Black Lives Matter will not endorse any candidate in the U.S. presidential elections as not one of them has dedicated enough time to understanding the issues or developing plans that “really get Black folks free,” one of the founders Professor Melina Abdullah said on Wednesday, adding that the group is “pushing real revolution.”
Abdullah, professor and chair of Pan-African Studies at Cal State Los Angeles, told Democracy Now that there were three reasons why the activist group would not throw their support behind an individual.
The first was that none were competent in dealing with issues affecting Black people in the U.S.
“Neither Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton have a strong command of the particular issues related to race in the specificity of Black oppression. Neither have been willing to really invest the time or energy to develop plans that really get Black folks free,” she said.
Abdullah completely ruled out Republican candidates, especially Donald Trump.
The next reason, she said, related to the limitations of presidential politics, and its disempowerment of Black people.
“We recognize that both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are controlled by monied interests. And as much as Bernie Sanders and, to a lesser degree, Hillary Clinton have kind of pushed back against that idea that they’re controlled by money, and Bernie Sanders has kind of identified with socialism, still we know that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are built to entrench themselves,” Abdullah explained.
“So no matter what the candidates attempt to do, being controlled by the two-party system is hugely problematic and is disempowering and oppressive to Black people.”
Abdullah continued that while Black Lives Matter were not telling people not to vote, there are different ways of achieving significant change, outside of conventional politics.
“We are pushing the real revolution. We know that the revolution won’t come at the ballot box and the revolution won’t be televised. The revolution will be on the ground, when the people rise up and demand something better, something more imaginative and something more visionary,” she said.
This content was originally published by teleSUR.