In advance of Black History Month and in observance of Dr. Martin Luther King Day, Peace and Freedom Party member Joe Delaplaine looks back at Dr. King’s interaction with and inspiration of activism in California. Click on any of the embedded images for a full poster-sized version suitable for printing.

This month, we celebrate the ongoing accomplishments of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Born January 15, 1929, Dr. King is closely associated with his leadership, organizing Southern states in the middle half of the last century. What’s forgotten, however, are the hundreds of thousands of Southern Californians he inspired. From the mid-1950s until his assassination in 1968, King spoke at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, L.A. Sports Arena, Jefferson High School, in Willowbrook/Compton, Chapman University, UCLA, the Hollywood Palladium, among many other locations in California.

(For a map and other details on Dr. King’s major public appearance in California between 1956 and ’63, click here.)

The Freedom Riders
In 1961, over 400 men and women across the country, many inspired by Dr. King, organized themselves into the Freedom Riders. These brave volunteers of all ages and nationalities openly confronted racial segregation on buses, in interstate transportation waiting rooms and in depot restaurants in order to win the right for anyone to sit, eat, or travel wherever they pleased without fear of discrimination or violence.

Although integrated interstate public transit was technically legal in 1961, many states continued to very violently enforce “whites only” segregation. The Riders knew they faced being beaten and most likely killed simply for riding public transit in such states; however, they did so to end discrimination once and literally “for all”.

Cassandra Devereaux, Peace and Freedom Party candidate for California State Assembly in district 14, weighs in on the PG&E monopoly’s tyrannical stranglehold on Northern California citizens and communities. The following piece originally ran on Fighting-Words.net.

On Tuesday, October 9, Pacific Gas & Electric, the publicly traded monopoly that supplies most of Northern California’s power needs, announced that they would be shutting off power for much of their service area due to the risk of wildfire posed by dryness, heat and high winds. These shutoffs would affect over 800,000 of their customers.

This announcement came scant weeks after the utility settled the second batch in a series of claims against it brought by insurers for its culpability in the wildfires that destroyed millions of acres over the past few years.

The night of the announcement, supermarkets were flocked by anxious shoppers preparing for the outage. Californians who were unsure whether they would be in an affected neighborhood frantically tried to get information from PG&E’s website, but their gravely overburdened servers made connecting impossible much of the time. As dread and fear spread, PG&E workers prepared to turn out the lights. Executives, however were otherwise busy; they were enjoying fine wine and decadent hors d’oeuvres at an exclusive Sonoma County winery in a modern analogue of Nero fiddling while Rome burned.

PG&E’s self-interest is matched by callous disregard for the people under their thumb, forced to pay them in exchange for electricity and gas. They neglected their budget devoted to routine maintenance and such measures as trimming trees around power lines in order to pay investors $4.5 billion in stock dividends. It was chided for lack of upkeep by a judge at a hearing related to a lethal 2010 gas line explosion. This judge threatened to deny them their ability to pay dividends should they continue to neglect such upkeep. It is now clear that this has had no effect on them. But then, a privately owned utility holding a monopoly puts it in the role of hostage taker, and is rendered essentially above the law. It is a chilling case of capitalism’s ethos: Profits for the powerful before people.

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
by Daniel Immerwahr
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019

Picture in your mind a map of the U.S. It probably shows the continental states, with Hawaii and Alaska somewhere off to the side. Does it have Puerto Rico? How about Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, etc.?

In How to Hide an Empire, the author attempts, and succeeds I believe, in introducing us to the United States Empire.

A great deal more of this empire existed in the past, but there are bits, big and small, still out there that we give very little thought to. Puerto Rico is the big bit. Its “Commonwealth” status obscures the fact that it really is a colonial possession. There are other little bits left over from the time that the U.S. had a much larger empire.

The United States Empire has a long history and Immerwahr takes us along for the ride as the U.S. expands through the designated “Indian Territory” that eventually results in many new states, states that were originally colonial possessions. The last continental state to lose its colonial status was Arizona in 1912. Hawaii and Alaska only ended their colonial status in 1959.

Prior to World War II, empires needed overseas possessions in order to supply and resupply their far-flung military. The U.S., like the other colonial powers, held many overseas places in its colonial/military grip. But post-war air power changed that: No longer were ships the major military and transportation mode. No longer were ports-of-call of supreme militarily importance. What matters now are airbases, and we don’t need whole territories for that, just compliant governments to grant long-term leases. The U.S. empire is now one of “points,” in the author’s wording.

This is an important book, a fitting companion to A People’s History of the United States.

On June 14, 2019, a judge in London ruled in favor of an extradition hearing for Julian Assange. Assange is set to appear before a British court in February 2020 in a hearing on whether the WikiLeaks founder should be extradited to the U.S. on 18 counts of espionage. He is currently serving a 50-week sentence in Belmarsh Prison in southeast London for bail violations after taking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in a bid to avoid extradition to Sweden to face rape allegations in 2012. At that time, Assange claimed that Sweden’s real motivation was to send him to the United States for criminal prosecution in retaliation for his exposure of U.S. government activity.

For more on Julian Asssange’s work, see the section entitled What is Wikileaks? below; for more on the rape allegations against Assange in Sweden, see the section entitled Manipulation of a Serious Offense.

Following the June 14 hearing, officials at Southwark Crown Court, where Assange was jailed for a bail breach, confirmed an appeal had been lodged against the sentence. Assange had spent seven years inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London before being handed over to British authorities. On April 11, 2019, the Ecuadorian government allowed British police to enter its embassy and arrest him. He is now in a hospital inside a British maximum-security prison due to his failing health, the result of seven years under de facto house arrest inside the Ecuadorian embassy. Under direction of the U.S. government, British police denied medical care to properly treat Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy and denied him the freedom to seek medical treatment. As of this week, Assange’s condition has not yet improved.

Meanwhile, a friend of Assange, Swedish programmer and data privacy activist Ola Bini, was arrested in Ecuador, where he currently resides, on April 11, the same day Assange was taken by British authorities from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Bini has been jailed ever since without charges. For more about Bini, click here.

The Green New Deal, as proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in Congress, has a lot to like. There is no doubt that manufacturing and agricultural production must be overhauled in a sustainable manner while meeting the needs of the people. However, in its laundry lists of projects and solutions, the Green New Deal makes a major omission: any mention of the U.S. military.

California's socialist and feminist political party urges you to:

• Register to vote with the Peace and Freedom Party
• Become a supporting member
• Support our registration drive
• Support our candidates and campaigns
• Get involved where you live

For posterity’s sake, Peace and Freedom Party presents our archive of some of our printed and distributed literature and pamphlets, from 1970 to 2013. Click on any of the links to open a PDF version of the given document in a new window and enjoy the tour through PFP history!

Summary Platform - last revised August 2013 (letter paper, both sides, in English on one side and Spanish on the other)

Tired of the Parties of War? - September 2013 (letter paper)

Free Chelsea Manning - Hands off Edward Snowden - September 2013 (letter paper, cut into quarter sheets)

Free Bradley Manning - Hands off Edward Snowden - July 2013 (letter paper, both sides, cut into quarter sheets)

Freedom, Justice and Crime - July 2013 (letter paper, both sides, cut into half sheets)

How can we save the earth? - July 2013 (letter paper, single sided)

Trabajadores de Todos Los Paises, Unios! Workers of All Countries, Unite!" - May Day 2013 (letter paper, one side)

Registration drive flyer - March 2013 (letter paper or 8.5 x 11 card stock, two sides, cut into quarter-sheets

Ditch the Parties of Wall Street - October 28 (letter paper or 8.5 x 11 card stock, one side, cut into quarter-sheets)

Occupy Wall Street! - Solidarity with OccupyWallStreet, updated October 6 (letter paper, both sides, cut into half sheets)

Occupy Wall Street! - Solidarity with OccupyWallStreet, original September 28 version (letter paper, both sides, cut into half sheets)

Tax Fairness Revolt ... - Occupy Sacramento May 9 through 13, 2011 (letter paper, both sides, cut into half sheets)

Why Must We Sacrifice ... - Take California! May 1 through 13, 2011 (letter paper, both sides, cut into half sheets)

Defend the ILWU, Local 10! - Statement of Solidarity from the Peace and Freedom Party Labor Committee - April 25, 2011 (letter paper, one side)

Trabajadores de Todos Los Paises, Unios! Workers of All Countries, Unite!" - May Day 2011 (letter paper, one side)

Peace and Freedom Party Newsletter - Spring 2011 (for printing on letter paper, 8.5 x 11)

Peace and Freedom Party Newsletter - September 2010 (for printing on legal paper, 8.5 x 14)

Peace and Freedom Party Newsletter - September 2010 (for printing on letter paper, 8.5 x 11)

Peace and Freedom Party Workers' Voter Guide - May 2010

Vote NO on Prop 14 - 5 x 4.25 flyer, 4 per sheet

Protect your right to vote from special interest money - 5.5 x 8.5 flyer, 2 per sheet

Peace and Freedom Party Says: "Protect Voter Choice! No on Prop 14!" - 8.5 x 11 flyer

Peace and Freedom Party Says: "Legalize It!" - flyer supporting legalization of marijuana

Peace and Freedom Party Newsletter - Spring 2010

Don’t Let the University Interfere With Your Education! - An Open Letter in Support of the March 4 Strike and Day of Action

End the War on Drugs - January 2009

How can the earth be saved?

Freedom, Justice and Crime

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Tired of the Parties of War?

Why you should register Peace and Freedom Party (1)

Why you should register Peace and Freedom Party (2)

Why you should register Peace and Freedom Party (3)

Peace and Freedom Newsletter - October 1970

The Peace and Freedom Party is committed to socialism, democracy, ecology, feminism and racial equality. We represent the working class, those without capital in a capitalist society. We organize toward a world where cooperation replaces competition, a world where all people are well fed, clothed and housed; where all women and men have equal status; where all individuals may freely endeavor to fulfill their own talents and desires; a world of freedom and peace where every community retains its cultural integrity and lives with all others in harmony.

The Peace and Freedom Party was founded on June 23, 1967, by people who wanted to vote for something they could support. The Democrats were leading the nation in the war against Vietnam. As the military drained the domestic economy, Republicans and Democrats called for "law and order" to repress Americans who wished to improve their own lives. Black militants were rising up angrily in the cities, while Filipino and Latino farmworkers were organizing labor unions in the fields. Women were agitating for full equality with men. These forces of discontent united to create an electoral arm of "The Movement." A massive voter registration drive placed the Peace and Freedom Party on the California ballot in January 1968. On both the state and national level, we have shown a willingness to work with other like minded groups, trying to build a mass based socialist party throughout the country.