Protect Our Rights
The growing disparities in income and wealth among our nation’s people have long-term impacts on our population — for wealth accumulation, debt reduction, and educational attainment.
- Medicare For All. The United States should catch up to every other modern nation and implement a single payer, Medicare for All system. It’s time to end the destruction of American health care by rapacious, price gouging, for-profit, private health insurance middlemen.
- Free Public Colleges and Trade Schools. Educating the citizenry of a nation pays dividends in the long run, with the economy getting back much more than is initially put in. Crushing student debt for higher education would no longer burden young men and women trying to improve their lives through hard work. We should strive to have the best education system in the world.
- Defend and Expand Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Republicans have been trying to privatize and cut earned benefit programs for decades. Corporate Democrats have been willing to go along with them under the guise of a ‘grand bargain’ and ‘reform’. We pledge to staunchly oppose this. Social Security reduced the elderly poverty rate from 35% to 10%. 3.4 million Americans would immediately fall into poverty without Medicaid. Gutting these vital programs is not an option.
- Ensure Paid Vacation Time, Sick Time, Family Leave, Childcare. The United States is one of just three countries in the world that doesn’t offer paid maternity leave, the others being Oman and Papua New Guinea. We are the only industrialized nation that doesn’t offer paid vacation time. This should be changed immediately.
- Fight For Racial Justice. Racism and xenophobia have always been part of our country’s history. Since our nation’s founding, the wealthy and the powerful have always used divide-and-conquer tactics to make working people fight each other instead of the people on top. African Americans and Latinos in particular, and people of color generally, have been targets in our nation’s continued assault against their rights, liberties, and humanity. As did generations before us, we will continue to advocate and push for justice, equity, and equality in all manner and forms, and will sponsor and vote on legislation to secure the same. We support a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the generational harms caused by slavery and Jim Crow and propose remedies.
- Protect Women’s Rights. We support the Paycheck Fairness Act and we support repealing the Hyde Amendment. We oppose Republican cuts to Planned Parenthood and women’s health clinics all across the country. In 2016 alone, 60 TRAP laws targeting abortion were passed in 19 states. We will vigorously oppose all efforts to dismantle reproductive rights.
- Combat Homelessness. More than 600,000 Americans are homeless on any given night, including over 57,000 veterans. Studies show the cost of leaving a homeless person on the streets is $30,000 while the cost of housing them is just $10,000. Addressing this crisis is both the moral and fiscally responsible thing to do.
- Police Reform. For-profit policing and for-profit prisons should be abolished. Police training should be retooled to emphasize de-escalation tactics, and body cameras should be mandatory on all officers. Furthermore, community oversight boards should be created and broken windows policing should be eliminated. Stop & frisk — which disproportionately targets African Americans and Latinos 87% of the time — has a 97% failure rate. On top of being discriminatory and ineffective, it’s also unconstitutional and should be ended. Special prosecutors must also be appointed to hold police accountable. We should invest more in jobs and education, less in jails and incarceration.
- Enact Common-Sense Gun Regulation92% of Americans want expanded background checks, 54% want a ban on assault weapons, and 54% want a ban on high capacity magazines. We agree with the majority of the American people and support these measures. Over 30,000 Americans die every year from gun violence, including over 10,000 homicides. The time to act is now to address this public health crisis.
- Voting Rights. Since 2013, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Shelby County v. Holder decision, states across the country have been actively working to reverse the hard-fought protections for voting rights secured during the Civil Rights Movement. Fair and equal access to the ballot is essential to our ability to uphold and protect our nation’s democracy. We believe every American citizen is entitled to vote, and we will work to secure voting rights, challenge ultra-partisan gerrymandering, and put an end to affronts to our democratic representation.