A Congressional Campaign for Peace in 2008 Eugene E Ruyle, a veteran & grandfather for peace Peace and Freedom Party 10th Congressional District (Contra Costa, Alameda, & Solano Counties)

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Running for Congress is my way of honoring the memory of such martyrs of the Civil Rights movement as Martin Luther King, Medgar Evars, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner, and countless others who have given so much to win our right to vote. People should not only have the right to vote, but also the right to vote for peace and socialism.

I see my campaign as educational, designed to raise issues of peace, justice, and sustainability within the electoral process, issues which are unlikely to be raised otherwise. I am running on the Platform of the Peace and Freedom Party, but I also support the Ten Key Values of the Green Movement. I see myself as socialist, feminist, environmentalist, anti-racist, and anti-imperialist. I participated in the WTO protests in Seattle and want to bring the spirit of Seattle and the global peace and justice movement into the 2008 elections.

For a variety of reasons, I decided to run in the 10th Congressional District (El Cerrito, Orinda, Moraga, Lafayette, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Livermore, Antioch, Fairfield & part of Concord) currently held by Ellen Tauscher, a conservative Democrat. Congressional candidates are required to live in the state they plan to represent, but not necessarily the district. I live in Oakland, but do not want to run in the 9th CD against Barbara Lee, who I consider one of the few decent members of Congress. I support the independent candidacy of Cindy Sheehan against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and therefore do not want to run in the 8th CD in San Francisco. I also support the Peace & Freedom candidacy of my friend, William Callison, in the 7th District (Richmond, Martinez, Concord) currently occupied by George Miller. Many people consider Miller to be progressive and anti-war, but he continues to fund the war and has never challenged U.S. imperialism nor the corporate dominated two-party system, and the same is true of Ellen Tauscher.

I am not asking for any financial support, but I do urge people to contribute to the Peace & Freedom Party, which you can do though our web site, listed below.

Background and qualifications: I was born and raised in Concord, California and graduated from Mt. Diablo High and UC, Berkeley. I served in the US Marine Corps from 1957-1960. I retired from Cal State Long Beach in December 2006 after a 35 year career teaching Anthropology and Marxism. I helped found the Peace Studies Program at CSULB, was active in the Peter Carr Peace Center and our faculty union, and worked closely with the Native American community in their struggle to save Puvungna, the sacred creation center on the Cal State Long Beach campus. I was a Peace and Freedom Party candidate for Congress in Long Beach in 1982. I am currently affiliated with the Institute for the Critical Study of Society at the Niebyl-Proctor Marxist Library in Oakland.

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for more info telephone: 510 428-1578 email: cuyleruyle@mac.com web: www.cuyleruyle.com Peace and Freedom Party website: http://peaceandfreedom.org/ Register --- Vote --- Organize

Socialism * Democracy * Ecology * Feminism * Racial Equality

Why Socialism?

For most of my professional career as an anthropologist, I have been concerned with understanding our species, the problems we face as a species, and the role of my country in finding solutions. After considering all the alternatives and all the evidence, I have come to the conclusion that the problems we face as Americans and as a species are all products of capitalism and cannot be solved within the framework of capitalism. A new social and economic system, socialism, is necessary to provide the framework to address issues such as war, poverty, racism, sexism, pollution, health care, education, immigration, and global warming.

Socialism will come to America when the American people want it; socialism cannot and should not be imposed on Americans against their will. By the same logic, however, the United States does not have the right to prevent other nations from adopting socialism or any other economic system they chose. Yet this has been the dominant aim of U.S. foreign policy since WWII. This has not benefited the freedom and well being of the American people. Americans are less free and less secure because of U.S. meddling in the internal affairs of other nations to make the world safe for U.S. corporate interests.

Socialism is a complex science requiring careful study. Briefly, we can highlight three pillars of socialism: Peace and Disarmament, Guaranteed Employment, and Environmental Sustainability.

Peace and Disarmament: Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan is of course a must. The U.S. must also honor the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, in which non-nuclear nations agreed to give up the right to build nuclear weapons and the United States and other nuclear nations agreed “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” (Article VI) Disarmament would free tremendous resources to address social and environmental concerns.

Guaranteed Employment: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations sixty years ago, guarantees everyone, in America and around the world, “the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment” and “to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for themselves and their family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.” The right to quality free heath care and free education must also be established and all forms of racism and sexism abolished.

Environmental Sustainability: Americans must learn to share our planet with six billion other people so that we can meet our needs while preserving the earth for future generations. We must end the ecological destruction caused by capitalism and build a new society that is in harmony with nature as well as our own people. Important steps include ending dependence of fossil fuels and nuclear power, development of solar technology and other renewable, non-polluting energy sources, massive development of free public transportation, and rigorous environmental protection.

In order to build a socialist world of peace, social justice, and ecological sanity, the workers and oppressed people of America and the world must organize as a class, take possession of the Earth and the machinery of production, and create a world in which, as Marx put it, “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”

Think outside the capitalist box —

— Consider socialism

(see other side for further information on the Congressional Campaign for Peace 2008)