The labor-community organization 15 Now Roanoke is sponsoring the event “Black Liberation & The Fight For Freedom,” that will feature Lamont Lilly, 2016 Vice Presidential candidate for Workers World Party, Saturday, Feb. 11, 2017 at 2 p.m. at the Gainsboro Library (Community Room), 15 Patton Avenue NW, Roanoke. The event is free and open to the public.
Lilly is a leading member of the Durham, NC branch Workers World Party and a member of WWP’s National Committee. As a people’s journalist, as an activist, an organizer, and a speaker, Lilly has traveled widely to stand in solidarity with struggles against racism and imperialist war, and for people’s justice.
Lilly was born in 1979 in Fayetteville, NC. The military veteran, graduated from North Carolina Central University (NCCU) then worked for several years as an educator and nonprofit program coordinator, focusing on African American youth leadership and academic development. His focus on youth continued, as he became an activist.
In 2010 he traveled to Colombia in South America as a human rights delegate with Witness for Peace, advocating for displaced Indigenous and AfroColombian people. In 2015, Lilly went to Syria and Lebanon in a delegation led by Ramsey Clark and Cynthia McKinney. In Beirut, he spoke as a Black Lives Matter representative at the International Forum for Palestinian Solidarity. In Damascus, where millions are displaced by war, he met with Syrians defending their sovereignty and opposed to the U.S. instigated destruction of Syria. He also met comrades of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.
Inside the U.S., he has gone wherever the struggle called, including Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Oakland, Los Angeles, and New York. From the Baltimore rebellion after the police killing of Freddie Gray to the Days of Grace actions in Charleston, S.C. in the wake of the racist massacre at Mother Emmanuel AME Church to anti-Trump protests in Washington D.C. on #J20, Lamont Lilly is always there on the ground—as a journalist providing consistent revolutionary inside perspective on the Black Lives Matter movement and the continuing struggle for Black Liberation, and as a tireless organizer whose energy and enthusiasm have helped encourage a new wave of activism among oppressed and working-class youth.
Lilly’s political commentary has been featured in Workers World newspaper (workers.org), Truthout, Counterpunch, the LA Progressive, Black Youth Project, the Durham News, and Triangle FreePress. Lilly was awarded a 2015 Local Hero Citizen’s Award by Indy Week of Raleigh-Cary- Durham-Chapel Hill N.C. for “pushing for workers’ rights and police reform.”
