With the June 3 election fast approaching, things are heating up in Los Angeles with the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s local campaign. PSL candidates for L.A. County Board of Supervisors Marylou Cabral, District 4, and Stephen Hinze, District 5, have been pounding the pavement to spread the message of socialism all over Southern California.
|
Every weekend, both candidates have been holding street meetings to talk to residents about the real issues facing working-class people in Los Angeles, including the county’s budget crisis, immigrants’ rights, education and health care.
Street meetings are stirring up excitement about the PSL election campaign. An immigrant woman in Burbank said: “I am voting for Stephen Hinze because he represents the interests of immigrant workers. We need better laws and rights so that we can work without threats and harassment.”
Cabral and Hinze have also been gathering signatures for a petition to demand a debate against the incumbents. Hundreds of people have already signed the petition, demanding that the bourgeois incumbents answer tough questions and face up to the PSL candidates.
Cabral and Hinze have also been attending local events. On May 7, Hinze attended a town hall meeting organized by Sylmar City Council member Richard Alarcón regarding a racist gang injunction covering San Fernando and Sylmar, which are both in District 5.
Unlike any of the bourgeois politicians present at the meeting—all who either supported the injunction or shied away from taking a side—Hinze expressed the outrage felt by workers and people of color. He called out the Los Angeles Police Department on their racist tactics used to criminalize the Latino community. Hinze’s indictment of the gang injunction caused much of the audience to applaud and take interest in the PSL’s intervention in the elections.
On May 10, Cabral and Hinze attended WorldFest in Encino, Calif.—the largest Earth Day festival in Los Angeles. The community event raised environmental awareness. The candidates spoke to hundreds of people from all over Southern California, passing out the PSL election campaign’s statement on the environment and explaining that corporate polluters who continue to destroy the environment in the interests of profits must pay.
Cabral and Hinze also explained why socialism is the only solution for achieving an ecologically sustainable world.
Cabral told a young worker who attended the festival: “Capitalism is the greatest threat to our planet. As a socialist, I believe people must take priority over profits. Socialism, which takes the profit motive out of the picture, is the only way scientifically supported solutions to pollution and global warming can be fully implemented.”
On May 17 and 18, both candidates attended the Sixth Annual Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim to support the Palestinian struggle and the right to return. On May 18, Cabral and Hinze also spoke at an event for Palestine, commemorating the 60th anniversary of Al-Nakba, in which 800,000 Palestinians were brutally expelled from their homeland.
As the June 3 election approaches, Cabral and Hinze will continue to get out on the street and talk to the people about the issues that matter most to the working class. Notably, throughout their campaigns, the candidates have been stressing a “No” vote on Proposition 98, which, if passed, would eliminate rent control in California.
Cabral and Hinze will be representing the interests of the working class to the otherwise faceless L.A. County Board of Supervisor when they address the board at a public meeting on May 27.
By calling out their incumbents on their negligence of the ills of the county and demanding a debate in front of the community, both candidates are exposing the true nature of the capitalist system. Furthermore, they are explaining the solution to the people—socialism.
To find out more about Marylou Cabral’s campaign for L.A. County Board of Supervisors, District 4, click here. To find out more about Stephen Hinze’s campaign for L.A. County Board of Supervisors, District 5, click here. To find out more about other PSL candidates running in local and national elections, click here.
