Rachel Chason reports in the Washington Post that a longtime progressive political activist and anti-war crusader Jerome Segal is running for president underneath the banner of his self-created Bread and Roses Party, recognized through certification by the state of Maryland in January 2019. The party’s name pays homage to a deadly 1912 strike of textile workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts of the same name. Chason writes in her August 28th, 2019 article “Jerome Segal, of Maryland socialist Bread and Roses Party, to run for president,”:
Jerome Segal, a philosopher and progressive activist, announced Wednesday that he is running for president as the nominee of a party he created — the socialist Bread and Roses party, which Maryland certified this year.
That means Segal, a 75-year-old Silver Spring resident, will appear on the Maryland ballot for the 2020 election. He and his nascent party are trying to qualify for the ballot in other states, he said.
Segal was part of a Jewish delegation that met with leaders of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, including Yasser Arafat, in 1987. Segal, the founder of the 5,000 member strong (a figure that includes over 400 rabbis) Jewish Peace Lobby has written books relating to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, such as Negotiating Jerusalem and Creating the Palestinian State. Another notable book of Segal’s is a collection of philosophical essays dealing with his perception on the economy and moral psychology. Segal challenged Ben Cardin in the 2018 Democratic U.S. Senate primary in Maryland, coming in third place behind Chelsea Manning with 20,027 votes, or 3.55% of the vote.
Segal sees a vision of his Bread and Roses Party becoming a 50-state party on his party’s website, which outlines a general overview of his political platform:
“… Bread and Roses is “socialistic” in its ideals, open to New Socialists and Non-Socialist alike. We use these terms “socialistic” and “New Socialists” to communicate both that the goals of socialism are central to our outlook, but also that we have new ideas with respect to public policy, that we are not wedded to big Government, and that we seek to develop a new political culture that is experimental and modest rather than dogmatic with respect to predictions of actual consequences of any effort to build a better world. We are not clairvoyant. We believe in keeping ones eye on ultimate goals and values, and being a society that learns, even from failure.
…. Further, “Roses” is central to our outlook. Roses means different things to different people. Clearly, it means beauty, both in the urban and natural environment, a society With Beauty For All. More fundamentally, in saying “And Roses too” the women strikers in Lawrence were saying, “We are not just laborers, with basic needs for bread. We are also complex human beings, with complex needs for lives of meaning and richness.” We agree. We believe that Renaissance is in America’s future. “
Segal’s party delivered over 15,000 signatures in August 2018 to the Maryland Secretary of State. Securing ballot access has often been a challenge for third party activists, particularly those creating new parties, as ballot access laws in America are designed the keep the duopoly in power.
