Vote Socialist!
Gloria La Riva and the Party for Socialism and Liberation
Eugene Victor Debs, a prominent labor leader and Democratic Socialist presidential candidate in the late 18 to early 1900s once famously said “I would rather vote for something I want and not get it, than vote for something I don’t want and get it”. Debs words, said over 100 years ago, seem to resonate as much today as when they were first uttered, and are echoing louder as the general election approaches. The 2016 presidential election is, if nothing else a historical anomaly. Faced with electing one of the two least popular candidates in electoral history, many Americans now look towards third party candidates as options in the election. For some the Libertarian party has a serious draw, combining the economic policy of Neoliberalism with a social policy focused on non-interventionism and personal freedom. For others, the Green party represents a chance at a real progressive movement, a potential haven for Social Democrats unwilling to vote for Clinton. However, for those Americans who identify as members of the far or radical left, there are relatively few parties that share their ambitions for a genuinely socialist movement in politics and economics.
For genuinely socialist voters, the party that has most ambitiously pursued a position in the 2016 election is the Party for Socialism and Liberation, or the PSL, who are running Gloria La Riva as their presidential candidate
Founded in 2004 after a split with the World Workers Party, the Party for Socialism and Liberation is one of the handful of Socialist Parties in America that runs candidates for president. Founded on modern adaptations of socialist theory, the PSL maintains a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist platform, with their beliefs centered around the eventual, toppling, through democratic means, of the current United States economy and government. The party outlines that all leaders should be democratically elected and fully recallable, with freedom of speech and expression being absolute rights of the workers class, excluding speech that is considered bigotry or poses a serious counter-revolutionary threat.
Economically, the PSL believes in instituting centralized worker control of the economy, with the concept that labor is entitled to all it creates as a central element of the labor economy. In order to eradicate poverty, the PSL believes in establishing, amongst other policies, a basic guaranteed income for all citizens, following the long standing Marxist ideology “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs”.
Central to their Leninist tendencies, the PSL believes in the principle of national self determination, upholding the idea that individual nations and their people have a right to decide their own policies and practices. Amongst their national policies, the PSL believes in providing national autonomy to Native American populations, and the release of Guam, American Samoa, The Virgin Islands, Hawaii, Puerto Rico and the Mariana Islands from U.S. control.
In 2008 and 2016, the party ran Gloria La Riva as their presidential candidate, with Eugene Puryear as VP both times. A lifelong activist, Gloria La Riva first appeared as a political candidate in a 1983 run for mayor of Albuquerque, NM, in which she garnered 6 percent of the total vote. La Riva later ran as the vice presidential candidate for the Workers World Party in 1984, running as the WWP’s VP 4 times and presidential candidate once. La Riva, the only hispanic female running for president as a candidate or primary nominee, is on the ballot in vermont, New Mexico, Iowa, Louisiana, Colorado, Washington, New Jersey, and California.
Outside of candidacy, La Riva has translated Fidel Castro’s work Cuba at the Crossroads, and produced the documentaries Nato Targets, Workers Democracy in Cuba, Genocide by Sanctions: The Case of Iraq, and Let Iraq Live. A long standing supporter of the Cuban revolution in its overthrow of the brutal dictator Batista and in the Cuban state’s efforts to instill worker democracy and maintain a truly revolutionary movement, La Riva has traveled to Cuba on multiple occasions, meeting with the Castro’s and other chief figures in Cuban politics.
La Riva on the Issues
- Abortion
Rights to abortion regardless of ability to pay
Women have a right to bodily autonomy
2. Budget and Economy
Centralized planning of the economy
Abolition of exploitation of labor for profit
Gradual shift away from market economy
3.Civil Rights
Abolish prison for profit
Equal civil rights for all LGBT
Pay reparations with interest to descendants of American slaves
4. Energy and Oil
Clean energy policy
Reduce and eventually eliminate fossil fuel consumption
Anti-Carbon legislation
5. Foreign Policy
National self determination
End economic blockade and sabotage of socialist nations
Withdraw occupying US troops from sovereign nations
End interventionism in international conflicts
6. Gun Control
All American citizens guaranteed right to firearm ownership by 2nd Amendment
Maintains Marxist perspective on the importance of worker firearm ownership
7. Immigration
Legal protection for immigrant workers
Protect undocumented Immigrants from deportation and violence
Streamline process of immigration into the United States.
