Do go militantly into that good night, Cornel West told a packed gymnasium Thursday during a guest lecture at Franklin & Marshall College.

But also strive to be "a subversive for sweetness," West said.

Resist violence in all forms, added the provocative thinker, author and social-justice activist who has famously accused President Barack Obama of overlooking poverty and greenlighting drone attacks that have killed children in the Middle East.

Support the poor and downtrodden of all colors, creeds and genders, West urged.

Confront calamity, from the individual to the global.

Every hour matters.

"You're not here that long," West reminded the crowd, which responded with frequent clapping. "Nobody gets out of time and space alive."

West, who graduated from Harvard University, is a Princeton University professor emeritus and professor of philosophy and Christian practice at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

He delivered his "The Struggle Continues" lecture as part of F&M's Common Hour event series.

The F&M Black Student Union invited West to speak as part of Civil Rights Week activities on campus.

"I want to try to say something that thoroughly unsettles you," began the bearded, bespectacled West by way of warning his audience, many of whom were students.

Election of a black president does not equal a post-racist society, declared the 59-year-old West, who is familiar across generations from appearances in "The Matrix" science-fiction movie series and on political talk shows such as "The Colbert Report" and "Real Time With Bill Maher."

Humanity will have to work unceasingly to achieve racial equality, West said.

Successful freedom fighters will have to die, in a way.

"Any time you examine some of your prejudices ... and let some of them go," West said, "that is a form of death."

Rebirth grows from that.

"As a Christian," said West, a self-professed "deep Democrat" who also derives his polymath philosophy from Martin Luther King Jr., blues musicians and many others, "loving enemies" is vital.

He cautioned that suppressing aggressive and vengeful impulses poses one of the greatest challenges for people in this country, whose persistent regeneration-through-violence ethos was forged in the storied American Revolution.

"More Californians kill each other with knives" than Canadians do with any weapon, he said.

Locally, West added, returning to the drone theme, "Those bombs dropped on Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen land in Lancaster, you know. They land in the soul of a nation."

"Every lie" by the rich and powerful wounds the American psyche, said West, an Occupy Wall Street supporter.

He took numerous jabs at fraudulent bankers.

He also blasted the push to define every institution, including public education, on the extent of its market value instead of citizenship value.

People talk about Wall Street "like it's a friend around the corner," he said. "'Wall Street feels bad.' 'Wall Street's got a broken heart.' Wait a minute!"

At the other end of the scale is what West calls the prison "industrial" complex.

The country's rising inmate population –– its members usually are poor, disproportionately minority –– shows that Jim Crow-style racism still flourishes, according to West.

He spoke for about 40 minutes and then answered questions for another 25.

"Something is happening in this place," he said early on in the talk.

"Hope has nothing to do with optimism," he told his audience. "It has to do with staying in motion."
jrutter@lnpnews.com