THE CAMPAIGN ARCHIVEPRIVATE PREVIEW · NOT YET OPEN

A RECORD OF CONSCIENCE · 2023–2024

WEST | ABDULLAH
2024

The archive of the independent campaign of Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Melina Abdullah for President and Vice President of the United States — preserved whole, verified, and kept for the generations who will ask what it meant.

ANNOUNCEDJune 5, 2023
INDEPENDENTOctober 5, 2023
THE TICKETApril 10, 2024
ELECTIONNovember 5, 2024

I · THE STORY

Truth and justice, on the ballot.

A philosopher left the academy's highest halls to stand for the poor and working peoples of this country — outside both parties, against the arithmetic, in the name of love. This is the verified line of the record.

JUNE 5, 2023

The announcement

Dr. Cornel West declares his candidacy for President of the United States.

“I have decided to run for truth and justice.”

— announcement address, June 2023 · campaign record
JUNE 14, 2023

Toward the Green Party

Nine days in, the campaign moves to seek the Green Party nomination — the first turn in a road that would demand independence.

OCTOBER 5, 2023

The independent run

Dr. West leaves the primary path entirely and takes the campaign directly to the people as an independent candidate.

JANUARY 31, 2024

Justice for All

The campaign founds the Justice for All Party — the banner under which the ballot-access fight is waged, and the name this archive still carries.

APRIL 10, 2024

The ticket is whole

Dr. Melina Abdullah — professor of Pan-African Studies, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles — is named the vice-presidential running mate.

SPRING – FALL 2024

The ballot fight

State by state, signature by signature, a volunteer army and a small staff carry an independent ticket onto ballots across the country — some thirty states by Election Day, against procedural resistance at nearly every door.

— ballot-line count under final verification against state records
NOVEMBER 5, 2024

Election Day

The West | Abdullah ticket receives 82,644 votes. The number is small; the argument was never about the number. The record of what was said, built, and risked now belongs to history.

JUNE 2026

The record is sealed into the archive

The campaign's complete working record — 545 gigabytes across fifteen sealed volumes — enters this archive, commissioned with the approval and at the request of Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Annahita Mahdavi West.

II · THE VAULT

What the archive holds.

The campaign's own working record, preserved whole — every photograph, film, design, and document as the staff left them. Indexed, verified, and prepared for the reading room.

9,675FILES INDEXED
3,706PHOTOGRAPHS & FILMS
13CUSTODIAL COLLECTIONS
545 GBACROSS 15 SEALED VOLUMES
PHOTOS & BRANDINGTHE LOVE WARRIORS BRAND SYSTEMDESIGN STUDIOYOUTUBE CLIPS · 261 FILMSVIDEO PRODUCTION · 57 EDIT PROJECTSFIELD & BALLOT ACCESSTHE FUNDRAISING OPERATIONCORRESPONDENCE

Donor, voter, and personal information held in the record is permanently sealed from public view. What opens here is the cleared, curated record — cleared one artifact at a time.

III · THE BALLOT LINES

Twenty-six states. Ten lines. One run.

An independent needs no convention — he needs signatures, filings, and lines. The FEC's official canvass records the run state by state; ten designations carried it, from the campaign's own Justice For All to Colorado's Unity Party.

AURORA · AURINDEPENDENT · INDJUSTICE FOR ALL · JFALEGAL MARIJUANA NOW · LMNNO PARTY AFFILIATION · NPAPEACE AND JUSTICE · PAJPROGRESSIVE · PROUNITED CITIZENS · UCUNAFFILIATED · UNUNITY PARTY OF COLORADO · UPC
NORTH CAROLINA12,099
VIRGINIA8,975
WASHINGTON7,254
SOUTH CAROLINA6,744
MICHIGAN6,664
OREGON5,644
COLORADO5,149
NEW YORK4,152
MINNESOTA3,136
NEBRASKA3,062
MAINE2,912
WISCONSIN2,753
LOUISIANA2,623
UTAH2,199
TEXAS1,858
ILLINOIS1,569
VERMONT1,549
ALASKA1,127
MARYLAND918
OHIO852
INDIANA722
MASSACHUSETTS243
KENTUCKY177
CONNECTICUT128
DELAWARE96
WEST VIRGINIA39

82,644 VOTES · VOTES RECORDED IN 26 STATES · ACCESS ACROSS 30 STATES · SOURCE: FEC OFFICIAL 2024 RESULTS, VAULTED IN THE ARCHIVE — PER-STATE FIGURES SUM EXACTLY TO THE OFFICIAL TOTAL

IV · THE VOICES

The screening room.

Speeches, interviews, and the campaign's own films — queued from the vault and played here with transcripts, as each is cleared.

FIRST COHORT IN CLEARANCE REVIEW

The first films are being extracted from the sealed volumes, transcribed, and reviewed under the archive's dignity and privacy standard. They will appear here the moment they clear — no rebuild, no announcement, just the record arriving.

V · THE MOVEMENT

The photographic record.

Rallies and living rooms, churches and street corners — the faces of an independent campaign, from the staff's own cameras.

FIRST COHORT IN CLEARANCE REVIEW

1,785 photographs stand indexed in the vault awaiting extraction and review. The wall fills as they clear.

VI · THE PEOPLE

The ticket.

Dr. Cornel West

CANDIDATE FOR PRESIDENT

Philosopher, author, and teacher — a voice of the Black prophetic tradition carried through Union, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton, and in 2023–24 through the University of Edinburgh's Gifford Lectures, “A Jazz-soaked Philosophy for our Catastrophic Times.” He brought that whole inheritance to the stump.

Dr. Melina Abdullah

CANDIDATE FOR VICE PRESIDENT

Professor of Pan-African Studies, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles, organizer and scholar. Named to the ticket on April 10, 2024 — a running mate drawn from the movement itself. That movement's everyday labor is carried by grassroots chapters across the country — from Los Angeles to the grassroots organizing in Miami that keeps the freedom work rooted in Black communities.

THE STEWARDSHIP

The campaign deliberately ran a multi-manager stewardship model rather than a single chief. The full roster of its managers and senior staff is being verified name-by-name against the record before it is published here.

VII · THE LEGACY

Toward the library.

This archive is the seed and cornerstone of a larger act of memory: an institution of presidential-library grade honoring the life and work of Dr. Cornel West — his philosophy, his witness, and the campaign that carried both into the arena. What is preserved here with care becomes the monument's foundation stone.

PROVENANCE & COLOPHON

Commissioned with the express approval and at the request of Dr. Cornel West and Dr. Annahita Mahdavi West. Entrusted to the archive by Israel Lee Armstead — National Director of Fundraising and Campaign Manager (final and post-campaign) of the West | Abdullah 2024 campaign — and kept by Athenaeum for E5 Enclave Incorporated.

Dates and totals verified against the public record (campaign announcements; certified election results as compiled in the public record, Nov. 2024). The ballot-line count is stated on the public record and remains under final verification against state election authorities. Campaign language quoted here is primary-source material, attributed to its speakers. Every artifact published in these rooms carries its provenance; donor, voter, and financial records are permanently non-public.

Nil satis nisi optimum — By grace, perfect ways.

THE WEST | ABDULLAH 2024 CAMPAIGN ARCHIVEPREVIEW