Are you one of the many voters that have found themselves not wanting to vote for Mitt Romney nor President Obama? Do you feel that neither candidate listens to your voice? You wouldn’t be alone (don’t count on me as I am #TeamObama) and you wouldn’t be without someone else to vote for that epitomizes the minority.
Independent party presidential candidate, Peta Lindsay is that someone. I mentioned Peta before as a part of my shock that Roseanne Barr was also on the presidential ballot. Lindsay is under the Independent umbrella alongside Barr. She is all about issues that mostly plague minorities, like mass incarceration, full rights for all immigrants and equal rights for women.
Lindsay’s passion stems from her desire to help people just like her. “It’s not what I say, it’s who I am–a young, African-American woman from a working class background, who wants to fight.”
Lindsay wants to fight for the people with the people because she is one of us and understands what we need as Americans. Beyond it all, even if you don’t vote for her, she wants you to remember one thing, “The election is a sham, but true change can be made and it comes from the people.”
#TeamBeautiful was lucky enough to sit down with Peta Lindsay to pick her brain on why she’s running, if America would ever accept a Black woman as president and how she spends her time when she’s not campaigning.
Check out our exclusive chat below:
HelloBeautiful: Do you think America will ever be ready to elect a Black female president?
Peta Lindsday: Under a different system. When I was in Cuba, I got to see a lot of different things. In one laboratory, all the scientists inside were Afro-Cuban women. They have the sane history of slavery and underdevelopment, but they have a different organization to their society. They’re first priority was the promotion of people historically oppressed. You can’t walk into a lab in the U.S. and see all women scientists! [laughs]
HelloBeautiful: Why run for president?
PL: We entered this election not because we thought we would win. We entered to expose the election to let them know it’s a sham. It’s a rigged game against poor, working people. We want to get our platform out there and we used the election as a tool to talk about the things working people need to fight for right now.
I’ve always been an activist and an organizer since I was very young. There are of course inequalities, but what’s sad is that our elected officials embrace these inequalities. They perpetuate it, so it’s up to the people to fight it. We believe in change coming from the organized mass movement of the people in the streets. If you look at everything we ever wanted in this country–women’s rights, Civil Rights for African-Americans and labor rights–it’s always been a mass movement of people. I’m an organizer first, I believe in building the movement and that’s what’s got me on this path.
HelloBeautiful: Why is this election so important for women?
PL: I think historically, especially in the 2008 Election, people have seen the Democrats as friends of women and women’s rights. They are perceived as the party that will fight for women’s rights. But the reality is women’s rights were fought for and won in the streets. We had to fight for our own rights. The extent to which we stop fighting is the extent to which we lose.
The last four years have seen an unprecedented roll back in women’s rights and this includes having a Democratic controlled Congress and a Democratic in the White House. Still, our rights were being taken away on a state level. I think its the absence of the movement that’s created the crisis in the women’s movement right now. As long as people say, ‘I’m just going to support this politician, they will take care of it for me,’ we’re going to lose.
