The Peace and Freedom Party:

A Brief Summary

The Peace and Freedom Party is a multi-tendency socialist and feminist political party which was first in the California ballot in 1968. It remains the only ballot-qualified socialilst party in California. But it is more than simply an election-oriented party. It is primarily movement-oriented, viewing elections as only one vehicle for promoting its immediate and long-range goals.

The Party stands for collective ownership and democratic management of industry and natural resources. It stands for feminism, affirmative action to combat past and present racial, national and gender discrimination. It stands for immediate and unconditional withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and for withdrawal of all U.S. military forces from other countries. The Party stands for unconditional end to U.S. military intervention and all other forms of U.S. intervention in the affairs of other nations and peoples.

Peace and Freedom Party stands for the rights of working class people, in the USA and throughout the world, and supports their struggles to secure and protect their rights by exercising the right to organize and strike and the right of workers to support others by refusing to cross picket lines and refusing to handle scab goods.

Peace and Freedom Party stands for the universal right to adequate housing and health care. It calls for the repeal of all laws restricting or limiting rent or eviction controls. It calls for a health-care system in which all persons have the right to health care without the need for private health insurance.

Peace and Freedom Party stands for defense of the environment against the attacks of the pollutors and clear-cutters, and recognizes that the pursuit of private profit by corporate capitalists is the biggest threat to environmental sanity.

The goals of the Peace and Freedom Party cannot be achieved by electoral means alone. The power of the working class at the ballot box must be backed up by the power of an organized working class movement on the job and in the community. Peace and Freedom Party supports the right to keep and bear arms for individual and collective defense, and recognizes that the surest way to minimize violent resistance to the democratic demands of the working class is for the class to be organized to meet such resistance by any means necessary.

Participation in elections is but a part of the activity of Peace and Freedom Party and its activists. We must take the battle for workers' rights, for the rights of minorities, women and immigrants into every sector of society.

Fighting together, we will win!