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Cornel West announces third party presidential bid

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: Agencies
6 Jun 2023 15:13

US Philosopher and activist Dr. Cornel West announces his bid to run for President in a bid to "run for truth and justice."

Philosopher and activist Cornel West (left), hugs a protester while marching with Occupy Wall Street protesters to Goldman Sachs headquarters on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011. (AP)

On Monday, Dr. Cornel West announced he is running for the 2024 US presidential elections, adding that he is running on the People's Party ticket, a third party formed by left-wing Democrats.

West said in a video posted to Twitter, "In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice, which takes the form of running for President of the United States as a candidate for the People's Party," adding that “I enter in the quest for truth, I enter in the quest for justice, and the presidency is just one vehicle to pursue that truth and justice – what I’ve been trying to do all of my life."

I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself - fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for… pic.twitter.com/u3NYGUbG1S
— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 5, 2023

“I come from a tradition where I care about you,” West said, listing off a number of issues including a living wage, decent housing, women’s bodily autonomy, universal healthcare, and “the escalating destruction of the planet. The destruction of American democracy.”

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West endorsed US Senator Bernie Sanders when he launched a left-wing challenge to the Democratic mainstream in 2016 and again in 2020. He is known for his strong criticisms of former US President Barack Obama, the nation's first Black leader, who he called a "Rockefeller Republican in blackface" in 2012.

He explained that his decision to run on a third party is related to the fact that "neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, Ukraine, the Pentagon, or about Big Tech," while also calling former President Donald Trump a "neo-fascist," and Biden a "milquetoast neoliberal."

West is running as a member of the People’s Party, a third party that was formed in 2017 by a group of former Sanders campaign workers after the Vermont senator was denied the Democratic Party nomination by a strongly pro-Hillary Clinton Democratic National Committee (DNC), which handed the nomination to the former secretary of state instead.