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" There is no fundamental social change by being simply of individual and interpersonal actions. You have to have organizations and institutions that make a fundamental difference. "

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" Poor people and working people have not been the focus of the Obama administration. That for me is not just a disappointment but a kind of betrayal. "

Cornel West

Kind

People

Disappointment

" Barack Obama commits war crimes - Somalia, Yemen. He commits war crimes in Pakistan, Afghanistan. Martin Luther King Jr. tried to keep a spotlight on war crimes, to keep track of the innocents killed... There is a major clash. "

" Neofascism in the United States takes the form of big money, big banks, big corporations, tied to xenophobic scapegoating of the vulnerable, like Mexicans and Muslims and women and black folk, and militaristic policies abroad, with strongman, charismatic, autocratic personality, and that's what Donald Trump is. "

Cornel West

Women

Black

" We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people. "

" Part of the popularity with Louis Farrakhan has less to do with the content of his message and more to do with the form that he portrays himself - as being a free black person who speaks what is on his mind with boldness and fearlessness. Who is willing to pay the consequences. "

" King's response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a reevaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens. "

" Clever gimmicks of mass distraction yield a cheap soulcraft of addicted and self-medicated narcissists. "

" Anytime I look at a president, I don't care what color he is. "

" We want to bear witness today that we know the relation between corporate greed and what goes on too often in the Supreme Court decisions. "

" I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft. "

" When you teach black people that they are less beautiful, less moral, less intelligent, and as a result you defer to the white supremacist status quo, you rationalize your accommodation to the status quo, you lose your fire, you become much more tied to producing foliage, what appears to be the case. "

" I'm against genocide. I'm against fascism. I'm willing to fight against them so that, in that sense, I think one can still be committed to justice and committed to peace but recognize the circumstances under which one does have to fight. "

" I am excited to have a black president because white supremacy is real and it needs to be shattered. "

" Now, myself, I'm not a pacifist at all. I believe in just war. I would have joined the spirit of the nation to fight against apartheid. "

" And when I talk about love, I'm talking about something that's great, though, brother. I'm talking about something that will sustain you. "

" Black people have been working hard for decades. "

" If you view life as a gold rush, you're going to end up worshiping a golden calf. And when you call for help, and that golden calf can't respond, you go under. "

" I tend to be one who just speaks from my soul, and so what comes out sometimes is rather harsh. In that sense, I'm very much a part of the tradition of a Frederick Douglass or a Malcolm X who used hyperbolic language at times to bring attention to the state of emergency. "

" Love and trust and justice, concern for the poor, that's being pushed to the margins, and you can see it. "

" There is always a very delicate interplay between individual actions and institutional conditions. But there is no such thing as institutional conditions without any individual actions and no such thing as individual action without institutional conditions. So there is always personal responsibility. "

" When you socially neglect a people, when you economically abandon a people, when you transfer wealth from them to the well-to-do, what are a people going to do? They're going to respond with very sad forms of despair, and that's true for everybody - I don't care what color you are. "

" I'm not saying that President Obama should be exempt from criticism, nor do I believe it is some act of racial treason for a black person to hold our president accountable for his actions. "

" If they think they have issues with the president not doing enough for the poor now, wait and see what happens if the opposition takes office. Then they would really need a poverty tour. "

" Racism is a moral catastrophe, most graphically seen in the prison industrial complex and targeted police surveillance in black and brown ghettos rendered invisible in public discourse. "

" The problem is we need much more moral content. "

Cornel West

Need

Problem

" You've got to be a thermostat rather than a thermometer. A thermostat shapes the climate of opinion; a thermometer just reflects it. "

" I always felt called to serve, to empower and ennoble as many people as I could, teaching, truth-telling, exposing lies, bearing witness, and being willing to live and die for something bigger than yourself. I had a passion and love of learning and wisdom that was inseparable from a love of music and the arts. "

" We had a much deeper sense of community in '67 than we do in '97. This is important to say that not in a nostalgic way because it's not as if '67 was a time when things were so good. "

" I'm an old Coltrane disciple just like I'm a Christian. "

Cornel West

Just

Old

" Hey, you got something going here. I think we've got a chance for some progressive policy that actually focuses on poor and working people. "