Progressive Party Platform
1. Fighting for Economic Justice and Security in the U.S. and Global Economies- To uphold the right to universal access to affordable, high quality health care for all.
- To preserve guaranteed Social Security benefits for all Americans, protect private pensions, and require corporate accountability.
- To invest in America and create new jobs in the U.S. by building more affordable housing, re-building America's schools and physical infrastructure, cleaning up our environment, and improving homeland security.
- To export more American products and not more American jobs and demand fair trade.
- To reaffirm freedom of association and enforce the right to organize.
- To ensure working families can live above the poverty line and with dignity by raising and indexing the minimum wage.
2. Protecting and Preserving Civil Rights and Civil Liberties- To sunset expiring provisions of the Patriot Act and bring remaining provisions into line with the U. S. Constitution.
- To protect the personal privacy of all Americans from unbridled police powers and unchecked government intrusion.
- To extend the Voting Rights Act and reform our electoral processes.
- To fight corporate consolidation of the media and ensure opportunity for all voices to be heard.
- To ensure enforcement of all legal rights in the workplace.
- To eliminate all forms of discrimination based upon color, race, religion, gender, creed, disability, or sexual orientation.
3. Promoting Global Peace and Security- To honor and help our overburdened international public servants – both military and civilian.
- To bring U. S. troops home from Iraq as soon as possible.
- To re-build U.S. alliances around the world, restore international respect for American power and influence, and reaffirm our nation's constructive engagement in the United Nations and other multilateral organizations.
- To enhance international cooperation to reduce the threats posed by nuclear proliferation and weapons of mass destruction.
- To increase efforts to combat hunger and the scourge of HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other infectious diseases.
- To encourage debt relief for poor countries and support efforts to reach the UN's Millennium Goals for Developing Countries.
4. Environmental Protection & Energy Independence- To free ourselves and our economy from dependence upon imported oil and shift to growing reliance upon renewable energy supplies and technologies, thus creating at least three million new jobs, cleansing our environment, and enhancing our nation's security.
- To free ourselves and our economy from dependence upon imported oil and shift to growing reliance upon renewable energy supplies and technologies, thus creating at least three million new jobs, cleansing our environment, and enhancing our nation's security.
- To change incentives in federal tax, procurement, and appropriation policies to:
(A.) Speed commercialization of solar, biomass, and wind power generation, while encouraging state and local policy innovation to link clean energy and job creation;
(B.) Convert domestic assembly lines to manufacture highly efficient vehicles, enhance global competitiveness of U.S. auto industry, and expand consumer choice;
(C.) Increase investment in construction of "green buildings" and more energy-efficient homes and workplaces;
(D.) Link higher energy efficiency standards in appliances to consumer and manufacturing incentives that increase demand for new durable goods and increase investment in U.S. factories;
- To eliminate environmental threat posed by global warming and ensuring that America does our part to advance an effective global problem-solving approach.
- To expand energy-efficient transportation choices by increasing investment in synthesized networks, including bicycle, local bus and rail transit, regional high-speed rail and magnetic levitation rail projects.
- To preserve prudent public interest regulations that encourage sustainable growth and investment, ensure energy diversity and system reliability, protect workers and the environment, reward consumer conservation, and support an expanding marketplace that rewards the commercialization of energy-efficient technologies.
- To protect, preserve, restore, and where reasonably possible expand wild lands and animal and plant populations endangered by human activity, reasonably compensating businesses and homeowners for damages or losses incurred by such.
5. Abortion Rights and Legal Reductions- Codify the 1973 Supreme Court Ruling on Roe vs Wade by passing HR 5151 -- the Freedom of Choice Act.
- Pass legislation and encourage community leadership to, among other acts: Increase funding to child placement services (foster care agencies); increase funding for comprehensive sex education programs that are proven to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies; increase awareness of the protective benefits of proper use of contraceptives, and increase access to them; increase funding for educational programs to spread awareness of sexually transmitted pathogens including viruses and bacteria, and their effects upon the human body; increase funding for prenatal care for unwed and low-income mothers; and expand daycare and nanny services to assist low-income families and single parents who choose to keep their children after birth.
6. Gun Control and State Militias- Adopt reasonable gun control laws that keep guns out of the hands of criminals, while preserving the 2nd Amendment right of law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.
- Restore full control of the National Guard units to their respective states, maintaining both a federal standing military and the individual state-controlled and regulated Militias.
7. Legalizing Marijuana
- Legalize marijuana, and regulate it like tobacco and alcohol.
- Increase funds to existing education and rehabilitation programs; create new programs and expand existing ones where necessary, to reduce addiction; pass common sense drug laws that focus on rehabilitation for non-violent offenders; and engage parents and community leaders to educate their children on the dangers of drugs.
"The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it: If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach. We need enthusiasm, imagination and the ability to face facts, even unpleasant ones, bravely. We need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer. We need the courage of the young. Yours is not the task of making your way in the world, but the task of remaking the world which you will find before you. May every one of us be granted the courage, the faith and the vision to give the best that is in us to that remaking!" -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Oglethorpe University Commencement Address (May 22, 1932)
"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)
"We find our population suffering from old inequalities, little changed by vast sporadic remedies. In spite of our efforts and in spite of our talk, we have not weeded out the over privileged and we have not effectively lifted up the underprivileged. Both of these manifestations of injustice have retarded happiness." -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, State of the Union Address, (1935)
"The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them." -- Joseph Heller, Catch-22
Corporate influence has thoroughly corrupted our government and destroyed our nation. Both of the major political parties have been compromised, co-opted, and usurped by people to whom the Constitution and the rule of law mean absolutely nothing. This is not the way things should be.
Progressives believe that government of, by, and for the people should fulfill its obligation to work for the people. Government is instituted among societies to secure liberties such as those laid out in America's Constitution. Likewise, Progressives believe that government not held accountable by the people is government unaccountable to the people. For over thirty years, we have seen the awful consequences of failing to make our government work for us.
The Progressive Party has been around since 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran for a third presidential term against incumbent William Howard Taft. Having failed to gain the his party's nomination Roosevelt, the twenty-sixth president -- a Republican by affiliation -- led his fellow progressives to form a new political party. Although they ultimately did not win the 1912 election, Progressives did make history by causing Taft to place last in a three-way race with Democrat Woodrow Wilson. That feat had not been accomplished before, nor has it been since then.
The progressive movement did see a resurgence in the wake of the Great Depression of 1929. Many had joined the Democratic Party by then, and in 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt (a cousin of Theodore's) was elected president riding a wave of voter resentment against the Republican Party. Roosevelt and the new Democratic Congress proceeded to build a coalition that soon gave rise to the New Deal, a package of economic and social reforms that had the ultimate effect of vastly reducing economic inequality. The New Deal era, which lasted for over forty years, was based on what has come to be known as the Second Bill of Rights. These rights, as FDR described them, include:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
The right of every family to a decent home;
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
The right to a good education.
Progressive remain true to these ideals today, and we are committed to realizing them for all Americans.
Why form -- or rather, reform -- another political party? It's unfortunate, but the fact is that at the national level the Democratic Party has become too ineffective to achieve the badly needed economic reforms necessary to restore the promise of America. It is fractured, split between its Progressive wing and the corporate wing of the party (as represented by the conservative Democratic Leadership Council). And despite having received a mandate in 2006 to end the occupation of Iraq and enact true change, there is little hope that the Progressive wing shall win out over the DLC.
We believe it's time to start over, from scratch. While we can and should continue to apply pressure on the Democratic Party at the national level, we must take into account the reality that these efforts are probably doomed to fail. This is because the influence of Big Money is too great. And the only way to counter it is by building a strong, accountable political party from the ground up that can eventually challenge the two-party system.
This means we must start out locally, and work our way up to the state level. Likewise, Progressives in other states must begin rebuilding the party in their communities. This has already begun in some states, most notably Vermont and Washington.
The mission of this blog is to build a presence for the Progressive Party in Ohio. We shall use this and other web sites in the netroots community to organize, plan, and communicate.
