Bella Ciao, Lorrell! A passionate communist leader gone too soon

On November 30th, 2023, we lost Lorrell, a devoted comrade, organizer, teacher, leader, and friend, to a medical complication. Her absence creates a hole in our lives that is immense and unfathomable. Trying to understand this tragedy is impossible and awful. We will carry on in her memory but what has been lost can never be replaced. We will do her justice by celebrating her life, spirit, and commitment to the international working class.

Early life, meeting Progressive Labor Party
Lorrell spent her early years in the southeast suburbs of Chicago, a region marked by brutal environmental racism due to concentrations of heavy industry and pollution. Undoubtedly witnessing firsthand from a young age how capitalism treats whole populations of workers – particularly Black and Brown workers – as disposable, influenced Lorrell’s understanding of the system and fueled her desire to fight to destroy it.

She met the Progressive Labor Party while a university student and quickly became a committed comrade in the struggle for revolution. Her sharp insights on how racism is indispensable to capitalism notably superseded the liberal interpretations of race and class within the mass movement in general. Her dialectical understanding of how racism, sexism, and capitalism all work to reinforce one another and oppress all working people influenced her to organize firmly based on multiracial working-class unity.

After graduating college, Lorrell committed herself to teaching at local universities attended by working-class students. She also worked as a program director for a disability rights organization, one of her life’s principal passions. She went above and beyond to fight alongside other workers with disabilities to demand their respect and basic accommodations so often denied under the profit system.

Although Lorrell always acknowledged the scale of the class struggle in nearby Chicago, she never once abandoned what she saw as revolutionary potential in workers and students in the smaller towns and cities of Northwest Indiana where she lived. To this end, she passionately advocated like she did for so many other issues for their inclusion in the Party’s overall political work. Because of her, countless people became closer to PLP and remain in our base to this day.

Tireless leadership fighting racism, sexism, and capitalism
As Lorrell’s experience and commitment grew, she was asked to give more leadership, joining the area city committee which included leaders from Chicago and Northwest Indiana clubs. Lorrell played a great role in this body and especially stepped up in 2016 when two leaders were gone for the year. During this year she helped plan the demonstration we held in front of the home of Jason Van Dyke, the racist kkkop murderer of 17-year-old Black teenager Laquan McDonald.

This action took weeks of planning and multiple meetings to make sure everyone agreed with and was committed to the plan. Security planning was crucial given we were directly targeting Van Dyke where he lived. The action was successful and caught Van Dyke unaware—the dirtbag was actually out front watering his lawn when we marched up! This was one of the sharpest actions that took place nationally that year.  

That same summer she led another struggle after city bosses in East Chicago tried to abruptly uproot the majority Black worker residents of the West Calumet Housing Complex after allowing them and their children to live for decades on soil contaminated with lead and arsenic. Lorrell personally made connections with mothers whose children had suffered serious health effects, driving them to doctor appointments as well as protests.

When the GEO corporation was trying to build an immigrant detention center in her area, Lorrell organized to have people oppose their efforts at every turn. She organized workers to go to council meetings and speak out against this racist project. Gary, Indiana is a majority Black city and as a Black worker, she spoke of solidarity with immigrants of all racial and ethnic backgrounds. Gary and the surrounding areas needed jobs (since so much manufacturing left the area) but she argued fiercely that jobs jailing other workers was not what the region needed or wanted. This was a struggle that was won—GEO did not get to build their immigrant jail.

Lorrell also participated in a coalition group that found out that a local airport was being used weekly to deport immigrants from the area. Weekly protests at the airport began and Lorrell once again played a leading role. Rejecting the average performative liberal protest tactics, she helped lead other workers onto the actual airport tarmac towards the airplanes during one particularly memorable confrontation against security forces in 2017.

Like millions of other antiracists around the world, Lorrell dove headlong into the mass rebellions that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. She was a mainstay in all the protests in the region, pushing the envelope to be more openly confrontational with the killer cops and gutter racists across the suburbs. The militant organizing spaces that she helped develop stayed busy in the years that followed, notably when staging mass antisexist protests around reproductive justice after the reversal of Roe v Wade in 2022.

Her memory marches on
Lorrell was the stabilizing force in her family and cared for the previous generation with devotion and kindness. Whether it was driving her aunt, mom, or dad to their doctor’s appointments, or having them move in with her, she always went the extra mile. Losing her is being felt deeply by her immediate family, her comrades, and her friends.

Speaking with a friend, she said, “You know, if something were to happen to me, don't mourn me with candles. Make it loud and revolutionary. Make it reflect the movement I gave my energy and passion to. Don't stand around silently with candles. Have a bullhorn, march the street, and more than anything join the struggle I believe in so strongly.”

We will do just that, comrade. We will pick up your rifle and keep fighting this racist and sexist system that took you from us far too soon.