The working class gets to vote every four years but is never represented in the White House, Congress or the Supreme Court. The PSL is running Gloria La Riva and Eugene Puryear in the 2008 elections to provide a real alternative. Our party expects to attain ballot status in 17 to 20 states.
“As a worker, a union leader who represents workers who are losing their jobs left and right, my run for the presidency
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The PSL electoral campaign promises to be a dynamic, fighting campaign that will reach into communities in large cities, small towns and rural areas, and galvanize a movement of workers and poor people who know deep down that the candidates of the rich do not speak to their needs.
That Hillary Clinton can donate $5 million of her own money to her campaign without blinking an eye shows that the candidates of the two main capitalist parties view politics through the filter of the plutocrats. This election is all about millionaires’ and billionaires’ money determining the election outcome.
Whether it is Mitt Romney investing $35 million of his personal fortune, or Clinton dipping into her millions, this election is about money and the real powers behind that money.
The Democratic and Republican candidates fully intend to protect the profits of the capitalists if they are elected. It is interesting that the Democrats, both Obama and Clinton, are now larger recipients of corporate donations than the Republicans. The corporations see no real difference, and their donations are assurances that the next president, whoever it may be, will sit comfortably in their pockets and do their bidding. Whichever capitalist candidate wins, working people lose.
La Riva, on the other hand, is an elected union leader of workers in the newspaper industry. This industry and the workers in it have been devastated by mass layoffs, outsourcing and media consolidation.
Corporate newspaper owners have cut thousands of jobs in recent months, with major layoffs recently at the San Diego Union-Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times. Cuts have also plagued newspaper workers in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and may hit Minneapolis and Philadelphia hard in the coming months. All of these cuts disregard workers’ needs and support the corporations’ bottom line—increasing profits.
Overall, in the coming year unemployment will rapidly grow. As millions of people lose their homes from foreclosures, hundreds of thousands of workers in construction will be laid off. That is fine for the banking and corporate plutocrats, their political representatives, and stock holdings, but it is a catastrophe for millions of working people.
When the House of Representatives passed its “stimulus” plan, Democrats and Republicans agreed not to extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks as part of their economic rescue. Their “rescue” is a pittance for workers. It is really intended to boost spending for the benefit of big business. It provides no real solutions for millions of working and poor people who are in crisis.
If you can spend millions to win elected office you will not lose sleep over the unemployment crisis in the United States.
The PSL is putting people’s needs first with a program that includes the universal right to a decent job, affordable housing, free health care and education from pre-K through college.
The La Riva/Puryear campaign represents those who have no cushion, those who seek real, profound and radical change—not as an empty campaign slogan, but as an urgent necessity.
