Interview with presidential candidate Gloria La Riva

author : WIP staff topic : presidential candidate | interview

by WIP staff

Gloria La Riva is a presidential candidate for the Party for Socialism and Liberation. She is on the Washington state ballot after a successful signature drive which obtained over 500 signatures during Olympia's Pride Parade earlier this year. La Riva is a long-time activist who has participated in many humanitarian trips to Cuba and brought awareness of the case of the Cuban 5 as coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five. She is currently employed as president of the Typographical Sector, Media Workers Union, Local 39521, CWA. She was in Olympia on Oct. 20 and was able to sit down for an interview with Works in Progress.

What has historically sustained the U.S. foreign policy's trade blockade on Cuba?

Since the U.S. blockade was formally passed by the Kennedy administration in 1962, through every administration since, the U.S. government has maintained a very tight economic blockade on Cuba. Both parties -- Democrat and Republican -- and the question is why. The blockade is part of the U.S. government's intent to destroy the Cuban Revolution, overthrow the Cuban government and try to install a government that does the bidding of the United States. It's not even so much for the wealth that the U.S. corporations used to own in Cuba. Although that's certainly a big reason. The U.S. corporations owned the railroads, the mines, including the very, very profitable nickel mines, the electric company, all the utilities, the communications of that time which was primarily telephone. Two million acres of land and most of the arable land of the country, 70% of the sugar plantations and sugar mills, so the U.S. was really the fundamental owner of Cuban wealth.

That's not really the main reason why the U.S. wants to overturn the Cuban Revolution. It's because, more and more, Cuba is providing an example to Latin America countries like Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay and others to show that when people take power and control of the resources and their land, they can provide for the people in a truly sustainable way. That's what's happened in Cuba with the socialist revolution. And that's what the U.S. wants to destroy.

That's why a U.S. blockade seems such a contradiction to so many Americans. Sometimes when I'm speaking people say 'Yeah but, why does the U.S. not let U.S. corporations trade with Cuba when they trade with a socialist country like Vietnam or China?' And really, the U.S. strategy against Vietnam and China is the same against Cuba. They want to undo those revolutions but they have different tactics. With Cuba, it's a small enough country that they can strangle it economically as an island. They try to isolate it from the rest of Latin America and the world. China is a huge country, China is a huge market and so the U.S. ruling class sees its policy and tactics toward China as 'open it up' Open it up to the biggest market in the world to potential customers and consumers, so it's a different means. But the U.S. is certainly trying to undermine the Chinese government constantly as well as other socialist countries. So the blockade is very, very tight right now.

The U.S. not only imposes a ban between U.S. corporations and Cuba to trade with each other, the U.S. also puts pressure on countries all over the world to keep them from trading with Cuba. In essence, the blockade is an extraterritorial application of U.S. policy. It's an internationalization of the blockade. The U.S. is not content to let Mexico trade with Cuba. They threaten Mexico.

So, for example, in 1992 after the Soviet Union had collapsed, the U.S. thought 'okay, with Cuba's largest trading partner falling apart, the Soviet Union, we now can undo Cuba. If their main trading partner disappeared, let's strangle them once and for all. So they passed in November 1992, it was signed by George Bush senior, the Torricelli law and the Torricelli law provided that any ship in the world that came to bring goods to Cuba of food, medicine, whatever, any country that brought its ship to Cuba and intended to dock in a U.S. harbor with goods for the U.S. would be confiscated by U.S. Customs and held for six months or denied the right to dock in the U.S.. So that was telling, for example, a Chinese or Japanese shipping line bringing rice or food, 'obviously you're not going to come from halfway around the world to trade with a small market like Cuba. You're going to bring goods to the U.S. But you choose between us or them.' So the blockade's been very, very harmful. It's been estimated that the blockade's damage to Cuba's economy is roughly $200 billion in the last 48 years. It doesn't make sense for American people when they hear about this. Southern farmers in Arkansas, Alabama, Louisiana, Florida, all the southern states are desperate to trade with Cuba. Because farmers don't have a market to sell their goods. Cuba needs rice. Cuba needs corn. Cuba needs milk, Cuba needs to import food and it's far cheaper to buy from U.S. growers than to ship it from even Latin America or Europe. So Cuba's trading with other countries often the price goes five times as high as it normally would because of the shipping costs alone.

Could we anticipate change in that policy from any of the two major presidential candidates?

I think in its essence U.S. policy will not change. Both candidates, both parties have maintained that they will maintain the blockade against Cuba. And I want to point out, right now, after the passing of Gustav and Ike, which hit the United States, but really devastated Cuba's island. It wiped out much of Cuba's agriculture. It totally destroyed 63,000 homes in Cuba. Cuba is a population of a million people and it tore the roofs or damaged the walls of 400,000 other homes. That's an enormous amount of Cuba's housing stock. So Cuba has called on the U.S. for a truce. Right after the hurricanes, they said 'look, lift this trade ban for six months. Frankly, we need to restore our country. Our people are suffering. Let us buy goods unrestricted.

October 29th, at the United Nations, at the annual vote of the General Assembly that takes place with over 180 countries, the question comes up every October or November since 1992, 'Should the U.S. blockade of Cuba be lifted?' And the majority has always voted yes. Lift the blockade. These are the general assembly nations. Last year, the vote was 183-4. 183 countries in favor of lifting the blockade and four countries against. Who are the four countries? The United States, Israel, Palau, an island of 40,000 people and the Marshall Islands, maybe a population of 200,000. That's absurd. And yet the U.S. defies international opinion of 183 countries representing virtually the whole world.

So will the blockade be lifted by the U.S. government? Only when it reaches a point that the American people finally pressure Washington to lift the blockade. It will take the people like it took the people to fight another bailout, the people to demand for housing for all, it will take a people's movement to really make change in this country, including foreign policy. Now, as far as the candidates and other issues in Cuba. The Democrats and the Republicans, depending on the issue, are very opportunistic. They'll take a hard line. And then when they see the polls changing drastically against them, then they'll change their opinion, only for the vote.

And so, whereas for many, many years, the vast majority of Cuban-Americans, very right-wing, were always for the blockade and punishing Cuba for being socialist; since 1980, more and more Cubans have come that are actually more moderate. They have family in Cuba and don't want to see their families suffer from the blockade. The majority opinion in Miami according to very recent polls shows that a strong majority not only want an end of the blockade, they want the right to travel to Cuba and visit their family members.

Since 2004, the Bush administration has had in place a very severe policy against Cuban-Americans which now says they can only visit "direct" family members meaning mother, father, child or sibling. They're not allowed to visit aunts and uncles and cousins according to U.S. policy. And they can only visit one time every three years with special license from the U.S.. So if your mother is dying and you just finished visiting her, or [there's an] emergency of your family member in Cuba, the U.S. prohibits those Cubans from going home. So there is a very big groundswell of anger about this in Miami. Because as I said, the majority of Cubans still have family there. And family to Cubans and Latin Americans is quite important, virtually to everybody. So Obama has said 'I will maintain the blockade as president but I promise to lift the travel restrictions on Cuban-Americans and the right for them to send money home.' So we'll see if that happens. If that happens, I think it will start to open up a little bit more. Not by act of the president but by pressure of the people.

To see if this can happen, why shouldn't others be able to go to Cuba. I think that's where we should, in the progressive movement, in the political movement, Cuba solidarity movement, think about challenging the government with trips to Cuba to defy the blockade as many people have done for years.

What should diplomacy between Cuba and the U.S. look like?

Well, it's all up to the United States but Cuba has always called for a normalization of relations. That is, normal trade relations, the right of peoples to travel to each other's country, it's up to the U.S. because it's the U.S. who imposes these polices. Most people don't know that Americans are prohibited from traveling to Cuba or you could face a quarter of a million dollar fine or 10 years imprisonment. That's our democracy. So we think it should be normal relations. Simple as that.

How do you stand on choice issues: abortion, birth control and comprehensive sex education?

I grew up in the 60s and 70s and was a great beneficiary as a young woman at that time of all the women's movement fought for. Fought for the right for all women to control our own bodies and choose to have an abortion if we wanted to or needed to. It was our choice. It took the women's movement to fight for the issues of equality and of course the technological, scientific advances of the pill was a great advancement for women. The women's movement did a lot.

I think we've seen a lot of regression but still in my campaign and my party and much of the movement, the progressive movement, we demand, still, a woman's right to choose whether to have a child or not and if you choose to have a child also the right to raise a child in a safe, healthy environment with support for children.

The right-wing talks a lot about right-to-life. But they're completely against life. They don't care about a child once it's born. It's a political weapon that they use against women. I don't really think that they care about abortion, it's just another way of beating women back in the kitchen. Into the alleys for illegal abortions. It's not an economic issue, it's an issue of right-wing agenda that says gay people shouldn't be able to have marriage, women shouldn't have control of their own bodies, and let's keep all these racist policies like abolishing affirmative action and so forth.

So we basically stand for the right of choice. And of course, it doesn't mean that it's preferable to do that, you know, it's not the best medical procedure for women. It can be traumatic. It's certainly not easy but also a lot of abortions take place, or unwanted pregnancies take place because of the lack of sexual education. It should begin early in the schools. And this idea of religious people, churches, being able to pressure schools against it, it's the religious right-wing blurring the lines of separation of church and state. So, the women's movement and all progressive people, we need to keep fighting for it.

That would for example be tied into measures to be enacted to protect a woman's right to choose for in the future.

Well, we still have Roe versus Wade. It's been somewhat weakened. But the Supreme Court right now, there is some possible hammer blows being dealt by the Supreme Court however I even think that this very right-wing court knows, if they dare to overturn Roe versus Wade, there'll be a real strong reaction from women. You're not going to drive us back into the old days.

I grew up in Albuquerque, and when I was four years old, one of my earliest memories was a woman named Maria across the street from me and she had three kids, our little playmates. And Maria died. And I never forgot it because in my little mind, I couldn't conceive of someone's mother dying. And I'll never forget like how heartbroken we all were that she died and very recently, a few years ago, I said 'Mother, do you remember Maria across the street from us?' And she said yes and I said 'what did she die of cause I'll never forget' and she said 'an illegal abortion'. I'll never forget that. I was so stunned. That's how women die in those days! When they had illegal abortions and that was one of our greatest victories. You know, the struggle is what makes progress, the struggle is what makes happen progressive laws and the struggle is what will keep them.

And I once saw a documentary about the Supreme Court, an extremely reactionary, racist institution. Nine judges selected for life. You can't kick them out of office. They make decisions that affect our life. And I saw a documentary once that showed where Roe versus Wade was decided: in the streets. And the Supreme Court wrote the majority decision. I forget his name [Ed. note: Harry Blackmun] and he said that in this documentary that the women's movement was very strong at this time. It was 1973, it was years of women's fight back and the civil right too. And he states how he was in this dilemma, didn't know what to do, it was a big decision. He went home and asked his wife and daughter 'what do you think I should do?' And they both said to him 'you better not dare rule against our rights.' And so this judge was affected by the women in his life and it shows how the women's movement effected all women at that time. It's very interesting.

The issue of race relations was briefly tolerated by corporate media with Obama's speech in March. What are some obstacle African-Americans face regardless of where they live? What issues are often avoided by the media to prevent confronting these obstacles?

Well, I think that the media which reflects so much of a very racist, right-wing viewpoint on the issue of race. And the government, many right-wing politicians. But a lot of people too in society that are openly racist or have very backward and prejudiced ideas. They ignore, deny the reality that exists and has existed since slavery for African-American people in the United States. And when you think about what happened right after the end of slavery. Emancipation which took place in stages in some parts of the country. The Emancipation Proclamation, most people don't realize was only declared by Lincoln for the states that had seceded. So states like Louisiana, the Emancipation Proclamation did not formally free the slaves in Louisiana. Because Louisiana wasn't in secession during the Civil War. So even from the government, it was a limited emancipation.

And then after the war ended and [the end of] slavery was finally declared for all the states, the plight of black people was very severe. This is where peonage and sharecropping of a minority but virtual slavery continued after slavery was over. You can take the example of South Carolina. In 1865, the black code, it was called, was passed and all black people who all had been slaves were not allowed to go look for a job unless they got permission from the local authorities. They had to get permission to get a job. So they weren't even allowed to do the one thing that all people who are not rich have to do under capitalism. That is go to work and have a job.

Here you come from slavery, suffering, the whip, death, torture, all kinds of abuse and attacks by white people who were the slaveowners and their supporters who thought we're not going to make it easy for you. And that legacy which overthrew the Reconstruction Era, the most revolutionary time in the United States where a few years after the Civil War, the overthrow of Reconstruction, the rise of Jim Crow, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan which was intended to keep black people oppressed and pushed back. Never to have equality. As far as white people were concerned. And by white people, I don't mean all white people, I mean the rulers, and of course many people who were very, very racist at that time who were suggesting that black people shouldn't have equality.

That pervasive atmosphere of racism in the South and the rest of the United States but primarily in the South, from 1865 all the way to the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s. There was segregation. Segregation was the law of the land. So black people didn't have the chance for true equality. And then came formal equality. The Civil Rights Act with the Brown versus Board of Education decision ending segregation in the schools. Many historic decisions made because African-Americans fought and died and sacrificed and boycotted. The great Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1954 through 1955. A whole year of refusing to board a bus and segregation of the bus system, this was the law of the land. So it was a very short amount of time since that was ended. Normal apartheid ended.

But the economic disparity still exists. There was some improvement in the 60s, some improvement in the 70s but we've seen a big loss in those gains, we've seen the undermining of affirmative action which was simply intended to open the doors to institutions that had been lily-white. Universities, fire departments for example. Jobs, all kinds of jobs. And so now since the 70s, the Supreme Court again has ruled against affirmative action in the workplace, in public institutions. So what is the situation?

I as a candidate for president and my running mate, Eugene Puryear, who is an African-American student at Howard University and our party as a whole, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, we believe that it is absolutely fundamental for the struggle of the African-American community and the need for everybody else in this country to have full solidarity in this struggle. The need to fight racism in all its forms. Against all manifestations of racism and of course against sexism, and against homophobia. But the biggest obstacle that we face in this country, to unite all working people, all people who need a job to survive, all people who are not able to work; all of us need to join together to realize it's not black people that are the problem, it's not immigrants needing a job that are the problem of the crisis we face.

If we join together and overcome the divisions that keep us from being together, we can change this world, change this society and have a life of dignity for everybody. The first thing is, in our fight, anywhere we are fighting, the first thing we have to remember is racism plays a very, very big part in keeping the black community oppressed in a very unequal situation. Police brutality affects black people more so than anybody. Murders, the prison system, the death penalty, all people in prison are poor. That's why for example, a part of our program is a demand for reparations. And people go 'well, how's that money going to be paid?' We're talking about a full affirmative action program, we're talking about millions of jobs to be created for especially African-American youth and Latino youth, many who don't even have a chance to start a job because they won't get hired, because of racism. Every adult needs a job, income. So again, it's a long answer but it needs a long explanation. It's not easy just to say fight racism, reparations, affirmative action, it's important to explain the roots of it, the reason for it.

There are over 800 documented U.S. military installations around the world. What long-term consequences affect the people of these countries where installations are?

Yeah, there are all U.S. bases all over the world. For example, there's 57 military bases in Iraq. People don't know that. That means within range of those bases, the U.S. can send troops out to break peoples' doors down, shoot people in the street, really just conduct a reign of terror in Iraq.

There's 37,000 U.S. troops in Korea. And the Korean people know that in an event [of] a rebellion, a struggle for justice in the unions, for students fighting to end repression, that the U.S. army is always there, ready to put it down. The U.S. army and its allies, the [South] Korean army.

So the U.S. role abroad is a message to the people of those countries that they occupy that you better keep in line because if you think you're going to fight your government which is acting out off of U.S. big business and military, you're going to have us to answer to. And the U.S. military has often been deployed in those countries. It's a big threat. Who feels their country is really free when they see U.S. tanks rolling down the streets and U.S. soldiers with their guns drawn?

But of course, we have the same thing in the United States. In Katrina. Myself and two other activists from the Party for Socialism and Liberation, we went to New Orleans six days after Katrina, when the evacuation was barely starting by the U.S. government. But the biggest presence of the U.S. was a National Guard and they were, if you drove down the streets they had their (Gloria imitates gun held and aimed) semi-automatics drawn, pointed at people, it was terrifying. And it was also a green light to racist vigilantes who were killing people, they were shooting people at night, I mean that happened quite a lot. So the U.S. military presence in New Orleans was not to help people, it was to keep private property in control. They had a shoot-to-kill order if anybody dared to break into a store to get food and there was no means to get food if you were in New Orleans. No means unless you break into a store or go into someone's house in case you had run out. So that's the role of the U.S. military.

We call for the immediate closing down of all U.S. bases abroad and of course no U.S. tanks in the United States as well. I was in South Korea. Now keep in mind that 37,000 troops are in Korea because it's a legacy, a carryover of the U.S. war against all of Korea from 1950-1953. Four million Koreans died, 57,000 U.S. troops died, most people don't know that. Very high casualties in that war. And I went there in 2001 and the U.S. army has a radio station in English there. And keep in mind that the U.S. obliterated Korea with carpet bombs for three years. Especially North Korea which was socialist and is still socialist, wiped out. People had to dig tunnels underground and live there during the war. Great destruction. And so U.S. troops still occupy the south. I went to South Korea and I turned on the radio and I was listening to this U.S. army show and they were hailing the 50th anniversary of one of the big U.S. battles against Korea in the Korean war. And the army solider that was announcing this show said 'On this day, we killed 10,000 communists in Wonsan'. That's Wonsan, a port city of North Korea, and I was in North Korea too in '89. I've been to Wonsan, it's a beautiful port city. And to hear this boasting of a U.S. army radio show, to this day, boasting what they did to the Korean people is like a message: 'we can do it again'. So South Korea, because of the U.S. occupation, is an extremely repressive society. Students are thrown in jail when elected student body president if they claim for the unity of Korea. I've met many students who have exiled in churches in South Korea to keep from going to prison. So that's the role of the U.S. army.

And families totally separated, right?

Yeah, and the U.S. is the reason Korea is divided. There is no peace treaty between the two countries. They're really one country. But they're at armistice so at any time the war could resume. It's a very big danger point.

I was also in Japan two years ago where there's dozens of U.S. bases. There's over 30 U.S. bases in Japan. And I was invited on behalf of an anti-war coalition, an Asian anti-war coalition which was there to demand the closing of a base in a part of Japan. We marched down the streets in this small town and went up to a hillside and saw a whole mountain had been leveled by the U.S. military. Now this community had been protesting that the army was there, the military has a huge base there and the U.S. army literally blasted out that mountain to expand the U.S. air base. So we went to that town and I passed by a bar that was an American bar and women had been raped there. It was a very strong movement of anger in the community because women have been accosted in the streets, young women, have been raped and I passed by a bar to see these Marines, videotaped inside and they're playing this reactionary music and they had this big banner 'Baghdad'. Baghdad. And I thought wow, what a message that is. Boasting we're in Japan and also Baghdad. So it's just...I was shouting at those guys inside.

Getting back to your experiences visiting New Orleans during Katrina, in what ways is capitalism responsible for the devastation in New Orleans?

Well, all of the money that was provided by the government finally after weeks did not go to help and rebuild the city. I don't know of any homes that was built by the U.S. government. They shelled out maybe thousands of dollars to home owners who had to means to file for assistance for Katrina from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). And yet it's been estimated that the overwhelming majority of African-American home owners were never able to recover their losses because they were scattered all over the country. They were not evacuated close by so they could take care of their personal business. People were literally, because we were there, you can read stories about it, before the evacuation started, rounded up onto planes and they said you can go to Colorado or you can go to Long Beach. You can go to..far away, Seattle. So they were just dropped in the middle of nowhere, with no assistance and they had to fend for themselves. So getting back to New Orleans was almost impossible for many, many people. That was one thing.

There was a definite racial disparity and difference in how white home owners were treated. Although many people were not able to come back in the white community. But the Bush administration provided billions of dollars to corporations who profit-gouged and who made money off the tragedy of people. To give you one example, that was the hurricane season of course in 2005. And the cruise liners, a very big business from the southern Gulf Coast to the southern islands, the cruise liners were suffering a big economic crisis, nobody was getting on the ships, people probably couldn't afford it. So the Bush administration developed this really clever plan that paid millions and millions of dollars to the owners of those cruise lines, which were docked, paid them to house seniors who were evacuated out of New Orleans. Well, the problem is that most seniors live with family or their kids came to take care of them. And to get on those ships, you had to just leave everything behind and get on a ship, I mean how is that going to make you get on with your life? It was a pork-barrel project for the shipping liners, a favor that Bush was doing for them.

It's often in natural disasters that the class nature and how the rich get rich and the poor get poor and how the system serves the rich is exposed evermore. I was in the earthquake of 1989 in San Francisco and the rich neighborhoods of the marina where the houses pretty much collapsed along the bay. They were given housing in luxury hotels. We know, because we followed the issue. They were given housing in luxury hotels while the poor in San Francisco who we were very involved in helping out to get assistance from Red Cross and FEMA, they were being turned down by Red Cross and FEMA. They were having to sleep in tents in parks. They were not given help.

And that happened in New Orleans. It was the French Quarter that was rehabilitated first because it's a big tourist area. And you can still drive through the lower ninth ward, other parishes that were devastated by Katrina and they're still not rebuilt. So we were there during the Gustav hurricane and again. I think this time the evacuation plan was much better. But people were just basically taken out hundreds of miles. We evacuated to a hotel in Baton Rouge. And there's a lot of profit-gouging by the hotel owners. We stayed in a place where the hotel owner charged everyone who came in the highest price in season demand. $200 for a motel that they wouldn't charge $59 for off-season. And it was just outrageous because we were there with a lot of African-American families who were housed in the rooms for a couple of nights and they couldn't afford a third night but they had nowhere else to go because New Orleans was still off-limits.

So capitalism doesn't provide the means to take care of people in crisis. Socialism does. You contrast that with Cuba, where everyone is evacuated out of a hurricane zone. And everyone's treated with respect. People respect their government. They have confidence in the many years of Cuba highly-developed evacuation system. People know that they're in the same fight together. There's no profiteering off a national crisis.

So on Thanksgiving Day in San Francisco, in the wake of the earthquake in 1989, there was a TV show. And it showed that the rich residents of the marina for that day to give them comfort, the Red Cross gave them a very fancy turkey dinner with silver and just a really beautiful setting in hotels. And the people who were still in shelters, the poor, were fed in these food kitchens and when there was an outcry about it, the Red Cross said we're simply trying to give people the kind of life that they're accustomed to. It's like what Barbara Bush said after Hurricane Katrina. I mean, she was, it was an outrageous statement where she said, people were talking about 'look how they are, they're in tents, they're in these horrible conditions' and she said 'well, it's better off than what they're used to'. So that's how the rich see us in this crisis where a million people have already lost their homes through foreclosure, working class people. Where the crisis is obvious to everyone.

Estimates of two million more people about to lose their home because they can't make their mortgage payment. Congress has its arms folded. The president could care less. There's not a word about rescue about a plan for any assistance not even from Obama or McCain. But instantly, within days, the fact that millions of people called in and protested and demanded no bailout, there was plenty of money for the banks. And yet in the last several months up to Oct. 3 when Bush signed the $700 billion bailout, the government has shelled out or is planning to shell out 1.9 trillion dollars. That's one thousand, nine hundred billions of dollars to the banks that caused the crisis in the first place. Is there any better example than the crime of the capitalist system? Because the taxpayers are going to pay for that debt. But the people who are losing their homes today as a result of the banker's criminal actions are still losing their homes. Not one home is going to be rescued by a result of this bailout. And when those banks finally recover which they will at some point, and they start to make profit again, they will still have the ownership and control of all those millions of homes that they have foreclosed off. It's like a triple crime.

What can be done for survivors who were and are displaced from their communities after the hurricane?

The biggest effort and the most success of recovery and resettlement into New Orleans has come from individual efforts and community efforts. Common Ground was one huge, huge great community effort of people from New Orleans who have survived and remained there during the hurricane and thousands of volunteers who have come in to rebuild homes, collected money, it's been a community effort, not the government. But of course, we should still demand that the government give money to people for more months. And people like Brad Pitt who started a project to help finance some of those community efforts.

But again, I think all of this is showing that the government has money. There's money things that can be achieved by a struggle of reforms under this very system. The government has plenty of money to provide scholarships for kids for school or healthcare for all. It's there. It's possible. The government has the capacity. But in the end, it's not enough to be fighting for a change here and a change there. Because over time, they're always taken back.

Under capitalism, you can win a gain but it can be taken back. When the rich get power, when they overcome our efforts, when they push us back, so in the end, our message in the election campaign and why I'm running for president, why we're running this campaign across the country and struggling so hard to get this ballot in 12 states including Washington state, our message is people must fight for justice today and tomorrow but in the end, it's going to take a socialist system. Where all the wealth in society is owned by the people in common and where decisions of production. Stop building cars and build mass transit. Build mass transit that people can ride for free. Create a sustainable environment. And a planned economy.

We don't have to build any more condos or homes or skyscrapers. There are 18 million empty homes and housing units in this country today. More than double the amount needed to house every person who's homeless or under housed and is going to need a home in the future. It's all there. The problem is private property and the capitalist system where a handful of wealthy can own the means of production, the wealth that creates wealth while the rest of us are subject to their decision of whether to shut down plants. In other words, it's only socialism that can only really meet the needs of people and guarantee housing, health care, education, social peace, the end of racism, the end of police brutality and have a life of dignity for all.

That's what we're running for. That's why we're running for president. To say find out more about the ideas of socialism and our party which is active on many fronts,of all the things that we just talked about. And you can find out more about our campaign and our party on pslweb.org. I really encourage people to check out more of what we are about. We found the biggest reception to socialism and the struggles against the war and against racism and exploitation is on the college campuses. I think that a lot of young people realize a lot of things aren't right, their future is very much in question. You know, young people are the most optimistic about life. The most willing to fight. They have the great feelings of invulnerability. I can do anything. And so the best thing to do, is to find out about the history in this country for socialism and the fact that there is a socialist party fighting today. And our group is composed of many young people. I think the majority of our people, overwhelmingly are under 25. And we're in over 20 cities in the U.S., we're growing largely the interest of the young people. And I, as someone who became an activist at 18 years old in college in 1972 so you can figure out how old I am, I've been through 36 years of activism and I'll do this the rest of my life. And there's nothing greater than to see young people active too.

All right, thank you for your time Gloria. And we appreciate you for answering all of our questions so fully.

Thank you.