A California State University professor who also leads the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter might be headed to jail after being charged with eight criminal counts related to her anti-police activism, including battery on an LAPD officer.
“This is about so much more than me,” wrote Dr. Melina Abdullah, who could spend more than a year in jail if convicted. “It’s an attempt to criminalize Black protest. We ain’t having that!”
The charges stem from Abdullah’s behavior at LAPD Commission meetings, which have become notorious for being disrupted and shut down by police abolitionists affiliated with Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles (BLM-LA). She has justified her conduct by claiming to advocate on behalf of families who have lost loved ones to police brutality and officer-involved shootings.
Following a pretrial hearing last week, Abdullah and Douglas addressed activists and other supporters who had packed the courtroom as a sign of solidarity.
“They are killing our people, and then they are criminalizing us for having the audacity to push back,” Abdullah told allies over a megaphone. “What kind of backward world do they think we live in? We’re not the criminals. They are.”
Abdullah then called on the crowd to march to LAPD headquarters nearby, where a police commission meeting was underway.
