From an early age, Christina López, the Freedom Socialist Party (FSP) candidate for vice president, has shown a fighting spirit. Growing up in Phoenix, she learned from her mother to defend people in the barrio over issues like fair housing. Her working-class family has been in the Southwest since before the U.S. stole it from Mexico.
An ethnic studies class on Chicano history, she says, “made me more aware of where I came from, who Chicanos are as a people.”An instinctive organizer, López joined the Chicano youth group MEChA and pushed it to work against a state English-only law.
López, who has held several union jobs, was drawn to FSP because it fights for racial liberation as key to unifying the working class. As part of her passionate involvement in the immigrant rights upsurge of 2006 and 2007, she opposed discriminatory and divisive “guest worker” bills.
Today, at 43, López is president of Radical Women (RW) in Seattle and author of the RW analysis “Estamos en la Lucha: Immigrant Women Light the Fires of Resistance.” She plays an important part in RW’s Sisters Organize for Survival campaign, which resists state budget cuts and layoffs. She is a leader in the Comrades of Color Caucus, a joint group of FSP and RW.
In every area in which she works, from writing about immigration policy to acting against austerity budgets and war, López emphasizes the special damage that this profit-driven system causes to women and children.
With her presidential running mate Stephen Durham, López is looking forward to taking their feminist, anti-capitalist, and humanistic message around the country. She feels this especially strongly when it comes to her home state of Arizona — where, thanks to the rise of a racist and aggressive right wing, this message is desperately needed.
Also see: Politics is about to change — here come the socialists
Also see: Stephen Durham bio
