Lamont Gregory Lilly, October 1, 1979 (Fayetteville, N.C.) -
VP candidate for Workers World Party (aka Unaffiliated) (2016)
Running mate with nominee: Monica Gail Moorehead (b. 1952)
Popular vote: 4,317 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
Monica Moorehead was making her third run for President as the nominee of the Workers World Party. She had previously been the standard bearer of the Marxist-Leninist group in 1996 and 2000. Her 2016 running-mate was activist Lamont G. Lilly.
The WWP was starting to look like an on-again off-again party in terms of Electoral campaigns. In 2008 the WWP endorsed Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney. In 2012 the WWP did not field a candidate at all. But then again, elections were not their primary focus.
The campaign website outlined their platform and tactics--
Workers World Party is participating in the 2016 presidential election. Not because we believe the election means any thing. We are running to expose the election.
Our candidates will be talking about the real issues facing workers and oppressed people – and organizing for the real solutions. Revolutionary solutions. We believe that the kind of socialism Bernie Sanders talks about only provides more cosmetic changes, a softer kinder of capitalism. But Sanders change means the capitalist system still stands. Reforming capitalism will not solve the greatest problems facing humanity.
Mass struggle, not elections, is the way forward.
The elections that take place every four years bring only cosmetic change: different faces administering the government on behalf of the same billionaire masters. Who really runs society? It is the capitalist class that exploits the working class and the oppressed. The great mass of people have no real representation because the government, whether headed by Democrats or Republicans, exists to serve the interests of the bosses and warmakers.
The Workers World Moorehead-Lilly campaign declares: Elections will matter when Black Lives matter.
Will the election of Hillary Rodham Clinton or Bernie Sanders mean that racist police terror against the Black community will finally stop? Of course not. Will it mean an end to the mass deportations of migrant workers? No not at all. Will it mean a cancellation of the student debt, more jobs or guaranteed decent healthcare?
The only time there is change in this country is when the people rise up and fight for it. That’s why we’re running: to help organize the fight.
Will the election of a Republican – whether it’s Cruz, Trump, Rubio, or Bush–usher in a period of reactionary setbacks? Possibly. But it could also usher in a revolutionary response.
Our campaign will be all about the struggle against the ruling class – the 1 % and the politicians who do their bidding. Our candidates, Monica Moorehead and Lamont Lilly, are in that struggle already.
We will travel the country building solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Standing up to stop imperialist wars abroad and the war on immigrants at home. We will converge at the Republican Convention in July in Cleveland and demand Justice for Tamir Rice. And we will demand the same at the Democratic Party Convention in Philadelphia.
Elections will matter when all working class and oppressed people matter. Only by building the fight for socialist revolution can workers change the conditions of exploitation and terror they face today.
We do not fight for a softer, kinder capitalism, for just a little more of the wealth we have created. We want it all. We want to build a workers’ world. This is the message of our campaign.
Lilly described to a reporter what it was like campaigning on a shoestring budget: "It costs an absurd amount of money just to get on the ballot in most states ... We don't have the big-business engine behind us pushing out our message and our candidates. We don't own the TV and radio stations or the newspapers. This two-party system is designed to prevent third parties from gaining footing ... For Democrats, two hundred dollars is chump change. To us, we can really put that to work. That's two train tickets for the candidates. That allows us to eat while we're on the trail."
"The more places I go, the more I see that people out there are really ready for something new. And not some new cliché, like Obama. I mean a brand new system. We're up against these huge, elite corporations that don't care about us. They don't care about working people. They don't care about our ability to pay for decent housing, or our right to livable wages, or our right to be members of unions, or our right to drink clean water, whether here or in Detroit ..."
The Moorehead/Lilly ticket was found on the ballot in New Jersey (0.05%), Utah (0.05%), and Wisconsin (0.06%). They were also registered as write-ins in 11 additional states.
In 2018 the WWP experienced a split when some members gathered in Detroit and formed the Communist Workers League.
Election history: none
Other occupations: US Army Reserve, Director of the NCCU African American Male Leadership Academy, activist, journalist, poet, lecturer
Notes:
Joined the WWP in 2011 and left the Party in 2018.
