Princeton University Professor Cornel West, Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore and personal finance guru Suze Orman joined talk show host Tavis Smiley at George Washington University’s Lisner Auditorium Thursday night for a rousing roundtable on poverty in America. “Tavis, you keep asking me when it’s going to happen,” Moore said, referring to an uprising of the poor. “Every time you see me, I’m wrapping crime scene tape around the stock exchange, I’m backing a truck up to Goldman Sach’s to get our money back, and I’m doing it all alone!” Frustration with capitalism, the two-party political system and Wall Street corruption dominated the discussion, titled “Remaking America: From Poverty to Prosperity,” as did disappointment in President Obama’s leadership, specifically in his choice of former Citigroup executive Jack Lew as his new chief of staff. “Let’s not waste another year addressing the issues we’re discussing on this stage tonight,” Moore pleaded into the camera. “You have the chance to be the Roosevelt of the 21st century.”
“It’s so ironic that a white brother from Flint, Michigan, is speaking in the black prophetic tradition to a black man in the White House,” West laughed.
The discussion will be rebroadcast on Tavis Smiley on PBS Jan. 16-18.
