Professor and philosophical giant Cornel West understands and supports Occupy Wall Street. He’s lent his voice to the movement in the mainstream media, and spent time speaking to and encouraging the New York protesters themselves.
On Bill Maher this week the discussion turned to the lack of big ideas coming from any of the Republican presidential candidates, when Cornel West shared the following gem:
If you want to know real big ideas you have got to go to the Occupy Wall Street movement. If you look at it… we got Monarchy- American revolution- birth of the new nation, Slavery- birth of new freedom, now we got Oligarchy.
The movement is not saying we hate slave holders, we hate slavery. We don’t hate kings, like king George III, we hate Monarchy. It’s not that we hate oligarchs on Wall street, we hate Oligarchy.
This is exactly what the impending global insurrection is all about, rising up against not just the American oligarchy, but the global oligarchy.
From riots in Europe, mass demonstrations in South America, Occupations in North America, and revolutions across the Arab World, humans everywhere are forming the vanguard for a monumental clash between the vast majority of the world’s population and a fraction of one percent of the human race who’ve been hoarding the fruits of humankind’s labor.
The people’s uprising is not about stripping these 70,000 or so super-rich individuals of all their wealth (or bringing out the guillotine for a little French justice).
Instead, this great struggle is about enforcing democratic accountability for those at the top. Otherwise, left to their own devices, the world’s wealthiest will just continue to expand their fortunes and influence at the expense of everyone else. And that is something we simply cannot afford.