The Partisan was the newspaper published by the Peace And Freedom Party State Central Committee and was published regularly from 1994 to 2009.Gloria La Riva: Howie Hawkins’s critique of PSL’s critical support for Sanders campaign “not honest”
Gloria La Riva is a longtime member of the Peace and Freedom Party as well as the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and has run for U.S. President and California Governor several times with the endorsement of both organizations. She is currently seeking the PFP nomination to run as our party’s candidate for U.S. president in Election 2020.
A recent statement from the PSL which announced a position of critical support for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign drew the ire of fellow PFP primary presidential candidate Howie Hawkins, who released a response to the PSL statement entitled “You didn’t join the Peace and Freedom Party to support Democrats.” Gloria La Riva in turn has released a counter-response to that of Mr. Hawkins, and we run Gloria’s statement in full below.
Dear sisters and brothers of Peace and Freedom Party,
I ask for your support and vote in the March 3 Peace and Freedom Party primary. I also urge you to register and vote PFP, as the only socialist party on the California ballot, and which has had a solid program of defending peace, true equality, social justice and socialism since 1968.
I have won the Peace and Freedom nomination for governor of California three times, and was the PFP candidate for President in 2016. I received the most votes for a socialist presidential candidate since 1976.
My vice-presidential candidate is the renowned Native leader and political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, unjustly imprisoned for 44 years. In accepting the invitation to run with me, he said, “I am not only a Native traditionalist, I am a socialist.”
I have been a PFP member since I moved to California in 1981, and always encourage others to register and join. I am decidedly opposed to the Democratic Party as well as the Republican Party, who work hand-in-hand to wage war at home and abroad. Both are imperialist parties that have initiated wars of aggression, genocide and occupation. Both are also responsible for economic policies meant to enrich the super-wealthy at the expense of the working class. The disastrous policies of social service cutbacks, mass incarceration and support for the police can be laid at the feet of Democrats as well as Republicans.
Howie Hawkins of New York, a socialist organizer and union worker for nearly 50 years, is seeking the U.S. presidential nomination of several socialist, leftist and eco-conscious parties – including Peace and Freedom Party as well as the national Green Party.
Earlier this week, Howie Hawkins posted a response to a statement from Richard Becker, a member of both PFP and PSL. Becker’s statement, released through the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s official website, suggested that socialist-minded voters who are only able to participate in the Democratic Party primary cast their votes for Bernie Sanders in that primary and, should he get the Democratic nomination, that voters in swing states should support Sanders. We run Howie's statement in full below.
In 1964, as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area, I watched Ronald Reagan and the Republicans lead a successful referendum to repeal the recently-adopted Rumford Fair Housing Act. I saw the Democratic convention seat the Mississippi segregationists instead of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. The “lesser evil” Democrat, Lyndon Johnson, won and immediately escalated the war in Vietnam.
With racists and militarists in charge of both major parties, I asked, “Where is my party?” My party emerged in 1968: the Peace and Freedom Party. Even though I was still too young to vote for it, I rooted for it. I concluded then what I still believe today: that we need a major independent working-class party committed to a democratic, socialist, and ecological society.
I am running in the Peace and Freedom Party presidential primary with that same commitment today. I intend to be on the ballot in all 50 states and D.C., mostly on Green Party lines because they already have over 20 ballot lines, but I am also seeking the ballot lines of other progressive parties where presidential ballot-line fusion is possible in states like California, Oregon, South Carolina and Vermont.
An important objective of our campaign is to build solidarity across the independent progressive and socialist left for a mass party based in the working-class majority and for all people who love peace, justice, freedom and the environment.
Unlike my opponent in the Peace and Freedom primary, whose Party for Socialism and Liberation supports a “safe strategy” of supporting Bernie Sanders in the “battleground” states, I believe every state is a battleground for the independent left where we must fight for ballot access and the right to raise our demands in elections. In every state, we are fighting the Democrats as well as the Republicans who are on the opposite side from us on so many issues, from Medicare for All to a ban on fracking to rent control to dismantling the US global military empire.
Read more: Howie Hawkins: You didn’t join the Peace and Freedom Party to support Democrats
Wednesday November 20th 2019. Peace and Freedom Party State Chair John Reiger (center) at the Sacramento office of the California Secretary of State with presidential candidate Gloria La Riva (left), and Nicole Castor (right), representative of presidential candidate Howie Hawkins. Reiger submitted the names of the two candidates to the Secretary of State to appear on the March 3rd 2020 primary ballot, Both the La Riva and the Hawkins campaigns also submitted required forms to qualify for the Peace and Freedom Party primary ballot.
On March 3, 2020, Peace & Freedom Party voters will not only be casting ballots for candidates running for statewide offices or state assembly; they’ll also be voting to head up the PFP ticket in November as the party’s nominee for U.S. President.
Howie Hawkins of New York seeks the Peace & Freedom nomination for president. His introductory statement runs below. For more on PFP campaigns, candidates and endorsees in the 2020 elections, click here.
I am a retired Teamster from Syracuse, New York, who was swept up into the civil rights, antiwar, and environmental movements in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s, when I became committed to independent working-class politics for democracy, socialism, and ecology.
My first party allegiance at age 15 in 1968 was to the Peace and Freedom Party. I co-founded the Green Party in 1984. I was the first US candidate to call for a Green New Deal in 2010 in the first of three New York gubernatorial runs that won enough votes to secure Green ballot lines.
Our campaign has two primary objectives: party-building and ecosocialism. Party-building means strengthening grassroots organization within – and promoting solidarity, joint events, and reciprocal support among – all independent left parties that want to build a mass party rooted in the working class. I am seeking the nomination of the Green Party and other independent left state parties including the Peace and Freedom Party in California. I have already been nominated by the Socialist Party USA. We expect to qualify for primary matching funds and all 51 state ballots.
Our Ecosocialist Green New Deal addresses the climate and inequality crises. Through social ownership and democratic planning of the energy, transportation, and manufacturing sectors, it eliminates carbon emissions by 2030. It enacts an Economic Bill of Rights based on public provision of a job guarantee, a guaranteed income above poverty, affordable housing, comprehensive health care, lifelong public education, and a secure retirement. To end the new nuclear arms race, we call for no first use and unilateral disarmament to a minimum credible deterrent, followed up by urgent negotiations among the nuclear powers for complete nuclear disarmament.
We ask for your vote in the presidential primary and as a delegate to the state convention.
For more on Howie Hawkins presidential campaign, visit the website HowieHawkins.us or via social media on the Facebook/MeWe page RunHowieRun2020; Twitter @HowieHawkins20; Instagram page HowieHawkins2020; and the H’20 YouTube channel.
On March 3, Californians will be voting in the 2020 Primary Elections which includes the chance for party voters to select their favored presidential candidate, but also features a number of sate- and local-level positions for which to vote.
Two Peace and Freedom Party candidates to date have filed to run for office in the February 2020 California Primary, and another two have announced their candidacy for the PFP presidential nomination. Our current slate of candidates is as follows.
Howie Hawkins –
Peace and Freedom Party presidential nominee candidate
As part of the stated effort to “unite the independent left”, Howie Hawkins is seeking the Peace and Freedom Party nomination for President of the United States.
Howie is a socialist who believes self-organization, independent political action, and international solidarity by the working class and oppressed people for full political and economic democracy is the way to build a society of freedom, equality, solidarity, peace, and ecological sustainability. As a member of Solidarity, he believes in the promotion of “socialism from below” and international solidarity because the fight for freedom against all dictators and imperialisms is worldwide and indivisible.
He has been an organizer in movements for peace, justice, labor, the environment, and independent working-class politics since 1967 when he got active in “The Movement” as a teenager in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has been a member of the Socialist Party USA since 1973 and was a co-founder of the Green Party US in 1984.
Gloria La Riva –
Peace and Freedom Party presidential nominee candidate
Lifelong labor/community/anti-war activist Gloria La Riva has stood as a socialist candidate on several occasions since her first turn with the Workers World Party in 1984, and most recently as the PSL/PFP presidential nominee in 2016 and as a gubernatorial candidate in 2018.
Gloria has been a key organizer of many mass demonstrations and other actions for three decades, and has traveled extensively to meet with workers and leaders alike. Most recently, she documented the Venezulean people’s resistance to the US economic blockade, and in late 2018 covered the Migrant Caravan in Latin America for alternative media.
The message of Gloria’s campaign along with vice presidential candidate Leonard Peltier is to the point: The world is facing unprecedented crises, none of which can be solved within the existing capitalist system. We are in a race against time. The need for the radical reorganization of society on a socialist basis has never been greater or more urgent.”
José Cortés – Peace and Freedom Party candidate,
U.S. Congress (CA District 50)
José Cortés was raised in the 50th Congressional District and has been a political organizer since 2016 when the rising violence of the Trump campaign and an unjust police shooting in his hometown compelled him to take to the streets and organize. He has participated in campaigns all over San Diego fighting for rent control, the closure of the for-profit concentration camps, and an end to the criminalization of the homeless and poor.
José is a proud Chicano socialist committed to ending the destructive US wars abroad and shuttering the military bases in occupied countries. He has helped organize for national liberation in Barrio Logan alongside Chicano Park defenders, stood in solidarity with the struggle for socialism in Venezuela and Cuba, and supports the right of self-determination for the people of Hawaii, Puerto Rico and all former and current US colonies. He is running in the PFP because only a socialist restructuring of society can bring about the end of the rule of political dynasties, career politicians and corporate lobbyists.
Cassie Devereaux – Peace and Freedom Party candidate,
14th CA Assembly District
Cassie Devereaux supports police oversight and an end to Vallejo’s reign of police terror; comprehensive rent control to keep people in their homes and communities; access to medical care and mental health services for the low-income and houseless; universal housing and an end to houselessness altogether; student-loan forgiveness and access to postsecondary education for all; and an end to all of ICE’s practices.
Says Cassie: “We can imagine a better world. To make things better we need deep, systemic change. Join a movement devoted to using the fruits of the la¬bor of people who do the work of the world to feed, clothe, and care for us and for our families, not to buy billionaires yet another yacht for their Pacific fleet. The ballot box can help build this movement. The people, united, can usher in this new world. Please join us in exercising our dem¬ocratic rights to uplift our demands for a better, more just world – and let’s get to work building it!”
Read more: Election 2020: The Peace & Freedom Party Candidates
