The Party for Socialism and Liberation is proud to announce that PSL candidate Carlos Alvarez has won the Peace and Freedom Party’s nomination for Governor of California. Running on an openly socialist platform, Alvarez secured the nomination by finishing first in a field of three candidates. Alvarez will head a fighting campaign that advocates for working-class causes, such as creating jobs, fighting for free health care and education, struggling against all cuts to social services, and for full equality for everyone, including immigrants, LGBT people, disabled people and others.
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Carlos Alvarez PSL photo: Bill Hackwell |
“I am honored to win the Peace and Freedom Party’s nomination. I congratulate the other candidates who ran, Stewart Alexander and Muhammad Arif, for their campaigns as well. They are allies in the struggle against capitalist exploitation. I am confident that we will all continue to fight for workers and oppressed people during the election and beyond,” Alvarez said in a statement after the electoral result was announced.
“I am especially proud to run on the Peace and Freedom ticket,” continued Alvarez. “As the only ballot-qualified socialist party in California, Peace and Freedom is an essential voice for working and poor people to hear as we are bombarded by million-dollar, pro-capitalist campaigns. Peace and Freedom proposes the only viable alternative at the ballot box: socialism.”
Alvarez and his campaign staff and volunteers have been going door-to-door throughout Southern California. Now, the campaign will expand the effort throughout the state. “We want the campaign to be a dynamic and boisterous voice for justice in California,” Alvarez told PSLweb.org. “And we encourage anyone who wants to really struggle for justice and equality to join us.”
Alvarez is the candidate for governor who believes that everyone in California has the right to a union job, a place to live, a high-quality education, and free health care. Unlike Democrat Jerry Brown and Republican Meg Whitman, Alvarez believes that these are not privileges, but fundamental human rights. As a candidate for mayor of Los Angeles in 2009, his central campaign demand was “People over profits: jobs, education, health care, and housing for all!”
Alvarez understands clearly that banks, corporations and Big Oil must be heavily taxed to fund social programs. He believes that all budget cuts instituted by California lawmakers should be reversed immediately. He stands against U.S. wars abroad that take hundreds of millions of dollars each day out of California’s working-class communities.
He also stands against police brutality. In light of one of the most brutal acts of police violence in memory, the killing of Oscar Grant in Oakland, Alvarez is the only candidate for governor demanding community control of the police and an end to police brutality. He understands that youth from Black and Latino communities are disproportionately targeted for violence, racial profiling and prison sentences. The Oscar Grant case was a terrible injustice to not only Grant and his family, but to all those wanting to fight police impunity and institutional racism. Cops who violate civil rights and murder working-class youth should be jailed!
Building a people’s movement
Not only will the Alvarez campaign make demands, but will participate in movements as well. Alvarez and the PSL have been active in demanding full justice for immigrants including immediate legalization and equality. If elected, Alvarez would make California a sanctuary state. He would shut down detention centers that imprison undocumented people, and he would call for an immediate demilitarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Alvarez will also advocate in the street. He is a principal organizer in the immigrant rights movement in Southern California. At this year’s May Day march in L.A., Alvarez addressed the crowd of over 350,000 people.
As a child of immigrant parents from El Salvador and a fluent Spanish-speaker who grew up in South Central L.A., Alvarez can relate to the experience of many Californians. He can help organize the important and fast growing Latino community into a powerful movement for progressive change. The Alvarez campaign also will represent the aspirations of immigrant workers of all backgrounds, and reject the shameless scapegoating of immigrants by the anti-immigrant Democratic and Republican parties.
Alvarez is also a leader of the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender movement. He has led some of the largest protests against bigoted Proposition 8 after its passage in 2008. Alvarez believes that the most important avenue for achieving full rights for LGBT people is through taking to the streets. Legislative change only comes when the working class unites in a movement that shakes the foundations on which society is run.
Alvarez’s campaign also will be the only gubernatorial campaign to actively fight against injustice as it affects all people, whether it is organizing to repeal SB 1070 in Arizona or to stop the criminal U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Wherever there is a movement, or action, the Alvarez campaign will be there with the people fighting for the real change that working-class people want and deserve. His campaign is not just about getting votes, it is a vehicle for working and poor people to build a movement for real change.
As a socialist, Alvarez knows that people’s movements, not politicians, change history. Neither Brown nor Whitman will demand that the capitalists pay for the economic crisis that they created. Instead, they will continue to side with the banks and force working and poor people to shoulder the burden. The Democratic and Republican campaigns are corporate campaigns, funded by the same forces that impoverish people in California and throughout the world. People should not expect anything different from these politicians. They merely represent more of the same—the status quo.
“My campaign fights against the status quo,” said Alvarez. “The elections would be nothing more than a sham without socialist candidates putting forth a truly revolutionary alternative—something that really speaks to the needs of the vast majority of people. If socialist candidates did not run or were not allowed to run, workers would be left with no choice but to vote for politicians that might talk about reform, but are nothing more then representatives of the ruling elite.”
Alvarez continued, “Since the Democrats and Republicans represent corrupt corporations, isn’t it time for a campaign that represents the interests of working and poor people. Isn’t it time for a campaign that rejects all budget cuts, and demands that the state tax the rich for the economic crisis they created? Isn’t it time for socialism?”
The PSL is running two other candidates in California. Marylou Cabral is the Peace and Freedom nominee for California Secretary of State. Cabral organized the largest anti-war demonstration against the Iraq War on the California State University, Long Beach campus, and is a current leader of the student movement against budget cuts and tuition hikes.
On the federal level, Gloria La Riva is facing off against Nancy Pelosi for U.S. House of Representatives. La Riva is a veteran activist in the anti-war, immigrant rights, and labor struggles. She is president of the Typographical Sector, Media Workers Union Local 35921.
These candidates join Peace and Freedom candidates for all other offices as the only socialists running in California in 2010.
At all levels of government, the PSL is taking the message of socialism to the people and confronting the capitalist powers.
Contact the PSL for more information about these campaigns and to volunteer. Help us put the voices of working and poor people at the forefront of the elections this season!
