“A third party option takes away consent from the ruling class" - Claudia De la Cruz

𝐀𝐦𝐢𝐝 𝐰𝐚𝐫 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐜𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐭𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐦 𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐬, 𝐬𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐬𝐨𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐭

“𝘼 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙧𝙙 𝙥𝙖𝙧𝙩𝙮 𝙤𝙥𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙩𝙖𝙠𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙬𝙖𝙮 𝙩𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙘𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙚𝙣𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙪𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙜𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙥𝙤𝙬𝙚𝙧 𝙩𝙤 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙠𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙘𝙡𝙖𝙨𝙨 𝙥𝙚𝙤𝙥𝙡𝙚,” 𝙨𝙖𝙮𝙨 𝘾𝙡𝙖𝙪𝙙𝙞𝙖 𝘿𝙚 𝙡𝙖 𝘾𝙧𝙪𝙯, 𝙨𝙤𝙘𝙞𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙩 𝙘𝙖𝙣𝙙𝙞𝙙𝙖𝙩𝙚 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙞𝙙𝙚𝙣𝙩

People in the US are set to head to the ballot box on November 5 to decide the next president of the United States, as well as all 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 33 seats in the Senate.

The United States presidential election season is occurring in a turbulent time, to say the least. Israel is carrying out a genocide against Palestinians with US funding, weaponry, and political backing. Biden shows no willingness to end this support, at least not before elections pass, as evidenced by the letter his administration sent to Israel, giving its ally 30 days to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza or the Zionist state may face restrictions on its supply of US weapons. According to the letter, “failure to demonstrate a sustained commitment to implementing and maintaining these measures may have implications for US policy under NSM-20 and relevant US law (weapons supply).” Whether this threat is genuine or not, this deadline will expire well after the next president is elected.

Domestically, the people of the United States continue to live in economic desperation, as the Biden administration has overseen the near total rollback of the COVID-19 social safety net that protected people from the impact of unemployment, medical costs, and sky-high cost of living. The internal economic crisis has only been exacerbated by the devastation wrought by hurricane season, including Helene and Milton, in the Southeastern United States, with Congress still unwilling to return from vacation before November 12 to provide more much-needed relief funding. According to US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, hurricane relief “can wait,” as working people in the Southeast struggle to recover from the aftermath.

What cannot seem to wait, it seems, is more funding for militarism abroad. The US just sent a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system to Israel, along with around 100 US troops to operate the system.

To socialists like third party presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz, running against the establishment’s candidates of Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, the solutions to the problems faced by the US working class are not “radical.” This is despite the fact that she is proposing to seize and make public the top 100 corporations in the US, and she is the only candidate who doesn’t seem to think that migrants seeking asylum will negatively impact people in the US. De la Cruz is running with vice presidential candidate and fellow socialist activist Karina Garcia, on the ticket of the Party for Socialism and Liberation.

“Migrants are not a threat to working people anywhere,” De la Cruz told Peoples Dispatch in an exclusive interview. “Migrants are part of the working class. Migrants are in many ways contributing to the economic, the political, the social life of this country. The real threats are the Republican Party, the Democrats, and the ruling class they serve.”

While Trump threatens to launch the largest mass deportation in US history and Harris touts every ounce of support she gets from border patrol agents, such a statement may indeed seem radical. But what socialists like De la Cruz seek is not radicalism per say, but mass class consciousness in opposition to the two-party system, as she puts it.

Read our interview below to hear more about how De la Cruz articulates her point of view on key issues and debates of this year’s election season:

𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡: We’re just one month away from the US general elections. And for people in the US, this is a really turbulent time. There’s threats of war, natural disasters, economic strife. What’s on the mind of working people ahead of these elections and what’s at stake this year on the ballot?

𝐂𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐚 𝐃𝐞 𝐥𝐚 𝐂𝐫𝐮𝐳: Our working class people are dealing with a lot. With so much that it’s very difficult for the majority of people in this country to engage in conversations around the elections.

People are trying to survive. People are trying to survive price gouging. People are trying to survive hurricanes. People are trying to survive increasing rent costs.

There’s a lot our people are concerned with and I think in terms of what’s at stake, it’s our people’s lives. But that’s always at stake in a capitalist society.

I feel like what is happening now is that there is some sort of blackmailing that’s happening to working class people from both the Democrats and the Republicans, which is basically the nonsense that they always feel.

If you do this, then we’ll do that. But neither the Republicans or the Democrats actually have done anything for working class people in a very long time. And so I feel like, you know, is it a decisive moment for working class people? It is a very decisive moment. It is a moment where we decide that we will no longer consent to the levels of exploitation and negligence coming from the ruling class. It is the moment in which we say we need to take power and control over our own lives. And we start building the mechanisms that actually work for us.

And so I think it’s a decisive moment in history. I think people are concerned, really, really concerned about the development of war, and what it costs us and what it costs our siblings across the seas in terms of human life, the destruction of infrastructure. But also what it costs us here as well, not only economically, but the many different social programs and the social net that we’re losing as a result of the ruling class wanting to defend its interests across the globe.

We’re talking about Palestine and the expansion of war in the Middle East. We’re talking about the ongoing war in Ukraine and we’re talking about possible war with China. And so people are really concerned about the potential of another world war.

And the climate catastrophe. The globe is getting warmer and warmer and conditions are becoming uninhabitable for some folks. What concerns the working class are all these things, things that are never spoken about as seriously as they should be, and things that are never resolved by the two party system.

𝐏𝐃: In the Southeast of the United States, working people are facing major devastation as a result of hurricanes and flooding. The Democrats and Republicans are both using these natural disasters as a campaigning opportunity. Republicans claim that FEMA money has run out due to migrants, and Democrats have spent a lot of their time debunking these claims. What is your response and solution to the people of the Southeastern United States who have been devastated by these hurricanes?

𝐂𝐃𝐂: I look at the news and I think of Katrina. I think about how they allowed for thousands of people to be displaced, hundreds of people to die, how prisoners were left to drown.

Similar things are happening. For them to claim and utilize immigrants as scapegoats, it’s nonsense. It’s really ridiculous, if you think about history and the ways in which immigrants in many different stages in our history have been utilized as scapegoats.

The ruling class, the two party system does a really good job at gaslighting the working class.

The reality of the matter is that immigrants pump into the economy close to 4 billion dollars a year. Money that they don’t have access to in many ways, when it comes to social benefits, because a lot of them are afraid to be able to claim these benefits.

Ultimately, if we wouldn’t have been spending the billions of dollars that we have been spending as a nation to massacre, to slaughter babies in Palestine, to massacre babies across the globe, we would have the capital to be able to invest in infrastructure, which is basically what we need.

We need to be able to invest in the infrastructure that actually coincides, that actually goes with the level of climate catastrophe that we’re facing. The reality of the matter is that militarism has accelerated the current crisis that we’re experiencing with the climate. Environmental devastation has to do with the bombs that are being dropped, has to do with the different experiments that are done on soil, on people.

When we talk about our socialist vision for the future, we’re talking about cutting the military budget by 90%, so that we can actually invest in our communities and actually prepare for natural disasters that we know are coming.

We know and have experience [with] what happens to Texas, being one of the biggest producers in our nation, if not the biggest producer of energy. We know that every time a storm hits, people have to deal with the fact that they are experiencing blackouts.

Why? Why is there that contradiction? Because politicians are in bed with these corporations that don’t solve the issues of the people. They’re there to make a profit.

We’re talking about seizing the top 100 corporations. Why don’t we make ExxonMobil a public utility so that it actually serves the people, rather than making 1, 2, 3 board members, that have no interest in advancing the livelihoods of people, rather than having that be the focus, people’s needs become the priority.

The solutions are there. They’re not radical, they’re not irrational. Actually, they make the most sense to be able to invest in communities and the infrastructure, to be able to upgrade the electric grid, to be able to provide support to the elderly, to the families that are in the Southeast, in the South, in places where we know that natural disaster hits every time.

There’s no reason why the state wouldn’t have a plan or a solution to decrease the amount of people that die, if not eliminate the numbers of people that die.

𝐏𝐃: A report was released on Monday that found that since October 7, the US has sent 17.9 billion dollars in military aid alone to Israel. And this is under a Democratic administration. How is it that even allegedly progressive Democrats are this committed to war?

𝐂𝐃𝐂: It’s an interesting question, one, because you mentioning that number, that is mostly weapons. The number is higher. It’s close to 30 billion that the United States has actually pumped into the slaughter happening in Palestine at the hands of the colonial state of Israel.

Why are the most progressive Democrats so committed to war and genocide? Because ultimately, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans, their commitment is to US capitalism and their commitment is to the US empire. That’s the project that Democrats, Republicans, the ruling class of this country and the colonial state of Israel defend.

They are going to be perfectly okay signing off on bills to continue a genocide, because ultimately, it’s [about] the protection of capital, US empire, and colonialism, not the people. They could care less about the people.

We see that when they’re trying to make decisions around housing, when they’re trying to make decisions around health care, and they always find gridlock. What they do not find gridlock on is war and genocide.

As both parties beat the drums of war, there are millions of people in the United States by some estimates, even half of the population, that are at or near poverty.

𝐏𝐃: And the Trump/Vance answer to this poverty in the United States is that it’s all the fault of migrants, essentially. Can you break down this thinking? What is your perspective on what is behind the economic hardship faced by millions of people?

𝐂𝐃𝐂: What lies at the very root of our crises economically, environmentally, politically and socially, is capitalism, is a system that is based on the accumulation of capital by very few people at the expense of the majority of people.

Everyone who is working class, if they don’t know how to articulate that, they feel it in their bones. Because they experience the crimes of capitalism every day. When they have to go to work, and they’re being exploited by these corporations, when they’re neglected in moments of crisis, when they pay claims to insurance companies, companies that leave them alone to fend for themselves when the crisis hits.

People know this. The amount of people that suffer, the brutality of having to pay for their medical bills, or becoming indebted because they can’t afford to pay their medical bills. That is criminal, and the criminality comes from the capitalist system.

What is important to remember is that capitalism is not local. Capitalism is global, it’s a global reality. It’s unfortunate to say that right now there are over 60 million people in the world that are migrating and they’re migrating due to war, due to economic sanctions and climate change. These are the three main reasons people are migrating.

The United States as an empire has very, very high responsibility in the levels of people that are migrating, seeking to have a better opportunity. The United States, in many cases, has invaded, has occupied or has gained some sort of control economically and politically of the majority of countries in the world. And in doing so, it creates the inability of people to be able to survive and be able to live and build their own nations.

Think about Cuba. Cuba has been under a blockade by the United States of America for over 60 years. Every day there are USD 15 million that are stolen from the Cuban economy. Of course, you are going to have a lot of Cubans migrating, because you make it impossible for Cuba to be able to provide everything people need. They can’t blame socialism. Capitalist blockades create the condition for people to migrate.

When we’re talking about the devastation and the wars and the genocide and the extermination campaigns across the Middle East, we’re talking about over 20 years of war in that region that has cost probably around 21 trillion dollars [in damages].

You make it unbearable for people to live. The same thing has happened in Africa.

So when you have the influx of migrants, these are people who are following the traces of the things that have been stolen from them by US empire, colonialism and capitalism.

We need to have a deeper understanding that our foreign policy, which is a foreign policy of war, that our economy, which is an economy of war, is what creates immigration.

𝐏𝐃: Immigration has become one of the biggest issues in this election, not only because of Republicans, but also because Democrats are responding to Republican attacks by arguing that they, in fact, are just as tough on the border, if not tougher. You described a lot about what we’re missing in this discussion of migration in terms of imperialism, the role that that plays in migration. But both parties seem to take for granted that immigration is a threat to working people in this country. What is your response to that? Are migrants a threat to working people in this country?

𝐂𝐃𝐂: Migrants are not a threat to working people anywhere. Migrants are part of the working class. Migrants are in many ways contributing to the economic, the political, the social life of this country.

The real threats are the Republican Party, the Democrats, and the ruling class they serve. Billionaires are the ones who decide who gets a job and who doesn’t. Billionaires are the ones who decide the levels of unemployment in this country. They are the ones who decide whether we get health care or not. Immigrants don’t have that power. And so the working class itself at large, whether you’re an immigrant or not, we don’t have that power.

That’s the power that we should aim to get to be able to decide what we do with our collective wealth. But that is something that we need to fight for, and that we need to be able to aim for. We need to aim to end the dictatorship of billionaires. And in order for us to do that, we need to build our own instruments.

The Republicans or the Democrats are going to continue to play football with our issues. They’re going to continue to play hot potato and tell us that the issue is the Democrats or the Republicans. If they can come to an agreement, they will blame the immigrants.

But the reality of the matter is that it is the corporations, it is the Wall Street bankers, and it is the military industrial complex, [who are to blame], which the Republicans and Democrats both are there to protect.

𝐏𝐃:Across the country and especially in swing states, your campaign, as well as other third party candidates, are being attacked by the Democratic Party, who seems to be determined to keep you off the ballot at all costs. Why do you think Democrats are so determined to attack third parties?

𝐂𝐃𝐂: We’ve received a lot of attacks from both the Republicans and the Democrats. The Democrats [are] attacking [us] even more. Democrats have created a fund of over 100 million dollars to get third parties off the ballot across the country.

We need to see that in the context of voter suppression. It’s important for us to understand just how undemocratic this system is. In North Carolina there have been over 700,000 people who were taken out of voter rolls. We also know that voter suppression exists with people who have gone to jail, done their time and come back and can’t cannot reintegrate themselves into society and exercise their right to vote, because that is taken away from them. We know that they are people who go to vote and present themselves at their voting precinct, and their voting precinct might be closed or might have changed.

By eliminating third party options from these ballots, you’re also limiting the options of voters.

We know that they are attacking third party candidates, and I would say even explicitly a socialist candidate, because people are tired and people are exhausted. And when people are tired and exhausted, they look for another alternative. They look for other options.

There’s many who say, well, there’s a splitting of the vote. There’s too much at stake. And to those folks who argue that, it’s important to remind them that those people who are committed to voting Democrat will go into that ballot and will vote Democrat. Those who are committed to Republicans won’t do that. Third parties don’t have access to main stages for debates. We don’t have access to mainstream media. We’re actually shadow-banned on social media. So it’s not like we have the access to be able to convince people that they should go an alternative route. And so saying that we’re taking away votes, it’s a false narrative, because people who are seeking another alternative are done with the betrayal of the two party system.

There’s a lot of narratives that unfortunately have been imposed on working class people that create a division that shouldn’t exist. People shouldn’t judge other people for looking to third party options.

The real problem here is that you have one party with two names, and both of these sections of the ruling class are gaslighting, blackmailing and bribing our people into believing that they have to vote against their interests, against their values, and against what they understand to be their principles.

And we are here as third parties saying, no, actually, you can engage in the ballot box with your values, with your principles, and what you understand the vision for this nation to be. And it is a threat to the ruling class to be able to provide another option that is not continuous war, that is not the continuing attack on immigrants, that is not the continuous attacks on working class people all around the country and all across the globe. When you ask what’s at stake in this election, people are not necessarily voting on the most basic and necessary things that we need and deserve. People are consenting to it. That is what it is. We vote and consent.

A third party option takes away that consent from the ruling class and gives power to working class people. That’s what they fear, that working class people actually develop some sort of consciousness that is class consciousness, that is this solidarity, not only across this country with other working class people, but across the globe, that we’re not okay, that we’re not complicit with continuous war, that we’re not complicit with the continuous destruction of the planet.

And it actually creates even more of a threat for them to have a party, such as the Party for Socialism and Liberation, that is explicitly running a socialist campaign, because it says in addition to going to the ballot box, you can hit the streets. You could organize your communities. You could find mechanisms to become politically active that go beyond the election cycle.

You could build a movement, and that is threatening to this country. What we’re trying to do here is threatening to them, because it means mass consciousness, mass mobilization, and the mass hope of taking power and the will of the people to do so.