James Harris (Socialist Workers Party politician)

James Harris (born 1948) is an American communist politician and member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was the party's candidate for President of the United States in 1996 receiving 8,463 votes and again in 2000 when his ticket received 7,378 votes. Harris also served as an alternate candidate for Róger Calero in 2004 and 2008 in states where Calero could not qualify for the ballot (due to being born in Nicaragua). In 2004 he received 7,102 votes of the parties 10,791 votes. In 2008 he received 2,424 votes. More recently Harris was the SWP candidate in the 2009 Los Angeles mayoral election receiving 2,057 votes for 0.89% of the vote. Harris served for a time as the national organization secretary of the SWP. He was a staff writer for the socialist newsweekly The Militant in New York. He wrote about the internal resistance to South African apartheid and in 1994 traveled to South Africa to attend the Congress of South African Trade Unions convention. In July 2012, Harris was named the Socialist Workers Party nominee for president. The vice presidential nominee was Maura DeLuca.

Born into a working-class, African American family in Cleveland, Ohio, Harris first became politically active in the civil rights movement. With growing protests against racist discrimination, tens of thousands of Black families in the city staged a school strike in the early 1960s, setting up "Freedom Schools" to study African-American history.

On graduating from high school, Harris attended Cleveland State University, where he was a founding member of the Black Student Union. He organized fellow students into demonstrations opposing the Vietnam War as well as actions against racist practices of the college, which then had only a small percentage of Black students. He became a member of the Student Mobilization Committee Against the War in Vietnam and later served on its national staff in Washington, D.C.

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