Dr. Cornel West named Dr. Melina Abdullah as his running mate for the 2024 presidential election, making the first ever all-Black presidential ticket in U.S. history.
“I wanted someone whose heart, mind and soul is committed to the empowerment of poor and working people,” West said in his announcement on The Tavis Smiley Show. “She has a record of deep commitment and investment in ensuring poor and working people are at the center of her vision.”
Abdullah, like West, is a scholar and racial justice advocate. She co-founded the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles chapter and is a professor of Pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles. She also identifies as Muslim, another historic first for a presidential ticket. .
“I regard [West], and many of us regard him as one of the most brilliant people to walk this earth, and so I’ve been following him and had been really enthusiastic about his candidacy,” Abdullah said on Smiley’s show shortly after she was announced as West’s running mate.
West announced his candidacy for the 2024 presidential election in June 2023, initially running in the Democratic primary. He then switched to the Green Party before changing again to become the second Independent candidate in the upcoming election. West’s platform includes initiatives to promote environmental justice, to abolish poverty and homelessness, to create a minimum wage for all public school teachers, to codify equal rights for LGBTQ identifying people, and more.
Together, West and Abdullah are changing history and seek to change the future of the United States.
“I think that both of us want to disrupt the narrative that you have only two choices,” Abdullah said. “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.”
Cover Photo: Cornel West Announces First-Ever All-Black Running Ticket For Presidential Race / Photo credit:Getty Images/Vox