Cornel West’s running mate defends calling police ‘same’ as KKK

Independent presidential candidate Cornel West’s running mate, Melina Abdullah, is defending a statement in which she said police were the same as the KKK.

Abdullah, named this week as West’s vice presidential candidate, posted on the social platform X in 2015 that “the KKK, the police, and government officials are one in the same.”

She also explained her thoughts to CNN’s Abby Phillips in an interview.

“I want us to understand the history of policing in this country. And so, Twitter doesn’t allow you to give a whole history of policing in this country, but in a few sentences, we can just confirm that there is no historian that I’ve ever come in contact with, who disputes the fact that policing in this country hails from slave catching,” Abdullah told Phillip on Thursday.

West, one of the few third-party candidates running in this year’s presidential election, announced Abdullah as his 2024 running mate Wednesday. She’s a professor at California State University in Los Angeles and formerly chaired the Pan-African studies department.

“When we say that policing is you know, the new millennial slave catching, we’re not saying that we don’t want public safety, we’re saying we want real public safety, where community is really centered, where Black safety is centered. And we know that when Black people are safe, we also create safety for everyone else.”

Abdullah said she was not expecting a phone call from West asking her to join his ticket. She said her “heart just soared” and she said yes immediately.

West, who trails in national polls behind fellow independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Biden and former President Trump, needed to declare a vice president to appear on state ballots before the deadline for signature collection.

West has qualified to appear on the ballot in four states — South Carolina, Alaska, Utah and Oregon. He initially ran in the Democratic primary as a progressive, before switching to the Green Party and then changing to run as an independent.