Resistance Is Not Enough.
We Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs,
Sustainable Prosperity, and Economic Justice.
We, the undersigned, are proud to be part of the vibrant resistance to the attacks by President Trump and Republicans on immigrants, people of color, women, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, and workers and their unions. We are working to defeat Republican efforts to dismantle basic protections for Americans: Medicaid, Medicare and the Affordable Care Act, public schools, voting and civil rights, environmental safeguards, and the US justice system. And we will fight to stop their right-wing, corporate agenda that will worsen economic inequality and threatens the planet.
We will resist Trump. But resistance is not enough.
We therefore pledge that:
⯈ We will fight for good jobs, sustainable prosperity and economic justice.
⯈ We will work to build a movement that can make that agenda a reality.
Real change begins with a clear and coherent vision of a better America, and with citizens’ movements dedicated to bringing that world into being. We offer this agenda for economic change in that spirit. We invite you to discuss and debate it — and, most of all, to join us to fight for it.
Background
The elites have failed us. We need a political movement that fights to take back our government from those who have corrupted and subverted it. Martin Luther King Jr found that “the inseparable twin of racial injustice is economic injustice.” That’s why the great unfinished work of his life — and of the civil rights movement — was the fight against poverty and for the economic empowerment of working people through labor rights and jobs for all. It will not be easy to create shared prosperity. We need to fight to make government an instrument of the common good, not the special interests. That requires a powerful, unified movement for economic justice that will take back our democracy.
Click here for rest of Background.
We pledge to build that movement — for Sustainable Prosperity and Economic Justice.
Platform for Jobs and Economic Justice.
1. Jobs for All – Created by Rebuilding America
We should commit ourselves to providing a high quality job (with good wages and benefits) for everyone willing and able to work. This cannot be achieved through tax cuts for the rich. We support a large national investment program to put millions of American to work rebuilding America, creating useful employment for young people and for the millions of workers made unemployed by the deindustrialization of America. The rebuilding and modernization of our basic infrastructure — from roads to rail to water and energy systems —will stimulate robust growth and it will make our economy more productive. This initiative should be linked to public service jobs — in everything from national service to cleaning up parks and cities. As a first step, the next administration should guarantee that every young person graduating from school can get a decent job.
2. Invest in a Green Economy
Catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger. The United States should lead the global green industrial revolution that builds strong and resilient communities. That requires strategic public investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency that will replace a carbon-based economy with a clean and sustainable energy system, creating jobs and opportunity, particularly in communities of color that have borne the worst consequences of toxic corporate practices. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are already rapidly expanding. But we need a public commitment to meet clear goals to replace carbon-based energy sources, create new green energy industries, and meet global emission targets. The country that leads in these areas will capture jobs generated from markets across the world.
3. Empower Workers to Reduce Inequality
Inequality has reached new extremes. As the corporate elite pulls in incomes, perks and tax breaks beyond the imaginations of kings, wages for the rest of us have stagnated or declined — and more and more jobs have become contingent and part-time, with low pay and few benefits. Robust economic growth and full employment, if we can achieve it, will force employers to bid up wages. But the key to reversing inequality is strong unions. We pledge to fight for the right of workers to form unions and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits. Guaranteed labor rights should be complemented by action to lift the floor under every worker by guaranteeing a living wage, paid sick and vacation days, and affordable health care. We must curb CEO compensation policies that give executives personal incentives to plunder their own companies. And we should use the tax system to reward companies that pay their workers a decent proportion to what they pay their executives.
4. Opportunity and Justice for All
– With Focus on Communities Harmed by Racism.
Full employment should provide opportunity for all. But special attention must be invested in those communities harmed by the legacy of Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, deindustrialization, and destruction of the public sector.” Scapegoating on the basis of race, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation works to the detriment of us all and to the benefit of those minions of corporate and Wall Street power who would divide us. Neglected urban and rural communities, working people victimized by the worst economic and social effects of neoliberalism must be given targeted attention and investment. Fundamental reform of our criminal justice system, an end to mass incarceration, and targeted investment to areas of need are all central to meeting the promise of economic justice.
Establishing a fair and humane immigration policy that stops the criminalization of communities of color should be a top priority. Our immigration policy should put the sanctity of families at the forefront – grounded in human, civil, and labor rights. We cannot allow our communities to be divided by anti-immigrant and xenophobic hysteria. And we must all work hard to end the racism and xenophobia that have historically been used to divide America’s working class majority from working together to win economic justice and prosperity for all.
5. Guarantee Women’s Economic Equality
Until 1920 most women could not vote in federal and local elections. And until very recently, women’s economic rights — to own a business or even control wealth or property — were severely limited. We have now gone from a society in which women were expected to handle home and family work to one where women are expected to earn money in the workplace — and still take care of home, children, and family. We should guarantee that women earn the same pay, protections and opportunities as men in the workplace and in society – including strengthened laws for reporting and preventing sexual harassment. Women must also be guaranteed affordable health care and the right to make choices about their own health and reproduction. Families must have access to high-quality child care, and all women must be guaranteed paid leave from the workplace for childbirth, illness and vacation, and a secure retirement — with Social Security credit for work in the household.
6. High-Quality Public Education – Pre-K to University
Every young person must have the right to high-quality, free public education from preschool through college. Public education must be controlled by the public — not by corporations — and not by charter school hucksters who take public subsidies without assuming the responsibility to educate all kids, regardless of special needs. This requires that every community, in partnership with the Federal Government must have the financing necessary to strengthen public schools, providing the necessary basics – preschool, smaller classes, summer and after-school programs, and skilled, well-paid teachers with rights on the job. College education or skills training should be available without tuition at all public universities as a right of civic membership — as was the policy in many states in the 1950s and 1960s. Education should be a public good that benefits all of society, not a commodity that indentures students to debt. We call for a national student debt jubilee that will forgive the debt burden imposed upon several generations seeking an education. Free college and debt forgiveness will not only allow students and former students to live their lives without that burden, but it will also stimulate economic growth and unleash new civic activism.
7. Medicare for All
— And Shared Economic Security.
Health care is a right, not a privilege. And that requires moving to a Medicare for All universal public health care system. Our fight to defend Obamacare from Trump and his allies is a crucial first step to a promise of quality health care for everyone. In addition, America needs a more robust social insurance system. Every worker deserves a secure retirement— and we will work to create new pension systems, while we secure Social Security by “lifting the cap” that now exempts wealthy people from paying their fair share of Social Security taxes. We will strengthen and expand America’s shared security programs — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food support and housing assistance. No one in America should go hungry or homeless. Greater shared security makes the economy more robust by making our society more fair – and giving all people the confidence that comes from solidarity.
8. Make Corporations and Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share
Our public investment/growth and justice agenda requires tax revenues. Yet the corporations and the rich do not pay their fair share in taxes — even though they pocket the greatest benefits from public investments. Our tax code rigs the rules to favor the few. Multinationals pay lower tax rates than small domestic businesses. Billionaire investors pay lower rates than their secretaries. Top income tax rates have been lowered even as working people face ever-higher sales taxes and fees. It is time for the rich and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. It is time to shut down the tax havens and tax dodges that enable companies to avoid taxes altogether. We should lift the cap on Social Security taxes, so rich people pay the same percentage of their income as the rest of us. We should tax the income of investors at the same rates we tax income from work. We need clear, simple, progressive corporate and individual taxes, closing loopholes and exemptions. And a tax on financial transactions and can produce significant revenues. A fair tax system will allow us to invest in an economy that will work for all.
9. A Global Economic Strategy for Working People
Our global trade and tax policies have been created for and by multinational companies. We must renegotiate trade deals and rethink tax policies that benefit the already-wealthy, while they encourage the export of whole American industries, drive down pay and worker protections, and harm the environment. We need more but balanced trade, and global standards that protect the rights of workers, consumers and the environment. That requires a crackdown on tax havens, currency manipulation, and deals that allow corporations to trample basic labor rights here and abroad. Finally, we need new policies that allow us to help existing US industries, by having our government buy American, policies that are now outlawed by trade deals. And we need active investment policies that grow new cutting-edge industries, like green energy systems.
Our current national security policies commit us to policing the world. The result costs lives and drains public resources. We need a real security policy that makes military intervention a last resort, and focuses on global threats like climate change, poverty and inequality. We should reduce military budgets and properly support humanitarian programs.
10. Close Wall Street’s Casino
Financial deregulation has devastated our economy and protected banks that are too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to jail. The financial casino fosters ever more dangerous speculation, while investment in the real economy lags. The resulting booms and busts devastate families and small businesses. We need to break up the big banks, levy a speculation tax, and provide low-income families with safe and affordable banking services. We should crack down on payday lenders and other schemes that exploit vulnerable working families, offering instead safe and inexpensive banking via the postal system.
11. Rescue Democracy from the Special Interests
Big money has corrupted our democracy. Some might say democracy is not part of an economics agenda. But the same financial elites and corporations that buy and sell politicians use that political power to rig the economy so the top .01 percent gets massively richer while incomes decline for the rest of us. The Citizens United decision gave corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. We pledge to reverse it, through a constitutional amendment, if necessary. We will stop the attack on voting rights which has escalated to just as a new majority of people of color, young people and working women has begun to exercise new power. We will fight for public financing of elections that bans corporate and big money – and for electoral reforms, like public matching of small donations, so people’s candidates to compete with the candidates of the plutocrats. Finally, we pledge to change national and local political party structures so that progressive candidates get a fair shake in the nominating process and in general elections. And we will build a new progressive majority that can take back our democracy and our economic system.
To: America
From: [Your Name]
I join with others to sign the Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity, and Economic Justice.
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