Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: Dr. Cornel West Talks Presidential Run, Truth & Justice, Reparations, Student Loans, DEI + More

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INTERVIEW: Dr. Cornel West Talks Presidential Run, Truth & Justice, Reparations, Student Loans, DEI + More · The Breakfast Club

0:00
Speaker 1: Wake that hands up in the morning.
0:02
Speaker 2: The Breakfast Club.
0:04
Speaker 1: Morning.
0:05
Speaker 3: Everybody's the j Envy just Hilarius Charlamagne the guy. We
0:09
Speaker 3: are the Breakfast Club. We got some special guests joining
0:12
Speaker 3: us this morning.
0:12
Speaker 2: That's right.
0:13
Speaker 3: We got the good brother, doctor Cornell West. Yes, indeed,
0:16
Speaker 3: and also his running mate, Malina Abdullah. Welcome.
0:20
Speaker 1: It's a blessing to be here. My brother said, he
0:22
Speaker 1: bring me back. He's a man of his word. It's
0:25
Speaker 1: good to see you, my brother, j Envy, and I'm
0:28
Speaker 1: so blessed to be with sister Malina. She is one
0:32
Speaker 1: of the great freedom fighters of her generation. And we
0:36
Speaker 1: are running together for truth, justice and love. And we
0:40
Speaker 1: want people to see what it's like to have two
0:44
Speaker 1: black folk who have no fear, no lies, tell the truth,
0:49
Speaker 1: seek justice, and love the people.
0:52
Speaker 2: Sister Molina, Let's let's start with you. When doctor Cornell
0:55
Speaker 2: West approached you to be his running mate, what was
0:57
Speaker 2: your thought process behind it all? And even receiving that
1:01
Speaker 2: message and didn't deciding to do.
1:02
Speaker 4: It well before thinking, my soul jumped out of myself
1:07
Speaker 4: and said absolutely. I told him yesterday that I haven't
1:11
Speaker 4: felt this kind of spirit soaring since I had my
1:15
Speaker 4: last child. And that was fourteen years ago. So my
1:18
Speaker 4: spirit spoke before my mind spoke. But then when I
1:23
Speaker 4: thought about it, I never planned to run for office,
1:27
Speaker 4: but it made all the sense in the world. I,
1:29
Speaker 4: like many people, have been deeply inspired by doctor West,
1:33
Speaker 4: both as a scholar but also as a freedom fighter
1:36
Speaker 4: and one who marches and moves on behalf of our people.
1:40
Speaker 2: What made you want to choose Molina doctor Cornell.
1:43
Speaker 1: You know, brother, I wanted to choose the best. I
1:46
Speaker 1: believe that excellence in the form of vision, courage, willingness
1:50
Speaker 1: to put your body on the line. She's a scholar,
1:53
Speaker 1: she's an intellectual. She's been to jail many, many, many times.
1:57
Speaker 1: They have attacked her in vicious way. She's ill standing
2:00
Speaker 1: with a tremendous sense of determination. And in that sense,
2:04
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of always acknowledging what we always do.
2:07
Speaker 1: And that's true for everybody around here. We'll come from
2:10
Speaker 1: a great Black people who have the highest standards of
2:14
Speaker 1: excellence within our tradition. And I wanted to put a
2:17
Speaker 1: smile on the face of Fanny Louhammer and Martin Luther
2:21
Speaker 1: King Jr. Curtis may feel and Nina Simon. That's high
2:25
Speaker 1: standards because those of folk who are free, as my
2:28
Speaker 1: brother Clifton always says, I want to see whether you're
2:31
Speaker 1: on a plantation or not. But it's since they've never
2:34
Speaker 1: been on nobody's plantation. That's hard to find these days
2:37
Speaker 1: for black folk. And so to be able to work
2:40
Speaker 1: with her, work alongside her, learn from her, be instructed
2:44
Speaker 1: and inspired, it's a beautiful thing.
2:46
Speaker 2: And let the direct show Molina has been to jail
2:48
Speaker 2: for good trouble. Donald Trump has been to jail many
2:51
Speaker 2: times too, So I just want to put that out there,
2:54
Speaker 2: good trouble.
2:55
Speaker 3: I was going to ask you, what keeps you in
2:57
Speaker 3: the fight? You know, because it's a lot of money,
3:00
Speaker 3: it's a lot of time. It's stressful. They attack you,
3:03
Speaker 3: They attack every part of your life. They dive deep
3:05
Speaker 3: into your finances, your taxes. And both of you guys,
3:08
Speaker 3: you know you both have families, so they gonna dive
3:11
Speaker 3: into your family. So what makes you still want to
3:14
Speaker 3: put that fight on?
3:15
Speaker 1: But I got so much love poured into me from
3:18
Speaker 1: Irene and Clifton West and Grandma and granddad, from Shiloh
3:21
Speaker 1: Baptist Church, Reverend Willie Pecook and Deacon Hinton and others
3:24
Speaker 1: that I would have to live three lifetimes to begin
3:27
Speaker 1: to pay that back. And then by the time you
3:29
Speaker 1: connected with the Black Panther Party, connected with those folks
3:32
Speaker 1: I didn't know, the Malcolms and the Fanny Low Hammers
3:35
Speaker 1: and others. All that love they poured it, all that courage,
3:38
Speaker 1: all that integrity. The least thing I could do is
3:41
Speaker 1: tell the truth and seek justice before I meet my
3:44
Speaker 1: hand and meet my maker, you know what I mean.
3:46
Speaker 1: So I get up with a joy, and I got
3:47
Speaker 1: a joy in the world and give me the world
3:48
Speaker 1: can't take away. And it's a deep joy tied to
3:52
Speaker 1: the struggle and try to try to try and to
3:55
Speaker 1: make the world a better face for oppressed people, poor people,
3:58
Speaker 1: working people. To deal with all this organized greed and
4:01
Speaker 1: institutionalized hatred and rutinize indifference to the vuner raubbul. It's
4:07
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing to be in struggle with. This is
4:09
Speaker 1: a Molina and the whole host of folk who are
4:11
Speaker 1: concerned about making the world a better place with a
4:14
Speaker 1: smile and also with a style too, because we come
4:17
Speaker 1: out of people that got style and sold Oh, brother.
4:20
Speaker 4: Malini, I mean for me, I couldn't say it better
4:25
Speaker 4: than doctor West. It is what we owe our ancestors.
4:27
Speaker 4: It is what we owe our guide, it is what
4:29
Speaker 4: we owe our people. And I'll also offer that I'm
4:33
Speaker 4: a mother of three children, and my three children, two
4:37
Speaker 4: of the three of them had police called on them
4:40
Speaker 4: in schools.
4:41
Speaker 5: When they were six years old for the first time.
4:44
Speaker 4: And I cannot leave a world as it is for
4:49
Speaker 4: Tandie way Amara and I'm in. We have to do
4:52
Speaker 4: the work to make the world better for them. That's
4:55
Speaker 4: what we owe our ancestors. That's what we owe our people.
4:58
Speaker 4: That's what we owe our children, and that's what we
5:00
Speaker 4: owd generations to come. That's what we owe ourselves as well.
5:04
Speaker 3: I was going to ask what they shold me. I
5:06
Speaker 3: was going to ask, you know, you guys are running independently,
5:09
Speaker 3: and people when they questioned the Democrats, or they questioned Biden,
5:14
Speaker 3: or they questioned Kamala Harris, they say people are going
5:17
Speaker 3: against their race and people are going against what they
5:20
Speaker 3: quote unquote should be doing. What's your thoughts on that,
5:23
Speaker 3: because in all actuality, people will say that you guys
5:26
Speaker 3: are questioning them as well.
5:28
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. Fanny lou Hammer said, I'm questioning America.
5:32
Speaker 1: I'm questioning capitalism, I'm questioning patriarchy, and I'm questioning white supremacy.
5:39
Speaker 1: The folk who want to defend Biden and can't say
5:41
Speaker 1: a mumbling word about the general side and ethnic cleansing
5:44
Speaker 1: and apartheized state of Israel, it means they're turning their backs. Well, no,
5:49
Speaker 1: we don't come out of a tradition like that. We
5:51
Speaker 1: committed to jamal Leticia in the hood. We committed to
5:54
Speaker 1: Wan and juan Nita in the barrio. We committed to
5:58
Speaker 1: poor white, we committed Palestinians, we committed to any folk.
6:02
Speaker 1: We committed the Jews when they catch in hell, we
6:04
Speaker 1: are around. In nineteen thirty we insolidated with the Jews
6:07
Speaker 1: against Hitler. Now right now, you got genocide taking place
6:11
Speaker 1: in Gaza. We take a stand not out of self righteousness,
6:15
Speaker 1: but because we want to be moral and spiritual. That's
6:17
Speaker 1: who we are as a people. Man at our best,
6:19
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about our worst, at our best. And
6:23
Speaker 1: therefore you got Trump, dead up, gangster leading the country
6:26
Speaker 1: towards Civil War two, Biden war criminal, leading the world
6:33
Speaker 1: toward World War three. Now you're gonna choose between Civil
6:35
Speaker 1: War two and World War three. What you're gonna do,
6:39
Speaker 1: That's the history of black folk. For us, Pharaoh has
6:41
Speaker 1: always been on the blows, both sides of the bloody
6:44
Speaker 1: red seas. What you're gonna do, Sing a song, what
6:47
Speaker 1: you're gonna do, Crack a smile, crack a joke, hug
6:50
Speaker 1: organize it, mobilized, and then make a way out of
6:54
Speaker 1: no way. That's the history of black folk. How have
6:57
Speaker 1: we made a way out of no way? I sit
7:00
Speaker 1: here and look at your young brothers. I know what's
7:02
Speaker 1: in you. I know your grandparents. I know what they
7:05
Speaker 1: been through. They made a way out of no way.
7:08
Speaker 1: Look at you sitting there with all this dignity. Couldn't
7:10
Speaker 1: do it by yourself. That's that rich tradition inside of you.
7:14
Speaker 1: That's all we're trying to do. And that's true for
7:17
Speaker 1: my dear sister, going back through Louisiana. We both got
7:20
Speaker 1: Louisiana roots deep Louisiana, even though she come out of
7:23
Speaker 1: East Oakland, so I mean, you know, she got jumped
7:25
Speaker 1: started like East Oakland's like Detroit and Chicago and Mississippi's
7:30
Speaker 1: even deeping them, all of them. We won't get into
7:32
Speaker 1: that right now. South South Carolina, what was it Month's corner? Yes, sir,
7:36
Speaker 1: oh lord.
7:40
Speaker 2: You know you brought up the civil war thing. And
7:42
Speaker 2: this happened to me this Friday's happened on like I
7:44
Speaker 2: think Tuesday ones. I walked downstairs and it was just
7:48
Speaker 2: a white guy had on some khakis and nice shoes
7:51
Speaker 2: and sweater glasses, looked like a Wall Street type. And
7:54
Speaker 2: he was just like, man, you Charlamagne right he goes Man.
7:57
Speaker 2: He said, I want you to tell people that it's
7:59
Speaker 2: gonna be a war regardless of who wins. And I
8:02
Speaker 2: was like, because he didn't even look like the type.
8:04
Speaker 2: He wasn't a wild conspiracy theorist. He is like, you
8:07
Speaker 2: tell people that it don't matter if Biden went to
8:09
Speaker 2: Trump win, there's gonna be a civil war in this country.
8:11
Speaker 2: And I was like, yikes, so what makes you feel
8:13
Speaker 2: that way?
8:14
Speaker 1: Well, we certainly headed that way. That's what civil wars
8:17
Speaker 1: are about. When you get organized greed and institutionalized hatred
8:20
Speaker 1: running amuck, especially at the top, manipulating every day people
8:23
Speaker 1: feeling frustrated, impotent, powerless, and then you escape, go to
8:28
Speaker 1: the most vulnerable rather than confront the most powerful, and
8:31
Speaker 1: what sits at the center of it white's supremacy. Now
8:34
Speaker 1: it's undergirded by capitalism and all the greed that that
8:38
Speaker 1: generates profit and so forth. But does that make sense,
8:41
Speaker 1: my dear sister, It does.
8:43
Speaker 4: Make sense, and it makes sense when we talk about
8:46
Speaker 4: why we have to get involved and why we have
8:48
Speaker 4: to do something different, why we can't just go along
8:51
Speaker 4: to get along. So the question about why we're not
8:54
Speaker 4: just saying, you know, let's let's dust Trump, let's make
8:58
Speaker 4: sure Trump doesn't get in. Of course Trump is the
9:01
Speaker 4: embodiment of evil. Of course Trump is the He's a
9:06
Speaker 4: devil incarnate, absolutely right. But we also have to remember that,
9:12
Speaker 4: you know, my children and all their friends recognize Joe
9:15
Speaker 4: Biden as genocidah Joe.
9:17
Speaker 5: And so we can't just go along to get along.
9:20
Speaker 4: We can't just say, let's take the lesser of two evils.
9:23
Speaker 4: The lesser of two evils is still evil. And so
9:27
Speaker 4: how do we pull ourselves into our highest selves? How
9:31
Speaker 4: do we say, you know, it's always been true that
9:33
Speaker 4: white supremacist patriarchal capitalism will try to get us to
9:38
Speaker 4: celebrate the individual advancement of a few at the expense
9:44
Speaker 4: of the many, And so we refuse to do that
9:46
Speaker 4: we say we all must be free. If we're not
9:50
Speaker 4: all free, nobody's free.
9:51
Speaker 2: I got a question for both of y'all when you
9:53
Speaker 2: talk about this civil war. I don't think the civil
9:55
Speaker 2: war is going to be between Republicans and Democrats. I
9:57
Speaker 2: think it's going to between the haves and the have not.
10:00
Speaker 1: What do you think I think? I think that's that's
10:03
Speaker 1: that's the serious formulation. But it's hard to know exactly
10:06
Speaker 1: what formula because race and white supremacy cuts so deep
10:11
Speaker 1: in the country that even well to do black folk
10:15
Speaker 1: could be viciously attacked by some of the poor wife folk.
10:21
Speaker 1: So that race is gonna be crucial, But the class
10:24
Speaker 1: dimension that you talk about will be crucial too, There's
10:27
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. And we know how ugly the
10:29
Speaker 1: gender question is. But you got what thirty percent now
10:32
Speaker 1: black brothers saying they're gonna vote for gangster Trump. Hey,
10:36
Speaker 1: where's that coming from? Well, that's a complicated situation. That's
10:41
Speaker 1: just at the moment. We don't know what it's gonna
10:42
Speaker 1: be like in November. But once the vicious conflict sets in,
10:47
Speaker 1: we don't know what response would be. We just have
10:50
Speaker 1: to make sure that we have a moral and spiritual witness.
10:55
Speaker 1: We're gonna be a witness. We're gonna bead witness to
10:57
Speaker 1: the best of the traditions of our people that has
11:00
Speaker 1: preserved our dignity and our sanity, regardless of what the
11:04
Speaker 1: circumstances is. Because you got to keep in mind, there's
11:07
Speaker 1: been a war against indigenous peoples for about six hundred years.
11:09
Speaker 1: There's been a war against black folk for four hundred years.
11:13
Speaker 1: We at war right now. So we're just talking about
11:15
Speaker 1: the hot war versus the cold. You go to mass
11:18
Speaker 1: incarceration and the jails and so forth, and on sloop
11:21
Speaker 1: by the Muomea because he got his birthday coming up
11:23
Speaker 1: seven ozer, but he been in a war. So the
11:26
Speaker 1: war's always ongoing. But the question what form it will take?
11:30
Speaker 1: And we have to decide personally and collectively, are we
11:34
Speaker 1: gonna hold on to some sense of morality and spirituality
11:37
Speaker 1: giving all this barbarity?
11:39
Speaker 2: What do you think believe? Who do you think the
11:41
Speaker 2: war will be between?
11:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think you're right on about the halves and
11:45
Speaker 4: the have nots, And it's those who also identify with
11:49
Speaker 4: the haves and the havelf nights, right, So you have
11:51
Speaker 4: plenty of poor people plenty of poor white people, especially
11:56
Speaker 4: who identify with the halves, even though they themselves are
12:00
Speaker 4: the have nuts. And so it's really important that we
12:04
Speaker 4: awaken people to what their real interests are. Right, that
12:07
Speaker 4: we awaken poor people, working class people, regardless of race,
12:12
Speaker 4: to what their interests are.
12:13
Speaker 5: And so as we awaken folks, we.
12:17
Speaker 4: Can lock arms and engage in whatever struggle needs to
12:21
Speaker 4: take place for the liberation of beginning with black people
12:26
Speaker 4: and extending to all oppressed people.
12:29
Speaker 3: How do we get people to get out of the
12:30
Speaker 3: mind frame where I only can vote for Democrat or Republican? Right,
12:35
Speaker 3: I say it all the time. A lot of people
12:37
Speaker 3: are from years and years and years of grandparents voting Democrat,
12:40
Speaker 3: and great grandparents and the parents and then yourselves. How
12:44
Speaker 3: do we get him out to think outside of the box, right,
12:46
Speaker 3: Because automatically, when somebody sees somebody running as an independent,
12:50
Speaker 3: they think, well he is or there's no way that
12:53
Speaker 3: they can possibly win. They're just somebody in there to
12:56
Speaker 3: start trouble and to mess up the Democrats. How do
13:00
Speaker 3: we get people to change that view?
13:02
Speaker 1: Yeah? I think part of it is, you know, Curtis
13:05
Speaker 1: Mayfield got this song no Thing on Me I'm so
13:07
Speaker 1: glad I got my own, so glad that I can
13:09
Speaker 1: see my life is a natural high. The man can't
13:13
Speaker 1: put no thing on me. It depends on what you see.
13:16
Speaker 1: When we see, we have to see a system. You
13:20
Speaker 1: can't just look at two parties. You got to see
13:22
Speaker 1: how both of them are tied to Wall Street, a Pentagon,
13:25
Speaker 1: both of them tied to war, both of them tied
13:27
Speaker 1: to greed, and so you have to have an understanding
13:31
Speaker 1: of how the system operates and then say, ah, I
13:36
Speaker 1: want to be critical of the system. I'm not just
13:38
Speaker 1: critical of Trump's gangsterism. I can see how Trump's gangsterism
13:42
Speaker 1: is inseparable from Biden's genocidal policies, facilitating genocide and Gaza.
13:49
Speaker 1: So you begin to see how the system operates and connects.
13:51
Speaker 1: What's happening with the Palestinians in Gaza, but what's happening
13:54
Speaker 1: in Black Folk and Harlem, what's happened with poul Whites
13:57
Speaker 1: in Kentucky, what's happening with poor Latinos in East And
14:01
Speaker 1: that is a different way of seeing the world. That's
14:03
Speaker 1: why our artists, at their height, none needed Simons and others.
14:07
Speaker 1: They help us to see things. We didn't see. Then
14:10
Speaker 1: the question becomes how do you implement? How do you execute?
14:13
Speaker 1: Usually when you see and you raise your voice, you
14:17
Speaker 1: get incarcerated or assassinated. That's what the system does to
14:21
Speaker 1: free black people. So you have to be willing to
14:23
Speaker 1: pay that cost. And that's exactly what the cost we're
14:26
Speaker 1: willing to pay. How come because we love the people
14:29
Speaker 1: and the only thing that breaks the back of fear
14:33
Speaker 1: is love. And if you don't love the people, then
14:35
Speaker 1: get out of the way and go on and sell out,
14:38
Speaker 1: going and sell your soul for mesapology and tell people lies,
14:41
Speaker 1: tell them how great Biden is. Tell them Biden has
14:44
Speaker 1: always been concerned with portfolio. He's an architect of mass incarceration.
14:48
Speaker 1: That's a crime against humanity. I've taught in prisons for
14:51
Speaker 1: forty one years. I've seen it go from two hundred
14:54
Speaker 1: thousand to two point three million right before my very eyes.
14:57
Speaker 1: That's a crime against humanity. That's my brothers and sisters
14:59
Speaker 1: in there. Don't lie, don't don't want to be lying
15:02
Speaker 1: on Biden in that sense. So is that kind of
15:04
Speaker 1: truth telling that we need, and that's kind of and
15:07
Speaker 1: is rooted in love.
15:08
Speaker 2: Why do they act like you know as a black
15:10
Speaker 2: person you can't speak that kind of truth but still
15:14
Speaker 2: know what's in your best interest to do come November.
15:17
Speaker 2: Why do they act like why do they act like
15:19
Speaker 2: those two things can't happen at the same time, Belina, I.
15:24
Speaker 5: Think that there.
15:25
Speaker 4: You know, when we talk about this duopoly of Democrats
15:28
Speaker 4: and Republicans, they want to lock us into these very
15:31
Speaker 4: narrow choices. Black people are the most critical people, the
15:36
Speaker 4: most discerning people, the most creative people on this planet, right,
15:40
Speaker 4: and they want to block us from that creativity because
15:43
Speaker 4: that kind of creativity gives birth to new ideas but
15:46
Speaker 4: also new worlds, Right.
15:48
Speaker 5: So I want to.
15:50
Speaker 4: Lock in and be clear about what this campaign is about.
15:53
Speaker 4: That we're advancing alternative visions. As Harriet Tubman abolitionists, we
16:00
Speaker 4: absolutely want to topple systems of harm.
16:02
Speaker 5: We want to topple.
16:04
Speaker 4: Systems of prisons that descend from plantations and policing that
16:08
Speaker 4: descend from slave catchers. And as Harriet Tubman abolitionists, we
16:14
Speaker 4: also know that as we tear down systems of harm,
16:18
Speaker 4: we want to build new systems of care that we
16:22
Speaker 4: can have if we make different choices. Imagine what would
16:26
Speaker 4: happen if we had the one hundred and something billion
16:29
Speaker 4: dollars that Joe Biden just sent to fuel genocide and gaza.
16:35
Speaker 5: What if we had that for housing.
16:37
Speaker 4: What if we had those resources that are poured into
16:40
Speaker 4: police in major cities. It's about half of the unrestricted
16:44
Speaker 4: funds that go to policing, even though police don't make
16:47
Speaker 4: us more safe. What if we had those dollars instead
16:51
Speaker 4: for healthcare? What if we had those dollars instead or education?
16:55
Speaker 4: These are simple and easy choices, and so that doopoly
16:59
Speaker 4: that's owned by corporations wants to lock us out so
17:04
Speaker 4: that they can keep the vision and the possibilities narrow.
17:08
Speaker 5: We're saying no more of that.
17:10
Speaker 4: Our possibilities are expansive and beautiful and creative, and we
17:15
Speaker 4: have to shake off this world that really sucks the
17:18
Speaker 4: life out of our people and puts targets on the
17:21
Speaker 4: backs of our children.
17:22
Speaker 2: You know, Molina, you founded, you were the co founder
17:25
Speaker 2: of the LA chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement,
17:28
Speaker 2: and in twenty twenty two you got police took you
17:31
Speaker 2: out of a Marrow debate. Well, I'm not gonna say
17:33
Speaker 2: took you out, that'd be kindie. They dragged you out.
17:35
Speaker 2: You know what, was the reasoning behind that.
17:39
Speaker 4: They carried me out by all fours, so that means
17:43
Speaker 4: on each limb I had a different cop pulling me
17:47
Speaker 4: from each limb on the last day Ramadan with my
17:50
Speaker 4: legs sprawled open. It was not only brutal, it was humiliating.
17:55
Speaker 4: It was dehumanizing. There is no just defiable reason for
18:01
Speaker 4: them doing that. I don't know the reason that they
18:06
Speaker 4: did that. I can surmise that they thought I was
18:10
Speaker 4: there to do something that I wasn't there to do.
18:13
Speaker 4: I was simply there to watch a mayoral debate. By training,
18:17
Speaker 4: I'm at my PhDs in political science, and we had
18:20
Speaker 4: the first viable black woman for mayor who's now our mayor,
18:24
Speaker 4: Karen Bass. My research is on black women's leadership, so
18:29
Speaker 4: of course I wanted to be on my own campus.
18:33
Speaker 4: I wanted to be on my own campus watching that debate,
18:36
Speaker 4: and so I think that that's absolutely despicable. Still haven't
18:41
Speaker 4: gotten a real apology or any remedy from the school.
18:44
Speaker 4: The school still continues to harass me, sending police into
18:48
Speaker 4: my office, searching my office and telling me they'll be
18:51
Speaker 4: back for me.
18:52
Speaker 5: And this is the reason why.
18:53
Speaker 4: We want to advance policies like removing police from our campuses.
18:57
Speaker 4: Our campuses don't have enough care councilors, they don't have
19:01
Speaker 4: enough scholars, they don't have enough staff to clean up,
19:05
Speaker 4: but we have police that were spending millions and millions
19:08
Speaker 4: of dollars on.
19:09
Speaker 2: I'm sorry you had to go through all of that
19:12
Speaker 2: is the true that you sued BLM.
19:16
Speaker 4: I sued, and I should be very clear. Black Lives
19:20
Speaker 4: Matter grass Roots, which is the side of Black Lives
19:24
Speaker 4: Matter that I represent where the boots on the ground.
19:27
Speaker 4: We're thirty three chapters around the country. Black Lives Matter
19:31
Speaker 4: grass Roots is the real BLM. When you think of
19:34
Speaker 4: Black Lives Matter being in the streets, organizing alongside families, that's.
19:38
Speaker 5: Who we are. In twenty twenty two.
19:42
Speaker 4: Our resources and platforms were stolen by a group of
19:46
Speaker 4: highly paid consultants, and we know we have a right
19:50
Speaker 4: to those things back, and so we sued them after
19:54
Speaker 4: trying to convince them to do the right thing, and
19:57
Speaker 4: that wasn't going to happen. They refused to listen to
20:00
Speaker 4: the voices of the people. We did file a lawsuit
20:03
Speaker 4: in September of twenty twenty two.
20:06
Speaker 1: Okay, well, let me just add this though. You see
20:08
Speaker 1: when they attacked our dear sistant, and they do it
20:11
Speaker 1: over and over again, And that's true for so many
20:13
Speaker 1: of us go to jail and so on. That we're threats,
20:17
Speaker 1: you see, that's a compliment. That means that we're true
20:20
Speaker 1: to our calling. And you can have a calling as
20:23
Speaker 1: a secular person. You can have a calling as a
20:26
Speaker 1: religious person. You see, I'm a Jesus loving free black
20:30
Speaker 1: man who wants to be true to the call. So
20:33
Speaker 1: if I'm not constituting a threat, then how am I
20:36
Speaker 1: following with Jesus who went into the temple and ran
20:38
Speaker 1: out the money changes they put him on the cross. No,
20:40
Speaker 1: my dear sister's Muslim. She's a law loving free black woman,
20:46
Speaker 1: mercy justice Koran, and you constitute a threat. So when
20:51
Speaker 1: she's willing to pay that kind of cost, that's the
20:54
Speaker 1: sign of courage, integrity, and it's connected to a calling.
20:58
Speaker 1: You got to have some call. If all you got
21:01
Speaker 1: is your career, then you on somebody's plantation and any
21:05
Speaker 1: any carriage that they dangle in front of you, you're
21:07
Speaker 1: gonna opt for. But when you have a calling and
21:10
Speaker 1: a professor, distinguished scholar and so forth, that that my
21:13
Speaker 1: dear sister. Is she's true to something bigger than her
21:17
Speaker 1: in her career. What is it? Well, it's the people,
21:19
Speaker 1: but it's also her God. Now, people get upset sometimes
21:22
Speaker 1: we talk about God in politics. I said, no, we're
21:25
Speaker 1: not saying anybody got to follow us, but we got
21:28
Speaker 1: to be true to where were coming from. We got
21:31
Speaker 1: to be true to what teaches us. Going preserves our
21:33
Speaker 1: sanity and our dignity, and it's just not God. We
21:36
Speaker 1: talk about Curtis Mayfield. You talking about Curtis may Film,
21:39
Speaker 1: John Coltrane all the time. I'm talking about folk who
21:42
Speaker 1: keep me sane now, and I'm and therefore that I
21:48
Speaker 1: won't be stopped from that. But I won't allow others
21:51
Speaker 1: to feel as if I'm imposing God on them, or
21:54
Speaker 1: Christianity on them, or Islam on them, or Buddhism. With
21:57
Speaker 1: bell hooks and others were being candid about what's inside
22:01
Speaker 1: of us, and we're being open in terms of people
22:04
Speaker 1: being canned, what's inside of him?
22:06
Speaker 3: What policies would you implement that you feel that biding
22:10
Speaker 3: is not doing for black people?
22:12
Speaker 1: Biden, Trump and Trump, Well, first things, reparations. Second thing
22:16
Speaker 1: is abolition of poverty. Abolition of on housements, supporting militant
22:22
Speaker 1: wing of the trade union movement that's fighting for wages
22:25
Speaker 1: for workers across the board. And what my dear sister
22:28
Speaker 1: was talking about disinvestment for military eight hundred military units
22:32
Speaker 1: around the world, special operations in one hundred and thirty countries.
22:35
Speaker 1: That's an empire. We're anti im peerless. America don't need
22:39
Speaker 1: to be an empire. We got to be a nation
22:41
Speaker 1: among other nations. We don't need to dominate every nook
22:46
Speaker 1: and cranny of the world. So all of those resources,
22:49
Speaker 1: the traders of dollars going into military, sixty two cent
22:52
Speaker 1: for every one dollar in the discretion and every budget
22:54
Speaker 1: that's going to housing, we can stop this gentrification taking places,
22:58
Speaker 1: power grab and land grab, which you're out poor and
23:00
Speaker 1: working people, pushing up the prices, the greed of Wall Street,
23:04
Speaker 1: degree of corporations and oligopolies and monopolies, and dealing with
23:09
Speaker 1: the ecological crisis with the fossil fuel companies. So that
23:12
Speaker 1: that is a way of going back to Kurz Mayfield.
23:16
Speaker 1: What we see the lens through which you view the world,
23:19
Speaker 1: and we view the world through the lens of those
23:22
Speaker 1: friends were known call the wretched of the earth. I
23:24
Speaker 1: don't view the world through stock market. I don't view
23:27
Speaker 1: the world through how many black faces are in high
23:29
Speaker 1: places when their cousins getting crushed. It's a different way
23:33
Speaker 1: of engaging politics. It's what my brother calls a paradigm shift.
23:37
Speaker 1: We are not politicians. She been running for justice all
23:41
Speaker 1: of her adult life. I've been running for justice all
23:43
Speaker 1: of my adult life. We need people to get in
23:45
Speaker 1: politics who already been running for justice, running for truth
23:49
Speaker 1: and into politics. Don't into politics and think all of
23:51
Speaker 1: a sudden you're gonna be a truth teller. That ain't
23:53
Speaker 1: gonna happen.
23:54
Speaker 2: Are y'all getting Are you getting black belt doctor Corne West?
23:57
Speaker 2: From media? From the MSNBC's seeing and are they having
24:02
Speaker 2: you on?
24:03
Speaker 1: Well, I've never been, you know, on MSNBC that much
24:06
Speaker 1: because they retired to Obama and we got a history
24:08
Speaker 1: that But seeing n it's been kind. We were on
24:11
Speaker 1: h just the abbey last night.
24:13
Speaker 2: Right, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Biden Trump, uh, you
24:20
Speaker 2: know the the rematches is coming in November. What do
24:24
Speaker 2: you think the Democrats have done? Well, we know, we
24:27
Speaker 2: know who the Republicans are, But what do you think
24:29
Speaker 2: the Democrats have done well.
24:30
Speaker 1: If anything, the one thing they did was cut child
24:35
Speaker 1: poverty in half, okay, because we put a lot of
24:37
Speaker 1: pressure on and what happened, It expired and it's doubled again,
24:43
Speaker 1: you see. So they did something well for a little
24:46
Speaker 1: bit and then fell back, and of course we got
24:49
Speaker 1: a long thing at what they're not doing well. But
24:51
Speaker 1: my dear sister, you jump right there, right.
24:53
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that there are individual Democrats who
24:57
Speaker 4: are doing really beautiful things, who are stepping forward and
25:01
Speaker 4: courage So Corey Bush is an inspiration to me.
25:05
Speaker 5: Jamaal Bawman is doing phenomenal work.
25:09
Speaker 4: Ayana Presley is carrying a bill for US right now
25:12
Speaker 4: called the Ending Qualified Immunity Act. And so I think
25:16
Speaker 4: that there are some courageous Democrats. Unfortunately they are too
25:20
Speaker 4: few and far between. So overall is a political party.
25:24
Speaker 4: They are cowering to corporate interests. They are abiding by
25:30
Speaker 4: what corporations want, what the few want, as you put it,
25:33
Speaker 4: what the haves.
25:34
Speaker 5: Want, rather than representing what the working class people want.
25:38
Speaker 4: They're not supporting people like one of the people I'm
25:41
Speaker 4: most inspired by is down the street from you, Chris Malls,
25:45
Speaker 4: and the Amazon Labors.
25:48
Speaker 5: Yeah, Chris is my.
25:49
Speaker 4: Folks, and you know that's the kind of labor union
25:52
Speaker 4: we want. And we're not seeing the kind of support
25:55
Speaker 4: for real labor, for radical labor unions like we need,
25:59
Speaker 4: like we should be expecting from the Democratic Party, although
26:03
Speaker 4: there are some individual courageous Democrats.
26:06
Speaker 2: What do you think about the student loan forgiveness?
26:09
Speaker 1: Oh shoot, that should have been in place a long
26:11
Speaker 1: time ago, Oh my god, across the board. And not
26:13
Speaker 1: only that, but well to have free education, free healthcare,
26:17
Speaker 1: and we ought to have a right to housing. It
26:19
Speaker 1: was just a reclaimed movement there on the East Side
26:21
Speaker 1: Cafe in Los Angeles, and he got all these homes
26:24
Speaker 1: empty and got hundreds and hundreds of folk nowhere to go.
26:28
Speaker 1: And of course we know Pastor Q in skid Row
26:31
Speaker 1: right the church with our wall Q.
26:35
Speaker 4: We know Los Angeles Community Action Network again, our policies,
26:40
Speaker 4: and if you look at our platform at Cornell West
26:43
Speaker 4: twenty twenty four, I was before I was invited onto
26:48
Speaker 4: this ticket. I was inspired by the platform. I was
26:51
Speaker 4: inspired by doctor West. I was inspired by a visionary
26:55
Speaker 4: plan to build what we can have when we make
26:58
Speaker 4: different choices, when we were used to again fuel genocide
27:02
Speaker 4: at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.
27:06
Speaker 5: Right, we can't have housing for all.
27:08
Speaker 4: When you ask about student debt, you know there is
27:10
Speaker 4: a cancelation of a limited amount of student debt, but
27:14
Speaker 4: there shouldn't be student debt in the first place because
27:17
Speaker 4: education should be free from birth through doctorate. Education should
27:22
Speaker 4: be free. And so these are the kinds of choices
27:25
Speaker 4: that we make. We know that budgets are some of
27:28
Speaker 4: the most serious moral and ethical documents, and they are
27:32
Speaker 4: zero sum games. So if you're spending on a military
27:36
Speaker 4: industrial complex, you're not housing your folks. And we want
27:40
Speaker 4: to make the choice to house our folks, to feed
27:42
Speaker 4: our folks, to provide quality healthcare for all. Those are
27:46
Speaker 4: the things that you'll get, and those are the things
27:49
Speaker 4: that we're proposing to the world to make different choices
27:54
Speaker 4: with this campaign.
27:56
Speaker 2: How would you handle the di situation if you're president,
27:58
Speaker 2: doctor Corneway.
27:59
Speaker 1: We never use the language THEI. What is diversity? No,
28:04
Speaker 1: we're talking about truth and justice. We got a visious
28:07
Speaker 1: legacy white supremaceriesclude black folk for over one hundred some years.
28:11
Speaker 1: And then you're gonna say, well, we got a diversity
28:13
Speaker 1: program for y'all. Now, no, we want truth, we want justice.
28:16
Speaker 1: It's reparations. And therefore the language was wrong. The language
28:21
Speaker 1: was a deodorized, sanitized language that concealed the funk. But
28:25
Speaker 1: we come out of a funk master oriented people. We
28:29
Speaker 1: want to get beneath this deodorized language. We want to
28:34
Speaker 1: ensure that black folk gang accests to whatever opportunities they
28:39
Speaker 1: can give them the fact they've been excluded. So diversity
28:42
Speaker 1: and equity and inclusion became this strategy for those who
28:48
Speaker 1: had power and resources to think that somehow we were
28:52
Speaker 1: getting something that we hardly deserved. So already he got
28:55
Speaker 1: the wrong lens which your viewing things. But we had to.
28:59
Speaker 1: We had to go with it because you fighting. My
29:02
Speaker 1: sister says that you put it so well, uh, yesterday, right.
29:05
Speaker 1: You fight for the crumbs, fight for the crumbs, but
29:09
Speaker 1: you know they're still crumbs, and you know that in
29:13
Speaker 1: the end, we've got to make sure that those who
29:17
Speaker 1: benefit are not just the black middle class, the black bourgeoise.
29:21
Speaker 1: We support them in becoming inclusive. Usually when they get
29:25
Speaker 1: in there, they sell out, but not always, not always,
29:28
Speaker 1: but usually they do. You know, that's a human thing.
29:31
Speaker 1: Black folk an't don't them on doing that. But we
29:33
Speaker 1: got to always view the litmus tests. And here I
29:35
Speaker 1: get Biblical twenty fifth chapter, Matthew, what you doing to
29:38
Speaker 1: the least of these? You do unto me? The prisoners,
29:40
Speaker 1: the poor, the widow, the orphan, the fatherless, the motherless.
29:46
Speaker 1: What's happening with pressous, Jamal and Leticia on the block?
29:50
Speaker 1: That's the litmus test. No matter how much success we are,
29:53
Speaker 1: and it's a beautiful thing, if we lose sight of them,
29:57
Speaker 1: we have already violated are calling. And of course part
30:02
Speaker 1: of it is all of us, just generations back sometimes
30:06
Speaker 1: a few years back, we were right there. That's that's
30:10
Speaker 1: who we are, you see. And so for me, the
30:14
Speaker 1: DEI issue is one of which it never it never
30:16
Speaker 1: should have been dee I should have been truth, justice.
30:19
Speaker 1: But now DEI you support it, and you know it's
30:21
Speaker 1: a vicious attack on black folk. You see it at Harvard.
30:25
Speaker 1: It's a sad thing. Sister Claudine becomes a poster child
30:28
Speaker 1: for anti Semitism. I ain't got an anti Semitic bone
30:32
Speaker 1: and a Haitian body. That's sick. That's ridiculous.
30:38
Speaker 4: And I'm just add you know it was already said brilliantly.
30:42
Speaker 4: But I've been thinking also about it overnight. The eye
30:47
Speaker 4: the inclusion part.
30:49
Speaker 5: I actually don't want.
30:50
Speaker 4: To be included in a fundamentally oppressive system, right, So
30:54
Speaker 4: the inclusion, the I is reminding us that they're not
30:59
Speaker 4: willing to transform an oppressive system into a liberatory one.
31:04
Speaker 4: They're only willing to say a few of y'all can
31:07
Speaker 4: come in the door.
31:08
Speaker 5: And what we want.
31:10
Speaker 4: Is the transformation of these systems so that we can
31:14
Speaker 4: all use them for our liberation and freedom.
31:17
Speaker 2: Right.
31:17
Speaker 4: We do want quality education, We do want accessible education.
31:21
Speaker 4: We do want liberatory models of education, where ethnic studies,
31:26
Speaker 4: where Pan African studies, which is what I teach, is
31:29
Speaker 4: part it's foundational because it's as important for you to
31:34
Speaker 4: take a class for me as it is to take
31:37
Speaker 4: a math class. I don't know a bit of algebra, right,
31:40
Speaker 4: I don't know a bit of algebra anymore. But I
31:45
Speaker 4: do not need to know my history, my background, my
31:49
Speaker 4: power house systems work, And so we want liberatory models
31:53
Speaker 4: of education, not just an inclusion into a system that's
31:58
Speaker 4: fundamentally oppressive.
32:00
Speaker 2: Doctor Cornyerweather, did you see Avion Crockett's impression to you
32:03
Speaker 2: in the movie at Hip hop story. No, Yeah, he
32:06
Speaker 2: did his thing.
32:07
Speaker 1: Is that right?
32:08
Speaker 2: You gotta check it out.
32:08
Speaker 1: I got to check that you mentioned that stuff.
32:12
Speaker 4: You know.
32:13
Speaker 2: I mean, it wasn't a disrespectful impersonation at all.
32:16
Speaker 1: He had his fro and everything everything. He's probably so
32:19
Speaker 1: much more handsome than I am. But that's all right,
32:21
Speaker 1: that's all right. I work with it. I work with
32:23
Speaker 1: how can.
32:23
Speaker 3: People donate and make sure they support and follow the cause?
32:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is what their sister said. It's corner West
32:29
Speaker 1: two o two for dot Com, Corner West two o
32:31
Speaker 1: two for dot Com. We are turning the corner. And
32:34
Speaker 1: the fact that Malina Abdul said yes takes us to
32:41
Speaker 1: a different level because we got new vision, new intellect,
32:46
Speaker 1: new energy, new courage coming together. And when brother Tabis
32:51
Speaker 1: Smiley formulated that, and we always wanted to start with tablets,
32:54
Speaker 1: we'd like to support black folk in media and so forth,
32:56
Speaker 1: we with Tim Black and so on that when he
32:59
Speaker 1: said historic ticket of two black folk, and you say, well,
33:05
Speaker 1: it's not just two black folks, it's too visionary, courageous
33:10
Speaker 1: people loving black folk. You see, to mean, Tammy Trell
33:15
Speaker 1: is very and Marvin Gay is very different than just
33:18
Speaker 1: any duet. That's what Barry Gordy understood. So yes, it's
33:23
Speaker 1: about skin pigmentation. But the deeper level is it's people
33:27
Speaker 1: who love the people, sacrifice, serve the people. Know you
33:32
Speaker 1: could be wrong, listen to the people reveling the people's
33:36
Speaker 1: humanity and creativity and music and culture, but then love
33:40
Speaker 1: them enough to correct them, respect them, protect them, correct them,
33:46
Speaker 1: and be corrected to. That's right, and that's what we
33:49
Speaker 1: have with this twosome and we on the move, as
33:54
Speaker 1: Mumi mal would say, on the move.
33:57
Speaker 3: All right, well, we appreciate you guys for joining us.
34:00
Speaker 2: And that's all they tell you about the Cornell West.
34:01
Speaker 2: Don't be a stranger, bro.
34:02
Speaker 3: That's right.
34:02
Speaker 1: Were you so kind you said that.
34:06
Speaker 2: I would?
34:07
Speaker 3: It's right, doctor Cornell West.
34:10
Speaker 2: Molina Abdullah, thank.
34:11
Speaker 3: You for joining us. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.
34:14
Speaker 1: Wake that ass up in the morning.
34:16
Speaker 2: Breakfast Club.