Melina Abdullah

THE ACTIVIST MELINA ABDULLAH

Cofounder, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles

photographed by MATT SAYLES at ST. ELMO VILLAGE

THE CAL STATE L.A. professor attended her first protest as a child, and she still believes in the power of students to fire up a movement. Abdullah cofounded Black Lives Matter Los Angeles with dozens of her Pan-African Studies students. She continues to embrace without apology defunding the police and voices skepticism that Karen Bass is the ideal mayoral candidate for progressives. The mother of three and self-described radical organizer calls for universal ethnic studies. “Black studies saved my life,” she says. —S.A.