Peta Lindsay, a 27-year-old from Los Angeles, is not likely to become our next president, but she promises to bring up some issues that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are less likely to discuss during the campaign. The presidential nominee for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, Lindsay told Amsterdam News that she’s deadly serious about running for president.
Lindsay believes that people are finally realizing that the capitalist system is based on exploitation and are fighting back. She stands firmly by her revolutionary movement, making speeches and making the people aware, involved and active for change.
“We have a 10-point program,” she said. “We want to see the profits of the biggest banks. It’s the people’s money they get to sit on; we want to use that money for things that people need—to provide housing, free education and health care for everyone.
“We see these massive profits—we want to end the war in Afghanistan that costs $330 million a day; there is no money for schools, but there is money to drop bombs,” said Lindsay.
As the youngest presidential candidate in the running, Lindsay said she’s prepared to challenge a Constitutional requirement that candidates must be at least 35 years old to become president. Despite her age, she’s no newby when it comes to politics.
Born in Virginia and raised in Philadelphia, Lindsay has always been an activist in her community and has pushed for her rights.
At 12, she experienced a turning point in her young life as a member of the Philadelphia Student Union. The union organized money for more public schools and thousands of students took buses to the state capital to ask why suburban students were getting more money than urban school districts. She discovered at that moment that the system, as in many matters, revolved around property taxes, and the system gave more resources to rich districts than to less well-off districts, leading to inequities in education.
Her campaign may seem like a long shot, but Lindsay counters that the platforms of the major party candidates are “unrealistic from what the majority of people are facing today.”
“Don’t wait for a politician to save you. The people need to get organized and fight back—it is important to struggle now or things will never change,” said Lindsay. “I think people should vote against the system that has oppressed us for so long. A vote for me is a vote for revolution.”
Originally published by Voices of NY.
