Activist and professor Cornel West endorsed Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein on Thursday, calling her the “only progressive woman in the race” in a jab at Hillary Clinton.
“This November, we need change. Yet we are tied in a choice between Trump, who would be a neo-fascist catastrophe, and Clinton, a neo-liberal disaster. That’s why I am supporting Jill Stein. I am with her — the only progressive woman in the race — because we’ve got to get beyond this lock-jaw situation,” West wrote in an editorial in the Guardian.
Stein welcomed his support Friday, calling West, who had originally backed Clinton’s primary opponent Bernie Sanders, a “truth-telling voice.”
“I am incredibly honored to have the support of the legendary Dr. Cornel West, a great American intellectual activist who has tirelessly carried the torch passed by love warriors like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.,” she said in a statement. “Dr. West’s truth-telling voice is especially needed now, with Americans across the country rising up against a morally bankrupt political system.”
West was on the Democratic National Convention platform committee, but abstained from the final voting citing the party’s “moral failures.”
West said he couldn’t join the Vermont senator, who formally endorsed Clinton on Tuesday, in backing the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“I have a deep love for my brother Bernie Sanders, but I disagree with him on Hillary Clinton,” he wrote. “Her militarism makes the world a less safe place. Clinton policies of the 1990s generated inequality, mass incarceration, privatization of schools and Wall Street domination.”
Stein praised West and the Black Lives Matter movement for their activism and dismissed the logic of voting for a “lesser evil” this fall.
“As Dr. West has said, in this tumultuous time we can draw inspiration from the Black Lives Matter movement, a youth-led movement that is leading the charge to the better world we know is possible,” she said. “Like these courageous activists for racial justice and an end to violence, we all must reject the suicidal logic of accepting lesser evil, and stand up to fight for the greater good like our lives depend on it.”