Milwaukee, July 7: Building People’s Power, Lamont Lilly Leads Community Conversation

Lamont Lilly, Vice Presidential candidate for Workers World Party (WWP) will be leading a community conversation about BUILDING PEOPLE’S POWER at this event.

Lamont Lilly is a leading member of the Durham, North Carolina., branch of WWP and a member of WWP’s National Committee. As a people’s journalist, as an activist, an organizer, and a speaker, Lilly has traveled widely to stand in solidarity with struggles against racism and imperialist war, for people’s justice and for socialism.

Lilly was born in 1979 in Fayetteville, NC. A military veteran, he graduated from North Carolina Central University, and then worked for several years as an educator and nonprofit program coordinator, focusing on African American youth leadership and academic development. His focus on youth continued as he became an activist.

In 2010, he traveled to Colombia in South America as a human rights delegate with Witness for Peace, advocating for displaced Indigenous and AfroColombian people. In 2015, Lilly went to Syria and Lebanon in a delegation led by Ramsey Clark and Cynthia McKinney. In Beirut, he spoke as a Black Lives Matter representative at the International Forum for Palestinian Solidarity. In Damascus, where millions are displaced by war, he met with Syrians defending their sovereignty and opposed to the U.S. instigated destruction of Syria. He also met comrades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Inside the U.S., he has gone wherever the struggle called, including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland, Los Angeles, and New York. From the Baltimore rebellion after the
police killing of Freddie Gray to the Days of Grace actions in Charleston, S.C. in the wake of the racist massacre at Mother Emmanuel AME Church, Lamont Lilly is always there on theground — as a journalist providing consistent revolutionary inside perspective on the Black Lives Matter movement and the continuing struggle for Black Liberation, and as a tireless organizer whose energy and enthusiasm have helped encourage a new wave of activism among oppressed and working-class youth.

Lilly’s political commentary has been featured in Workers World newspaper, Truthout, Counterpunch, the LA Progressive, Black Youth Project, the Durham News, and Triangle Free Press.

Lilly was awarded a 2015 Local Hero Citizen’s Award by Indy Week of Raleigh-Cary-Durham-Chapel Hill N.C. for “pushing for workers’ rights and police reform.”