The Workers World Party Presidential candidate, Monica Moorehead, and VP candidate, Lamont Lilly, helped to kick off the protests at the RNC on Sunday, the day before the start of the convention.
Both candidates for this American communist party gave speeches at the start of the “Shut Down Trump and the RNC” march on Sunday. The VP candidate, Lamont Lilly, then helped to hold the banner at the front of the march as it chanted its way through Cleveland.
After leading the “Power to the people” chant, Lilly particularly wanted to share a few thoughts about Black Lives Matter. “Yeah, we face helicopters,” he said. “Yeah we face police departments, and tanks, and tear gas, and smoke bombs. With children in the—marching. With women marching.”
Moorehead spoke shortly after Lilly. She explained that she and Lilly “don’t give a damn about these elections.” They aren’t running to “win,” but to “put forth a message.”
The message of the Workers World Party is “to defend Black Lives Matter, to stop the deportations and raids against our migrant sisters and brother and their families, to abolish capitalism—the whole damn system is guilty—and to fight for a new socialist society.”
Moorehead doesn’t just want to abolish capitalism, but the police as well.
“We have the right to abolish the cops,” she said, citing the Declaration of Independence. “Not just disarm the cops,” she said. In Moorehead’s eyes, the police only serve “the rich, private property, the profits on Wall Street, the profits around the world, from Walmart to GM, from all of the different corporations.”
The Sunday march picked up Moorehead’s theme, chanting, “All these racist ass cops, we don’t need ‘em, need ‘em. We’re saying back up, back up. We want freedom, freedom;” and, “Indict. Convict. Send those killer cops to jail. The whole damn system is guilty as hell.”