Image of the Day

under death threat every day from your own government. You know
governments can be vicious – and that’s the history of black people in
America. So then the anarchists say ‘we want democratic accountability,
not just of the corporations (which, coming out of the socialist tradition, I
accept) but we want to make sure that the government doesn’t have a
concentration of power, especially instrumentalities of violence which can
be brought to bear on dissidents, who are then criminalized and
assassinated.’ And that’s very important. Yet at the same time, as a radical
democrat or a deep democrat, in the end I’m not an anarchist but
anarchism has some deep truths that one has to take into consideration.
PG: Cornel, you campaigned for Obama in 2008 but unlike many
other critical supporters of the President, your critique of his policies
eventually eclipsed your support as his first term unfolded. And as a
result you’ve found yourself in confrontation with former comrades –
but still brother – like Michael Eric Dyson, Al Sharpton and others,
who remain allied to the Obama regime while purporting to be critical
of it from within.
CW: You don’t see too much criticism coming from either one of
them though! (laughs). I think they’ve sold their soul for a mess of Obama
pottage!
PG: Right, and it’s obvious that these confrontations have led
many in the mainstream American press to denounce you, but even
then your popularity among poor and working people in America and
across the world continues to grow. How do you account for that?
CW: Well, one important thing to keep in mind is that in the 65
events that I did, at each stop I would tell them that we must bring
Reaganism to a close – McCain and Palin were the last moments of
Reaganite policy (unregulated markets, indifference towards the poor,
stagnating wages) – and that if Obama won, I would break dance in the
afternoon and be his major critic the next morning. That’s how I ended
every speech. And so I broke dance in the afternoon [when Obama won in
2008] because we did stop McCain and Palin. But the next morning I
knew the social forces behind him (Wall Street and so forth) needed to be
called into question. So when I went after Larry Summers, went after Tim