Melina Abdullah

Melina Reimann Abdullah (born 1972) is an American academic and civic leader. She is the former chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, and is a co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter and Black Lives Matter Grassroots, for which she also serves as co-director.

As an original member of the group that convened to form Black Lives Matter, she serves as a matriarch for the current movement in Los Angeles. In addition to organizing work with BLM Los Angeles, she has hosted three local radio shows, "Move the Crowd" and "Beautiful Struggle" on KPFK and "This Is Not a Drill" on KBLA.

On April 10, 2024, independent 2024 presidential candidate Cornel West announced Abdullah as his running mate.

Early life and education
Melina Rachel Reimann was born in the East Oakland section of Oakland, California. Her father, John Reimann, was "a union organizer and self-proclaimed Trotskyist." according to LA Weekly. Her paternal grandfather was Günter Reimann (born Hans Steinicke), a German-Jewish Marxist economist and member of the Communist Party of Germany who opposed Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Her mother is Linda Fowler Blackston; later remarried Oji “Baba” Blackston of the music group Arrested Development.

Abdullah graduated from Howard University, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in African American Studies. She subsequently earned Master of Arts (M.A.) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degrees in political science from the University of Southern California.

She changed her surname from Reimann to Abdullah due to her marriage to filmmaker Phaylen Abdullah and kept the name after their divorce.

Career
Abdullah is a tenured professor and served as chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. She was interviewed in 13th, a 2016 documentary about mass incarceration in the United States.

Abdullah has served on the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission since 2014. She is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation chapter in Los Angeles, California, and regularly writes articles for the LA Progressive.

She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.

Activism
Abdullah is a self-described "womanist scholar-activist." She has said that her academic roles are connected with her activist role in fighting for liberating those who have been exploited many times. She serves on several boards, including Black Community, Clergy and Labor Alliance (BCCLA), Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA-CAN), and Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education (SCOPE). Abdullah has also worked closely with Rabbi Brous in Los Angeles, speaking on many panels with Brous about white supremacy and allyship with the Black/Jewish Justice Alliance (BJJA). She has been featured on season two of Rabbi Heather Miller's podcast "Keeping It Sacred".

As part of her activism, Abdullah has been detained several times. She has accused the city of Los Angeles of bringing charges for the sole purpose of quashing her activism, which often includes antagonistic encounters at Police Commission meetings.

Abdullah was arrested on suspicion of battery against a police officer, following an incident in which she allegedly grabbed the officer's arm during the arrest of protester Sheila Hines-Brim at an LAPD police commission hearing. Hines-Brim allegedly threw an unknown powdery substance at Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck, which she claimed were the cremated ashes of her niece Wakiesha Wilson (who died in LAPD custody in 2016). Abdullah was charged with misdemeanor battery, as well as seven other counts: these charges included interfering with a public business establishment and the lawful business of the Police Commission during separate incidents in 2017. The criminal charges against Abdullah were eventually dismissed. The city later agreed to pay Wilson's family nearly $300,000 to settle a lawsuit they filed over her death.

During a debate by ABC7 for the 2022 Los Angeles mayoral election, police removed Melina Abdullah, at Cal State LA as well as other protesters from the room as they did not have tickets to the event.

Controversies
In February 2024, Abdullah was criticized for a tweet in which she stated that being a fan of Taylor Swift is "slightly racist" ("Why do I feel like it’s slightly racist to be a Taylor Swift fan?") and another tweet that stated her belief that the result of Super Bowl LVIII was a "right-wing, white-supremacist conspiracy".

Personal life
Abdullah resides in Mid-City, Los Angeles. She has three children.

Publications

 * Abdullah, Melina. "The emergence of a black feminist leadership model: African-American women and political activism in the nineteenth century." Black women's intellectual traditions: Speaking their minds (2007): 328–345.
 * Abdullah, Melina, and Regina Freer. "Bass to bass: Relative freedom and womanist leadership in Black Los Angeles." Black Los Angeles (2010).
 * Abdullah, Melina, and Freer, Regina. 2008. "Towards a Womanist Leadership Praxis: The History and Promise of Black Grassroots/Electoral Partnerships in California." In Racial and Ethnic Politics in California: Continuity and Change, edited by Cain, Bruce and Bass, Sandra, 95–118.
 * Abdullah, Melina. "What the Black Lives Matter Movement Demands of Ethnic Studies Scholars." Ethnic Studies Review 37.1 (2014): 5–9.

Awards and nominations
In October 2021, Melina received "Chatham House Centenary Diversity Champion Award".