Friday, September 15, 2023
Cornel West for President
CornelWest2024.com
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New York City - Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West announced today that he will participate in the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York City on Sunday, September 17 as part of a week of events and appearances to present his vision for climate justice through global cooperation.
“The only way the United States can lead this global fight is to reject the corporate duopoly, who give us false choices, false solutions, and false hopes," said Dr. West. “There’s no more time for the empty proclamations and broken promises of this administration, the people won’t stand for it anymore. I hear them and look forward to taking the streets with them so we can take back our collective future.”
The Cornel West campaign will emphasize the contradictions of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that purports to be historic climate legislation while also handing out billions of dollars to fossil fuel cartels who have known about the harm they cause the planet since the 1970s.
“This president has issued more oil and gas leases at this point in his presidency than the entirety of Trump’s, continuing the neoliberal approach to climate change of the Obama administration.” West added, “how in the world can Biden refer to himself as a climate president when his landmark climate policy will open up 600 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas leasing, and continue to litter hotspots like Cancer Alley with hazardous and demonstrably ineffective mechanisms like carbon and direct air capture that only fill the coffers of the fossil fuel industry while short changing environmental justice communities?”
“The intransigent denialism of the Republican party coupled with the derelict climate policies of the Biden Administration, both of whom are more beholden to corporate interests than the interests of the people, have put us on a trajectory to irreparable atmospheric annihilation and global ecocide.” He continued, “We’re literally paying out climate criminals for years of destruction and environmental racism,” West remarked. ‘It’s time to flip the script, instead of paying the fossil fuel pipers, we need to make the pipers pay.”
As a participant in the March to End Fossil Fuels, West will join a chorus of climate justice activists and other concerned earth citizens calling for President Biden to use emergency powers to acknowledge a climate emergency demonstrated by more powerful storms, cataclysmic wildfires and toxic smoke, as well as deadly heat waves.
“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, on my first day as president I will use the National Emergencies Act, the Defense Production Act, and the Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act to order an immediate cessation of all oil and gas leasing projects on federal lands and waters,” He continued, “I will ban the poisonous practice of fracking and demand an immediate moratorium on all liquefied natural gas facilities.”
West further declared his intention to cancel unnecessary fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which was handed to coal baron Joe Manchin as part of a, “low down, dirty, racist deal” included with the Inflation Reduction Act, and Joe Biden’s Willow Project. He also issued a declaration to halt and deny all extraction projects on indigenous lands if they do not have the free, prior, and informed consent of Indigenous peoples.
“What we’re not going to do is create new energy sacrifice zones in the name of renewable energy production. Environmental racism and green capitalism have no place in cooperative, global solutions to the quintessential threat of climate change. We must make sure those that are suffering most have a seat at the table; we must ensure that our precious Indigenous siblings, our often overlooked working class and rural white brothers and sisters, and our suffering Black and brown people are not thrown underneath it.”
West also announced his intentions to visit frontline communities across the country including the sites of Cop City and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, as well as “Cancer Alley” and throughout Indian Country. “The hypocrisy of the Democratic Party knows no bounds.” West continued, “they ask the same people, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and the poor to save democracy and then turn around and poison their communities in the same breath…that’s gangster.”
During his week in New York City, West will call for a people centered climate justice and eco-socialist alternative to the inflation reduction act, including the nationalization of the fossil fuel industry.
About Cornel West
Dr. Cornel West is a renowned philosopher, author, and activist who is running to be the U.S. Green Party Presidential Candidate. He has made significant contributions to the fields of philosophy and social justice. He is a professor at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and has also taught the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University, and at several other institutions, including Princeton and Yale. Dr. West is known to be an outspoken advocate for social justice and has worked tirelessly to promote equality and fairness for marginalized communities in the spirit of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Fannie Lou Hamer, and bell hooks.. His academic, activist, and musical work have earned him a well-deserved reputation as one of the most important, principled, and influential thinkers of our time.
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