Cornel West, Tavis Smiley On 'Poverty Tour'
NEW YORK - PBS talk show host Tavis Smiley and Princeton professor Cornel West are travelling the country on a 16 city 'poverty tour.'
Although both men have been vocal critics of the president, West insists, "It is not an anti-Obama tour."
Rather, the men seek to highlight what they say is lack of effort by both the president and Congress to address the needs of the Americans who have been hardest hit by the recession.
When asked about some of the communities the tour will stop in, West replied, "We’re going to an Indian reservation in Wisconsin, we’re going to hit the brown barrios, the Asian poor communities, white poor communities, the Black hoods and we’re ending in Memphis to keep alive the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.’s fundamental commitment to sanitation workers there, and of course his assassination."
Asked whether he feels if President Obama has a special responsibility to Black people given their current economic state, West replied, "I think that every citizen in a democracy has a moral obligation to be concerned about the weak and vulnerable and the president of the United States is a citizen."
West continued, "When he says he has the exact same responsibility to every member of society, I just say it’s not true, he’s lying. It’s clear that he has more commitment to investment banks than he does to poor people. It’s just clear because when they got in trouble he gave them $700 billion; he subsidized them. They have not made poor people a priority. That’s why we’re going on the tour."
