Despite being ineligible to become president due to her age (born 1984), as she would need to be at least 35 in order to take office, Peta Lindsay, an American anti-war activist is a nominee of the Party for Socialism and Liberation this election. She said to the Voice of Russia that both Republicans and Democrats are just “expressions of the power of the 1% and it’s a very undemocratic system that is designed to keep the ruling class in power and to keep the people’s voices from being heard.”
Robles: Hello, Ms Lindsay. Thanks for agreeing to speak with me. We are interested in the obstacles that are faced by the third party candidates in the United States. Can you tell us about some of the difficulties you have getting on ballots and things like that?
Lindsay : Yes, absolutely. It is a really undemocratic system, you know. When you grow up in the United States there’s this idea, that’s often presented, that anybody can be president. You know it’s such a great free country anyone can achieve the highest office in the land, until you actually try to do that and you realize how completely false that is.
Ahem, you know, our system is almost completely lost into a two-party paradigm, although there are more than two parties, both the Democrats and Republicans have automatic ballot status, everyone else has to you, you know, fight their way onto the ballot state by state it is a really interesting system, because you know, we are all trying to qualify for a federal office, but the qualifications for this federal national office varies state by state. Like, that doesn’t make any sense, you know. Shouldn’t there be one set of qualifications for this one office?
Robles: Sure!
Lindsay : But, you know, in the United States I think one of the biggest issues is money, funds. Because, you know, like, even if, you know: we have managed to do an awful lot, you know, with our ideas and with our volunteers and with our organization. We have done an incredible amount of work to get on the ballot in 13 states. Our volunteers turned in just under 30,000 signatures in New York this summer, in a four-week-period in New York, just to get us on the ballot in New York State.
It was really quite a feat, I mean, considering that nobody was getting paid. You know, we didn’t have a lot of money to finance this campaign. It’s really working off the strength of the ideas that people will believe.
But, you know the biggest issue, the two major parties. Ahem have the main focus of this entire electoral circus, you know. They have billions of dollars to spend, they have the media at their beck-and-call. So it’s a system, that benefits… to keep them in power and, you know, both of these parties are just expressions of the power of the 1% and it’s a very undemocratic system that is designed to keep the ruling class in power and to keep the people’s voices from being heard.
Robles: I am hearing this more and more all the time over here in Moscow. What percentage of the population would you say, in the United States is truly unhappy with that situation, with the 1%?
Lindsay: Oh gosh! So, I think the anger is rising every day. Especially if you look at what’s happening to the young people right now, you know, youth unemployment in the United States is the highest since the government began recording the statistics, and you know, while people’s wages have more or less stagnated over the past 20 years, college tuition has been shooting up, so you know, something that once people took for granted, you know, educational opportunities that we fought for, public education which we fought for. Fought for and we always thought would be a right, is becoming more and more out of reach of young people. And coupled with the unemployment, coupled with the crippling student loan debt, you know, there’s an aggregate of a trillion dollars in student loan debt that people in the United States owe right now. It’s the money that you had to pay just for the privilege of going to school, you know, which is a requirement for getting a decent job and the (unintelligible) are graduating to find there are no jobs available.
So, there is immense, immense anger at the political system and economic system in the United States right now, which I think manifests itself in different ways. You see these outbursts of anger like in the Occupy Movement, which has sprung up, all over the country. I think we are going to be seeing a great deal more people voting third party.
For us, like we are organizing to let people know that the system’s to blame, you know, the capitalist system, the system that accumulates massive, massive profits for the wealthy few and mass misery for the rest of us.
And you know, we have had great success getting our message out there and talking with people.. You know, I have been on a two-month-tour talking with a lot of people. A lot of people are really feeling these issues right now, they’re experiencing these issues. Ahem, and all that they are really looking for is a way to fight back, a vehicle, you know, to which to fight back. And ahem you know, we are offering our program in the Party of Socialism and Liberation, as that vehicle, to manifest that anger and actually organize and fight back and do something about it.
Robles: If the situation is such in the United States why do people keep voting for these two parties and only for these two parties? Can you explain that?
Lindsay : Yeah, I mean, It is the most powerful propaganda apparatus that has ever existed in the history of the world, that tells you from the time when you are very young that you have to vote to make change, you know. That that’s how you get what you want, you know, don’t protest! Go back inside! Wait for one of our politicians to take care of it for you! And this is pounded into our heads!
And these candidates are spending 2.5 billion dollars campaigning. Romney and Obama are spending 2.5 billion dollars campaigning. That’s a tremendous amount of a waste! I mean, imagine what our school system could do with that kind of money.
Robles: Sure!
Lindsay: But you know, it’s this money that is coming from the banks and the corporations, and they are pouring so much of their resources, like all of the resources of the ruling class, into keeping people within the two-party-paradigm, into keeping people from organizing and fighting for real change, and keeping people, you know, complacent and voting. Like you said.
Robles: Do you have any comments on the technical side of act actually voting in the United States? Are there still widespread fraud claims with electronic ballot machines etc?
Lindsay: Ahem, well, I think we have seen some really desperate voter suppression ploys by the Republican Party, especially by the right wing. Ahem, and state by state, you know, we’ve heard of horrible things: we’ve heard of campaign people throwing out ballots, we’ve heard of, ahem, you know, a Spanish language leaflet being handed out to the Latino Community that had the date of voting listed as the wrong date! Ahem, you know, the voter ID laws they tried to institute across the country!
Ahem, which really, like one Republican Politician admitted, was just a measure to make sure that black African-Americans don’t vote, because, you know, they think that all African-Americans are going to vote for Obama. Ahem and so, you know, in the United States we have political rights, right?
Like we have the right to protest, we have the right to vote, ahem you know we have the right to do stuff like that, but these rights are constantly under attack. We have to constantly defend these rights. And honestly like these are rights that we only won by organizing as people, and you know, fighting the system, the trends keeping us from having these rights. Ahem, and so like… Yeah… It is very common that, you know, even though we have the right to vote on paper, they’ll do everything they can to keep us from exercising it, you know. They’ll keep us from exercising that right and I think that the voter ID laws which are super-racist and super-intended to suppress the votes of African-Americans, and things like, are evidence that these rights are constantly under attack.
Robles: Speaking about voter ID laws: can you give us a couple of specific examples?
Lindsay: Well like what the laws are saying, is that, you know, ahem we have to… You didn’t used to have to present identification to vote, and in addition to that, like, they’re saying that you have to present identification, like it has to be, you know, there’s some… I read a story about an elderly women who couldn’t find a copy of her marriage license, so she wouldn’t be able to vote because she didn’t have the, like, proper… You know like the certification, with the proper last name, things like that.
They are just throwing up another barrier to keep people from voting, you know. People who have trouble accessing IDs and that kind of information, tend to be poor people, tend to be African Americans and be people who the right-wing especially wants to keep away from the polls.
Another thing they were doing was putting up the billboards all over the country saying, you know: “It’s a federal crime to commit voter fraud, to vote more than once, and stuff!”, but the actually instances of voter fraud are very very low. The only reason they put up those billboards is to intimidate people. To make people think that they are going to go to jail if they get caught doing something wrong, in the voting booth. Maybe if they don’t understand or something like that.
So, you know, I would suggest looking it up but this is a real problem this election season. And it’s just another way that, you know, the they crush us under the capitalist system, you know, we’d won certain rights, but as long as, you know, it belongs… It’s their system, as long as they are in control they will try to take those rights away.
Robles: You are presidential candidate yourself. Now how do you feel that you are not allowed to debate Obama and Romney and what is your opinion of Obama and Romney? What would you have asked them if you were allowed to debate them?
Lindsay: We think that fundamentally the elections are a sham! They’re a rigged game, that is rigged against working people, you know like I said, the candidates are spending 2.5 billion dollars, and while they are both rich individually, you don’t get that kind of money without the support of the big banks and corporations and often if you look at who’s donating to these politicians, it is the same banks and corporations that donate on both sides. So that regardless whether it is a Republican who wins or a Democrat who wins, the corporations always win, the banks always win and the people always lose.
Ahem, and you know, similarly I think, so… for us… you know we believe the elections are a form of class rule, they give the appearance of change without giving any real change. You get to just pick which politician from the ruling class is going to oppress us for the next four years, basically.
Ahem and I think, you know, it’s a сharade, it’s designed to take people in, and I think that the presidential debate, the televised debates that we just had is another example of how this is so. You know, the commission on presidential debates, the CPD, is an institution, a lot of… the majority of people in America don’t understand how this institution works.
It sounds like a public institution, right? The Commission on Presidential Debates! With a very official sounding name, but it’s not! It’s actually a private entity and those in charge of the entity include corporations like Anheuser-Busch and JP Morgan and they are the ones who make the rules for the presidential debates and of course one of their rules is only to these two candidates are allowed because, you know, it is their candidate, candidates of the ruling class. So they’d never let us on.
You know, we have a 10-point program which, you know, if people want to check out, I recommend going to vote pslweb.org. The number 1 point on our program is making a job a constitutional right, you know, we want to make free education, free housing and free healthcare constitutional rights. We are calling for the immediate cancellation of student loan debt and for an immediate moratorium on all foreclosures and evictions.
Now, can you imagine if we had had the access to the presidential debates, you know, that are broadcast on network TV that are viewed by millions. If people knew that there was a candidate that said that with their first day in the office they would immediately cancel all student loan debt, you know, I think overnight there’d be a million more socialists. I think that is why they keep us out of these debates. You know it’s another form of class rule, it’s another way of keeping out the voice of the people and ensuring that it’s the ruling class that wins.
Robles: What about Obama, I mean, and all his promises of change and the fact that he was the first African American president? How are the American/African American electorate reacting to Obama this time around?
Lindsay: It is extremely significant that he is the first African American president, you know. It shows how far we’ve come in the struggle against racism. It was really a victory for the black struggle, the black liberation movement, you know. But, you know, because he was elected to this office under the system, you know, the office of president in the US is really just the castle of class, you know, his job in office is just to manage their affairs, and so he has continued this system through which the poor… the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and we’ve seen a significant, like, degradation in the quality of life, for people in the United States because of the system which he serves to perpetuate.
Ahem, and so, I noticed in the previous few years there were a lot of people who are growing very disillusioned with Obama. Very, very concerned with his policies, starting to think outside of this system, thinking maybe there are more things they should do.
And you see stuff like when Trayvon Martin was killed millions of African Americans marched overnight demanding accountability and understanding the reality of the racist criminal justice system. People do organize, people do fight back.
END of Part 1
