https://youtube.com/watch?v=C7bCMXEI0oE
Cornel West may approve of President Obama’s call to review Stand Your Ground laws, but he also believes, in light of the president’s drone policy, that it’s hypocritical.
After praising the president for addressing the laws in his remarks on Friday, the Princeton professor said, “Then I thought about our drone policy, which makes us the George Zimmerman of the world in terms of killing innocent folk in the name of self-defense.”
“Self-defense must never be used as a way of downplaying the precious lives of innocent people,” he explained.
West has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration, declaring the president “a war criminal” at one point over his drone campaign. These criticisms even extended to Obama’s use of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Bible for his second inauguration, which West called “just a moment in presidential pageantry” and at odds with King’s values.
On CNN, West went on to call for President Obama to be more assertive and take federal action on state Stand Your Ground laws. “I applaud his words, but I’m still waiting for action,” he said.