Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia are running for President and Vice-President of the United States on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Claudia de la Cruz was born and raised in the South Bronx, New York to immigrant Dominican parents. As a teenager, she regularly participated in campaigns calling for an end to the U.S. blockade in Cuba and calling out police terror. While completing her degree in forensic psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, a City University of New York college, de la Cruz helped create Palenque. Palenque was a group focused on bringing together young people to study the history of struggles and resistance by marginalized groups. During the Iraq War, de la Cruz organized some of these members as well as church members to rally against the war. She also helped found Da Urban Butterflies, a youth leadership development project for women from Washington Heights and the Bronx. Later on, de la Cruz co-founded The People’s Forum in New York City, a place dedicated to making space for working-class people. De la Cruz is also a mother and a pastor for the United Church of Christ, a Christian denomination that has historically been involved in social justice work.
Karina Garcia grew up in East Harlem, also known as El Barrio, in New York, as well as California. She attended Columbia University on a full scholarship and organized fellow students to speak out against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and to advocate for immigrant rights. After completing a degree in economics, Garcia became a high school math teacher in New York City. During that time, she advised a student group on issues like police brutality and school budget cuts. In 2012, she took up an organizing position at the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice. She is also a mother and writer for Breaking the Chains, a feminist and socialist magazine under the PSL.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation is comprised of leaders and activists, workers and students, of all backgrounds. Organized in branches across the country, their mission is to link the everyday struggles of oppressed and exploited people to the fight for a new world.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation believes that the only solution to the deepening crisis of capitalism is the socialist transformation of society. Driven by an insatiable appetite for ever greater profits regardless of social cost, capitalism is on a collision course with the people of the world and the planet itself. Imperialist war; deepening unemployment and poverty; deteriorating health care, housing and education; racism; discrimination and violence based on gender and sexual orientation; environmental destruction—all are inevitable products of the capitalist system itself.
For the great majority of people in the world, including tens of millions of workers in the United States, conditions of life and work are worsening. There is no prospect that this situation can or will be turned around under the existing system.
The idea that the capitalists’ grip on society and their increasingly repressive state can be abolished through any means other than a revolutionary overturn is an illusion. Equally unrealistic are reformist hopes for a “kinder, gentler” capitalism, or solutions based on economic decentralization or small group autonomy. Meeting the needs of the more than 6.5 billion people who inhabit the planet today is impossible without large-scale agriculture and industry and economic planning.
The fundamental problems confronting humanity today flow from the reality that most of the world’s productive wealth—the product of socialized labor and nature—is privately owned and controlled by a tiny minority. This minority decides what will be produced and what will not. Its decisions are based on making profits rather than meeting human needs.
There are really only two choices for humanity today—an increasingly destructive capitalism, or socialism
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‘We are working-class women of color’: the long-shot socialist run for the White House
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END CAPITALISM BEFORE IT ENDS US Claudia/Karina campaign page
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In my "I need to shut the fuck up more" era
Good intentions don't always mean my viewpoint is wanted or necessary, and others who relate more can speak up just fine. I know this is common sense, but I've been real bad about this lately and think I've annoyed or frustrated others.
Course, I could be misreading it, but it's better to shut the fuck up sometimes. Could be internal chauvanism, could be genuine good intentions, don't trust myself for now. Need to read and listen more, and speak less.
I would suggest reading Oppose Book Worship by Mao. This piece of theory has saved me so many times. Before I came out, I'd say whatever dumb bullshit came to mind because people around me took it seriously. Now that I'm out of the closet (as both a Marxist and a trans person) I don't feel the need to speak up on things unless I am certain what I'm saying is good information. It's lead to some of my best critical writing, and has kept me in the learning mindset instead of just falling back into the "I know everything" my brain so badly wants to do.
Thanks! I have read Oppose Book Worship before, it has been massively helpful in learning more Marxist Theory and speaking or not speaking on factual aspects of theory and history.
My struggle, if you can call it a struggle, is more about how I interact with marginalized people. I'm learning that I am likely coming off as fake or condescending when I support marginalized comrades and speak on issues I personally cannot directly relate to. That's why I struggle to see if my goal is truly to do good, or if it's to feel good about myself. I don't need to give my opinion on a struggle I don't directly relate to, others can, and I can shut the fuck up and listen more.
I haven't solved that yet. I can't trust my own intentions yet.
I'm not looking for a pat on the back or anything, just wanted to vent a bit. I know this is an incredibly privledged "problem" to have.
Just want to be a better comrade and ally, and that I think means I need to be more comfortable with taking a backseat. Clowning on racists, transphobes, homophobes, etc? Totally fine for me to go off. A marginalized person talking about their struggles? I can offer solidarity but really need to shut the fuck up more or else I come off as fake and condescending, and let other people who can directly sympathize speak up.
No that's totally valid. I don't really talk about it super openly, but because of how I was raised, I honestly have a really weird relationship with the positions of privilege I have now as an adult. I was raised by my Dad who told us we were American Indigenous, and I had a lot of features that saw me experiencing racial discrimination as a kid, being regularly called racial slurs in middle school. Eventually I did a DNA test, found out I am 100 percent white. Now that I'm a shut-in, I'm a lot paler and face a lot less colorism. And I'm early enough in my transition that I will purposefully use my perceived masculinity if the situation calls for it (witnessing sexual harassment, overt sexism in general, ect.)
With people with PTSD, we often talk about survivors guilt. I was in some nuclearly bad situations as a kid, and I feel horrible that I made it out alive when so many other kids didn't. I kind of relate that to the experience of being a decent white person as someone whose strangely kind of experienced both perspectives. I don't think there's anything wrong with offering support to marginalized groups, as long as you aren't babying them. There's nothing wrong with sending a "I'm sorry you had to go through that" with a hug emote." Supporting people is good, we're social creatures. You might feel better about yourself for sending that to someone, but there's nothing wrong with that. They feel better getting a little bit of support and validation. If you really break it down, absolutely every relationship is "transactional" in some way. Friends don't just hang out with each other because they need to support their friend, they hang out because they enjoy doing it. I think the important part is that you don't invalidate anybody's experience because of your privilege. Sometimes it's really easy to fall back on your gut reaction, but it's usually better to just read a little bit first and see how that changes what you think.
You don't have to trust your own intentions, you just have to keep educating yourself, and listening to marginalized people when they speak. You can have selfish reasons for doing things, as long as they're not your only reasons for doing things. I've never seen you post something that seemed condescending or anything like that. Being a better ally is easier when you accept all parts of yourself, even the parts that make you feel uncomfortable. It's not in this space, but I'm sure you have the privilege to defend people IRL. At my old job, an old cis lady would always go to the bathroom with me so I wouldn't get shit. At the same job, there was a single black server that was always forced to do the worst jobs (cleaning the bathrooms, running food, ect.) and I called out management for it because I was perceived as a white dude at the time. She thanked me for it because she wasn't really in the position to stand up for herself (very quiet person, working at a place owned by an HOA for petit bourgeois). The more you educate yourself and listen, the more you know when you should speak up. Knowledge is liberation
Big feels. I feel like a silly ass a lot of the time, like what I'm saying is so trite or inadequate, but I figure a lot of the time any expression of support and compassion is better than silence when people are going through shit.
Thank you for your perspective! Really helps me contextualize a lot of how I feel. I am sorry to hear about your traumatic childhood experiences.
One area where I can relate is that I have relatively recently accepted that I'm pansexual. I've been relentlessly bullied since I was a kid for being "fruity" and always internally justified myself as straight. Not to say that queer people necessarily fit a stereotype, of course, I've just never been traditionally masculine and always had gay tendencies. All that being said, I'm in a het relationship, even though we are both pan we present het, so it can be easy to "mask." I feel like that clouds my own judgement.
I do greatly appreciate your point on how I can be a good ally and comrade IRL in ways that don't "baby" marginalized people. I try to do that when I can, but I think that's an area I can work harder on. I'm relatively timid IRL and that timidness is a privledge I need to overcome.
Thank you!
I really relate to that. I'm not a very traditional trans woman. I get sensory overload from makeup, I just want hormones and dresses. It's really easy to diminish the discrimination you face because you have a somewhat privledged position on it. I'm also very timid, so it's very hard sometimes. I'm not saying I'm a perfect leftist who always stands up for the right thing, but when I can't DBT my way out of it (for example, she thought racist jokes were funny, I wasn't going to stand up for her on that) I'll definitely use my privledge to the advantage of other people, and that's what being a good ally is all about.
Can definitely agree with you regarding makeup, my fiancé uses me as a model sometimes and I hate the sensory aspects of it, lol
Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it!
:mao
"No I don't have a reference. I don't care who the APA sends I am not using Chicago Style citations.
Back in my school daze my anthro prof had us do a project that totally, permanently changed how I view conversation.
We were each tasked to get an audio recorder, sit down, and talk with friends for at least twenty minutes. Afterwards we were to go through the recording and carefully record
Who spoke and for how long
Who interrupted who, and how often
along with a couple of other things. But speaking time and interruptions were the big ones because I was suddenly looking at hard data, backed up by pretty much everyone else in the class, showing that men interrupted much more often, interrupted women more than other men, and spoke longer than women.
It was one thing to know that something like that was the case, but seeing it mapped out on a piece of paper made a very strong impression on me.
I think that would have helped me a lot, sounds like a cool experiment for everyone to learn from! Hard, irrefutable data from your own making really helps contextualize systemic issues that can be easy to blow off if you aren't personally a victim.
This little bit of advice has saved my ass numerous occasions.
Yep, big fan of Mao's work on proper skills of revolutionaries and how to conduct yourself