Cornel West on Occupy Wall Street: It’s the Makings of a U.S. Autumn Responding to the Arab Spring
SHORT VIDEO CLIPS, 3 Oct 2011
Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW! – TRANSCEND Media Service
“It’s impossible to translate the issue of the greed of Wall Street into one demand, or two demands. We’re talking about a democratic awakening,” said Dr. Cornel West when he spoke with Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman during a visit Tuesday night to the Occupy Wall Street encampment. Some critics have expressed frustration at the protest’s lack of a clear and unified message. But the Princeton University professor emphasized that “you’re talking about raising political consciousness so it spills over all parts of the country, so people can begin to see what’s going on through a set of different lens, and then you begin to highlight what the more detailed demands would be.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEoDXN4mRmM
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 3 Oct 2011.
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Although he reports that gasoline consumption in the United States is falling, Lester Brown’s most recent newsletter reports that our nation consumes more gasoline than the next 16 nations combined. That isn’t news? So that no one in the United States knows this?! And the fact that the population of the planet has increased forty per cent during the last twenty-five years – that Americans (and most of the other people on the planet) don’t know this – is that how democracies are supposed to operate? These statistics define the problems of our society. No one that I have inquired of on the street has been able to answer the question, “How many people do you think live on our planet at the present time?” Ans. Seven billion. Nor do any of these people on the street have a clue regarding how many people were living on our planet twenty-five years ago. Ans. Five billion. There is a problem when a society or nation doens’t get facts like these, that are turning the big gears of the world’s political machinery.