 |
| December 2, 2011 University of California, Berkeley Pauley Ballroom |
Earlier this month I had an amazing Dialogue with Cornel West before a standing room only crowd of more than 1800 people on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley. Our theme was “In the Age of Obama … Police Terror, Incarceration, No Jobs, Mis-education: WHAT FUTURE FOR OUR YOUTH?”
I’m writing you about this because you will soon have a chance to experience this conversation. C-SPAN recorded this Dialogue and has plans to air it during the holiday break in Congressional proceedings. They haven’t yet developed their schedule for this period because they don’t yet know when Congress will adjourn. I will send out when the broadcast is scheduled as soon as I find out.
The conversation covered a range of topics including why the world is like it is, what’s the significance of the Occupy Movement and where do things need to go from here. We exchanged perspectives over religion, the role of love in developing and sustaining a movement for radical change, the importance of dreaming. And we argued over a few things to, among them religion and how to assess previous revolutionary societies.
Cornel was in his usual rare form, imploring the mostly youthful audience to not become “… adjusted to injustice …” or “… adapted to indifference …” He said the way people were beginning to stand up in the Occupy movement was important because “… once you stand up, people can no longer ride your back.” And he urged the audience not to aim to be the smartest person in the room but without any concern for poor and working people. My message was that the world is a horror, but it doesn’t have to be that way; that thru revolution we could bring a totally different and far better world into being. And I urged people there to get with the movement for revolution and to engage in resistance to the injustice being rained down on humanity by this system, whether or not they agreed with me about the need for revolution.
In short, this is a Dialogue you don’t want to miss. Look for my follow up note on when it will air on C-SPAN. You could also go to C-SPAN’s web site for their schedule. And as always, I’d like to hear from you. Let me know what you think of the conversation Cornel and I engage in at Berkeley.
Warm Revolutionary Greetings,
Carl Dix
