Cornel West enters race for 2024 as 3rd-party candidate
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Professor and activist Cornel West announced his bid as a 2024 presidential candidate for the People’s Party on Monday.
“In these bleak times, I have decided to run for truth and justice which takes the form of running for president of the United States as a candidate for the People’s Party,” West said in a campaign video posted to Twitter.
“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 that I’ve been trying to do all of my life.”
I am running for truth and justice as a presidential candidate for the People’s Party to reintroduce America to the best of itself - fighting to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for… pic.twitter.com/u3NYGUbG1S
— Cornel West (@CornelWest) June 5, 2023
West, 70, has taught at top Ivy League schools and currently works as a philosophy professor at Union Theological Seminary.
His exit from Harvard University was widely publicized and came as a result of his dispute with the then-president of the university, Lawrence Summers. West joined Princeton University and also taught at Yale University shortly after.
It’s worth noting that West later rejoined Harvard but left in 2021 after accusing the university of “intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of deep depths,” as Politico reported.
He is the author of 20 books, including titles like “Race Matters” and “Democracy Matters,” and has been an activist since the 1960s, and even marched during the Civil Rights movement.
As a young man, he was inspired by Malcolm X. He also had admiration for the Black Panther Party, which West didn’t join because of his Christian faith, as he said in an interview in 2009.
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West will represent the People’s Party, founded by Nick Brana, a former staffer for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
In his campaign video, West targeted both political parties, stating that neither “wants to tell the truth about Wall Street, about Ukraine, about the Pentagon, about Big Tech.”
“I come from a tradition where I care about you. I care about the quality of your life. I care about whether you have access to a job with a living wage, decent housing, women having control over their bodies, health for all,” West said in the clip.
Alongside the video, West wrote on Twitter that he will fight “to end poverty, mass incarceration, ending wars and ecological collapse, guaranteeing housing, health care, education and living wages for all!”
