This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.—Dr. Cornel West is running to become U.S. President, and he wants your vote.
In October 2023, West, a high-profile academic and thought leader, announced he would no longer run for the nation’s highest office under the Green Party banner, instead choosing to campaign as an independent.
Then, on Wednesday, West shifted courses, announcing in a press release that he would form a new third party, the Justice for All Party, to facilitate what the campaign characterized as a 50-state strategy “for the expansion of voter choice and proportional representation.”
“We are proud to already be on the ballot in the great states of Alaska and Oregon,” West said. “We’re on the move with a 50-state strategy, establishing the Justice for All Party as a platform to gain access to the ballot in those states where it’s easier to gain access as a party, as opposed to independent.”
West, a Harvard and Princeton-educated philosopher, has long been outspoken on issues ranging from race to militarism to the climate crisis. Following his visit to Birmingham to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, West spoke to Inside Climate News about his vision for Alabama, the climate, and beyond.
You’ve called climate change “Planetary Selma.” Tell me what you mean by that phrase.
The intersection of white supremacy on the one hand and ecological collapse on the other can be the catalyst for a movement that is multiracial—that keeps track of the very ugly consequences of predatory capitalist processes, where it’s just money, money, money, whether it’s fossil fuels, it could be oil, it could be coal, it’s just profit, profit, profit, over satisfying people’s needs. But it’s rare that people make that connection.
The same was true with…
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