Stewart Alexander and Alejandro “Alex” Mendoza were elected by the Socialist Party USA National Convention in Los Angeles, CA to represent the party as its presidential ticket on October 15, 2011. Stewart Alexander is a working man from Los Angeles, CA and Alex Mendoza is a self-employed landscaper from Dallas, TX. Both are working full time during the campaign. They are truly of the 99%.
The Occupy movement has claimed that it represents the bottom 99% of Americans while policies are geared to help the top 1% of Americans, the highest echelons of the capitalist class. In essence, the 99% are the rest of us whom have been left behind in America’s economic growth and whom are being told must bear the weight of the problem caused by this 1%.
Alexander and Mendoza align themselves with the Occupy movements across the nation and call for a radical change in the United States in order to meet the needs of the 99%. The word “radical” comes from the Latin stem meaning root, and the two believe that the economic system must be pulled out by the root and replaced with another system which seeks to meet the needs of the 99%.
| “You cannot simply regulate the weed of capitalism by chopping off its leaves – you must pull it out by the root and replace it with something beneficial.” – Stewart Alexander |
The campaign calls for radical democratization in many arenas. They call for the institution of democratic reforms in our political system, such as proportional representation and the single transferrable vote, to ensure that everyone has their voice heard and no one feels coerced to sell out their voice in the interests of the lesser of two evils.
They call for our civil liberties to be extended and reinforced. They want to turn back the curtailment of our civil liberties through the PATRIOT Act, the creation of “Free Speech Zones,” and the imprisonment of people whom speak in favor of groups our government officially opposes.
They call for the extension of democracy to the economic sector by putting workers and consumers in control of the economy so they may keep it working for themselves and not for their exploitation. In this economic democracy, goods would not be designed under the doctrine of planned obsolescence where goods are designed to break so that they have to be repurchased constantly; there would be no artificial needs created in order for individuals to amass great fortunes without providing anything of worth; most importantly, workers would reap the fruits of their labor rather than having it massively siphoned off to those who produce nothing but were given the good fortune of having great wealth to begin with.
| “There should be no ‘free speech zones’ in America. America is one big free speech zone where one should be able to show their freedom of conscience absolutely everywhere without fear of repercussions from the powers that be.” – Alex Mendoza |
In this quest for liberation of the 99%, they call for the 99% to become active, mobilize, and participate in their own liberation.
The Dissenting Democrat 