California Peace and Freedom Party

CALIFORNIA PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY. Emerging in 1967 from the Community for a New Politics, the California Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) distinguished itself from the Democratic and Republican parties by connecting U.S. imperialism, militarism, and capitalism to racism, poverty, and environmental degradation. Announcing its solidarity with Black, Mexican-American and Native American activists and with poor people, workers, and students, the PFP embarked on a voter registration drive to build a broad-based third party. By January 1968, it qualified for the November ballot by registering more than 100,000 voters. Its success partly traced to a short-lived alliance with the Black Panther Party and a statewide bus tour of college campuses that featured performances by the Freedom Players and Carlos Santana’s Blues Band. However, its greatest asset was its grassroots organizing strategy that enlisted thousands of volunteers to cover special events, set up tables in shopping areas and on college campuses, and canvass their neighborhoods. By March 1968, at its founding convention in Richmond, California, the PFP had established more than twenty-eight county chapters, each representing dozens of community and neighborhood-based committees. Indeed, it was at the local level that the PFP enjoyed its greatest success, winning seats on city councils and boards, establishing food cooperatives, free clinics, and community newspapers, and organizing in support of farmworker, tenant, immigrant, LGBTQ, women’s rights, and environmental justice. Despite these achievements, no PFP candidate won state or national office.

Even before its founding convention, the PFP was dispatching organizers to build a national party, an effort that helped nineteen other states secure qualified ballot status before the PFP held its August 1968 national convention in Ann Arbor, Michigan. There, delegates nominated Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver as the PFP’s first presidential candidate. Although Cleaver was disqualified because he had not reached the constitutionally-mandated age of thirty-five, thirty-six other PFP members ran for California state office in 1968 including Huey Newton for Congress, Bobby Seale and Kathleen Cleaver for State Assembly, and former Free Speech Movement spokesperson, Mario Savio, for State Senate. In the 1970s the PFP lost ballot status in most states, but managed to maintain its qualified standing in California. In the opening year of the new decade, the PFP nominated Richard Romo as California’s first twentieth-century Mexican American gubernatorial candidate.

In 1972, the PFP co-founded the national People’s Party (PP) which ran antiwar activist Dr. Benjamin Spock for President. The PP’s platform, mirroring that of the PFP, included the immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from abroad, universal health care, women’s and LBGT rights, a high minimum wage, and legalization of marijuana.

In 1974, the PFP proclaimed itself a socialist-feminist organization and elected Kayren Hudiburgh as California PFP chair, the first woman to hold such office among the state’s qualified parties. In 1976 it extended its commitment to gender equality by nominating Margaret Wright, founder of Women Against Racism, as its presidential candidate. An early supporter of LBGTQ rights, it ran Gayle Justice, the first openly gay candidate for the U.S. Senate in 1974, and in 1978 chose Marilyn Seals to run for California governor—the first lesbian in any state to seek that office.

After the People’s Party collapsed in the late 1970s, the PFP attempted to create another national progressive coalition by convening a series of conferences that produced a “United Left Presidential Ticket” and platform. This initially promising effort failed when constituent organizations defected to support Jesse Jackson’s 1984 Democratic Party primary campaign. Following this defeat, the PFP faced internal dissention as competing factions (the New Alliance Party, International Workers party, and a third coalition consisting of independents and members of the Communist and Socialist parties) failed to agree on the PFP’s 1988 presidential nominee. For the first time in its history, the Party failed to run a presidential candidate on the California ballot. Making matters worse, the New Alliance Party attempted a complete take-over of the PFP before being expelled in 1992. The Party faced another challenge in 1996 after California voters passed Proposition 198, which allowed primary voters to cast ballots across party lines. Although the PFP and other state parties secured a Supreme Court ruling that struck down the new law, their legal challenge constituted a struggle for existence. Just two years later, in 1998, the PFP failed to obtain two-percent of the vote for any one of its statewide candidates and lost its place on the California ballot. After mounting its second voter registration drive, the PFP regained qualified status in 2003—a status that it retained.

Since its beginnings in 1967 the PFP ran hundreds of candidates for public office, including an unprecedented number of women, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community, and activists from outside organizations. Although its platform has shifted to accommodate additional concerns, it has remained consistent in its purpose. Its preamble, affirming its “common commitment to socialism, democracy, feminism and unionism and our common opposition to capitalism, imperialism, racism, sexism and elitism,” is remarkably similar to that of its founders. The Party also retained its commitment to coalition-building and willingness to use its qualified ballot status to run candidates from other leftwing organizations. Through its support of progressive candidates and positions, and its efforts to create a unified, national voice on the left, the PFP provided an alternative to mainstream parties and to raise new issues for political debate.

Dick Yanowitz. “The Real and Actually Slightly Expurgated History of the PFP”

Aaron Byungjoo Bae. “‘The Struggle for Freedom, Justice, and Equality Transcends Racial and National Boundaries’: Anti-Imperialism, Multiracial Alliances, and the Free Huey Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area.” Pacific Historical Review. 86, no.4 (2007): 691-712.

Casey Peters “Exploring New Approaches for the New Left: Peace and Freedom Party from 1967-1997” Synthesis/Regeneration. 12 (Winter 1997).

http://peaceandfreedom.org/home/244-about-us

http://www.greens.org/s-r/12/12-05.html