Cornel West selects L.A. professor and activist Melina Abdullah as presidential running mate

California Politics ,Election 2024,Kamala Harris,L.A. Politics ,Homepage News

Benjamin Oreskes Matt Hamilton April 10, 2024

Independent presidential candidate Cornel West

on Wednesday

named Cal State Los Angeles professor Melina Abdullah as his running mate

on Wednesday

, saying that her commitment to social justice and

to

prioritizing the needs of poor Americans embodied the values of his candidacy.

I wanted to to run with someone who would put a smile on the face of [civil rights activist] Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King Jr. from the grave, West said on Tavis Smiley’s Los Angeles radio program.

Abdullah is well-known figure in local political circles

: Shewho

co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter and has been a fixture in recent years at protests and

acts of

civil disobedience on issues including police funding and the war in

the

Gaza

Strip

.

West’s choice means

that

at least three women from California

arewill be

running for vice president

in 2024

Abdullah, Vice President Kamala Harris and Nicole Shanahan, selected by independent

presidential

candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Former President Trump has not announced his choice for running mate.) The three candidates reflect the wide spectrum of backgrounds the state has to offer, with Harris coming up in the rough

–

and

–

tumble of Bay Area politics, Shanahan steeped in the Silicon Valley and Abdullah representing leftist

and progressive

grassroots

progressive

activism.

“It’s striking. But that’s about all that we have in common,” Abdullah said when Smiley noted that she and Harris had Bay Area roots and both attended Howard University.

During the broadcast, Abdullah recalled first meeting West when she was as an undergraduate student at Howard

,

and said she revered his influence on American political thought.

She added that he called her last week and

“

I

t felt as though God was speaking to me

,

and I said ‘yes

. ,

‘”

she said of receiving his call last week.

She noted

that theirsthis

was the first presidential ticket

in the U.S.

to include a Muslim, and Smiley

pointed out thatnoted

it was the first all-Black ticket.

“Both of us want to disrupt the narrative that you have only two choices,” said Abdullah, 52, referring

to Trump and

President Biden

,and former President Trump , the presumptive major-party nominees

.

“The world tries to tell us that we’re tethered to certain ideas that we don’t have to be tethered to. We can be expansive, and imaginative.”

West, an academic, author and activist, said alternative voices

arewere

needed to represent the anger of Americans frustrated by wars abroad and a lack of investment in communities at home. Lacking the infrastructure of a mainstream political party, West is collecting signatures to appear on ballots across the country. According to his website, he is

now

on the ballot

now

only in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah.

Selecting a vice

–

presidential candidate is a key part of

thethis

process

of making the ballot

in many state

s

.

“Trump is leading the country toward a second Civil War. Biden is leading the world toward World War III,” West told Smiley, with whom he co-hosted a radio program a decade ago.

“That’s the choice you have if you only are tied to the duopoly. That’s what it comes down to. We are providing an alternative. … We ain’t on nobody’s plantation.”

In recent years, Abdullah has spoken out against police shootings and increases in the Los Angeles Police Department budget. She

has

regularly appeared at Police Commission meetings, and as The Times wrote in 2015,

has

turned “normally dry public hearings into hours-long confrontations that frequently devolve into officers clearing demonstrators from the room.”

She has long pushed for abolishing the police

, and

prisons

,

and in 2020 was a forceful opponent of then

–

Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey’s re

–

election campaign, and

a

supporter of current Dist. Atty. George Gascn.

During that race, Lacey’s husband, David, was charged with assault after he

was accused of wavingallegedly waved

a gun at Abdullah and other protesters when they appeared outside the couples Granada Hills home early one morning. (The case was dismissed after he finished a diversion program.)

In 2022, Abdullah was forcibly removed from a mayoral debate on Cal State L.A.’s campus. She and

Mayor

Karen Bass

, who has been mayor of Los Angeles since that election,

have

a

decades-long relationship.

In 2020, after the

police

murder of George Floyd

in Minneapolis

, Abdullah was a central figure in organizing large rallies in Los Angeles.

More than a decade ago,

Abdullah,

along with Patrisse Cullors and others,

she

built what would grow to become the Black Lives Matter movement and later the nonprofit Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation.

Abdullah also is the founder of Black Lives Matter Grassroots Inc., which made waves in 2022 by accusing the foundation and one of its executives, Shalomyah Bowers, of “fraudulently [raising] money from unsuspecting donors” and diverting

itthe money

to benefit

the

Bowers and his consulting firm.

Bowers and the foundation vigorously denied the allegations and sought

the dismissal of a lawsuit thatto dismiss the suit, which

asked for $10 million in damages. L.A. Superior Court Judge Stephanie Bowick agreed

to tossand tossed

out the lawsuit in June 2023.

In her ruling, Bowick wrote that part of the lawsuit’s “allegations are so confusing and unintelligible it cannot even be determined what”

wasis

being alleged.

The judge earlier this year ordered Abdullah’s group to pay more than $374,000 in legal fees and costs to the foundation, Bowers and his consulting group

.

Smiley asked about these legal fights

,

and Abdullah

saidnoted

that

,

as non

–

profits, the various chapters that belong to Black Lives Matter Grassroots wouldn’t be endorsing anyone in the 2024 race.

“Some people might see it as baggage, but I actually see the work and experience of organizing and the kind of authenticity of our work as being something that actually fuels this campaign,” she said.

“I know that as we move forward, organizing is essential.”

Last month, Abdullah was sued by Dr. Lawson Bush V, a colleague in Cal State L.A.’s department of Pan African Studies, who accused Abdullah of defamation and intentional infliction of emotional distress.Bush said that Abdullah characterized him as a “horrible oppressive, vindictive, misogynist,” a “polygamist,” and “a voodoo practitioner,” and that her “defamatory statements” scuttled Bush’s appointment to interim dean of the College of Ethnic Studies, according to the lawsuit filed in L.A. Superior Court.In the suit, Bush contends that Abdullah had been campaigning for years to be dean, including with the hashtag #DrAbdullah4Dean, and that she vowed to “go public with everything” if Bush was appointed.”Dr. Abdullah has the knowledge and understanding of how her allegations negatively affect Dr. Bush as an African American man,” states the lawsuit, which also accuses the university and its trustees of harassment, retaliation and failure to prevent discrimination.Neither Abdullah or nor her attorneys have responded in court.