Wake that hands up in the morning.
The Breakfast Club.
Morning.
Everybody's the j Envy just Hilarius Charlamagne the guy. We are the Breakfast Club. We got some special guests joining us this morning.
That's right.
We got the good brother, doctor Cornell West. Yes, indeed, and also his running mate, Malina Abdullah. Welcome.
It's a blessing to be here. My brother said, he bring me back. He's a man of his word. It's good to see you, my brother, j Envy, and I'm so blessed to be with sister Malina. She is one of the great freedom fighters of her generation. And we are running together for truth, justice and love. And we want people to see what it's like to have two black folk who have no fear, no lies, tell the truth, seek justice, and love the people.
Sister Molina, Let's let's start with you. When doctor Cornell West approached you to be his running mate, what was your thought process behind it all? And even receiving that message and didn't deciding to do.
It well before thinking, my soul jumped out of myself and said absolutely. I told him yesterday that I haven't felt this kind of spirit soaring since I had my last child. And that was fourteen years ago. So my spirit spoke before my mind spoke. But then when I thought about it, I never planned to run for office,
but it made all the sense in the world. I, like many people, have been deeply inspired by doctor West, both as a scholar but also as a freedom fighter and one who marches and moves on behalf of our people.
What made you want to choose Molina doctor Cornell.
You know, brother, I wanted to choose the best. I believe that excellence in the form of vision, courage, willingness to put your body on the line. She's a scholar, she's an intellectual. She's been to jail many, many, many times. They have attacked her in vicious way. She's ill standing with a tremendous sense of determination. And in that sense, it's just a matter of always acknowledging what we always do.
And that's true for everybody around here. We'll come from a great Black people who have the highest standards of excellence within our tradition. And I wanted to put a smile on the face of Fanny Louhammer and Martin Luther King Jr. Curtis may feel and Nina Simon. That's high standards because those of folk who are free, as my brother Clifton always says, I want to see whether you're on a plantation or not. But it's since they've never been on nobody's plantation. That's hard to find these days
for black folk. And so to be able to work with her, work alongside her, learn from her, be instructed and inspired, it's a beautiful thing.
And let the direct show Molina has been to jail for good trouble. Donald Trump has been to jail many times too, So I just want to put that out there, good trouble.
I was going to ask you, what keeps you in the fight? You know, because it's a lot of money, it's a lot of time. It's stressful. They attack you, They attack every part of your life. They dive deep into your finances, your taxes. And both of you guys, you know you both have families, so they gonna dive into your family. So what makes you still want to put that fight on?
But I got so much love poured into me from Irene and Clifton West and Grandma and granddad, from Shiloh Baptist Church, Reverend Willie Pecook and Deacon Hinton and others that I would have to live three lifetimes to begin to pay that back. And then by the time you connected with the Black Panther Party, connected with those folks I didn't know, the Malcolms and the Fanny Low Hammers and others. All that love they poured it, all that courage,
all that integrity. The least thing I could do is tell the truth and seek justice before I meet my hand and meet my maker, you know what I mean. So I get up with a joy, and I got a joy in the world and give me the world can't take away. And it's a deep joy tied to the struggle and try to try to try and to make the world a better face for oppressed people, poor people, working people. To deal with all this organized greed and
institutionalized hatred and rutinize indifference to the vuner raubbul. It's a beautiful thing to be in struggle with. This is a Molina and the whole host of folk who are concerned about making the world a better place with a smile and also with a style too, because we come out of people that got style and sold Oh, brother.
Malini, I mean for me, I couldn't say it better than doctor West. It is what we owe our ancestors. It is what we owe our guide, it is what we owe our people. And I'll also offer that I'm a mother of three children, and my three children, two of the three of them had police called on them in schools.
When they were six years old for the first time.
And I cannot leave a world as it is for Tandie way Amara and I'm in. We have to do the work to make the world better for them. That's what we owe our ancestors. That's what we owe our people. That's what we owe our children, and that's what we owd generations to come. That's what we owe ourselves as well.
I was going to ask what they shold me. I was going to ask, you know, you guys are running independently, and people when they questioned the Democrats, or they questioned Biden, or they questioned Kamala Harris, they say people are going against their race and people are going against what they quote unquote should be doing. What's your thoughts on that, because in all actuality, people will say that you guys are questioning them as well.
That's true, that's true. Fanny lou Hammer said, I'm questioning America. I'm questioning capitalism, I'm questioning patriarchy, and I'm questioning white supremacy. The folk who want to defend Biden and can't say a mumbling word about the general side and ethnic cleansing and apartheized state of Israel, it means they're turning their backs. Well, no, we don't come out of a tradition like that. We committed to jamal Leticia in the hood. We committed to
Wan and juan Nita in the barrio. We committed to poor white, we committed Palestinians, we committed to any folk. We committed the Jews when they catch in hell, we are around. In nineteen thirty we insolidated with the Jews against Hitler. Now right now, you got genocide taking place in Gaza. We take a stand not out of self righteousness, but because we want to be moral and spiritual. That's who we are as a people. Man at our best,
I'm not talking about our worst, at our best. And therefore you got Trump, dead up, gangster leading the country towards Civil War two, Biden war criminal, leading the world toward World War three. Now you're gonna choose between Civil War two and World War three. What you're gonna do, That's the history of black folk. For us, Pharaoh has always been on the blows, both sides of the bloody
red seas. What you're gonna do, Sing a song, what you're gonna do, Crack a smile, crack a joke, hug organize it, mobilized, and then make a way out of no way. That's the history of black folk. How have we made a way out of no way? I sit here and look at your young brothers. I know what's in you. I know your grandparents. I know what they been through. They made a way out of no way. Look at you sitting there with all this dignity. Couldn't
do it by yourself. That's that rich tradition inside of you. That's all we're trying to do. And that's true for my dear sister, going back through Louisiana. We both got Louisiana roots deep Louisiana, even though she come out of East Oakland, so I mean, you know, she got jumped started like East Oakland's like Detroit and Chicago and Mississippi's even deeping them, all of them. We won't get into that right now. South South Carolina, what was it Month's corner? Yes, sir, oh lord.
You know you brought up the civil war thing. And this happened to me this Friday's happened on like I think Tuesday ones. I walked downstairs and it was just a white guy had on some khakis and nice shoes and sweater glasses, looked like a Wall Street type. And he was just like, man, you Charlamagne right he goes Man. He said, I want you to tell people that it's gonna be a war regardless of who wins. And I was like, because he didn't even look like the type.
He wasn't a wild conspiracy theorist. He is like, you tell people that it don't matter if Biden went to Trump win, there's gonna be a civil war in this country. And I was like, yikes, so what makes you feel that way?
Well, we certainly headed that way. That's what civil wars are about. When you get organized greed and institutionalized hatred running amuck, especially at the top, manipulating every day people feeling frustrated, impotent, powerless, and then you escape, go to the most vulnerable rather than confront the most powerful, and what sits at the center of it white's supremacy. Now it's undergirded by capitalism and all the greed that that
generates profit and so forth. But does that make sense, my dear sister, It does.
Make sense, and it makes sense when we talk about why we have to get involved and why we have to do something different, why we can't just go along to get along. So the question about why we're not just saying, you know, let's let's dust Trump, let's make sure Trump doesn't get in. Of course Trump is the embodiment of evil. Of course Trump is the He's a
devil incarnate, absolutely right. But we also have to remember that, you know, my children and all their friends recognize Joe Biden as genocidah Joe.
And so we can't just go along to get along.
We can't just say, let's take the lesser of two evils. The lesser of two evils is still evil. And so how do we pull ourselves into our highest selves? How do we say, you know, it's always been true that white supremacist patriarchal capitalism will try to get us to celebrate the individual advancement of a few at the expense of the many, And so we refuse to do that we say we all must be free. If we're not all free, nobody's free.
I got a question for both of y'all when you talk about this civil war. I don't think the civil war is going to be between Republicans and Democrats. I think it's going to between the haves and the have not.
What do you think I think? I think that's that's that's the serious formulation. But it's hard to know exactly what formula because race and white supremacy cuts so deep in the country that even well to do black folk could be viciously attacked by some of the poor wife folk. So that race is gonna be crucial, But the class dimension that you talk about will be crucial too, There's no doubt about it. And we know how ugly the gender question is. But you got what thirty percent now
black brothers saying they're gonna vote for gangster Trump. Hey, where's that coming from? Well, that's a complicated situation. That's just at the moment. We don't know what it's gonna be like in November. But once the vicious conflict sets in, we don't know what response would be. We just have to make sure that we have a moral and spiritual witness.
We're gonna be a witness. We're gonna bead witness to the best of the traditions of our people that has preserved our dignity and our sanity, regardless of what the circumstances is. Because you got to keep in mind, there's been a war against indigenous peoples for about six hundred years. There's been a war against black folk for four hundred years. We at war right now. So we're just talking about
the hot war versus the cold. You go to mass incarceration and the jails and so forth, and on sloop by the Muomea because he got his birthday coming up seven ozer, but he been in a war. So the war's always ongoing. But the question what form it will take? And we have to decide personally and collectively, are we gonna hold on to some sense of morality and spirituality giving all this barbarity?
What do you think believe? Who do you think the war will be between?
Yeah, I think you're right on about the halves and the have nots, And it's those who also identify with the haves and the havelf nights, right, So you have plenty of poor people plenty of poor white people, especially who identify with the halves, even though they themselves are the have nuts. And so it's really important that we awaken people to what their real interests are. Right, that we awaken poor people, working class people, regardless of race, to what their interests are.
And so as we awaken folks, we.
Can lock arms and engage in whatever struggle needs to take place for the liberation of beginning with black people and extending to all oppressed people.
How do we get people to get out of the mind frame where I only can vote for Democrat or Republican? Right, I say it all the time. A lot of people are from years and years and years of grandparents voting Democrat, and great grandparents and the parents and then yourselves. How do we get him out to think outside of the box, right, Because automatically, when somebody sees somebody running as an independent, they think, well he is or there's no way that
they can possibly win. They're just somebody in there to start trouble and to mess up the Democrats. How do we get people to change that view?
Yeah? I think part of it is, you know, Curtis Mayfield got this song no Thing on Me I'm so glad I got my own, so glad that I can see my life is a natural high. The man can't put no thing on me. It depends on what you see. When we see, we have to see a system. You
can't just look at two parties. You got to see how both of them are tied to Wall Street, a Pentagon, both of them tied to war, both of them tied to greed, and so you have to have an understanding of how the system operates and then say, ah, I want to be critical of the system. I'm not just critical of Trump's gangsterism. I can see how Trump's gangsterism is inseparable from Biden's genocidal policies, facilitating genocide and Gaza. So you begin to see how the system operates and connects.
What's happening with the Palestinians in Gaza, but what's happening in Black Folk and Harlem, what's happened with poul Whites in Kentucky, what's happening with poor Latinos in East And that is a different way of seeing the world. That's why our artists, at their height, none needed Simons and others. They help us to see things. We didn't see. Then the question becomes how do you implement? How do you execute? Usually when you see and you raise your voice, you
get incarcerated or assassinated. That's what the system does to free black people. So you have to be willing to pay that cost. And that's exactly what the cost we're willing to pay. How come because we love the people and the only thing that breaks the back of fear is love. And if you don't love the people, then get out of the way and go on and sell out, going and sell your soul for mesapology and tell people lies, tell them how great Biden is. Tell them Biden has
always been concerned with portfolio. He's an architect of mass incarceration. That's a crime against humanity. I've taught in prisons for forty one years. I've seen it go from two hundred thousand to two point three million right before my very eyes. That's a crime against humanity. That's my brothers and sisters in there. Don't lie, don't don't want to be lying on Biden in that sense. So is that kind of truth telling that we need, and that's kind of and is rooted in love.
Why do they act like you know as a black person you can't speak that kind of truth but still know what's in your best interest to do come November. Why do they act like why do they act like those two things can't happen at the same time, Belina, I.
Think that there.
You know, when we talk about this duopoly of Democrats and Republicans, they want to lock us into these very narrow choices. Black people are the most critical people, the most discerning people, the most creative people on this planet, right, and they want to block us from that creativity because that kind of creativity gives birth to new ideas but also new worlds, Right.
So I want to.
Lock in and be clear about what this campaign is about. That we're advancing alternative visions. As Harriet Tubman abolitionists, we absolutely want to topple systems of harm.
We want to topple.
Systems of prisons that descend from plantations and policing that descend from slave catchers. And as Harriet Tubman abolitionists, we also know that as we tear down systems of harm, we want to build new systems of care that we can have if we make different choices. Imagine what would happen if we had the one hundred and something billion dollars that Joe Biden just sent to fuel genocide and gaza.
What if we had that for housing.
What if we had those resources that are poured into police in major cities. It's about half of the unrestricted funds that go to policing, even though police don't make us more safe. What if we had those dollars instead for healthcare? What if we had those dollars instead or education? These are simple and easy choices, and so that doopoly that's owned by corporations wants to lock us out so that they can keep the vision and the possibilities narrow.
We're saying no more of that.
Our possibilities are expansive and beautiful and creative, and we have to shake off this world that really sucks the life out of our people and puts targets on the backs of our children.
You know, Molina, you founded, you were the co founder of the LA chapter of the Black Lives Matter movement, and in twenty twenty two you got police took you out of a Marrow debate. Well, I'm not gonna say took you out, that'd be kindie. They dragged you out. You know what, was the reasoning behind that.
They carried me out by all fours, so that means on each limb I had a different cop pulling me from each limb on the last day Ramadan with my legs sprawled open. It was not only brutal, it was humiliating. It was dehumanizing. There is no just defiable reason for them doing that. I don't know the reason that they did that. I can surmise that they thought I was there to do something that I wasn't there to do.
I was simply there to watch a mayoral debate. By training, I'm at my PhDs in political science, and we had the first viable black woman for mayor who's now our mayor, Karen Bass. My research is on black women's leadership, so of course I wanted to be on my own campus. I wanted to be on my own campus watching that debate, and so I think that that's absolutely despicable. Still haven't gotten a real apology or any remedy from the school.
The school still continues to harass me, sending police into my office, searching my office and telling me they'll be back for me.
And this is the reason why.
We want to advance policies like removing police from our campuses. Our campuses don't have enough care councilors, they don't have enough scholars, they don't have enough staff to clean up, but we have police that were spending millions and millions of dollars on.
I'm sorry you had to go through all of that is the true that you sued BLM.
I sued, and I should be very clear. Black Lives Matter grass Roots, which is the side of Black Lives Matter that I represent where the boots on the ground. We're thirty three chapters around the country. Black Lives Matter grass Roots is the real BLM. When you think of Black Lives Matter being in the streets, organizing alongside families, that's.
Who we are. In twenty twenty two.
Our resources and platforms were stolen by a group of highly paid consultants, and we know we have a right to those things back, and so we sued them after trying to convince them to do the right thing, and that wasn't going to happen. They refused to listen to the voices of the people. We did file a lawsuit in September of twenty twenty two.
Okay, well, let me just add this though. You see when they attacked our dear sistant, and they do it over and over again, And that's true for so many of us go to jail and so on. That we're threats, you see, that's a compliment. That means that we're true to our calling. And you can have a calling as a secular person. You can have a calling as a religious person. You see, I'm a Jesus loving free black
man who wants to be true to the call. So if I'm not constituting a threat, then how am I following with Jesus who went into the temple and ran out the money changes they put him on the cross. No, my dear sister's Muslim. She's a law loving free black woman, mercy justice Koran, and you constitute a threat. So when she's willing to pay that kind of cost, that's the sign of courage, integrity, and it's connected to a calling.
You got to have some call. If all you got is your career, then you on somebody's plantation and any any carriage that they dangle in front of you, you're gonna opt for. But when you have a calling and a professor, distinguished scholar and so forth, that that my dear sister. Is she's true to something bigger than her in her career. What is it? Well, it's the people, but it's also her God. Now, people get upset sometimes
we talk about God in politics. I said, no, we're not saying anybody got to follow us, but we got to be true to where were coming from. We got to be true to what teaches us. Going preserves our sanity and our dignity, and it's just not God. We talk about Curtis Mayfield. You talking about Curtis may Film, John Coltrane all the time. I'm talking about folk who keep me sane now, and I'm and therefore that I
won't be stopped from that. But I won't allow others to feel as if I'm imposing God on them, or Christianity on them, or Islam on them, or Buddhism. With bell hooks and others were being candid about what's inside of us, and we're being open in terms of people being canned, what's inside of him?
What policies would you implement that you feel that biding is not doing for black people?
Biden, Trump and Trump, Well, first things, reparations. Second thing is abolition of poverty. Abolition of on housements, supporting militant wing of the trade union movement that's fighting for wages for workers across the board. And what my dear sister was talking about disinvestment for military eight hundred military units around the world, special operations in one hundred and thirty countries. That's an empire. We're anti im peerless. America don't need
to be an empire. We got to be a nation among other nations. We don't need to dominate every nook
and cranny of the world. So all of those resources, the traders of dollars going into military, sixty two cent for every one dollar in the discretion and every budget that's going to housing, we can stop this gentrification taking places, power grab and land grab, which you're out poor and working people, pushing up the prices, the greed of Wall Street, degree of corporations and oligopolies and monopolies, and dealing with
the ecological crisis with the fossil fuel companies. So that that is a way of going back to Kurz Mayfield. What we see the lens through which you view the world, and we view the world through the lens of those friends were known call the wretched of the earth. I don't view the world through stock market. I don't view the world through how many black faces are in high places when their cousins getting crushed. It's a different way
of engaging politics. It's what my brother calls a paradigm shift. We are not politicians. She been running for justice all of her adult life. I've been running for justice all of my adult life. We need people to get in politics who already been running for justice, running for truth and into politics. Don't into politics and think all of a sudden you're gonna be a truth teller. That ain't gonna happen.
Are y'all getting Are you getting black belt doctor Corne West? From media? From the MSNBC's seeing and are they having you on?
Well, I've never been, you know, on MSNBC that much because they retired to Obama and we got a history that But seeing n it's been kind. We were on h just the abbey last night.
Right, okay, okay, okay, okay, okay. Biden Trump, uh, you know the the rematches is coming in November. What do you think the Democrats have done? Well, we know, we know who the Republicans are, But what do you think the Democrats have done well.
If anything, the one thing they did was cut child poverty in half, okay, because we put a lot of pressure on and what happened, It expired and it's doubled again, you see. So they did something well for a little bit and then fell back, and of course we got a long thing at what they're not doing well. But my dear sister, you jump right there, right.
I mean, I think that there are individual Democrats who are doing really beautiful things, who are stepping forward and courage So Corey Bush is an inspiration to me.
Jamaal Bawman is doing phenomenal work.
Ayana Presley is carrying a bill for US right now called the Ending Qualified Immunity Act. And so I think that there are some courageous Democrats. Unfortunately they are too few and far between. So overall is a political party. They are cowering to corporate interests. They are abiding by what corporations want, what the few want, as you put it, what the haves.
Want, rather than representing what the working class people want.
They're not supporting people like one of the people I'm most inspired by is down the street from you, Chris Malls, and the Amazon Labors.
Yeah, Chris is my.
Folks, and you know that's the kind of labor union we want. And we're not seeing the kind of support for real labor, for radical labor unions like we need, like we should be expecting from the Democratic Party, although there are some individual courageous Democrats.
What do you think about the student loan forgiveness?
Oh shoot, that should have been in place a long time ago, Oh my god, across the board. And not only that, but well to have free education, free healthcare, and we ought to have a right to housing. It was just a reclaimed movement there on the East Side Cafe in Los Angeles, and he got all these homes empty and got hundreds and hundreds of folk nowhere to go. And of course we know Pastor Q in skid Row right the church with our wall Q.
We know Los Angeles Community Action Network again, our policies, and if you look at our platform at Cornell West twenty twenty four, I was before I was invited onto this ticket. I was inspired by the platform. I was inspired by doctor West. I was inspired by a visionary plan to build what we can have when we make different choices, when we were used to again fuel genocide at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Right, we can't have housing for all.
When you ask about student debt, you know there is a cancelation of a limited amount of student debt, but there shouldn't be student debt in the first place because education should be free from birth through doctorate. Education should be free. And so these are the kinds of choices that we make. We know that budgets are some of the most serious moral and ethical documents, and they are zero sum games. So if you're spending on a military
industrial complex, you're not housing your folks. And we want to make the choice to house our folks, to feed our folks, to provide quality healthcare for all. Those are the things that you'll get, and those are the things that we're proposing to the world to make different choices with this campaign.
How would you handle the di situation if you're president, doctor Corneway.
We never use the language THEI. What is diversity? No, we're talking about truth and justice. We got a visious legacy white supremaceriesclude black folk for over one hundred some years. And then you're gonna say, well, we got a diversity program for y'all. Now, no, we want truth, we want justice. It's reparations. And therefore the language was wrong. The language was a deodorized, sanitized language that concealed the funk. But we come out of a funk master oriented people. We
want to get beneath this deodorized language. We want to ensure that black folk gang accests to whatever opportunities they can give them the fact they've been excluded. So diversity and equity and inclusion became this strategy for those who had power and resources to think that somehow we were getting something that we hardly deserved. So already he got the wrong lens which your viewing things. But we had to.
We had to go with it because you fighting. My sister says that you put it so well, uh, yesterday, right. You fight for the crumbs, fight for the crumbs, but you know they're still crumbs, and you know that in the end, we've got to make sure that those who benefit are not just the black middle class, the black bourgeoise. We support them in becoming inclusive. Usually when they get in there, they sell out, but not always, not always, but usually they do. You know, that's a human thing.
Black folk an't don't them on doing that. But we got to always view the litmus tests. And here I get Biblical twenty fifth chapter, Matthew, what you doing to the least of these? You do unto me? The prisoners, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the fatherless, the motherless. What's happening with pressous, Jamal and Leticia on the block? That's the litmus test. No matter how much success we are, and it's a beautiful thing, if we lose sight of them,
we have already violated are calling. And of course part of it is all of us, just generations back sometimes a few years back, we were right there. That's that's who we are, you see. And so for me, the DEI issue is one of which it never it never should have been dee I should have been truth, justice. But now DEI you support it, and you know it's a vicious attack on black folk. You see it at Harvard. It's a sad thing. Sister Claudine becomes a poster child
for anti Semitism. I ain't got an anti Semitic bone and a Haitian body. That's sick. That's ridiculous.
And I'm just add you know it was already said brilliantly. But I've been thinking also about it overnight. The eye the inclusion part.
I actually don't want.
To be included in a fundamentally oppressive system, right, So the inclusion, the I is reminding us that they're not willing to transform an oppressive system into a liberatory one. They're only willing to say a few of y'all can come in the door.
And what we want.
Is the transformation of these systems so that we can all use them for our liberation and freedom.
Right.
We do want quality education, We do want accessible education. We do want liberatory models of education, where ethnic studies, where Pan African studies, which is what I teach, is part it's foundational because it's as important for you to take a class for me as it is to take a math class. I don't know a bit of algebra, right,
I don't know a bit of algebra anymore. But I do not need to know my history, my background, my power house systems work, And so we want liberatory models of education, not just an inclusion into a system that's fundamentally oppressive.
Doctor Cornyerweather, did you see Avion Crockett's impression to you in the movie at Hip hop story. No, Yeah, he did his thing.
Is that right?
You gotta check it out.
I got to check that you mentioned that stuff.
You know.
I mean, it wasn't a disrespectful impersonation at all.
He had his fro and everything everything. He's probably so much more handsome than I am. But that's all right, that's all right. I work with it. I work with how can.
People donate and make sure they support and follow the cause?
Yeah, this is what their sister said. It's corner West two o two for dot Com, Corner West two o two for dot Com. We are turning the corner. And the fact that Malina Abdul said yes takes us to a different level because we got new vision, new intellect,
new energy, new courage coming together. And when brother Tabis Smiley formulated that, and we always wanted to start with tablets, we'd like to support black folk in media and so forth, we with Tim Black and so on that when he said historic ticket of two black folk, and you say, well, it's not just two black folks, it's too visionary, courageous people loving black folk. You see, to mean, Tammy Trell is very and Marvin Gay is very different than just
any duet. That's what Barry Gordy understood. So yes, it's about skin pigmentation. But the deeper level is it's people who love the people, sacrifice, serve the people. Know you could be wrong, listen to the people reveling the people's humanity and creativity and music and culture, but then love them enough to correct them, respect them, protect them, correct them,
and be corrected to. That's right, and that's what we have with this twosome and we on the move, as Mumi mal would say, on the move.
All right, well, we appreciate you guys for joining us.
And that's all they tell you about the Cornell West. Don't be a stranger, bro.
That's right.
Were you so kind you said that.
I would?
It's right, doctor Cornell West.
Molina Abdullah, thank.
You for joining us. It's the Breakfast Club. Good morning.
Wake that ass up in the morning.
Breakfast Club.