Carlos Alvarez is the Peace and Freedom candidate running for Calif. Governor. He is also a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.
Socialist gubernatorial candidate Carlos Alvarez denounces California’s plans to execute a prisoner Wednesday morning at 12:01 am. San Quentin prison is the site of a new execution facility that was recently completed. Executions have been temporarily suspended in the state since 2006 when California’s particular method of execution was ruled cruel and unusual punishment.
Alvarez, on the Nov. 2 statewide ballot for California’s Peace and Freedom Party, said, “The death penalty—like the U.S. ‘justice’ system has historically been used across the United States as a weapon against the poor, against the working class, and has an overwhelming racist character. No rich man was ever executed, and only a handful of wealthy individuals are even among the 2 million prisoners in the country.
“Racism is one of the biggest factors in who gets the death penalty. That is true in California and across the United States. Although African Americans are only 6.7 percent of the state population, they are 33 percent of the inmates who have been sentenced to death since executions were reinstated in 1977. The man set to be executed, Albert Greenwood Brown, is African American.”
Alvarez added, “In a particularly atrocious move, the judge—presiding over the court case on the execution method—gave Brown the choice of being murdered by a single drug or three.
“Meanwhile the Democrat and Republican candidates, attorney general Jerry Brown and billionaire Meg Whitman, by their actions, are supporting this execution, conveniently timed before Nov. 2, so they show they are ‘tough on crime.’ Brown permitted Riverside County prosecutors to push for the Sept. 28 death date, and Whitman is a strong advocate of executions.
“As socialists, we demand the immediate and permanent abolition of the death penalty. We will be at San Quentin tomorrow (Tuesday) night along with other death penalty opponents, and hope that the execution is halted.”
The Peace and Freedom Party in California is the only socialist party with permanent ballot status in the United States. The PFP, as well as the Party for Socialism and Liberation—the nationally-based socialist party of which Alvarez is also a member—call for a massive jobs program, the complete and immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, taxing the rich and an end to the death penalty.
The PFP and PSL have also mobilized to save the life of California death-row inmate Kevin Cooper, whose case has been exposed by supporters as manipulated by police and prosecutors to railroad an innocent man into prison and death row.
More more information on the Alvarez campaign, visit www.VotePSL.org.
