Sarah E. Sloan, ca1980 -
VP candidate for Party for Socialism and Liberation (2016)
Running mate with nominee: Gloria Estela La Riva (b. 1954)
Popular vote: 48 (0.00%)
Electoral vote: 0/538
The campaign:
The Gloria La Riva/Eugene Puryear ticket for the Party for Socialism and Liberation was nominated again for the 2016 election, and Puryear was still too young to serve if elected. La Riva's substitute running-mates were Dennis Banks (California [Peace and Freedom Party], Colorado, Iowa, New Mexico) and Sarah Sloan (Maryland).
The strength of Bernie Sanders' campaign in the Democratic Party was a mixed issue for the PSL. On their webpage they did not consider him a real socialist--
He does not call for nationalizing the corporations and banks, without which the reorganization of the economy to meet people’s needs rather than maximizing the profits of capitalist investors could not take place … He is clearly seeking to reform the existing capitalist system.
Sloan had been a co-author, along with La Riva, Puryear, and Brian Becker of the book China: Revolution and Counterrevolution (2013). Like La Riva, Sloan had been an activist with the Workers World Party but joined the split and helped form the PSL in 2004.
During a PSL meeting in 2014, Sloan presented her view of life in the USSR during Stalin's regime--
"Socialist revolutions have not happened in rich societies but in the poorest parts of the world. At the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Russian economy was one-twelfth the size of the U.S. economy. By eliminating the profits for a tiny handful of capitalists, even a poor country like the Soviet Union, managed by the 1930s, to provide every worker with the right to a job and the right to free health care. By 1960, the Soviet Union had emerged as the second-biggest economy in the world. There was no unemployment and there was a right to housing — to pay no more than 6 percent of your income for rent. Evictions were illegal because there were no landlords. It was your housing.
Women had a right to free childcare and one year’s paid maternity leave, and they had the right to put their child in child care facilities at no cost. Women in the Soviet Union had the right to retire at 55 years of age at half pay. And remember, they had free health care, so retirement didn’t mean being plunged into poverty. They had a month’s paid vacation.
It doesn’t mean that there were no problems in the Soviet Union, or that we agree with all the policies of different leaderships. But the Soviet Union proved, just as Cuba proves today, that when you take the wealth out of the hands of the capitalists, it can be used to meet people’s needs."
During the 2016 campaign, the Washington, DC-based Sloan took part in demonstration protesting the opening of a hotel by Trump on Pennsylvania Ave. "The people of D.C. and the people of the country say no to Trump's rhetoric and policies of racism, of fear mongering and scapegoating against immigrants, the Muslim community, refugees," Sloan told the press.
Of the impressive 74,405 popular votes (0.05%) gained nationally by La Riva in 2016, the ticket with Sloan accounted for 48 of them. Sloan's public presence began to evaporate starting in 2019 for reasons that are not clear.
Election history: none
Other occupations: author, National Staff Coordinator of the ANSWER Coalition (Act Now to Stop War and Racism)
Notes:
Apparently came to DC from New York.
