San Diego: A revolutionary roundtable with WWP candidates

San Diego, Calif. – This city’s Malcolm X Library was the scene on Oct. 16 of some serious political discussion as local activists shared ideas for fighting racism, police terror and capitalism at a dead end with visiting Workers World Party presidential candidates Monica Moorehead and Lamont Lilly. Chairing the roundtable discussion was Gloria Verdieu, of the San Diego Committee Against Police Brutality.

Present were a wide range of community members, including a teacher, students and community activists, several local leaders of the San Diego Black Panther Party, San Diego Black Lives Matter movement, Justice4SD33 and the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, a representative of the Native American Rights Network, and members of the local branch of Workers World Party.

The Black Panthers present were original members celebrating their 50th anniversary. They announced they are back, and will be patrolling the streets of San Diego, feeding the homeless and coming to the aid of other organizations.

The discussion included an array of social justice topics, from racism and police terror to freeing Leonard Peltier and supporting the Standing Rock anti-pipeline struggle. We also discussed how important the Black Lives Matter movement is and the need to defend it.

We ended by talking about solutions to Trump’s bigotry, racism and misogyny — his anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, anti-LGBTQ hate — and Clinton’s pro-imperialist war, anti-Black, anti-working-class record.

We say thank you to Monica Moorehead and Lamont Lilly, two Black revolutionary socialist candidates who have been touring the country with a different kind of message than that of Trump or Clinton.