Peta Lindsay is 27 years old and running for president. She represents the PSL — Party for Socialism and Liberation — and believes that we could experience a socialist revolution right here in Amurrica: “The United States has a long, rich history of struggle,” she says. “From the 1930s, there was a strong labor movement, and in the ’50s and ’60s, there was a movement for civil rights. I feel like this is just a next phase of the movement in the U.S.” We’re listening.
In a statement about why she’s interested in a political career, Lindsay writes:
Without a doubt, the capitalist electoral system is a sham. It is a rigged system to ensure the domination of the tiny ruling class of Wall Street bankers, corporations and big-business owners over the vast majority of people in the United States-the working class.
The U.S. electoral system is reflective of a capitalist plutocracy. We live under a government of, by and for the wealthy. These politicians-from President Obama to Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and on down the line-are fully beholden to their corporate backers, the 1 %. Even if they started off from humble backgrounds or espoused progressive positions earlier in their careers, not one politician will be able to become president of the United States unless they adjust their positions to that which is acceptable to the capitalist vultures and the military-industrial complex. Each one of them will embrace the goals of U.S. imperialist domination or they will be dumped unceremoniously by the Republican and Democratic parties. None of them will forward the working-class struggle.
Dammit, you guys: She’s right. Look, obviously it’s a super-duper insane long shot, but just for one minute, imagine: Imagine Peta Lindsay as POTUS (with a Lindsay-friendly Congress). Imagine how the war on women, the war on birth control, the health care debacle would all pan out. Think of the throngs gathered when Obama was running, the way folks rallied around the idea of HOPE.
Lindsay points out that Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Google and Citigroup were among the top contributors to Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign; her message is that our democracy is “by, of and for the rich — you get about as much democracy as you can buy.” She’s against the patriarchy, as you can see in
this speech from 2007, in which she calls the war in Iraq a war against women, and declares that George Bush is the “world’s biggest criminal.” She’s also angry about the burdens young people face:
We all grew up hearing that if we studied hard and worked hard we would succeed. So those of us who could went to college despite rising education costs, shouldering crippling loans for the promise of a good job and a foundation for a good life. After graduating, we found that the market had no intention of keeping that promise.
It will most likely be a cold day in hell when Washington DC represents Marxist values, but Lindsay is both an activist (she’s been in a zillion demonstrations against war, racism, budget cuts, tuition hikes, police brutality, anti-LGBT bigotry, and in support of immigrant rights, women’s rights, and so on) and an optimist: “With the explosive growth of the Occupy Wall Street movement, people are already struggling against the exploitation of the capitalist system,” she tells The Root. “People are in motion.”
