What of America? "We elected a black president and that means we are less racist now than we used to be. That's beautiful. But when you look at the prison industrial complex and the new Jim Crow: levels of massive unemployment and the decrepit unemployment system, indecent housing: white supremacy is still operating in the US, even with a brilliant black face in a high place called the White House. He is a brilliant, charismatic black brother. He's just too tied to Wall Street. And at this point he is a war criminal. You can't meet every Tuesday with a killer list and continually have drones drop bombs. You can do that once or twice and say: 'I shouldn't have done that, I've got to stop.' But when you do it month in, month out, year in, year out – that's a pattern of behaviour. I think there is a chance of a snowball in hell that he will ever be tried, but I think he should be tried and I said the same about George Bush. These are war crimes. We suffer in this age from an indifference toward criminality and a callousness to catastrophe when it comes to poor and working people."

Can you not cut the president some slack, I ask? Think of what he faced. What did you expect? "I worked to get him elected," he says, almost indignant. "And I would do it again because the alternative was so much worse. But at the same time, I have to be able to tell the truth. I thought he was going to be a dyed-in-the-wool liberal rather than a weak centrist. I thought he would actually move towards healthcare with a public option. I thought he was going to try to bail out homeowners as he bailed out banks. I thought he would try to hit the issue of poverty head-on."

He and Obama, the first-time candidate, talked. And then West attended 65 events drumming up support. "He talked about Martin Luther King over and over again as he ran. King died fighting not just against poverty but against carpet-bombing in Vietnam; the war crimes under Nixon and Kissinger. You can't just invoke Martin Luther King like that and not follow through on his priorities in some way. I knew he would have rightwing opposition, but he hasn't tried. When he came in, he brought in Wall Street-friendly people – Tim Geithner, Larry Summers – and made it clear he had no intention of bailing out homeowners, supporting trade unions. And he hasn't said a mumbling word about the institutions that have destroyed two generations of young black and brown youth, the new Jim Crow, the prison industrial complex. It's not about race. It is about commitment to justice. He should be able to say that in the last few years, with the shift from 300,000 inmates to 2.5 million today, there have been unjust polices and I intend to do all I can. Maybe he couldn't do that much. But at least tell the truth. I would rather have a white president fundamentally dedicated to eradicating poverty and enhancing the plight of working people than a black president tied to Wall Street and drones."

Unsurprisingly, he and team Obama no longer speak. "They say I'm un-American."

....

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/may/13/cornel-west-they-say-i-am-unamerican

Like Hillary Clinton.

The heavyweight Democrat has a robust campaign machine — with political recognition, financial access, and unrivaled experience, her role in the presidential race is a solid one. She’s qualified, determined, brilliant, and pragmatic…and she’s keeping her eye on the Black base. With many high profile grassroots pro-Black activists publicly questioning her commitment to Black Liberation, she knows she’ll need Black foot soldiers with more reach and validity firmly in her corner.

Dyson is a good fit. He has the connections and platform without the threat. Cornel West is a threat. A few choice words about Clinton’s ties to mass incarceration and the Black base starts to look for other political options.

To me, Dyson’s article was a strategic maneuver — a preemptive setup that’s weak-kneed at best, and betrayal at worst. Dyson positioned himself as a respectable Black savior attuned to the revolutionary vibe, but deeply invested in capitalist/political infrastructure. Cornel West is his arch-villain, a fallen angel suffocating in the clutches of a demented satanic-like possession, while Dyson is a deliverer of reasonable truth and justice, even when, with closer inspection, his words ring shallow.

http://blackmillennials.com/2015/04/21/about-that-dyson-article/

...

There will be a moment of reckoning when President Obama leaves office. White feminists will become the new media darlings in preparation for Hillary Clinton’s presidential run, and Obama will no longer be the site of exploration where many black people grapple with what real black political power looks like situated within a white supremacist structure. During that moment, identity politics and neoliberal agendas won't be able to masquerade as collective advancement, and we will climb out of this rabbit hole where progressive blackness seems to be defined by proximity to the African-American man in the White House.

And when that day comes, I’d be willing to place a bet that Cornel West will still be standing in his truth: scholar, activist and lover of black people, even when too many of us didn’t love him back.

Kirsten West Savali is a cultural critic and senior writer for The Root and was awarded a 2015 Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship. Her provocative commentary explores the intersections of race, social justice, religion, feminism, politics and pop culture.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/04/michael_eric_dyson_s_cornel_west_essay_was_a_hit_piece_wrapped_in_scholarly.2.html

Hillary Clinton Loses Voters to Bernie Sanders Over Her Pro-GMO Stance

Christopher Delamo
August 17, 2015
Food, Health, Politics

...

“I was surprised, because these women were really pushing for Hillary until they found out about the Monsanto connections, and they dropped her like a hot potato”, says James Berge, the Chairman of the Democratic Party in Worth County, Iowa.



Furthermore, not only are scores of Democrat voters fleeing Mrs. Clinton, but they’re running to the Bernie Sanders camp instead.

This shouldn’t be surprising given the fact that Bernie, as a Senator in Vermont, was one of the first major politicians to push for a GMO labeling bill. Unsurprisingly, Vermont was also the first state in the country to push for it.



Hillary Clinton has publicly defended GMOs, saying, “‘Genetically modified’ sound frankenstienish. ‘Drought resistant’ sounds really like something you’d want. There’s a big gap between the facts and what the perceptions are.”

Maybe if Hillary, or her focus group polling experts, had been more in tune with the growing March Against Monsanto movement, they would have advised her to take a more skeptical stance on GMOs.



http://www.iquestioneverything.net/2157/hillary-clinton-loses-voters-to-bernie-sanders-over-her-pro-gmo-stance/

...

Sanders, who is seeking the Democratic presidential nomination, is offering an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require that lawmakers offset spending in the Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) fund by raising new revenues.

Congress isn't currently required to pay for any spending through OCO. The war fund also isn't subjected to the congressionally mandated budget caps under the sequester.

Sanders has long criticized Congress for not paying for wars, and a fact sheet from his office says that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars "were put on the nation's credit card while the president cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires at the same time."

...

Critics argue that the fund, meant to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and now financing operations against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has turned into a slush fund for the Pentagon.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/senate/244587-sanders-wants-to-pay-for-war-fund

Bernie Sanders bulks up his digital operation

By Daniel Strauss

....

The campaign has hired Zack Exley and two other operatives to join its digital team, Sanders aides confirmed Tuesday.

Exley is the former chief revenue officer of the Wikimedia Foundation and previously served as MoveOn.org’s organizing director during the peak of its anti-Iraq war advocacy efforts. He was also an adviser for former Vermont governor Howard Dean’s presidential campaign. Exley will be a senior adviser on the digital team.

“He’ll be working on converting the enthusiasm we’ve seen around the senator’s message into real votes by organizing with grassroots volunteers around the country,” Sanders digital director Kenneth Pennington said in an email.

Two other operatives have joined the Sanders digital team, the campaign told POLITICO. Claire Sandberg, who formerly ran a digital campaign against fracking in New York, is the digital organizing director. She will be “working with Zack to secure votes and mobilize volunteers” Pennington said. Pinky Weitzman, formerly of the American Civil Liberties Union, is joining the campaign as the Iowa digital director.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/bernie-sanders-2016-increases-digital-operation-121488.html