Despite the unfathomable odds standing in the way, the crowd assembeled at the Community of Faith Assembly Church on Cleveland’s east side on Tuesday was filled with enthusiasm and hope during a forum and meet-and-greet with Party for Socialism and Liberation presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz and vice-presidential candidate Karina Garcia.
Organized and hosted by the Cleveland Party for Socialism and Liberation, a political party which focuses on grassroots organizing and community work in the City of Cleveland, the event wasa centered on giving a voice to marginalized communities and addressing neglect that has long plagued those communities.
Claudia De la Cruz, a mother, educator and community organizer, was born in the South Bronx to immigrant parents from the Dominican Republic. At the age of 13, she began her political organizing work. Karina Garcia, a Chicana organizer and educator, began her political organizing when at the age of 17, and has led campaigns against landlord abuses, wage theft, police brutality reproductive rights, immigrant rights and student financial aid reform.
Both candidates criticize capitalism, and systemic injustices and want to create representation for working-class people.
“We live in a society that wants to strip away the politics of the working-class people,” Cruz says.
That there is no logical way for them to emerge in the upcoming election — the party received about 85,000 total votes nationally in the 2020 presidential election — didn't stop supporters from coming out. Whether they see a platform that more closely aligns with their beliefs, or simply out on the Biden vs. Trump debate, or newly aware of the party due to recent events, including the war in Gaza, attendees emphasized a local focus.
“I think [Claudia’s and Karina’s visit] is important for Clevelanders,” says Kameron Damaska, an organizer with the Cleveland PSL. “Cleveland has been a deeply neglected city and I think having candidates come through that are interested in speaking to the grassroots of Cleveland is something that we have not really experienced.”
With a nearly 60% Black and Brown population, Cleveland is the second poorest large city in the United States. Over 50% of children living in Cleveland live in poverty and over 60% of its population is living near poverty.
“Conditions [in Cleveland] are unacceptable,” says Damaska. “Like the poverty rate, the illiteracy rate, all these metrics that are very important signs [of a] healthy society where people can thrive. That is not what is being delivered to the people of Cleveland.”
As November elections move closer, the conversation around voting has focused more on criticizing people who choose to not vote, and less on why candidates are choosing to not vote. According to a 2023 poll released by the Harvard Kennedy School, young Americans are less likely to vote in 2024 than they did in 2020.
From Biden’s Israel policy to broken promises about student loan debt relief to the American economy to reproductive health care, many young voters do not feel that their values are in alignment with either Democrat or Republican parties, leaving them to feel hopeless and looking for other alternatives to an outdated rule.
“With everything going on in Palestine, [I’m] branching out to other candidates that are more aligned with my values and my perspective on the world,” says Rikki, a campaign volunteer. “Something that was really frustrating to me was just hearing people [say] ‘Well, I’m just not going to vote because I don’t like the choices,’ and I think that’s not the answer.”
The campaign pledges a host of radical changes, including seizing the biggest 100 corporations and cutting the military budget by 90%, but also planks defending women's rights and full equality for LGBTQ people, working to end mass incarceration, and supporting the working class of America.
But, as De la Cruz told The Guardian earlier this year, while she hopes to garner more votes in 2024 than Gloria La Riva did in 2020, the gains of PSL's goals will happen through grassroots changes, not elections.
“It has never happened through electoral politics,” De la Cruz said.“It’s always necessitated mass movements. It’s always necessitated political organizations outside of the two-party system. And that goes for any reform that we have won, whether it is abortion rights, whether it is the right for the LGBTQI community to be able to have access to the most basic rights as people to live in a union; whether it is desegregation, whether it is the end of slavery, it necessitated mass movement to force the hand of reform... Because these people will never give us anything willingly. It will necessitate millions and millions and millions of people in motion to transform society, electoral politics won’t do it alone.”
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Longshot Socialist Party Presidential Candidate Claudia De la Cruz Visits Cleveland
“Cleveland has been a deeply neglected city and I think having candidates come through that are interested in speaking to the grassroots of Cleveland is something that we have not really experienced.”
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