WASHINGTON – In response to the Starbucks incident in Philadelphia earlier this month, Dr. Cornel West said that Americans must fight white supremacy “in all of its forms.”
An employee called the police on two African-Americans in a Starbucks store for sitting inside and not making a purchase. The police arrived and arrested the men, who stated that they were waiting for someone to arrive for a business meeting. Starbucks announced that it plans to close all of its stores on the afternoon of May 29 for “racial bias education.”
West was asked for his preferred outcome of the Starbucks incident.
“We’ve got to fight white supremacy is all of its forms,” West replied after a “Save Our Sons: Stop the Killing” and “Condemn Donald Trump” National Black Men’s Convention march and rally organized by former New Black Panther Party Chairman Malik Shabazz, president of Black Lawyers for Justice, on Saturday outside the White House.
During his speech at the protest, West urged civil rights activists not to “isolate” white supremacy from capitalism.
“I have the love of God and it empowers me in the midst of all of this nightmare, all of the lies and mendacity, all of the cold-heartedness and mean spiritedness of Donald Trump and his cronies and Wall Street and the military industrial complex and the State Department and the Pentagon. They all go together,” he said. “Never isolate white supremacy from capitalism. Never isolate capitalism from colonialism and imperialism and let us bring our critiques to bear on patriarchy.”
West condemned police shootings of African-Americans, telling the crowd to remember that black police officers can be “trigger happy, too.” CONTINUE AT SITE
