Obama Called for Economic Redistribution in 2001

Barack Obama, in phone call to a Chicago WBEZ public radio program in 2001, forcefully advocated the economic redistribution of society's product as a corrective to the unrealized promise of the civil rights movement:

You know, if you look at the victories and failures of the civil-rights movement, and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to vest formal rights in previously dispossessed peoples. So that I would now have the right to vote, I would now be able to sit at a lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it, I’d be okay, but the Supreme Court never entered into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society...

I think, the tragedies of the civil-rights movement was because the civil-rights movement became so court-focused, uh, I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change. And in some ways we still suffer from that.

Ironic now, isn't it, that the very civil and voting rights movement that gave blacks the right to vote and run for office has now resulted in the nomination and pending election of a transparently socialist nominee for president of the United States.

This story's currently the lead entry at Memeorandum.

This is not a hoax. Power Line has links to the audio.

This is a big story, but if America's really ready for a socialist revolution, as top leftists advocate, with media backing, then we should see little public backlash.

Change we can believe in ... big change!