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From Jacobin and I agree with this whole article

DANIEL DENVIR

Well, what are some possible answers to those questions? Like, where do we look for hope? Because I’m particularly thinking about my younger comrades out there. A whole generation of young people were radicalized by Bernie. And they got very hopeful, very fast, about making big changes that theretofore seemed totally impossible, but they are now confronted with this deeply bleak picture. Do we assemble hope by pointing to things like Arizona turning left, young people in general turning left? Or is hope something more ephemeral, that we have to cultivate for the long haul? A sort of faith, secular or otherwise.

CORNEL WEST

Mm-hmm. Well, one thing is, I mean, I go back to my own traditions of black folk. Our anthem tries to lift every voice. And you have to lift every voice in the face of all the hatred that comes at you. You’re dishing out the love voice, from John Coltrane, to Martin Luther King, to Fannie Lou Hamer, to Stevie Wonder. With all the trauma coming at you, you got to dish out the wounded healers. All the terror coming at you, you got to dish out the freedom fighters from Harriet Tubman to Malcolm X, from Frederick Douglass to Ella Baker. All we can do as human beings though, brother, is not just be echoes — that’s cowardly and conformist — we got to be voices of courage and vision.

And in the end, with the need for our identities to be grounded in integrity and solidarity. We have each other. I got Daniel, Daniel got me. You know what I mean? And you got your identities, I’ve got my identities. We can come together in terms of our visions of a new world, our analysis of predatory capitalism, and our critiques of white supremacy and male supremacy, and the way in which empire connects with that predatory capitalism. Keeping track of the humanity of trans and others.

And then, in the end, act courageously and say, we are going to be in solidarity. And that’s all we’ve ever had in human history. I mean, thank God for Mike Davis and the others, who raised their voices to provide us with tremendous insights, visions, data, arguments, stories, and narratives of the past. Now most of the folk who raise their voices in the past, they paid a major cost. But that’s why we need each other. Brother Daniel, Brother West, are we willing to pay the cost? Are we willing to hold on? Are we willing to be constant and consistent, all the way through?

Very important. You know what I mean?

DANIEL DENVIR

You keep circling back to that politics of solidarity.

CORNEL WEST

Absolutely. So, in that sense, there’s never a guarantee that what we’re trying to do is something we can pull off. But there is a real possibility if we can fortify ourselves. Now, we’ll always have disagreements, and strategic battles, and tactical battles. But if our vision and our analysis is in place, then we know we’re headed toward the empowerment of those who are called the wretched of the Earth, or, from my own Biblical tradition, “the least of these.”

I’m building on the genius of Hebrew scripture. Not all the genocide and the patriarchy and so forth. But that genius that says that steadfast love is going to focus on the orphan, and the widow, and the fatherless, the motherless, the poor, the persecuted, the subjugated, the exploited, the oppressed. You see, this is one of the great gifts of Jewish brothers and sisters to the world. And it applies to them like anybody else. Because it’s a high standard, it’s a high moral and spiritual standard that’s bigger than all of us. But it is a gift we build on and say, yes, that is worth our energy, our vitality, how we look at the world, how we feel, how we act.

That’s what it is to be a revolutionary, or a radical, or somebody who wants to be decent enough to fundamentally transform the structures of domination that are coming at us.

DANIEL DENVIR

Well, that’s my next question. How do you see Black Lives Matter, in this whole massive explosion in black political radicalism right now, impacting the black politics status quo and all of its various regional, generational, religious class divides?

CORNEL WEST

Well, I think Black Lives Matter, again, is a stage in the black freedom movement. The black freedom movement has always been confronted with the fundamental challenge of being co-opted by the status quo with big money and big status and big position. And, of course, Black Lives Matter has got big money coming at it from NGOs and various other liberal and neoliberal elites. Some progressive elites, they aren’t neoliberal, but they still have money.

When they’re not co-opted, they provide some kind of alternative, but the question is, how long will that alternative be able to sustain itself? Oftentimes, it becomes a target of vicious repression at the hands of the neofascist policies of the liberal state. That’s what COINTELPRO was, that’s what FBI surveillance was. Because for the genuine love warriors and the genuine freedom fighters, who constitute a threat to the whole system, America has a long history of killing, assassinating, murdering, trashing, creating mayhem for them.

We can go on and on in that regard. Black Lives Matter is going to reach its own fork in the road and see which way it goes. Now, if in fact we can somehow have a stronger wing of the black freedom movement — the Black Lives Matter that’s not co-opted and then has solidarity with other serious left groups — then we got a chance to bring some serious power and pressure to bear. And that’s where the threat actually is.

The fundamental threat to the status quo is a genuine political solidarity, rooted in an integrity that calls for the transfer of power and resources.

Because in the end, the fundamental threat to the status quo is a genuine political solidarity, rooted in an integrity that calls for the fundamental transfer of power and resources, from the ruling classes to everyday people. And you always hope and pray it’s not a violent thing, but the violence is always already a part of it. Because it’s institutionalized before you even start the dialogue. Police and others are committing various kinds of violations too often. But that’s the question of the great Sheldon Wolin, his great book on fugitive democracy. He was very pessimistic about this kind of thing.

Ernesto Cortez said, well, I got to stay local; I got to stay the civic organizing. The public organizing and the political organizing has to be rooted in neighborhoods, because there’s too much money and power at the national level in the empire. That’s what the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) is about. Jeffrey Stout has written the great classic on this, Blessed Are the Organized. That ought to be much more well read, in terms of the centrality of organizing for alternatives.

You see, the young people who are concerned about organizing, that’s the book to read. And he’s there with IAF, he’s there with those folk who are on the ground. And Black Lives Matter, magnificent organizers, they got the spirit of Ella Baker. And that’s a very different kind of spirit than the spirit of a Martin King. King is magnificent, we love him, and he gives these great speeches and things. But he’s in and out of town, Ella’s on the ground, and she’s transgenerational (former President Teddy Roosevelt talked about fighting for poc rights being a generational thing)

And she got that spirit, you can’t organize without having the right kind of spirit. You got to get your soul intact to get fortified. This ain’t no three-day demonstration, this is a year, this is a life commitment. And I think we do have a chance. Because in the end, it’s going to be as Noam Chomsky says, “On the global level, it’s internationalism or extinction.” If we don’t have solidarity around the world, then the elites at the top, with their greed, will blow up the whole planet, given the ecological catastrophe. And nationally, it’s going to be solidarity or self-destruction.