Obama's Wealth Redistribution for Civil Rights

Amanda Carpenter | October 27, 2008 8:00 AM

For those who can't watch the video, let me tell you exactly what it says. It's more shocking than Obama's exchange with Joe the Plumber by far.

Barack Obama laments the Supreme Court's unwillingness to examine "wealth redistribution" to help the civil rights movement. He says the civil rights movement made a mistake by become too focused on the court and instead they should have stuck with community organizing to get their "redistributive change"

“The Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society,” Obama, then an Illinois State Senator, said in a 2001 radio interview.

“And one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was, um, because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think 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 coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.”

A caller then asks if the courts were the right place begin redistributing wealth. Obama instructs the caller that the courts aren't "very good at it" and it would be better to pursue legislative ways to redistribute wealth.