ARC 109

The Peoples' Platform

These 10 points of unity can help us build a grassroots movement to force our elected officials to make the changes the American people yearn for and desperately need.  We recognize and support parallel initiatives toward the same end. We are united with people around the world who are resisting racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia. We see this undertaking as more than a single campaign, but a movement in the making.

1. Immediate withdrawal from Iraq.  Wage peace globally.
 
We want to realize a safer world and truly global justice. To begin, the U.S. must withdraw all troops, private contractors, and mercenaries from Iraq, and keep hands off Iraqi oil. We need to demobilize the U.S. troops present in 146 countries, and end massive military spending on Cold War technologies that only put public funds in the hands of military contractors.  We support a robust GI Bill to educate and care for returning troops. Barack Obama's pledge to meet with world leaders, especially in trouble spots around the globe, is compelling but this has to include the war-torn and war-weary Middle East region.  Following the lead of President Jimmy Carter and South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, these conversations have to include the Palestinian people and all of their elected leaders. We demand an end to the US financed Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. We seek the demilitarization of Africa, ending the new “scramble” for Africa’s resources; and we support humanitarian aid that is based on genuine relationships in which Africans determine the aid they need. We further support the suggestion of Dennis Kucinich who called for the establishment of a Department of Peace Initiatives, to reorient U.S. foreign policy and our economy toward humane, sustainable solutions that actively seek justice, open dialogue and diplomacy, and reinvigorate and democratize multi-lateral institutions like the United Nations as steps toward greater peace and security. Nuclear disarmament and demilitarization of the planet should be a concrete goal. We should pledge our resources to peace, the planet, and progress, not death, despair and destruction.

2. Economic Justice.  End poverty in the U.S. and hunger in the world in our lifetime.
 
The growing wealth disparity in this country is wholly obscene: the rich get tax breaks and subsidies, and full-scale bail-outs when their investments go wrong, while low wage workers and the chronically unemployed suffer in increasing poverty, and middle income workers are squeezed even further. John Edwards and others have embraced a “Half in Ten” Campaign to cut poverty in half in ten years, and have called for the complete eradication of poverty in our lifetime.  The new administration should embrace these goals.  Public works jobs programs should be massively expanded, college education should be a right for all, housing, child care, paid parental leave, and health care should be guaranteed to all residents of the United States as cornerstones to lives beyond the reach of poverty. We must learn to live differently, so others may live.  The federal government should stand behind a living wage initiative as another key component of realizing greater economic justice and giving all workers dollars and dignity. Toward this end the federal government should also strengthen workers’ right to organize.

3. One Person/One Vote/No Obstacles.

We need to build a robust and participatory democracy. We must make such everyone feels a reason to vote, and must insure that exercising the vote, a fundamental human and civil right, is an open and easy process which is visible and accessible.  Make every vote count and let every citizen vote. Access to the ballot has been a long and hard-fought process but full enfranchisement and unimpaired access is far from a reality. Full enfranchisement includes allowing former and current inmates to cast their ballots in local, state and federal elections.  Other countries do this. Incarcerated persons are still citizens; half a million incarcerated people are released each year and they have a stake in the political process. Easy same day registration means that even demanding work schedules and family responsibilities will not impede access to the ballot. Campaign finance reform and public funding of political campaigns would allow someone who is not a millionaire to run for public office, and would blunt the influence of rich benefactors. We must reform the anti-democratic Electoral College—a living legacy of slavery—by promoting state passage of National Popular Vote legislation. We also support instant run-off voting in which voters rank their choices and it takes a majority rather than a plurality to win. These reforms would move in the direction of making every vote count.

4. Defend and extend basic civil liberties and insure government transparency and accountability.

We have a truth deficit in our country. The right to free speech, thought and affiliation are fundamental safeguards against tyranny.  The right of citizens to know what goes on behind closed government doors is also fundamental to a vital democracy.    A pattern of lies, deceit, and selective disclosure has meant that policies are being carried out in our names---from extraordinary rendition and torture abroad to illegal surveillance and imprisonment at home---that the public has neither fully understood nor approved. The Patriot Act (PA), the Military Commission Act (MCA), the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA), and various limits of individual liberties have further compromised Constitutional rights. Therefore, we need full disclosure and public access to information laws, expansion of the FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), and full repeal of the PA, the MCA, and their offshoots.

5. A sustainable energy and environment initiative internationally and at home, and a reimagined and rebuilt national infrastructure.

A secret Bush Administration/oil company-designed federal energy policy guaranteed massive subsidies for the petroleum industry at our expense and at the expense of the global environment. Ensuring an uninterrupted oil supply has driven U.S. military intervention in the Middle East and the fossil-fueled economy has pumped sufficient greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to bring us to the brink of ecological and human disaster. Catastrophic climate change now threatens the world’s food supply and fuel choices, with prolonged drought, flood, storms, fires and rising seas endangering poor nations and communities most, exemplified by Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.  The U.S. must ratify the Kyoto Protocol and set the example for developed nations in moving the Bali Roadmap forward to binding and aggressive commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.  We must commit to at least an 80% reduction below 1990 levels by the year 2050. We must reinvent where and how we live, developing local and organic agriculture, protecting green space as well as sustainable and affordable cities, mass transportation, non-fossil-fueled vehicles, energy conservation and efficiency, and America’s boundless renewable energy resources, including solar, wind, and hydropower. Accomplishing these changes will provide training and employment for a new green collar jobs sector and a federal climate corps.  The Green Jobs Campaign is an important new initiative potentially linking the environmental and labor movements into a powerful political force.


6. Legalization for undocumented immigrants in the United States.

There are no “aliens” among us, and all undocumented workers and their families deserve rights, recognition and respect. We demand comprehensive immigration reform that confers legal rights on undocumented immigrants. We are a world increasingly without borders--- big corporations and finance capital move freely around the globe and yet people seeking work are denied and detained. We need policies that are fair, flexible, just, and humane.  Our national leaders must affirm the dignity and humanity of immigrant communities by demilitarizing the U.S. border and building bridges not fences; stopping the raids and detentions; extending labor and civil rights to undocumented workers; and supporting family reunification. Congress should repeal the law which makes two non-criminal convictions for possession of marijuana a deportable offense for a lawful permanent resident.

7. “Rejuvenation resources” for hardest hit and long-suffering communities.

We support aggressive anti-poverty and massive public works programs, as well as a program of justice for Native Americans and Indian nations. We see this as linked to a set of policies that also provide “rejuvenation resources” to impoverished regions of the country like Appalachia, rust belt cities, and the rural Deep South.  New Orleans and the Gulf area still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and the federal negligence that followed require a special and concrete commitment from the White House, with recovery decision-making firmly in the hands of local and displaced residents. We support Affirmative Action policies as one basic step toward the inclusion of historically marginalized and excluded groups. In the spirit of truth and reconciliation, we need to build for the future by reconciling with the past and righting old wrongs.

8. End the death penalty, Stop mass incarceration and the criminalization of youth.

We cage over 2 million of our fellow citizens, the vast majority of them poor and either Black or Latino. Most prisoners are convicted of non-violent crimes.  This is the highest incarceration rate of any society in history: 1 in every 100 adults behind bars.  We need to embrace alternatives to incarceration and invest in community restorative justice as the first resort for violations of law.  Youth need jobs, continuing education, drug treatment, recreational and mental health programs as alternatives to crime and unemployment. All people, especially the young, need to see equitable justice and equal treatment.  And for those already incarcerated we need to insure humane treatment and real opportunities for rehabilitation and reintegration. We seek the repeal of federal laws that create unfair obstacles to education and housing for the poor, including the denial of federal financial aid for one year to a student convicted of any drug offense and the eviction of families from section 8 housing because one family member is convicted of a minor offense. The U.S. remains the only industrialized nation that executes its citizens.  Since 1973, over 120 people have been freed from U.S. death rows based evidence of their innocence.  Therefore, we must also end the death penalty now. Finally, since the domestic proliferation of weapons by police and civilians, is a public health crisis that has led to wartime casualty rates, we need to reduce handguns in our communities.

9. Racial and Gender justice and full rights for LGBT* people and disabled communities.

There is no denying that there has been progress on issues of racism, sexism and homophobia over the last generation.  The fact that the two top contenders for the Democratic Party nomination for president were a white woman and an African American man is some evidence of that progress.  Still we are not a post-racial society, we are not free from vicious sexism and misogyny, and  we do not live a society where we are all treated equally in fundamental respects. The next president should seize this historic moment -- not to launch another commission or conversation -- but to act. The U.S. should ratify and implement the UN’s CEDAW (The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women), and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. This should also include more support for sexual and domestic violence prevention programs and an unequivocal commitment to reproductive choice for all women, including the right to bear and raise healthy children. The U.S. should actively participate in the 2009 Review meeting of the Durban World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (Durban II) and unequivocally call for aggressive and uncompromising civil rights and legal equality for all irrespective of sexual orientation.  We need a Justice Department that is devoted to anti-discrimination, and full implementation of access to justice and human rights. Racial profiling of people of color, including Arabs and Muslims, must end and full civil liberties must be afforded to all. We also need the federal government to reassert and bolster its pledge to freedom, inclusion and opportunity for people with physical, mental, cognitive and developmental disabilities.

*LGBT stands for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered.


10. Healthcare and Education for all.

 These are fundamental human rights, essential to a just future.  We are a sick nation with a growing number of people ailing from preventable or treatable illnesses and specific sectors dying younger than necessary. The U.S. spends billions on war, yet many people are deeply in debt because of soaring healthcare costs.  We have some of the most advanced medical institutions in the world but millions are without healthcare coverage. A single payer health care system is needed to fix what ails us.  This has the overwhelming endorsements of experts and our next president should listen and implement plans to meet this goal. As a part of comprehensive healthcare, all women must have access to safe and affordable birth control, and quality health care for themselves and their children. In terms of education, we need a Marshall plan-type effort to rebuild and reinvigorate schools everywhere. K to 16 education should be a fundamental right for all, not simply those who can afford it, since full access to education, including college, strengthens democracy and the ability for citizens to participate fully in their government and civil society.