More than a week after independent presidential candidate Dr. Cornel West announced her as his running mate, Dr. Melina Abdullah said she remains committed to Black liberation, regardless of the outcome of the election.
In speaking about her goal during this election, Abdullah paid homage to Charlotta Bass, a Los Angeles-based newspaper publisher and activist who in 1952 became the first African American female vice presidential nominee in the United States.
Abdullah said, like Bass, she plans to use the national election to amplify and bring to the forefront issues of significance to Black people and other marginalized communities.
“It’s to put out a platform for what justice looks like,” Abdullah said, later emphasizing that a West-Abdullah White House would deviate from the Biden-Harris administration in the realms of economic, social and foreign policy. “If we were to win, we would have a vastly different approach [to governance] which would require a restructuring of how the U.S. works.”
West and Abdullah represent the first African American presidential ticket in U.S. history. They are running under the Justice for All Party, which West formed earlier this year after initially declaring his run with the People’s Party and later attempting to run on the Green Party’s ticket.
As of April 19, the Justice for All Party has gotten on the ballot in Alaska, Oregon, South Carolina and Utah. Attempts to produce similar results are ongoing in nearly two dozen other states, including Abdullah’s home state of California.
On April 10, West revealed Abdullah as his running mate on “The Tavis Smiley Show” on KBLA TALK 1580. He commended what he described as Abdullah’s record of centering poor and working-class people. He also said that she would “put a smile on the face of Fannie Lou Hamer and Martin Luther King Jr. from the grave.”
Abdullah, a Pan-African studies professor at California State, Los Angeles, hosts “This is Not a Drill” on KBLA TALK 1580 every Saturday. She co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter Grassroots, the latter of which she sits on as a board member.
On Wednesday, Abdullah told reporters that before West contacted her, she never gave any thought to any electoral office, other than the school board. She said that the campaign wouldn’t interfere with her work with Black Lives Matter Grassroots, nor will the organization endorse a candidate.
Abdullah also countered a narrative about third-party candidates spoiling Biden’s chances of winning.
“It’s an opportunity to raise a vision in truth, love and justice where we recognize that when this country spends money on genocide, it’s not on our people,” Abdullah said. “This is to advance an agenda empowering Black people and everyone else.”
The Unavoidable Question of Palestine
Abdullah’s ascent as a vice presidential candidate comes amid West’s ongoing efforts to differentiate himself from President Joe Biden, particularly as it relates to events in Gaza.
As of this week, nearly 34,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 76,000 wounded since Israel started its attacks on October 7, 2023.
In recent months, West has met with Palestinian organizers across the country, including in the battleground state of Michigan where the Uncommitted movement secured two state delegates via the Democratic primary process that took place in February.
Despite Biden’s overwhelming victory in the state, that outcome, to many, suggests waning support for the White House among Arab Americans living in Dearborn and Hamtramck, where they account for more than half of the population.
“You have a large concentration of Palestinians and the first Palestinian elected representative [Rashida Tlaib],” said Dr. Elsie Scott, founding director of the Ron W. Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center at Howard University in Northwest D.C. “People are waiting to see what happens and if President Biden pulls back but some say that won’t change their mind because he put too much into the basket.”
Just days before the Michigan primary, the Ron W. Walters Leadership and Public Policy Center, in collaboration with HU Graduate School and the HU Initiative on Public Opinion, released the findings of a survey of Black Michigan voters that they conducted. More than half of the 412 respondents were below the age of 40 with salaries below the middle-class threshold. Three out of four of them had either a high school diploma or a college degree.
Top issues among the respondents included economy and jobs (69%), affordable housing (41%), income inequality (39%) and racial justice (38%). Black independents, according to the poll, showed greater concern about affordable housing and racial justice than their counterparts who vote along party lines. Meanwhile, 13% of respondents designated foreign policy as an important campaign issue.
While nearly half of the sample planned to vote for Biden, 3% said they would support a write-in candidate. More than 10% of the sample expressed plans to vote for third-party candidates, particularly Robert Kennedy Jr. Fewer than 40% of respondents said they knew about West, compared to 76% who acknowledged knowing Kennedy, 34% who recognized Jill Stein and 29% who said they knew Mariam Williamson.
Earlier this year, Scott, political scientist Clarence Lusane, HU professor emeritus Lorenzo Morris and Tariah Hyland, president of Black Girls Vote’s HU chapter, counted among those who spoke about the findings of the survey during an event at HU’s Institutional Research Building.
While Hyland, a junior, pushed back against what she described as the misinformation surrounding Vice President Kamala Harris’ accomplishments, she lamented the circumstances under which she and other young people are voting.
“A lot of my peers feel like they have to choose between the lesser of two evils and feel discouraged. We feel there isn’t enough urgency toward meeting the needs of Black women,” she said on Feb. 23.
Ample Opportunity for Third-Party Candidates
Tim Black told The Informer that dire economic conditions domestically and the genocide in Gaza has created the ideal conditions for the rise of a third-party candidate.
With increasing working-class dissatisfaction with the Biden-Harris administration and former President Donald J. Trump’s legal woes, Black predicts that West and Abdullah will have ample opportunity to make their case.
For more than a decade, Black, a Gen X journalist-activist, has used his platform, Tim Black TV, to explore electoral politics, Black culture, and other topics of significance to Black people. He said that the show reflects his independent stance, as expressed by his criticism of President Barack Obama and his vote for Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka of the Green Party during the 2016 presidential election.
Over the years, Black has interviewed a bevy of people who championed causes for the working class, including Andrew Yang and Rep. Cori Bush. He also counts West among one of his more frequent guests, well before he announced his presidential run.
On April 11, Black featured West and Abdullah on Tim Black TV. He expressed plans to vote for them in November, telling The Informer that Abdullah really clarified why Americans, especially those who are concerned about domestic issues more so than what’s happening abroad, should be concerned about the BIden-Harris administration’s foreign policy record.
“If you spend money in one place, you don’t have money to spend anywhere else,” Black said. “With discretionary funding going to foreign countries, how can we have money for homeless folks, child care and all of the other issues that regular Americans face every day? There’s not an infinite amount of money that’s available. That’s where I’m at. That’s how I try to phrase it for people who aren’t on top of international issues.”
