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 that will rally to his populist standard is an explosive cocktail encompassing all the elements to induce a realignment that alters the dynamics of the countries' body politic.
Cornel West's unexpected presidential announcement streamed across social media and cable news outlets on June 5, 2023. Over the next ten days, his video announcement 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 'sit down' with former Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein and her 2016 vice-presidential running mate Ajamu Baraka. Following the 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, need a general staff and troop mobilizations. On June 21, West added Jill Stein as his “Interim Coordinator” to work on fundraising, communications, and expanding the Green's ballot access beyond its current 17 states.
As a veteran Green presidential candidate, Stein's knowledge of the organization, its culture, and the topography of the ballot access wars is a huge get for West. As for mobilizing an army of active supporters to augment the Greens’ 234,120 national members, NBN has some ideas. Barring another high-profile personality jumping in the primary, Cornel West will likely win the party's presidential nomination.
While West's entry in the presidential contest clearly unsettled Democrats, news leaks revealed their party fixers and anti-Trump Republicans are busy 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 NLP third-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 with the force of a fusillade of projectiles whose blast radius is far-reaching.
A Framework to Evaluate Cornel West's Presidential Run
The Ivy League scholar and author cum political actionist is the first Black presidential candidate running as a radical third-party social democrat with the candle-watt power to light up a race not just between three major candidates, but three different governing systems: neo-liberal imperium, ascendant proto-fascism, and radical democratic socialism.
West enters a contentious race stained by the January 6, Capitol Coup that destabilized America's core institutions and imposed a Cold Civil War on the body politic. --one that could go hot as criminal indictments against his opponent Donald Trump mount. Despite his vows to visit the MAGA-Verse hinterlands to engage Trump supporters, it's not likely 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 in 2024. Bolting the Oval Office door to Republican control over U.S. Armed Forces, the Justice Department, the intelligence community, the Homeland Security Department, and national emergency powers is paramount to foreclosing the short-term existential threat posed by MAGA-Verse's sedition wing.
2.) The options and political maneuvering room West creates 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.
New Black Nationalists will track West's and Green Party's attempts to expand ballot access and secure third-party cross endorsements to win ballot access in additional states as we recommend later in this brief. We will critique Cornel West's domestic and foreign 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. However, our network provisions analytical products for the Black Commons provide our best counsel and supports 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: the West Bank Realignment. The locus of the realignment inverts the leadership dynamic of a growing social democracy movement and a fragmented Democrat Party. It seeks to elevate the Black Commons as a vanguard force in both constellations.
The West Bank Realignment pursues a dual-track strategy targeting two different audiences simultaneously to achieve two separate aims. The campaign's principal theater of action is Cornel West's campaign which builds 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 we call the West Bank Coalition.
The WBRs secondary theater of engagement 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. Cornel West will win a share of Black Dems to his populist social democracy standard. But the onus of this fight is on the majority of grassroots Black Dems. They must decide to either support Biden's anemic campaign to preserve the status quo ante or draft a fresh, exciting candidate with youth, brio, and the swag of a fighter.
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. New Black Nationalists are unorthodox thinkers, but we are realists. We understand Cornell West will not likely win the election nor does that appear to be his goal. But to neutralize the existential threat posed by the Trump MAGA-Verse sedition, Democrats must win the Oval Office.
Should grassroots Black Democrats spearhead Biden's ouster, and their nominee wins the presidency, they will seize the party's commanding heights. Negotiating the Black Commons’ unfinished agenda and ensuring our community’s self-defense capabilities will be top of mind. Anyone that thinks the MAGA-Verse will not respond violently to losing the 2024 presidential election or Trump being outfitted in an orange jumpsuit in 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 crises ahead. Properly approached, and with a bit of luck, radicalizing Black activists can gain ascendancy in the leadership ranks of the social democratic movement and wrangle significant power away from the neo-liberal status quo ante Democrat Party leadership. Should that happen, the West Bank Realignment will have begun.
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. His racial crossover appeal to GEN Z, millennial voters, and social democrats after supporting Bernie Sander’s 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns diversifies his portfolio of assets. 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 possible electoral votes by gaining ballot access in several states.
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.
Should Cornel West win 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 used for selecting presidential preference polls and assuring that representative samples of Black, Hispanic, Asian-American, and Indigenous Natives are factored into the polling matrix 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
New Black Nationalists are comfortable with Cornel West's rationale to run for president as a "truth-teller." His vow to expose the neo-liberal and neo-fascist agenda of Democrats and Republicans is precisely what the Black Commons and its allies need at this time.
Cornel West's campaign promise to speak truth on behalf of American Empire's most marginalized and vulnerable communities marks the continuation of his life's vocation to ignite a Revolution of Dignity. His voice, his writings, and his presence in the 2024 presidential campaign ensure they have agency, their interests will be heard, and that their presence will not be invisible or erased.
Further New Black Nationalists assert that West's reference to "caretaker governments' and "postponing the collapse of democracy" are critical passages not arbitrarily chosen. They contemplate the weight of 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. There is no political force or individual that can rally and consolidate a political bulwark strong enough to hold the vital center against the authoritarian encroachments of the right and the Supreme Court that is currently running the country by judicial fiat.
New Black Nationalists and Cornel West share a general view that American Empire is on the knife's edge. The Black Commons are having a difficult time coming to grips with the reality that Trump, the Republican Party, and white nationalist militias want to burn the country down despite the fact that they shout, 'civil war' from the rooftops every day. Cornel West is desperately needed to sound the alarm.
Democrat 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." It's bollocks--which is our polite way of saying bull----t. 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 restricting voting rights were premised on combatting voter fraud that never happened. Books are being removed from public library shelves and public schools for advocating Critical Race Theory: another big lie.
When lies don't suffice, the MAGA-Verse conjures alternative facts and conspiracy theories. Mimicking Euro-fascist playbooks the MAGA-Verse's web of post-factual propaganda thrives on the sheer scale and incessant drumroll of lies pumped out by cable news and hard-right social media. Injecting grievance, victimhood, and hate into the bloodstream of its MAGA-Verse, QAnon, and Christian Nationalists occult is the oxygen that breathes life into the MAGA-Verse's design for regime change.
MAGE-Verse psychological warfare is not just for the vulnerable and weak MAGA minions. It seeks to project a sense of inevitability and resignation among the Black and Brown Commons that Trump and white proto-fascists will prevail. Ubiquitous and attacking by stealth, Russian bots breeched Black Lives Matter's firewall to conduct disinformation ops. Putin sent BLM a very specific message on behalf of Trump that you are not beyond our reach. In that sense, it is not insignificant when MSNBC's Joy Reid has episodic fits about how scared Black people are today and about the future.
We have entered a new age of political, cultural, and informational warfare sometimes referred to as the "integrated battlespace. " The time has come for the Black Commons to alter the state of play by getting off the defensive and begin dictating the time and place of struggle, and the choice of political weapons.
That said, for the next 17 months Cornel West will stand on the front lines as a truth-teller to counter-message the MAGA-Verse propaganda machine. West has a hammer to pulverize the post-factual propaganda of the MAGA-Verse proto-fascists and half-truths mouthed by Joe Biden and milquetoast liberal Dems.
Cornel has vowed to "wrestle with my own Black politicians who reinforce the neoliberal hegemony in the Black community intoxicated with the felicities of bourgeois existence and with the wine of the world."
If West is going to hold Black Democrat politicians accountable, his tone and the hills he chooses to fight to defend will be critical to how the internal political dynamics play out among the Black Commons. West took a look a lot of heat in 2012 for calling President Obama, a “Rockefeller Republican in blackface,” when Black poverty rose under his administration. West didn't back down in 2012, nor did he in 2015 during the sequel to that same fight but this time with author Ta-Nehisi Coates.
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."
What this exchange tells us about Cornell West, is his commitment to the same issues he raised 14 years ago with Obama has not changed. What has changed is the Trump-inspired rise of white nationalism to foment regime change, and the Supreme Court's imposing White Minority Rule through a series of major decisions that are opposed by the majority of the people.
NBN believes West is on solid ground. He is speaking in the vernacular and interests of the Black Street, but his target is Biden. As a presidential candidate, we urge West to resist the temptation to punch downward on individuals in the Black Democrat establishment. He must have strategic trust and patience that grassroots Black Democrats will call the Congressional Black Caucus Members and other Black Biden 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 don't want to attack West and risk alienating Black voters whom they desperately 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.
The West Bank Realignment and Altering the State of Play
The West Bank Realignment [WBR] strategy envisages the Black Commons spearheading the MAGA-Verse Republican Party's defeat in the 2024 presidential race. It centers 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.
The 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.
The secondary political theater calls for grassroots Black Democrats to lead a rear-guard action to oust Joe Biden as the presumptive nominee and support the strongest candidate to beat the Republicans in November 2024. Who that candidate is certainly debatable. NBN it's a no-brainer.
In April, NBN's drafted a recommendation and strategic overview for grassroots Black Democrats to initiate a draft Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for President campaign. As explained in the Contingency Plan for Black Democrats Disenthralled with Joe Biden, 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 a three-part series, NBN outlined a strategy and path for Big Gretch to win a "brokered" national convention in Chicago.
The argument advanced here posits that the stronger Cornel West's Green Party candidacy grows, the more momentum will build for Democrats to dump Biden before or at the Democrats Chicago National Convention.
The West Bank Project
Since the 2020 elections, a fresh surge of millennial and GEN Z activists have coalesced around abortion rights, gun reform, climate change, and renewed waves of pro-union activity concerning work conditions, pay, and union organizing.
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 focus 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. Those 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 the DSA's predecessors launched the post-modern democratic socialist trend in the mid-1970s, the movement has historically been predominantly white. Its racial composition began changing in 2016 with Bernie Sander'’ presidential campaign, followed by the seismic quake of the George Floyd protests.
Cornel West has the opportunity to elevate this transformation to the next level. The composition of social democratic organizations has not only changed but their agendas reflect its 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 American Empire's neo-liberal agenda, then an organized electoral alternative must be available.
Should Cornel West and the Greens start gaining traction 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:
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.
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
The People's Party -- Qualified for ballot access in Virginia and Florida
Joint West Bank Coalition Statement on 2024 Campaign Issue Priorities
--The West campaign is considering initiating an effort to develop a joint statement of 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.
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 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 a customized opportunity here for Cornel West to develop a customized approach to summon them back to the fight.
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 them if they are not running a candidate for that office and they are at ease with the candidate's platform.
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 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 (2) misdemeanor counts of failure to file tax payments and entered a plea agreement on a firearm charge that is subject to a plea agreement. 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 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 candidate 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 the 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 white nationalist-infested waters. They are the only force capable of taking independent action to nominate Democrats’ most powerful leader which we believe is Gretchen Whitmer. 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 teem with new possibilities for the Black Commons to alter the affairs of state and our 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. We cannot have a 4-G mindset in a 6-G world.
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 those opportunities contingency plans that respond to the urgency and complexity of the moment will be at a premium. The three-dimensional chessboard requires that we be agile and play all sides of the equation to win.
Cornell West ended this historic presidential campaign announcement by saying his candidacy hoped to bring out the best in us, and we would "tease out the best in him." In that spirit, New Black Nationalists are submitting this brief for his thoughtful consideration.
The New Black Nationalist Network
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida