 Carolina Maradiaga Photo: Raymond White |
The following is a presentation given at the May 8 “Capitalism is a crime: We need socialism!” conference in Los Angeles, hosted
by the PSL.
Good afternoon, everyone. My name
is Carolina Maradiaga, and I am a current candidate member of the Party for
Socialism and Liberation.
Some of you might be wondering what made me want to
join the party, and the answer to that is the fact that I was tired—tired of
being unemployed due to the economy, tired of seeing my mother struggle on a
weekly basis because of her paycheck, and most of all tired of seeing my
family, some of whom are in this country illegally, struggle and live in fear
of being deported.
At the age of 20 I graduated from
a vocational school as a certified medical assistant. From there on I thought
it was going to be easy. Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out that way; for
the following six months I was unemployed.
I applied at many places and didn’t
even get a call back. I was so desperate for any job that when I got a call
from a warehouse, I took it. I was getting paid minimum wage, and my working
hours were from 7:30 a.m. until we finished the shipment of the day. Sometimes
I got out at 8 p.m. My hands and feet were swollen most of the time from work,
and I remember thinking, ”why do people put up with this? Why can’t there be
any decent jobs with decent pay”?
It was then that I was introduced
to the PSL and socialism. I have learned that the struggles people face today
can be resolved, if we join together and fight for our rights. We need to fight
back for our basic human rights. Since joining the PSL, I have taken part in
anti-war, anti-Nazi and immigrant rights demonstrations. The members of this
party all fight with the same dedication against the capitalist system.
Nevertheless, I am glad to say
that after my long search for employment. I finally got a job at a clinic. Now
I work in skid row, and for those of you who don’t know what skid row is, well
it is home to 7,000 homeless people in downtown Los Angeles. Working there and
seeing how unjust the government system we have now is to those people has
reassured me that I made the right choice by joining the PSL. Every human being
should have a right to housing, food and health care.
Being a Latina lesbian woman, I
have been witness to some of the prejudice against the LGBT community by the
current government. Proposition 8 denies me the right to marry another woman.
This is an example of how the capitalist system divides people in order to keep
their government in place. I have seen many people stare at my partner and
myself as we walk hand in hand. Seeing all of this makes me realize that the
only way we are ever going to achieve full equality is through socialism.
For those of you here today it is
obvious that you are not happy with the current situation in this country. We
all have a different story, but I encourage you to join the struggle and become
a member of the PSL. As for you comrades, I look forward in fighting against
capitalism by your side.
