Meet the PSL 2020 presidential candidate

Gloria La Riva is the Party for Socialism and Liberation's presidential nominee.  This is from her campaign:

	Gloria La Riva is a labor, community and anti-war activist based in San Francisco, California. In 2016, as the presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation and the Peace and Freedom Party, Gloria received the most votes of any socialist presidential candidate since 1976. Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Gloria attended Brandeis University where she was active in affirmative action struggles. Gloria has been a key organizer of many mass demonstrations and other actions opposing the wars and occupation in Central America, Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia and elsewhere. Gloria has worked for decades to defend Cuba’s sovereignty and against the U.S. blockade. She was awarded Cuba’s Friendship Medal in 2010, approved by the Council of State, for her many years of Cuba solidarity, and was the coordinator of the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, Cuban heroes unjustly imprisoned in the U.S. for defending Cuba from U.S.-sponsored terrorism.
	Gloria has traveled to Venezuela many times since the presidency of Hugo Chávez and the dawn of the Bolivarian Revolution began in 1999. As the U.S. government’s aggression against Venezuela intensified in early 2019, Gloria traveled to the country from February to March. She documented and conveyed the Venezuelan people’s resistance to the U.S. economic blockade and military threats, via video and articles. Upon her return, PSL members organized 50 public events in a 43-city tour, where Gloria spoke, to dispel the U.S. government and media lies that are attempting to justify the blockade and a U.S. war on Venezuela. Gloria has been active in the struggle for immigrant rights, organizing for and speaking at many mass marches in California over the past 30 years. In November 2018, she accompanied the refugee caravan of 7,000 Hondurans, Salvadoran and Guatemalans for eight days in their arduous march through Mexico to reach the United States. In the early 1990s, she was the initiator of the Farmworkers Emergency Relief campaign, following a disastrous freeze that left tens of thousands of Central Valley agricultural workers with no income.
	Gloria organized support for the Black Fire Fighters Association in their struggle to end racist and sexist discrimination in the San Francisco Fire Department in the 1980s. A longtime supporter of LGBTQ rights, Gloria participated in the first National March for Lesbian and Gay rights in 1979 and subsequent national marches. She joined in the marches and rallies protesting the passage of the anti- marriage equality Prop 8 in California. She has joined picket lines defending women’s reproductive health clinics.
	In 1998 Gloria produced the award-winning video, “Genocide by Sanctions: The Case of Iraq,” documenting the effects of the U.S./UN blockade on Iraq. In 1999, she traveled twice to Yugoslavia with former U.S. attorney general Ramsey Clark, at the height of the U.S./NATO bombing war, producing the video, NATO Targets. In September 2005, six days after Hurricane Katrina, Gloria traveled to New Orleans, producing the video “Heroes Not Looters.” In August 2014, she traveled to Ferguson twice during the uprising there in the wake of the police murder of 18-year-old Michael Brown, to participate with thousands of people in demonstrations demanding justice. Gloria is a contributing writer for LiberationNews.org, where she has written extensively on Latin America and many other issues.
	In 1994 and 1998, Gloria was Peace & Freedom Party’s candidate for governor of California. She ran as a socialist candidate for mayor of San Francisco in 1983, finishing third overall and second in every working-class neighborhood. She was the 2008 presidential candidate of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Gloria became a member of the International Typographical Union at the age of 24 after leading a union-organizing drive of women newspaper workers in her workplace in Fairport, NY. The ITU later merged with the Communications Workers of America. Today Gloria is the elected First Vice President of Pacific Media Workers Guild, CWA Local 39521. Over the years she has been an organizer, together with many other supporters, of actions demanding the freedom of Leonard Peltier, and is proud to be running with him on a program for working-class justice and socialism.