Cornel West Is Under Arrest (Awwwwww)

Princeton academic Cornel West attended the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial in Washington on Sunday, and then nipped over to the Supreme Court, where he joined 18 other members of “Occupy Wall Street” subsidiary “October 2011 / Stop the Machine” in getting arrested when they refused to obey police orders to clear the area.

West is a fitfully amusing example of self-righteous academic incoherence, who can be counted on to produce memorable sound bites. He recently told black presidential candidate Herman Cain to “get off the symbolic crack pipe” because Cain is insufficiently cowed by the menace of institutional racism. He also thinks Barack Obama is “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats” who “has a certain fear of free black men.” He’s a smooth fit for the blind populist, collectivist rage of the OWS crowd.

What was he doing on the steps of the Supreme Court? The October 2011 website explains:

The October2011.org Movement that is occupying Freedom Plaza, led an impromptu march of 250 people up Pennsylvania Avenue to the U.S. Supreme Court where Dr. Cornel West climbed on the steps of the Supreme Court and denounced court decisions that have produced money-based elections that empower corporations. Dr. West was holding a sign that said "Poverty is the Greatest Violence of All." He was arrested because holding political signs on the Supreme Court steps is illegal.

Dr. West spoke to more than 500 people on Freedom Plaza where he said that "if Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be on Freedom Plaza." West described how the struggle against, poverty, war and injustice continues and confidence that the people will succeed. He applauded the occupation as "an inclusive social revolution for all of us" and a "leaderless-leader-filled movement" where people are "finding their own political voices rather than echoing others."

(Emphasis mine.) Ah, so this “inspiring speech” and “occupation” is just more lefty bellyaching about the Citizens United decision, which has become an important layer of tinfoil in their “corporate rule” hat. Only big media corporations should have any say in politics, man! Except for big media corporations owned by the wrong people!

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