Dr. Cornel West

Princeton Professor Cornel West  and Tavis Smiley, co-hosts of Smiley & West, which airs Sundays at 4PM on AM 820, came to WNYC to discuss their new book, The Rich And The Rest Of Us: A Poverty Manifesto. Brian asked them the End of War question: Is war inevitable. Listen.

Princeton Professor Cornel West  and Tavis Smiley, co-hosts of Smiley & West,  which airs Sundays at 4PM on AM 820, discuss their new book, The Rich And The Rest Of Us: A Poverty Manifesto -- a call for a new socioeconomic system based on "fundamental fairness."

One in six Americans are poor, which means 50 million people are living in poverty in the United States. Dr. Cornel West and Tavis Smiley, hosts of PRI's "Smiley and West," went on "The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience," an 18-city tour of the United States in August, to speak with Americans living in poverty and get a sense of what it's like to be poor in America today. This week, PBS will air the first of five episodes of "The Poverty Tour."

Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the Huffington Post.com and the author of Third World America: How Our Politicians Are Abandoning the Middle Class and Betraying the American Dream, discusses whether or not President Obama has betrayed his base.   Then, later in the show, Dr. Cornel West, University Professor in the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University; co-host of Smiley & West; and author of Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir, weighs in on the topic.  Jami Floyd, broadcast journalist, legal analyst for cable and network news, and blogger at It's A Free Country, chimes in with her post on whether Obama abandoned his base.