New York, New York - Claudia De la Cruz is running to bring socialism to the White House in 2024. Here's what you need to know about her candidacy for president.

Claudia De la Cruz officially announced her third-party campaign for president alongside running mate Karina Garcia on September 7, 2023.

De la Cruz and Garcia are running with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), founded in 2004 to dismantle capitalism and create a future in which all people can thrive, not just the wealthy few.

While the socialist candidates may not get much air time in mainstream media outlets, they are nevertheless gaining traction as many Americans grow increasingly fed up with the two-party political system.

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TAG24 NEWS is here to fill in the gaps with everything to know about Claudia De la Cruz's campaign and her plan for America should she win the presidency.

Claudia De la Cruz is a South Bronx native, born to Dominican immigrant parents. She is a popular educator, community organizer, and theologian.

Growing up, De la Cruz witnessed firsthand the conditions of poverty and oppression that kept communities like hers in a static underclass. These experiences sparked her passion and interest in political organizing and liberation theology from an early age.

De la Cruz's desire to fight back against US imperialism was solidified after her first trip to Cuba when she was 17 years old, where she was inspired by the resistance and revolutionary spirit of the people she met.

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During her time at the City University of New York, De la Cruz coordinated Palenque, a group that brought together teens to study resistance struggles, and organized their participation in marches against the Iraq War.

She later served for eight years as a pastor at the Iglesia San Romero de Las Américas–UCC and, most recently, as co-executive director and co-founder of The People's Forum in New York City.

A mother and an outspoken socialist, De la Cruz has a lifelong record of fierce advocacy for decolonization, Black liberation, internationalism, and economic justice.

Karina Garcia is in the running to become the next vice president of the United States, alongside Claudia De la Cruz.

Garcia, whose father migrated from Mexico to the US, is a Chicana organizer with decades of experience fighting for immigrants' rights, wage justice, and reproductive freedom.

She got a full ride to study Economics at Columbia University and then went on to become a New York City high school math teacher.

In 2012, Garcia took on a national organizing position for the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice. She devoted nearly a decade to training immigrant women and working-class Latina activists in New York, Texas, Virginia, and Florida.

She is a founder of the Justice Center en El Barrio in New York City and is a member of the Central Committee of the PSL.

Claudia De la Cruz is running for president to offer a people-centered alternative to the corporate-controlled Republican and Democratic parties.

Her platform imagines a future in which everyday people have guaranteed access to the basic necessities of life and a say over how their communities function.

"We're running to build a political organization that finally gives voice to the working people of this country. It's time to stop going around in circles while the elites change places every four years," De la Cruz says in her campaign announcement video.

"We think this country deserves a better option – a socialist option!"

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia want to tackle the crises of gross economic exploitation, racial injustice, and climate destruction at their root. Their policy program is available on the Vote Socialist 2024 campaign website.

Here is where the presidential hopeful stands on some of the most pressing political issues of the day.

The PSL stands for free, high-quality education guaranteed to every person in the US, from pre-school through college and beyond.

De la Cruz's program also demands an end to the attacks on Black and LGBTQ+ history in schools in the form of book bans and other oppressive laws. She wants to take immediate action to abolish debt, including student debt.

The PSL sees the police and the US legal system as defending the interests of the corporate elites over those of the working class, and believes they need to be replaced with structures by and for everyday people. A longtime racial justice advocate, De la Cruz supports ending the oppression of Black Americans, disbanding the FBI and NSA, releasing all US political prisoners, and ending officer immunity in cases of police brutality and murder.

Claudia De la Cruz's anti-imperialist stances include ending the US blockade of Cuba; ending sanctions against Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Eritrea, North Korea, and Iran; and recognizing the right of self-determination of Puerto Ricans, Hawaiian nationals, and other colonized peoples.

De la Cruz wants to slash the US' bloated military budget by 90% and de-escalate tensions with China.

Since Israel began its war on Gaza in October 2023, De la Cruz has become a fixture at New York City protests in support of Palestinian liberation, calling for a permanent ceasefire, the dismantling of the Israeli apartheid regime in the occupied territories, and an end to US military funding for Israel.

De la Cruz has called for peace in Ukraine by ending US weapons transfers and dissolving NATO. She also calls for the abolition of the US Africa Command and the CIA.

As both De la Cruz and Garcia were born to immigrant parents, it's no surprise their campaign prioritizes comprehensive immigration reform in accordance with international law and respect for basic human dignity. The PSL also calls for the extension of citizenship rights to every person living in the US.

De la Cruz's 2024 campaign calls for a radical redistribution of wealth to create a more democratic society in which everyone can thrive. If elected, she would seize the top 100 corporations in the US (as a start) to turn them into public property, and institute a 100% tax on all income and assets over $10 million.

The presidential candidate believes housing, health care access, and living wages with union representation should be guaranteed as constitutional rights. She was staunch in her support of the United Auto Workers' 2023 Stand Up strike against the Big Three carmakers and has said she would enact a card check unionization process allowing for immediate certification.

Her platform includes universal, cost-free health care at hospitals and pharmaceutical companies.

De la Cruz is all about putting the planet and its people over private profits. She and Garcia support taking over all fossil fuel corporations to make them public and to repurpose them for renewable energy production. Farmers would gain control over landholdings and technological resources to create democratic and sustainable food production plans.

The socialist candidates also call for massive investments in green infrastructure projects, including accessible public transportation options, while protecting and creating good-paying jobs.

De la Cruz supports universal access to cost-free abortion care. Her policy program calls for federal legislation to enshrine the right to abortion, as well as the adoption of the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee the equal rights of all people, regardless of sex or gender. She also pledges to address disproportionately high Black maternal mortality rates.

De la Cruz's campaign supports full equality for LGBTQ+ people, including the elimination of discrimination in marriage rights, employment, housing, health care, and adoption.

De la Cruz supports a federal reparations initiative for Black Americans to address the ongoing legacy of enslavement and racial discrimination. Her plan to seize the 100 top US corporations and to cut US military spending would be used to help finance cash payments as well as massive investments in infrastructure, education, and social services.

"We have the capitalist system that we currently have because slavery and colonialism were the downpayment for the capitalist system," De la Cruz told TAG24 NEWS in an exclusive interview in September 2023.

"For us, the question of reparations is at the center of our work," she added.

The PSL supports the right of self-determination of all Indigenous Peoples, the return of stolen land, and other forms of restitution for the ongoing harms of white settler colonialism.

Puerto Rican and Hawaiian independence will be recognized, and the people of Guam, Samoa, the Mariana Islands, and the Virgin Islands will be able to exercise their right to self-determination with reparations.

Consistently ignored by many in the media, Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia have a tough path to the White House in 2024.

But their campaign also comes at a time of growing Black and youth dissatisfaction with Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

Whether the PSL can break through the two-party stranglehold remains to be seen, but for De la Cruz, the campaign is about more than one election.

"The biggest thing for us in this electoral process is being able to engage with communities, being able to uplift struggles, being able to contribute to building the confidence of the working class to know and understand that we deserve more than what we've been given, that we shouldn't be okay with crumbs, that we shouldn't be okay with the limited perspective that these are the only two options we have," De la Cruz told TAG24.

"We can build a new future; we just need to be able to get organized. We really don't have anything more to lose than our chains. They've taken everything."