6.30.2023
Introduction
The New Black Nationalist Network (NBN) welcomes Cornel West's June 13, 2023, announcement that he's seeking the Green Party's nomination for President of the United States.
Cornel West's candidacy introduces a political dimension to the 2024 presidential election that is unique to the American experience. The forces he can rally to his populist standard is an potent cocktail encompassing the elements needed to induce a realignment that alters the dynamic of the body politic.
Cornel West's unexpected presidential announcement streamed across social media and cable news outlets shortly before noon on June 5, 2023. Over the next ten days, the video declaring his candidacy was viewed nineteen million times.
Having initially announced he would run as the People's Party candidate, West was invited by Chris Hedges, a long-time friend and Presbyterian minister to a speak with former Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and her 2016 vice-presidential running mate Ajamu Baraka. Shortly after that discussion, West announced he would seek the Green Party nomination.
The Greens responded to his entreaty with dispatch saying "Dr. West is an important voice for social and economic justice in line with our party's platform. We look forward to him participating in the nomination process."
Presidential campaigns, like wars, require general staff and troop mobilizations. On June 21, West added Jill Stein as his “Interim Coordinator” to assist with fundraising, communications, and expanding the Green's ballot access beyond its current 17 states. Currently, there are 234,000 voters registered as Green Party members.
As a former presidential candidate, Stein's knowledge of the organization, its culture, and the topography of the Green Party's ballot access wars is a huge asset for West. So too, a new wave of voters has been catapulted into the political vortex by the Supreme Court's decisions curtailing abortion, LGBTQI rights, and eliminating affirmative action. Many of them feel compelled to get off the sidelines and engage in active opposition.
West is well positioned to capture the Green Party's presidential nomination and catch this fresh wave of discontented voters that vibrate to the rhythms of his radical truth-telling candidacy as opposed to Joe Biden.
While West's entry in the presidential contest has unsettled the political establishment, news leaks revealed Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans are colluding to puncture Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and the No Label Party's (NLP) presidential trial balloon. Manchin said he'll decide on an No Labels Party run in January 2024. Financed in part by billionaire Republican donors, the NLP has raised $70 million, gained ballot access in four states, and is supporting the reelection of Manchin's best bud, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz).
In this fractious environment, Cornel West's announcement as the Green's presidential candidate landed like a fusillade of projectiles whose blast radius is yet to be measured.
A Framework to Evaluate Cornel West's Presidential Run
As an Ivy League scholar and author cum political actionist, Cornel West is the first Black presidential candidate to run as a radical third-party social democrat with the candle-watt power to light up a national election.
The 2024 election wars are not just a contest between three major candidates, but three different governing systems and ideologies: neo-liberal imperium, ascendant proto-fascism, and radical democratic socialism.
When NBN reference MAGA-Verse as proto fascists we are characterizing them as Trump-inspired, authoritarian, white ethno-nationalists in a pre-fascists stage seeking to establish an American Apartheid regime. Unlike classical Euro-fascists of the early 1900s, who actually built things and redistributed wealth to the lower and working-classes, these revanchists dolts grift off their own supporters and sell access to the government coffers for payoffs and perks.
Cornel West enters a contentious race stained by the January 6, Capitol Coup that destabilized America's core institutions. It imposed a Cold Civil War on the body politic that could go hot quickly as tension mounts with the stream of criminal indictments being filed against Donald Trump. Despite his vows to visit the MAGA-Verse hinterlands to engage Trump supporters, it's not likely Cornell West will dial down the temperature.
New Black Nationalists are evaluating how the West campaign impacts three pivotal issues confronting the Black Commons.
1.) How West shapes the political battlespace for the Black Commons to prevent Republicans from winning the White House. Bolting the Oval Office door to Republican control of U.S. Armed Forces, the Justice Department, the DNI and CIS intelligence services, the Homeland Security Department, and national emergency powers is paramount to foreclose on the short-term existential threat posed by MAGA-Verse's sedition wing.
2.) How the West campaign creates options and political maneuvering room for the Black Commons to pursue independent political action on multiple fronts.
3.) How the West campaign repositions the Black Commons to respond to extra-constitutional attempts by the MAGA-Verse sedition to impose authoritarian rule through armed coup attempts, civil war, or a stolen national election.
As part of New Black Nationalists ongoing analysis, we will track West's efforts to expand the Green Party's ballot access and secure third-party cross endorsements to win ballot access in additional states. Recommendations for third-party cross endorsements are included in this brief. We will also critique Cornel West's domestic and foreign policy platform, taking issue with him where critical policy differences arise.
As a point of clarification, New Black Nationalists do not engage in electoral politics. We have no desire to save American Empire nor corporately managed democracy from itself. We seek exit and self-determination to create a sovereign Black majority-led nation-state. Our network's central task is provisioning analytical products for the Black Commons, providing our best counsel, and supporting the Black Commons' independent political actions.
This paper outlines a framework that envisages Cornel West's presidential campaign as a transformative project that sets a new political realignment in motion. We refer to this reconfiguration as the West Bank Realignment. The locus of the realignment seeks to invert the leadership dynamic of a growing social democracy movement and a fragmented Democrat Party. It strives to elevate the Black Commons as a vanguard force in both constellations.
The West Bank Realignment pursues a dual-track strategy targeting two audiences simultaneously to achieve two separate aims. The campaign's principal theater of action is Cornel West's success in building a politically coherent social democrat coalition around the Green Party.
Winning cross endorsements from other third parties to expand ballot access, enlarging voter turnout, running compelling new Green Party candidates, refreshing the Green Party's ranks with youth and Black and Brown members, and generating new policy ideas are the signature markings of an extended social democrat assemblage of a West Bank Coalition. For example, why West hasn't West called for expanding the Supreme Court with a plan that includes a rationale, a sound constitutional argument, the number of justices and term limits?
The WBRs secondary theater calls for grassroots Black Democrats to lead a rear-guard action to reject Joe Biden as the presumptive party nominee and draft the strongest Democrat to win the Oval Office in 2024. West will win a share of Black Dems to his populist social democracy standard, but the onus of this fight is on grassroots Black Democrats to initiate a draft effort to nominate a fresh, exciting candidate with youth, brio, and the swag of a fighter.
In May 2023, NBN's drafted a recommendation and strategic overview for grassroots Black Democrats to draft Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for President campaign. Whitmer is the strongest, most electable Democrat with the best-governing record in a battleground state in the strategic Midwest region of the country. In the three-part series, NBN outlined a path for Big Gretch to win a "brokered national convention" in Chicago in August 2024. Since NBN released its Draft Whitmer strategy, in June Politico, Vanity Fair, and Atlantic Monthly published major articles raising the question of Democrats dumping Biden and putting Whitmer on the ticket.
These two movements are not in contradiction to each other. Cornel West must lead the former to build an alternative political power base for the Black Commons while influencing the latter simply carrying through on his campaign promise to articulate his differences with Joe Biden's milquetoast liberalism. New Black Nationalists underderstand Cornell West will not likely win the presidential election nor does that appear to be his goal. However, to neutralize the immediate existential threat posed by the Trump MAGA-Verse sedition, Democrats must win the Oval Office, even if they lose both congressional houses.
Should grassroots Black Democrats successfully spearhead Biden's ouster, and their nominee wins the presidency, they will be positioned to contend for the commanding heights of the party's leadership. They can negotiate the Black Commons' unfinished agenda and ensure our community's self-defense capabilities are hardened to repel attacks and reprisals. Anyone that thinks the MAGA-Verse will not respond violently to losing the 2024 presidential election or seeing Trump in an orange jumpsuit at a federal penal colony, should think again.
In short, Cornel West's candidacy creates maneuvering room for the Black Commons to assert its independent interests and buys us precious time to prepare for the multiple political crises that lie ahead. Properly approached, and with a bit of luck, radicalized Black activists can gain ascendancy in the leadership ranks of the social democratic movement and wrangle significant power away from the neo-liberal Democrat Party apparatchiks. These developments would signal the start of the West Bank Realignment power shift.
The Ballot Access War and Presidential Debate Participation
From Princeton's lecture halls to standing with anti-fascist protesters at the 2017 Battle of Charlottesville, Cornel West has accrued street cred among the Black Commons. He has broad racial crossover appeal with GEN Z and millennial voters. He has also been part of the furniture of the social democracy movement since the early 1970's. West supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, serving as his adviser. After losing the Democrat Party primary, Sander's endorsed Hilary Clinton, prompting West to break away and support Jill Stein. In 2020, West backed Sanders and then Biden saying “an anti-fascist coalition” was needed to stop Trump.
A talented orator with a charismatic persona, Cornel West has the receipts to sustain and expand a national campaign. In seeking the Green Party presidential nomination, instead of running as the People's Party candidate, Cornel West repositioned his candidacy to gain ballot access in 17 states representing a total of 228 electoral college votes.
To qualify for the general election presidential debates with the Democrat and Republican nominees, West needs to gain ballot access in states representing the mathematical possibility of winning 270 electoral votes. As we shall demonstrate, West has several paths to secure 42 additional electoral votes by gaining ballot access in handful of states.
To qualify to appear in the debates with the Republican and Democrat nominees, West also needs to amass 15% of the national electorates' support after Labor Day 2024, in five national public opinion polls selected by the Commission on Presidential Debates. The Commission currently has no Blacks serving on its Board of Directors. Its Executive Director nor either one of its Co-Chairs is Black.
If West wins the Green Party nomination, New Black Nationalists believe he will exceed the 15% threshold required to appear in the general election presidential debates. However, the criteria for identifying the presidential preference polls used and the methods adopted to assure representative samples of Black, Hispanic, Asian-American, and Indigenous Natives are factored into the selection process merits intervention now.
Why is Cornel West Running: The Revolution of Dignity
"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...We’re talking about empowering those who have been pushed to the margins. Neither political party wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech. We will never actually be able to deal with the escalating fascism in America with milquetoast neoliberalism. You just end up with caretaker governments. You end up postponing the collapse of democracy..."I’ve got to wrestle with my own Black politicians who reinforce the neoliberal hegemony in the Black community. "We have to get at the roots of fascism... Quit scapegoating the most vulnerable. Let us confront the most powerful."
Cornel West, June 5, 2023 Announcement
Cornel West is running for president as a radical "truth-teller." His vow to speak unvarnished truth to action on behalf of the most "marginalized and vulnerable" communities mark the continuation of his vocation to espouse a Revolution of Dignity.
At a time when the ethical and moral leadership of Republicans, Democrats, and institutional leaders is so debased, West's truth-telling Revolution of Dignity can lance the armor of widespread cynicism and disbelief. For the next seventeen months Cornel West will stand on the front lines to counter-message the post-factual propaganda of MAGA-Verse proto-fascists. In his words, he will also "wrestle with the milquetoast liberalism of Joe Biden and my own Black politicians who reinforce the neoliberal hegemony in the Black community."
In New Black Nationalists view this is precisely what the Black Commons and its allies need at this time. Democrats and centrist social democrats deride Cornel West's "truth-telling" project as too amorphous and emotional an enterprise---the rhetorical flourishes of a colorful academic who can't win the presidency but wants to end his celebrated career with a "vanity project." Bernie Sanders acolyte and social democrat podcaster Benjamin P Dixon epitomized this viewpoint best when he said,
"When I heard about my beloved brother’s campaign for president, I immediately thought of President Ron DeSantis’ First 100 days. Dr. Cornel West will inspire a wonderful campaign of hope, justice & liberation. And will get just enough support for DeSantis to win the White House."
We'd remind our Black Democrat and centrist social democrat friends the January 6 Capital Coup was predicated on the Stop the Steal election fraud big lie. Hundreds of bills rammed through majority Republican state legislatures since the 2020 election restricting voting rights are premised on combatting voter fraud that never happened. Books are removed from public library shelves and public schools for advocating Critical Race Theory: another big lie.
The MAGA-Verse and Republicans have little need for a political agenda. When lies don't suffice they create alternative facts and conspiracy theories. Mimicking Euro-fascist playbooks, MAGA-Verse post-factual propaganda thrive on the scale and incessant drumroll of lies churned out by cable news and hard-right social media. Injecting grievance, victimhood, and hate into the bloodstream of QAnon, Christian Nationalists, and Moms for Liberty is the oxygen that breathes life into their regime change project.
MAGA-Verse propaganda is not generated solely for vulnerable white Republican and conservative voters. It's also disseminated to invoke a sense of fear and resignation in Black and Brown communities that Trump, and white proto fascists will prevail. Ubiquitous and attacking by stealth, Russian bots breached Black Lives Matter's firewall to conduct disinformation ops in 2016. Putin sent BLM a message on behalf of Trump reminding them they are not beyond Moscow's reach. Similarly, it's not insignificant when MSNBC's Joy Reid has episodic fulminations about how scared Black people are as happened after the Buffalo mass killing and the Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action last week.
For these reasons and more, Cornel West is needed to sound the alarm and summon the fight back. In this regard, NBN also wishes to proffer a cautionary note to West. There is a difference between being an academic and Christian minister and running for president. It's one thing for West to venture into the MAGA-Verse hinterlands to campaign in Trump country, it is another to support calls for Left-Right unity coalitions with white nationalists as the Peoples Party for the Rage Against the War Machine Rally in February 2023. West did not personally support the rally, but his proximity to the People's Party, exposes him to unwarranted criticism.
West also co-authored a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “DeSantis’s Revolutionary Defense of the Classics”. The op-ed praised Ron Savonarola DeSantis-- the high priest of book burning--for endorsing Florida high school students qualifying for scholarships using the Classic Learning Test. It turns out that West in his Christian ministerial role along with co-author J.W. Tate are associated with the Christian-based "Classic Learning Test" organization that advocates substituting the exam for the SAT. It is precisely these kinds of issues that can spread confusion and sow doubt about West's authenticity and loyalties.
The same issue applies to West's vow to hold Black politicians' accountable. He must strike the right tone and ensure the battles he fights are on solid terrain. West is both an intellectual and street fighter who relishes verbal combat. He took a lot of heat in 2012 for calling President Obama, a “a war president with a [Nobel] peace prize” and a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface” when Black poverty levels rose under Obama's administration.
West didn't back down. Rather he upped the ante in 2015, skirmishing with author Ta-Nehisi Coates over similar issues concerning President Obama. Coates, said West, is “a clever wordsmith with journalistic talent who avoids any critique of the Black president in power. The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading."
On the one hand this exchange demonstrates West is committed to the same core issues today that he raised fourteen years ago with Obama. As a presidential candidate, however, West cannot punch down to individuals in the Black Democrat establishment but continue to target the Republican nominee and Biden. He must have the patience and confidence that grassroots Black Democrats will hold Congressional Black Caucus members and Biden's Black surrogates to account.
Thus far Biden's Black surrogates and elected Black Democrat officials have kept their powder dry and gone silent on West's campaign. They act as if they didn't get the memo that West is running. They are reluctant to attack West and risk alienating Black voters they need to support Biden. But as West's campaign picks up steam, that will change. NBN trusts that West has the maturity to pick and choose his battles well. As much as politics is about organization, money, and message, it's also an art form--something a jazz improvisationalist like West surely understands.
West's presence in the 2024 presidential campaign also ensures that the interests of the most marginalized and vulnerable communities will be heard: they will not be erased from the public square. By constantly putting their needs at the center of his campaign, West continues to bestow agency and dignity on them.
Further, New Black Nationalists assert that West's reference to "caretaker governments' and "postponing the collapse of democracy" are central themes in his campaign schematic. They contemplate the existential moment the Black Commons now confront and are ill-prepared to take on.
On its current trajectory, American Empire is no longer stainable. Its decaying institutions are too brittle to resist subversion. No authentic national "American" culture exists to sustain a national ideal or identity in the face of the gathering factional headwinds. There is no political force or individual capable of consolidating a vital center durable enough to constrain MAGA-Verse's authoritarian encroachments and the Supreme Court's ideological and religious decisions.
New Black Nationalists and Cornel West share a general view that American Empire is on the knife's edge. The Black Commons are having difficulty coming to grips with the reality that Trump, the Republican Party, and white nationalist militias are determined to deconstruct the government and burn the country down. They shout 'civil war' from the rooftops every day.
We have entered a new age of political, cultural, and informational warfare sometimes referred to as the "integrated battlespace." The Black Commons needs to step up the pace and quality of its engagement to maintain contact with accelerating crush of developments. We need to alter the state of play by transitioning from the defensive and start dictating the time and place of struggle, and choice of political weapons.
The West Bank Realignment and Altering the State of Play
The West Bank Realignment [WBR] strategy envisages Cornel West's 2024 presidential candidacy as the foci of a Black electorate simultaneously surging from below to contend for leadership in the social democratic movement and Democrat Party.
Thus, WBR pursues a dual-track strategy that targets two audiences to achieve two separate aims. The campaign's principal theater is Cornel West building a politically coherent social democrat coalition around the Green Party that turns out voters, runs compelling candidates, and generates new policy ideas. This proposed social democrat assemblage is the West Bank Coalition.
As mentioned earlier, the secondary political theater of action calls for grassroots Black Democrats to lead a rear-guard action to oust Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee and draft Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as the party's presidential nominee. We commend our readers to review the recommendation on our site. In our view, the stronger Cornel West's Green Party candidacy grows, the more momentum will build for Democrats to dump Biden before or during the Democrats Chicago National Convention.
Since the 2020 elections, a fresh surge of millennial and GEN Z activists have coalesced around abortion and LGBTQI rights, gun reform, climate change, and pro-union organizing around work conditions, pay, and health care benefits. This second wave is impatient for change, more left in attitude, and less given to compromise. Animated by the 2020 George Floyd protests, Black activists have been flowing into social democrat organizations through a number of portals: Black socialist groups, the DSA, the Green Party, Bernie Sanders's Our Revolution movement, The People's Party, the Working Class Party, the Movement for Black Lives, and Black Lives Matter despite their disappointing and inconsistent decentralized leadership model.
The agenda of the groups and parties listed above generally agree on a similar subset of issues that are core to today's social democrat movement: Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, a living wage, climate change, union organizing rights, and reproductive rights.
Social democrats divide over whether to work through the Democrat Party or third parties and advocacy organizations to realize their goals. Social democrats gathering outside the ambit of the Democrat Party are the bricks and mortar of a broader West Bank Coalition.
Cornel West can affect a significant change in the composition and character of the social democracy movement by ushering greater numbers of Black and Brown activists and youth into the Green Party. Since Cornel West originally joined the Democratic Socialist of America (DSA) in the late 1970s, the democratic socialist trend had historically been a predominantly white movement. Its racial composition began changing in 2016 with Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign, followed by the seismic quake of the George Floyd protests.
Cornel West has an opportunity to take this transformation to the next level. The composition of social democratic organizations is not only changing but the agendas of the organizations is beginning to reflect that evolution as well. The Green's platform, for example, calls for independence for Puerto Rico and reparations for the Black Commons. If there is to be a political power shift away from Black Democrats who are beholden to its neo-liberal agenda, then a credible organized electoral alternative must be available.
Should Cornel West and the Greens start gaining traction as a third force, he can emerge as a central figure to build broader operational unity and political coherency between social democrat formations outside the Democrat Party. We won't belabor the point, but to demonstrate these possibilities we would refer you to Socialist Alternative's statement welcoming Cornel West's announcement. The organization which has branches in 21 cities and is working to form a new party makes a compelling argument why West's campaign should be supported. From our reading of their statement, Socialist Alternative appears to be open to actively supporting West's candidacy. NBN foresees numerous opportunities like this developing as the West Bank Coalition unfolds.
Recommendations:
To facilitate the growth of the West Bank Coalition, New Black Nationalists offer the following recommendations for consideration.
1) Select A Woman Vice-Presidential Running Mate
-- Cornel West's vice-presidential selection can greatly expand the political bandwidth, voting power, and influence of his campaign. NBN urges Cornel West to give consideration to a gender-balanced national ticket and weigh the benefits of selecting a Hispanic woman.
2) State Ballot Access Strategy
-- NBN encourages the West campaign to explore the possibilities of pursuing cross endorsements from the following third parties to expand its state ballot access.
Working Families Party --Qualified for ballot access in New York, Connecticut, Oregon, and S. Carolina
The Grass Roots Legalize Cannabis Party of Minnesota --Qualified for ballot access in Minnesota
The Alohaʻ Āina Party -- Qualified for ballot access in Hawaii
The Working Class Party of Maryland - -Qualified for ballot access in Maryland and Michigan
The Progressive Party of Vermont -- Qualified for ballot access in Vermont
3) Draft a Joint West Bank Coalition Statement on 2024 Campaign Issue Priorities
--The West campaign considers initiating an effort to develop a joint statement for all endorsing organizations declaring support for three issues. For example, 1) 15$.00 Living Wage, 2) National Abortion Rights Bill, 3) Medicare for all. Through a consultive process, a consensus statement could help build greater operational unity between 3rd parties and social democracy groups.
4) Targeted outreach to Black Lives Matter and Movement to Support Black Lives supporters and sympathizers.
-- Since 2014, tens of thousands of Movement 4 Black Lives and Black Lives Matter activists and supporters have taken to the streets clamoring for social justice and protesting the barbarous actions of law enforcement and anti-Black policies of the carceral state. Where have they all gone? From organizers to media specialists to community groups, NBN believes there is an army of activists out there that want to get back in the fight and are not thrilled about working with or voting for the Democrat Party. There is an opportunity here for Cornel West to develop a customized approach to summon them back to the fight.
5) The Green Party Will Consider Cross-Endorsing Other Third-Party Candidates and Independents.
--As part of the overall strategy to build operational and political unity with other third parties and independent candidates, the Green Party may want to consider cross-endorsing non-Green Party candidates in seats they are not competing for. If there is local consensus with endorsing such candidates and state election laws allow fusion tickets it may be a mutually beneficial practice.
Subverting the Democrat Party Establishment: The Black Commons and the Making of a President
The media and Democrat Party pretend Joe Biden has already won the nomination. Far from it. Biden is in deep trouble. He lacks the ability to inspire the passion required to match today's perilous moment. After two decades as a U.S. Senator, eight years as vice president and two years as president, Democrats and Independents are suffering from Biden fatigue. The base is in a fighting mood, especially women and the youth. Biden is not. He believes he can make peace with the sedition: he cannot.
As we predicted in October 2022, Hunter Biden was dirty and would open Joe Biden up to significant exposure. On June 20, 2023, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failure to file tax payments and entered a plea agreement on a firearms charge. The Biden campaign believes Hunter's guilty pleas will put an end to the controversies, but his family's exposure to questionable business practices and the classified documents snafu is far from over.
Worse still, the May ABC News/Washington Post poll found 63% of American adults don't think Biden has the "mental sharpness" it takes to serve effectively as president. That makes him a high-risk candidate the Black Commons cannot afford. When Democrats should be running away with the 2024 presidential race, Biden has barely led Trump and Ron Savonarola DeSantis for months in the polls. Everyone has written off Robert Kennedy Jr., but if he's the only Democrat opposing Joe Biden in the primaries, he could shock Biden in New Hampshire and Iowa and throw his campaign into turmoil.
If Democrats lose the Oval Office in 2024, it's not because Cornel West or Joe Manchin are spoilers. It's because Democrat leaders including the Congressional Black Caucus are refusing to do their duty by nominating the party's strongest presidential candidate. Instead, they acquiesce to the privileges of white hetero-patriarchy and incumbency.
It falls to grassroots Black Democrats as the party's dominant voting bloc to refuse to walk the gangplank with Biden over proto fascist-infested waters. They are the only force capable of taking independent action to nominate Democrats' most powerful leader which we believe is Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, A.K.A. "Big Gretch." Grassroots Black Dems have a hammer in their toolbox to subvert the cowardly defeatism of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party establishment: its Cornel West. They should use it by making it clear they have the option to Go Green and Go West.
Conclusion
Whether you are a fan of Cornel West or not, one thing is clear: his Green Party candidacy has opened several doors that percolate with new possibilities for the Black Commons to alter the affairs of state and their everyday life experiences. Leveraging those possibilities calls for boldness and imagination. We cannot afford to just think outside the box, we must break the box and create new modes of thinking. As vision-holders of a far different society than we inhabit today, we cannot reach that celestial space with a 4-G mindset in a 6-G world. We must think anew.
The West Bank Realignment is one attempt to build on the bricks and mortar of what already exists. More opportunities, surprises, and twists and turns will arise during the course of this campaign. To take advantage of these opportunities contingency plans that respond to the urgency and complexity of the moment will be at a premium. The three-dimensional chessboard we are navigating requires us to be agile and master all sides of the problematic.
Cornell West ended this historic presidential June 5, campaign announcement by saying his candidacy hoped to bring out the best in us, and that we would "tease out the best in him." It is in that spirit that New Black Nationalists submit this brief for consideration.
The New Black Nationalist Network
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
