Vote Cornel West/Melina Abdullah 2024

This is a moment in a movement!

Hello Friends and Comrades,

This weekend has been very busy so I’m simply sending my short contribution that I gave at the Cornel West Ballot Access Kickoff Event that I helped organize this weekend.

Pictured above is a great sign made by one of the other Cornel West volunteers.

I'm Nick Shillingford, I’m a South Minneapolis resident a nurse, and a podcaster. I've been one of the volunteers in Minnesota to work on the Cornel West Campaign for the past number of months trying to get things lined up for today and for our upcoming signature gathering.

I see the faces of other people that have been working on this project alongside me so far and then I imagine some of you I might have reached out to by email or phone.

I'm so glad to see you all here. Just to outline expectations for today I'm going to give a brief introduction and motivation for this event, then we will have some brief discussion, Diane will do a training on signature gathering with materials from the National Campaign and sign up for upcoming events for signature gathering which starts this Tuesday.

After that we will watch a brief message to us today from Cornel West and then we will do a signature gathering role play to finish out the event.

So today we are all here because we think it is important to get Cornel West/Melina Abdullah 2024 on the ballot in Minnesota and ultimately people need an option to vote against the duopoly that currently runs politics in this country.

Some have said if you vote for Cornel West aren't you afraid of Trump getting into office and I saw West answering this on C-Span last month he said "If we continue down this road America is over. Trump is leading us towards a second civil war and Biden is leading us towards a Third World War."

But this isn't an ordinary campaign for President. As Cornel West likes to say this is a moment in a movement.

This campaign isn't just about Cornel West and Melina Abdullah as individuals but also as West says this is about "the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer" and ultimately this is about all of us building a movement for Truth Justice and Love in this country. West himself has said this campaign is about dismantling US Empire.

The West/Abdullah Campaign is going to need to raise funds to function but it is not going to be a money powered campaign like the campaigns of the ruling class in this country it is going to be a people powered campaign. I saw a video of west last month saying this is a campaign that is about Genuine concern for people instead of corruption and bribery by elites to stay in power. The kind of campaigns we usually see.

And so we need to SEE THIS as a campaign that we can take ownership over. And when I say WE I mean all the people in this room and the others that aren't able to be in this room today but care about building a society that is about people and community and not about profits, and war and revenge etc.

I've had a number of people ask me if the Cornel West campaign for President is serious and obviously I tell them it is, but its going to be on us in this room to prove the seriousness of the campaign. And at the moment that looks here in Minnesota like getting West/Abdullah 2024 on the ballot so people in this state have a choice to vote against the duopoly.

Now we need 2,000 signatures in Minnesota but the Democrats have lawyers that will be trying to keep other candidate off the ballots and that includes discounting signatures so the way I've kind of thought about it is we should aim for a goal to get double the number of signatures we need around 4,000. Then we either reach that goal or we get around 3,000 something which I think will still be a decent number to get on the ballot. So we have 89 days from this Tuesday May 21st - Aug 20th to gather signatures. So if we can get 4 people out for a couple hours every day during that 89 day period that would be about 11 signatures gathered each to aim for that goal of 4,000 (which again we don't have to hit a total of 4,000 but I think the closer we get the safer we are as far as getting on the ballot.)

Let’s get Cornel West and Melina Abdullah on the ballot in Minnesota.

Solidarity,

Nick Shillingford - Host - Socialist News and Views

PS here are the podcasts from the past month…

SNV Special Interview: Community And Democracy:

SNV Special Interview: BrookeBartDoesArt:

SNV Special Report: From Minnesota To Palestine:

Climate Perspectives: Socialist News And Views Episode # 58: