media friends to give more air time to Trump in the early days of her failed Campaign.

"On the West Bank it's worse than Apartheid. That's what Desmond Tutu told me when I traveled with him.

He says it was worse on the West Bank than it was in Suweto, so you just have to speak that truth. " -Cornel West

{ The lawsuit, filed Aug. 1 in D.C. Superior Court and first reported by DCist, says the city’s Elections Board erred last month when it determined that the proposed initiative was “proper subject matter,” and asks the court to permanently block it from being implemented. While the measure’s organizers still have a long way to go before the “Make All Votes Count Act,” also known as Initiative 83, reaches next year’s ballot, it has already drawn a chorus of opposition, including from the city’s Republican Party.

As proposed, Initiative 83 starting in 2026 would allow more than 80,000 people registered as “unaffiliated” to vote in D.C.’s primary election, which is currently closed to them. It also would implement a ranked-choice balloting system in the city. Under the ranked-choice system, voters would be able to rank candidates for an office in order of preference; if no candidate emerges with at least 50 percent of the vote during ballot tabulation, the lowest-performing candidate is eliminated. Among voters who picked that candidate as their top choice, their votes would go to their No. 2 candidate, and so on, until one candidate eclipses 50 percent of the vote.

Supporters of the measure — who argued Tuesday that the Democratic Party’s lawsuit was filed prematurely and should be dismissed — say these two changes would make elections more accessible in the District: Opening up primaries would give unaffiliated residents in deep-blue D.C. a voice in the city’s crucial primary elections. As for ranked-choice voting, proponents say it would ensure elected candidates receive at least 50 percent of the vote, which isn’t always the case now.

In its lawsuit, however, the Democratic Party says opening the city’s primaries violates the city’s Home Rule charter, which instructs voters to elect the mayor, attorney general and members of the D.C. Council on a “partisan” basis. The Democratic Party also claims in its suit that opening the city’s primaries would violate voters’ rights to freely associate with a political party protected by the First and Fifth amendments.

“Allowing 80,000 non-affiliated voters to participate in partisan elections would undermine the intent of the Charter and dilute the votes of party members who seek to nominate party candidates to stand in subsequent general elections,” the suit reads.

The lawsuit repeats other claims against the ballot initiative that were dismissed by the D.C. Elections Board when it allowed the measure to proceed, including an argument that it would cost money to implement (ballot initiatives, by law, cannot have fiscal impact). The Democratic Party further alleges that the measure runs afoul of the D.C. Human Rights Act by discriminating against residents in low-income areas of the city who might be confused by the new system (the initiative’s backers have said that claim is insulting to Black voters). }

"Keep Track of the Hypocricy, because hypocricies are often lies that hide crimes. Hipocricy is not just abstract, mendacity and criminality are inseparable when it comes to public policy, when it comes to utterances made by the elites of nation states" -Cornel West

"When you get to US Foreign Policy, it's so deeply shaped by the settler colonial experience of the europeans, they're now just going beyond national borders, so they carry that white supremacy with them" - Cornel West

"Progressives will always be a kind of window dressing... Corporate interests, military industrial complex, Wall Street, Silicon Valley... They're at the Center of the Democratic party. " -Cornel West

taken from this interview with Chris Hedges

Hey Everybody, I just wanted to make a general chit chat / getting-to-know-you thread, and also lay out my goals with making this sub, feel free to say Hi in the comments or bring up any issues or requests you might have

This Space, tho it will probably always have fairly little reach can serve as a base of operations and launching point on other platforms ( twitter, reddit, facebook ) it can also help to draw people off of corporate platforms and into the fediverse

Mission Statement:

• Form a Central Hub to share resources and coordinate activity the Cornel West's campaign on the Fediverse and beyond
• Produce and Distribute Memes and Talking points useful for the campaign
• Challenge DNC Smears with Facts and compelling arguments
• Raise Awareness of General Issues beyond the campaign: Mass Incarceration, HealthCare etc.
• Show Solidarity with Grassroots Movements: Striking Workers, the CopyCity protestors etc.
• Network between activists, talk strategy, build connections between poor communities: particularly between black white and latine, between citizens and immigrants etc.

I welcome any edits / additions to this list

I've never voted third party before. I know people who have, and I've experienced the frustration first hand that comes with the fear of friends who refuse to use what power they have to protect people more vulnerable than themselves. I had a friend in 2020 who REFUSED to vote for Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, and I tried to really communicate what I thought was the hypocrisy of his personal insulation from the consequences of a second Trump term. And I'm pleased to acknowledge that in this sentiment, I shared Cornell West's position.

What brings me to supporting Cornell West now is not the attitude of my wealthy, purist, friend. If I still lived in Pennsylvania, I will admit that I could be convinced to vote for Joe Biden in 2024. But I'm at the point that I simply demand convincing. I'm not lining up automatically, I need to be given a better reason. It's a small, small, TINY ask.

I think I'm one of millions of people West is speaking to. I'm willing to vote for the lesser of two evils, but if doing so is just a delay tactic for the worse outcome? That's just a distinction without a difference.

Whether I vote for Cornell West is immaterial, because I live in a blue state. Which is a sentence that is as democratic as saying 'I hope the supreme leader decides to choose the candidate who gets the most votes this year.' And that's the problem. If my only influence is volunteering or giving MONEY to help persuade a few thousand people in places that matter in a system engineered to limit choice? Then I'm going to use that influence to say we need to stop putting up with that system. And if that scares the better of the two corporate parties, then GOOD. Maybe a little existential fear might motivate them to get on the right side.

We'll see. But if people ask, "Aren't you afraid of what happens if Republicans take over again?" I'll say, "YES! That's why I'm giving my support to someone who seems to take that threat seriously!"

Cornel West will hold his first campaign event on August 24th, a town hall meeting in Jackson Mississippi hosted by Emmet Till's Family

A reaction meme for when your dear brother isn't being very Socratic

Black people have no obligation to pay taxes in a country that enslaved them

the IRS admits disproportionately auditing Black taxpayers

use this when people bring up West's tax returns