Peace and Freedom Party (United States)

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United States Peace and Freedom Party logo
United States Peace and Freedom Party logo

The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a ballot-listed minor political party in California. It is a left-leaning party influenced by feminism and socialism. Although its first candidates appeared on the ballot in 1966, the national party was founded in 1967 as a leftist organization opposed to the Vietnam War. Since that time, the party has become consolidated in California.

Contents

[edit] Platform

The PFP from the very beginning has been a left-of-center political organization. It is a strong advocate of protecting the environment from pollution and nuclear waste. It advocates the right of self-determination of peoples and personal liberties as well as universal free access to education and health care. Since 1974, the Peace and Freedom Party platform has been feminist and socialist. Its understanding of socialism includes a socialist economy, where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them.

[edit] Organization

The Peace and Freedom Party is governed by its State Central Committee (SCC) and local County Central Committees. The party central committees are elected in the direct primary election, with any Peace and Freedom registrant eligible to run. Local County Central Committees and the State Central Committee may also appoint persons to membership who wish to be active in the party. A biennial state convention adopts the PFP platform.

[edit] History

Founding of Party

The Peace and Freedom Party was organized on June 23, 1967 by social activists in the farm workers, civil rights, and anti-Vietnam War movements. Its initial registration drive began at a demonstration against Lyndon Johnson at the Century City Plaza in Los Angeles California.

The party's name has sometimes created confusion with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, an international anti-war organization. While many Peace and Freedom Party members are also members of WILPF, the two organizations are not affiliated with each other and have no historical connection.

The Peace and Freedom Party grew out of the widespread unhappiness with the Democratic Party's support for the war in Vietnam and failure to effectively support the civil rights movement.

In 1966, three men ran for the U.S. House on the Peace & Freedom Party label. Herbert Apetheker received 3,562 votes in New York's 12th Congressional District; Robert B. Shaw received 1,974 votes in Washington's 7th Congressional District; and Frank L. Patterson received 1,105 votes in Washington's 2d Congressional District.

Election of 1968

The party achieved ballot status in California at the start of 1968 by registering over 105,000 voters under its banner. It later got ballot status in 13 other states, but in most of those the election laws and small organization meant that it was unable to retain ballot status after 1968.

The PFP's first national convention to nominate candidates for President and Vice President was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on August 17-August 18, 1968. Eldridge Cleaver was nominated for President over Richard C. "Dick" Gregory by a margin of 161.5 to 54. Cleaver, a convicted felon and Black Panther spokesman, was technically not eligible to run since he was only 34 years old at the time. Due to the needs of the state parties to collect signatures, the party fielded several different vice presidential nominees, including Chicago activist Peggy Terry, [FNU] Gonzalez, economist Doug Dowd, and Judith Mage, who had been nominated at the national convention. Cleaver personally preferred Yippie leader Jerry Rubin. Gregory formed a competing Freedom and Peace party and ran separately. Two states (California and Utah) refused to list Cleaver on the ballot, although each state listed the Presidential Electors and candidates for Vice President (Terry in California and Gonzalez in Utah).

A variety of people joined the PFP in its first election. Bob Avakian was a spokesman for the party in the San Francisco Area. The New York Peace and Freedom Party consisted of a fractious coalition of competing Marxist groups along with libertarians led by Murray Rothbard. Libertarians briefly took over the California branch of the party as well.

In the election of 1968, the PFP fared fairly well for a new third party. Gregory outpolled Cleaver, receiving 47,097 votes to Cleaver's 36,623. In California and Utah, where no presidential nominee appeared on the ballot, the voters cast 27,887 votes for the PFP. The full nationwide vote for Presidential Electors was thus 111,607. PFP candidates for the U.S. Senate garnered an aggregate nationwide total of 105,411 votes. The PFP gained ballot access in California, which it retained except for the brief period 1999-2003.

The People's Party and the PFP

After 1968, the PFP affiliates in most states dissolved, with the California party as the primary exception. Throughout the 1970s, the California party continued to contest local elections but endorsed the national candidates of the left-wing People's Party. In 1972, the People's Party nominated the democratic socialist and anti-war activist Benjamin Spock for President, and in 1976 it nominated Margaret Wright of California for President.

Recent History

In 1998, the PFP failed to attain more than 2% of the votes cast, causing the party to lose ballot status in the state. Their position on the ballot was restored in 2003 after a voter registration drive. Longtime PFP activist CT Weber was one of 135 candidates who ran for governor in the 2003 recall election in which voters threw out Gov. Gray Davis and elected Arnold Schwarzenegger. In 2004 framed political prisoner and Native American activist, Leonard Peltier, was nominated as the party's presidential candidate at the August 2004 State Convention. Party members who supported Peltier’s candidacy hoped to draw attention to his case and the effort to win a presidential pardon for the wrongfully convicted American Indian Movement leader.

The party again fell under the required number of registered voters to retain ballot status in February 2006, and was declared disqualified by California Secretary of State. However, citing previous instances in which parties not meeting the 'ballot qualification' criteria were still allowed to participate in primary elections, and the fact that there had not yet been a regular gubernatorial election since the party regained its ballot status (and as such, the decision was premature), the decision to bar the party from the June 2006 Primary was reversed after less than a week.

In the November 7, 2006 election, two Peace and Freedom Party candidates received over 2% of the vote, thus ensuring the party's ballot status for the next four years. (Elizabeth Barron received 212,383 votes, 2.5% of the total, for Controller,[1] and Tom Condit received 187,618 votes, 2.2% of the total, for Insurance Commissioner.[2])

[edit] Presidential tickets

[edit] California Gubernatorial candidates

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links


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