Lawrence Hamm: "The progressive movement must continue to push forward within the electoral arena"

Lawrence Hamm is the chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress – an independent, community based association of citizens working for racial, social and economic justice, which he founded in 1983. A graduate of Princeton University, Hamm has been a community activist in New Jersey for the last 35 years. He was the state co-chair of the Jesse Jackson presidential campaign in 1988, the president of the New Jersey Rainbow Coalition, and the coordinator of the Malcolm X Commemoration Coalition. He was also the New Jersey state chair for the Bernie Sanders campaign in 2020. Hamm is running for the US Senate against incumbent Democrat Cory Booker – who ran for the presidency earlier this year. The primary election will take place on July 7th. We asked Hamm about his life as an activist, his involvement in the Jesse Jackson and Bernie Sanders campaigns, and how he views the unprecedented nature of the Black Lives Matter movement across the US and the world.

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