Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia bring the fire at presidential campaign launch

Newark, New Jersey - Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia have officially launched their 2024 presidential campaign with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) at a high-energy event in New Jersey.

Claudia De la Cruz (l.) and Karina Garcia are running to bring socialism to the White House in 2024.
Claudia De la Cruz (l.) and Karina Garcia are running to bring socialism to the White House in 2024.  © Claudia de la Cruz for President

Claudia and Karina are vying to bring socialism to the White House in 2024 – and to ignite a political movement for change far beyond.

The campaign kick-off event took place in Newark, a location chosen due to its historical significance as the home of Amiri Baraka, one of the founders of the Black Arts movement and a Marxist political activist. It was also the site of the 1967 Newark Rebellion for Black liberation.

It is this revolutionary spirit that Claudia and Karina have embraced in their decades of political organizing and their current presidential campaign. The two women and mothers are aiming to unite working people within a party that will serve their needs and aspirations in a truly democratic way.

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As Karina put it, "What we're trying to do is promote a fighting organization, a fighting program, so that we don't give a false sense of hope, so that we actually help tens of thousands and maybe even millions of working-class people feel their power in a collective way, in a way that's tied to an organization."

"We're for socialism. Our proposal is socialism as a way of vindicating humanity, as a way of reclaiming our dignity, as a way of saying that we are not only the producers of everything in human history," Claudia said as she outlined the goals of the campaign.

"We have the full capacity to have the control and have the power over everything and anything we produce."

Claudia and Karina take on the corporate elite

Socialist presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz speaks during the PSL's campaign launch event in Newark, New Jersey, on January 28, 2024.
Socialist presidential candidate Claudia De la Cruz speaks during the PSL's campaign launch event in Newark, New Jersey, on January 28, 2024.  © Screenshot/YouTube/PSL National

The socialist candidates are calling on people to ditch the "ruling-class" politics embodied in both the Republican and Democratic parties – a corporate-controlled duopoly Claudia and Karina reject.

Karina described the "false hope" that these politicians instill in voters every few years, only to let them down once elected.

"This feeds a kind of momentary optimism every few years that's only then replaced by an even deeper cynicism, and that's the real threat," the vice presidential hopeful said.

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Claudia and Karina's campaign hopes to provide a home for those growing increasingly frustrated with the billions of dollars administration after administration sends to fund wars abroad – all while many people in the US struggle to make ends meet.

"This campaign is about uprooting a system that has hurt us enough and that we are unwilling to allow to continue and that we are unwilling to allow to be legitimized," Claudia insisted.

"This is the year to make the shift necessary to build the society and the future that we so urgently need, and what that means is divorcing ourselves from the systems of oppression that have been imposed on us – imposed on us politically, imposed on us economically and culturally."

Claudia and Karina walk the walk

Socialist vice presidential candidate Karina Garcia speaks during the PSL's campaign launch event in Newark, New Jersey, on January 28, 2024.
Socialist vice presidential candidate Karina Garcia speaks during the PSL's campaign launch event in Newark, New Jersey, on January 28, 2024.  © Screenshot/YouTube/PSL National

Claudia and Karina shared that the support their campaign has generated so far has surpassed their expectations – and just keeps on growing.

Amari Butler, an organizer with the African and African American Resistance Organization (AFRO) at Harvard University, spoke about the repression of pro-Palestine protests she has experienced on campus. Seeing Claudia and Karina's unwavering support for the Palestinian people convinced her that theirs is the ticket needed to win true freedom.

"Claudia and Karina's campaign speaks to us because we see them out in the streets week after week, just like us. Because they come from working-class backgrounds, just like us. Because their political program aims to restructure our society to serve regular people, just like us," Butler explained.

Eugene Puryear, the PSL's 2008 and 2016 vice presidential nominee, also praised the Claudia and Karina campaign as a ray of hope in bleak times: "For all of the people who see the genocide happening in Gaza, and you just can't understand how any human being could stand with that and you're thinking: How, how do we get out? We've got to have somebody. There must be somebody, somebody out there who can lead us out of this cul-de-sac into a better world no matter what it takes, even if it's a revolution. Well, I'll tell you what: Those people exist. That's Claudia and Karina."

"They know that we have to organize us as a collective power to take back what's ours, what we make, what we deserve, and we will have after November 6, 2024: socialism in the United States."

Cover photo: Collage: Screenshots/YouTube/PSL National

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