Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He became widely known while on death row for his writings and commentary on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.
Richard Claxton Gregory was an American comedian, civil rights and vegetarian activist, and conspiracy theorist. He spent the last decades of his life speaking regularly about numerous conspiracy theories. His writings were best sellers. Gregory became popular among the African-American communities in the southern United States with his "no-holds-barred" sets, poking fun at the bigotry and racism in the United States. In 1961 he became a staple in the comedy clubs, even appearing on television, and officially releasing comedy record albums.
Monica Gail Moorehead is an American retired teacher, writer, and political activist. She was the presidential nominee of the Workers World Party (WWP) in 1996, 2000, and 2016.
The Revolutionary Communist League (Internationalist) was a small Trotskyist group in the US, which existed in various forms between 1968 and the late 1980s.
The New Communist Movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement principally within the United States, during the 1970s and 1980s. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.
Yuri Kochiyama was an American civil rights activist. Influenced by her Japanese-American family's internment, her association with Malcolm X, and her Maoist beliefs, she advocated for many causes, including black separatism, the anti-war movement, reparations for Japanese-American internees, and the rights of people imprisoned by the U.S. government for violent offenses whom she considered to be political prisoners. On May 19, 2016, which would have been her 95th birthday, she was featured on the U.S. Google Doodle, sparking controversy over her past statements expressing admiration for figures such as Osama bin Laden and groups like Al-Qaeda and Shining Path.
James Harris is an American communist politician and member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1996 receiving 8,463 votes and again in 2000 when his ticket received 7,378 votes. Harris also served as an alternate candidate for Róger Calero in 2004 and 2008 in states where Calero could not qualify for the ballot. In 2004 he received 7,102 votes of the parties 10,791 votes. In 2008 he received 2,424 votes. More recently Harris was the SWP candidate in the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral election receiving 2,057 votes for 0.89% of the vote. Harris served for a time as the national organization secretary of the SWP. He was a staff writer for the socialist newsweekly The Militant in New York. He wrote about the internal resistance to South African apartheid and in 1994 traveled to South Africa to attend the Congress of South African Trade Unions convention. In July 2012, Harris was named the Socialist Workers Party nominee for president. The vice presidential nominee was Maura DeLuca.
Teresa Gutiérrez is an American activist. Gutiérrez was the Workers World Party nominee for Vice President of the United States in the 2004. She was the running mate of John Parker. Besides the World Workers Party, the Parker/Gutiérrez ticket was also endorsed by the Liberty Union Party of Vermont.
James W. “Jim” Ford was an activist and politician, the Vice-Presidential candidate for the Communist Party USA in 1932, 1936, and 1940. A party organizer born in Alabama and living in New York City, Ford was the first African American to run on a presidential ticket in the 20th century.
Colia L. Liddell Lafayette Clark is an American activist and politician. Clark was the Green Party's candidate for the United States Senate in New York in 2010 and 2012.
Henry M. Winston was an African-American political leader and Marxist civil rights activist.
The American Left consists of individuals and groups that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political and cultural institutions of the United States. Various subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives believe that equality can be accommodated into existing capitalist structures, but they differ in their criticism of capitalism and on the extent of reform and the welfare state. Anarchists, communists and socialists with international imperatives are also present within this macro-movement. Many communes and egalitarian communities have existed in the United States as a sub-category of the broader intentional community movement, some of which were based on utopian socialist ideals. The left has been involved in both Democratic and Republican parties at different times, having originated in the Democratic-Republican Party as opposed to the Federalist Party.
The Spartacist League is a Trotskyist political grouping. They are the United States section of the International Communist League, formerly the International Spartacist Tendency. This Spartacist League named themselves after the original Spartacus League of Weimar Republic in Germany, but the current League has no formal descent from it. The League self-identifies as a "revolutionary communist" organization.
The International Communist League , earlier known as the International Spartacist tendency is a Trotskyist international. Its largest constituent party is the Spartacist League (US). There are smaller sections of the ICL (FI) in Mexico, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, South Africa, Australia, Greece and the United Kingdom.
The Workers World Party (WWP) is a revolutionary Marxist–Leninist political party in the United States founded in 1959 by a group led by Sam Marcy of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Marcy and his followers split from the SWP in 1958 over a series of long-standing differences, among them their support for Henry A. Wallace's Progressive Party in 1948, the positive view they held of the Chinese Revolution led by Mao Zedong and their defense of the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, all of which the SWP opposed.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) is a communist party in the United States established in 2004 after a split in the Workers World Party (WWP).
Victoria "Vicki" Garvin was an American political activist, Pan-Africanist, and self-described "working class internationalist." While growing up in a working-class family during the height of the Great Depression, Garvin was exposed early on to the realities of both proletariat and racial exploitation. Garvin became a prominent organizer in the Black Left during the height of McCarthyism, before traveling to Nigeria, Ghana, and China. In Ghana, Garvin was a member of a committee who received Malcolm X and created his itinerary, since Garvin had previously met him in Harlem. As a lifelong activist and radical intellectual, Garvin created direct links between Black Power politics, Pan-Africanism, and Third World liberation.
Lamont Lilly is an American writer, political activist, and community organizer based in Durham, North Carolina. He is also a former vice-presidential candidate with the Workers World Party in the 2016 presidential election.
Vincent Copeland was an American actor, labor official, writer, and political activist. A communist, Copeland was an actor during the 1930s but soon turned to political activism. Turning to industrial labor, Copeland was a welder, grievance officer, and editor of his unions' newspaper at the Bethlehem Steel plant in Lackawanna, New York. He "opposed the company's practice of denying black furnace workers better jobs by hiring outsiders to fill them" and 16,000 workers walked off the job in a wildcat strike. Copeland, however, was not rehired.
Safiya Bukhari was an American political prisoner and member of the Black Panther Party. She was also the co-founder of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), the Jericho Movement for U.S. Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War, and was the vice president of the Republic of New Afrika.
