Lamont Lilly | |
---|---|
Born | 1979 (age 43–44) |
Occupation(s) | Political activist and journalist |
Political party | Workers World Party (2011–2018) |
Lamont Lilly (born 1979) 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.
Lamont Lilly was born in 1979 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, United States. [1] He served in the United States Army Reserve, being honorably discharged in 2001. [2] In 1998 Lilly moved to Durham, North Carolina and enrolled at North Carolina Central University (NCCU), studying criminal justice. He graduated in 2003. Lilly initially aspired to become a lawyer. During his sophomore year of college he worked at a store at Northgate Mall, and while there he allowed a friend to use his employee discount. He later confessed and was convicted of felony embezzlement. He subsequently struggled to maintain employment and for a time became homeless. He later credited these experiences with shaping his views of homelessness and the criminal justice system. [3]
Shortly after graduating from NCCU, he pursued graduate studies in sociology, also at NCCU, but decided to forego traditional education and worked for several years as a grassroots non-profit program coordinator, focusing on Black youth leadership and academic development. His focus on Black youth and families continued as he became an activist and community organizer. [2] [1] In 2005 Lilly was hired by NCCU to serve the director of its African American Male Leadership Academy. He left the job in 2008. [3]
In 2011 Lilly participated in the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York City. That year he joined the Workers World Party (WWP). In 2015 he became a paid organizer for the party. [3] He served as the party's U.S. Vice Presidential candidate in the 2016 presidential election. [2] Lilly left the party in 2018, though he still identified as a socialist. [3]
From 2013 to 2018 Lilly was a Durham political activist, [4] [5] [6] a leading member of the Durham branch of the WWP, a member of WWP's National Committee, and an early member of Black Alliance for Peace. [7]
In 2010, Lilly traveled to Colombia in South America as a human rights delegate with Witness for Peace, advocating for displaced Indigenous and Afro-Colombian people. In 2015, he went to Syria and Lebanon [8] in a group led by Ramsey Clark and Cynthia McKinney. In Beirut, he spoke as a Black Lives Matter representative at the International Forum for Justice Palestine. In Damascus, he met with members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. [9]
Lilly has participated in several protests in the United States, including the 2015 Baltimore protests after the police murder of Freddie Gray, [10] to the Days of Grace actions in Charleston, SC in the wake of the racist massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church; [11] [12] Lilly has been present and involved at numerous instances of civil unrest related to racial discrimination, recording his perspective as an activist-journalist in the Black Lives Matter movement. [13] [2]
Lilly participated in the protests in Ferguson after the 2014 police murder of Michael Brown Jr. [14] and was present at the 2016 Standing Rock protests. [2] [15] Later, he led support rallies for the arrested activists who tore down the Confederate statue in Durham in 2017. [16] [17] [18] [19] Lilly has helped to lead demonstrations in Boston, [20] Chicago,[ citation needed ] Cleveland, [21] Los Angeles, [22] Milwaukee, [23] [24] New York City, [25] Oakland, [26] Philadelphia, [27] and San Diego. [28]
Lilly has written as a guest columnist in The Durham News, The Herald-Sun , and Triangle Tribune. [2] As of 2020 he is a regular contributor for Truthout . [3]
He has also been a guest speaker and facilitated workshops at several colleges and universities including the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford, [29] [30] Marshall University, [31] and Malcolm X College. [32]
Lilly was awarded the 2015 Local Hero Citizen's Award [33] by Indy Week for "pushing for workers' rights and police reform" and the 2017 Spectacular Magazine Man of the Year for "human rights and social justice". [34] Most recently, the Courier Newsroom named Lilly as one of their "Heroes of 2020" for his continued activism in the Movement for Black Lives. [35] He attributes much of his political development to Monica Moorehead, [36] [37] [38] Pam Africa, Mark Anthony Neal, and Mumia Abu-Jamal. He has also credited the writings of Thomas Sankara, Lucille Clifton, Amiri Baraka, Henry Dumas, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Kwame Nkrumah with influencing his political beliefs. [39]
Lilly currently resides in Durham's historically African-American community, Old Hayti. [40] He is also a member of the Alpha Kappa chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity. [41]
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 Greensboro massacre was a deadly confrontation which occurred on November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, US, when members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party (ANP) shot and killed five participants in a "Death to the Klan" march which was organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP).
The Workers World Party (WWP) is a revolutionary Marxist–Leninist communist party 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, their view of People's Republic of China as a workers' state, and their defense of the 1956 Soviet intervention in Hungary, some of which the SWP opposed.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people, and promote anti-racism. Its primary concerns are incidents of police brutality and racially motivated violence against black people. It started following the killings of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Rekia Boyd, among others. The movement and its related organizations typically advocate for various policy changes considered to be related to black liberation. While there are specific organizations that label themselves simply as "Black Lives Matter," such as the Black Lives Matter Global Network, the overall movement is a decentralized network of people and organizations with no formal hierarchy. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" itself remains untrademarked by any group. Despite being characterized by some as a violent movement, the overwhelming majority of its public demonstrations have been peaceful.
Rhodes Must Fall was a protest movement that began on 9 March 2015, originally directed against a statue at the University of Cape Town (UCT) that commemorates Cecil Rhodes. The campaign for the statue's removal received global attention and led to a wider movement to "decolonise" education across South Africa. On 9 April 2015, following a UCT Council vote the previous night, the statue was removed.
The Internet Research Agency, also known as Glavset, and known in Russian Internet slang as the Trolls from Olgino, was a Russian company engaged in online propaganda and influence operations on behalf of Russian business and political interests. It was linked to Yevgeny Prigozhin, a former Russian oligarch and leader of the mercenary company, the Wagner Group, and based in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
The Huey P. Newton Gun Club is a group named after Black Panther Party co-founder and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton.
Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100) is an African American youth organization in the United States. Its activities include community organizing, voter mobilization, and other social justice campaigns focused on black, feminist, and queer issues. The national director is D'Atra "Dee Dee" Jackson.
The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) is a coalition of more than 50 groups representing the interests of black communities across the United States. Members include the Black Lives Matter Network, the National Conference of Black Lawyers, and the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights. They are endorsed by groups such as Color of Change, Race Forward, Brooklyn Movement Center, PolicyLink, Million Women March Cleveland, and ONE DC, and the coalition receives communications and tactical support from an organization named Blackbird.
Peoples Power Assemblies(PPA) is an advocacy group in the United States that coordinates through local offices of the Workers World Party. The group advocates for jobs, healthcare, and educations and against police brutality, sexism, and anti-LGBT and ableist oppression.
The 2017 May Day protests were a series of protests that took place on May Day over worker and immigrant rights, throughout the United States and around the world. Protests became violent in Olympia, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. Many demonstrators were protesting against the policies of President Donald Trump, specifically those related to immigration.
The Confederate Soldiers Monument was a memorial to the soldiers from Durham County who fought for the Confederate States of America in the American Civil War. The statue was seriously damaged by protestors and removed from public view on August 14, 2017.
The 2022 Connecticut gubernatorial election took place on November 8, 2022, to elect the governor of Connecticut. Incumbent Democratic Governor Ned Lamont ran for re-election to a second term in office. The race simultaneously took place with the election to the state's Class III Senate seat. This election featured a rematch of the previous 2018 gubernatorial election, pitting Lamont against Republican Bob Stefanowski, who he previously defeated by 3.2% of the vote. This time Lamont won re-election by a wider margin, becoming the first Democrat to win a gubernatorial election by more than 5 points in the state since 1986. This is the first time since 1994 that Tolland County voted Democratic in a gubernatorial election.
The George Floyd protests were a series of police brutality protests that began in Minneapolis in the United States on May 26, 2020. The civil unrest and protests began as part of international reactions to the murder of George Floyd, a 46-year-old African American man, during an arrest. Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis Police Department officer, knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds as three other officers looked on and prevented passers-by from intervening. Chauvin and the other three officers involved were later arrested. In April 2021, Chauvin was found guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter. In June 2021 Chauvin was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison with possibility of supervised release after 15 years for second-degree murder.
This is a list of George Floyd protests in North Carolina, United States.
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The Strike for Black Lives was a mass walkout that occurred throughout the United States on July 20, 2020. Occurring during the George Floyd protests, the main goals of the strike were to draw attention to systemic racism and racial inequality in the United States, with additional goals including a raising of the minimum wage in the United States, stronger protections for unionizing, and expanded healthcare.
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