“Hearts starve as well as bodies—give us bread but give us roses.”

–James Oppenheim, 1911

A 50-State Organization

Bread and Roses (more fully, Bread and Roses/Peace and Justice) is a new national organization. We see electoral politics as the central free speech realm in America, as the place where change happens, where people are raising new visions, and are listening. We support Bread and Roses candidates inside the dominant parties, and we support the establishment of statewide Bread and Roses Parties. Our first state party is The Bread and Roses Party of Maryland, which in August 2018 delivered 15,000 signatures to the Maryland Board of Elections. We have now been qualified as a non-major party in Maryland, and our Presidential Candidate, Jerome Segal, will be on the ballot in November, along with his running mate, filmmaker John de Graaf. We also will be on the ballot in Vermont where we are running as independents under the Bread and Roses banner. In most states ballot access in 2020 is out of reach because it has been almost impossible to gain signatures on access petitions because of the pandemic. We do welcome write-in votes, except in the swing states, where we are supporting the Democratic candidate.



Bread and Roses is egalitarian in its ideals, open to Socialists and Non-Socialists alike. The goals of American democratic socialism are central to our outlook, but we also have new ideas with respect to public policy; we are not wedded to Big Government, and we seek to develop a new political culture that is experimental and modest rather than dogmatic with respect to its efforts to build a better world. We are not clairvoyant. We believe in keeping our eyes on ultimate goals and values, while being a society that learns, even from failure.



We embrace the social vision implied in old labor slogan, “an injury to one is an injury to all.” We are all in this together. We wish to build a society where everyone can make a contribution and is given an opportunity to do so. That contribution should come from our deepest abilities, from potentials that we be able to develop to their fullest. And in exchange, we all have a right to fulfillment of core economic needs, regardless of income level.



Secondly, we believe that the “The Job System,” our basic economic framework that divides us into two groups: “the job creators” and the “the job seekers,” is not an eternal fact of nature. It is a recent system, primarily the result of industrialization, and it has largely served its purpose. We are ready to move beyond the job system, and to transform what remains of it to provide meaningful work and just rewards for all. We are developing policies to promote the transition from job-system work to lives that central around what we call “passion-work” — work one would do, even if you weren’t paid to do it.



Our roots are broader than the democratic socialist tradition. We strongly identify with the “plain living, high thinking” traditions of America, whether the Quakers, John Adams, Thoreau, the experimental utopian communes of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, or the “Cooperative Commonwealth” sought by generations of American workers and farmers. We seek a socio- economic framework that makes it easier to pursue an Alternative American Dream, one of modest consumption, solid economic security, and abundant leisure, sufficient to do the things in life that matter most.

Further, “Roses” is central to our outlook. First expressed by the suffragist Helen Todd in 1910 and immortalized in the 1911 poem “Bread and Roses” by James Oppenheim and the 1912 Lawrence textile strike, “Roses” stands for the non-material things that make life worth living—time, art, friendship, love, nature and beauty, both in the urban and natural environment, a society With Beauty For All. More fundamentally, in demanding “Bread and Roses too” the women of Lawrence were saying, “We are not just laborers who need only material things. We are also complex human beings, with complex needs for lives of meaning and richness.” We agree. We believe that a Renaissance of Roses is America’s future.

For us, Roses also symbolizes nature, a sustainable planet for ourselves and future generations. And finally, we are international in our orientation. We believe in an engaged America, one that seeks a world of peace in which human rights are respected, in which cultures are tolerant and in which oppression is checked by evolving international institutions that ensure liberty and justice for all people on planet Earth.

Yes, we wanted sewers…but we wanted much, oh, so very much more than sewers. We wanted our workers to have pure air; we wanted them to have sunshine; we wanted planned homes; we wanted living wages; we wanted recreation for young and old; we wanted vocational education; we wanted a chance for every human being to be strong and live a life of happiness. And, we wanted everything that was necessary to give them that: playgrounds, parks, lakes, beaches, clean creeks and rivers, swimming and wading pools, social centers, reading rooms, clean fun, music, dance, song and joy for all. That was our Milwaukee Social Democratic movement.

–Emil Seidel, first socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Wisconsin

- Jerome Segal, founder