Harvard Vote Socialist Campaign Launches, Aims to ‘End Capitalism Before It Ends Us’

The Harvard Vote Socialist 2024 campaign, an unrecognized student organization campaigning for Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia in the 2024 presidential election, held its official launch event Monday in Emerson Hall.

The organization, formed earlier in September, is the only active student group oriented around advocating for socialism.

De la Cruz and Garcia are running for president as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which aims to “end capitalism before it ends us,” according to their website.

“We’re students, we’re internationals, we’re immigrants. We come from different backgrounds, and we have all sorts of different stakes in this election,” Prince A. Williams ’25, an organizer with the group and a Crimson Editorial editor, said. “We really want to give Harvard students and, of course, the people in this country generally, an idea about what we actually can win.”

According to literature handed out by event organizers, the PSL ticket advocates for policies to “seize the biggest 100 corporations,” “end all U.S. aid to Israel,” “cut the military budget by 90%,” and “end capitalism before it ends us.”

Williams also pointed to core issues around inflation and advocating for immigrants.

“We want to give Harvard students this voice and this platform, and this campaign is representing those people and those populations,” he said.

Attendees were also provided with quizzes to evaluate their beliefs’ alignment with socialism in order to prompt discussion about different attendee’s political values.

“It’s really exciting to feel like I have an option to vote for candidates that actually align with my values for the first time in my life,” said Daven McQueen, an event attendee and master’s student at Emerson College. “And it was just cool to talk to other people who feel the same way and are considering the same thing.”

In addition to introducing the PSL platform, event organizers addressed common concerns around voting for a third party candidate.

“The fear of either ruling class party holding power is very valid,” Williams said. “But never in the history of this country have we ever had true progress in any capacity through the status quo.”

“We can see time and time again, the Democrats and the Republicans not meeting the scale of the problem,” he added.

Xavier Emmanuel Hadley, a Ph.D. candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was appreciative of the conversations the event started.

“I think it was interesting to learn that it’s a party that seeks to join differing opinions with policies that would benefit everybody,” he said.

Still, he had his reservations about voting socialist in the upcoming election.

“I want to see more socialist movement and policies in the world,” he said. “But I don’t know if it’s changed where I’m gonna vote.”

—Staff writer Hiral M. Chavre can be reached at hiral.chavre@thecrimson.com.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch.