WHEN the Democrats screw the Obama nomination at the convention you will want and need alternatives. Here is one alternative.
Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthis McKinney, running for the Green Party presidential nomination in 2008, has published a manifesto of her values as a candidate. Following are her positions in opposition to the oppression that is the war on drugs and against the United States of America’s authoritarian prison industrial complex.
| Green Party candidate  Cynthia McKinney |
What We Want; What We Believe; What We Need. Now!
Draft Manifesto for a Reconstruction Party
>Note: This Draft Manifesto was produced by a group of Reconstruction Party activists who met in New Orleans on Saturday, Jan. 26 in support of the International Days of Action against Neo-Liberalism. This draft is being submitted for wide discussion and amendments to all activists interested in joining the effort to build a Reconstruction Party. Sister Cynthia McKinney participated in this meeting and contributed to this Draft Manifesto.
| 6. We Want an End to the War on Drugs Now!
We want an end to unequal justice in this country! We want an end to toxic spraying and military deployments in other countries. We want an end to the assault on our civil liberties. We want an end to the lies of the U.S. government around its own participation in the spread of drugs into poor communities in this country. We want an explanation of why a CIA rendition aircraft crashed in Yucatan with 3.2 tons of cocaine on board. After the crack cocaine epidemic and what we now know of U.S. government complicity therewith, we want to know if the U.S. government is fighting or fueling the use of drugs in its so-called War on Drugs. We believe that the war on drugs provides cover for U.S. military intervention in foreign countries, particularly to our south, and that this increased militarization is used to put down all social protest movements in countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, and elsewhere. We believe that unequal justice is epitomized in the U.S. prosecution of the so-called War on Drugs. We believe that the United States has the most expensive, most repressive, least effective drug policy in the industrialized world. And it is this drug war that has helped the United States incarcerate a higher percentage of its own people than any other country in the world. We believe that the War on Drugs is waged largely against the poor and the resultant massive incarceration serves the profitmotive of prisons whose stocks are traded on Wall Street. The War on Drugs has become a war on truth, taxpayers, civil liberties, and higher education for the poor and middle class, and sadly, it has also become a war on treatment, addicts, and reason. We need an end to mandatory minimum drug sentences. We need a budget focused on prevention and treatment. The law should include legal regulation of drugs. We need legalization of industrial hemp as a cash crop. We need drug laws based on the truth. According to the drug policy reform group Efficacy, from 1984 to 1996, California built 21 new prisons, and 1 new university. California state government expenditures on prisons increased 30% from 1987 to 1995, while spending on higher education decreased by 18%. This trend is echoed in every state of the nation. Clearly, we need a drug policy that is based on truth, compassion, prevention, and treatment. We need laws that franchise citizens of the United States without regard to incarceration status. No non-violent drug offender should suffer permanent or temporary disfranchisement of voting and other citizenship rights due to entanglement in the current system of criminal injustice. We need to end the funding of Plan Colombia and Plan Mexico and other militarized “plans” enacted that fund and support a failed drug policy at home and abroad. 7. We Want to End Prisons for Profit Now! We want an end to privatization of prisons and prison health services. We want an end to the racism that serves as an engine of growth for a profitdriven prison system. We want an end to prison labor schemes that are little more than corporate subsidies that provide little training or rehabilitation for inmates. We want reconciliation, transformation, preparation, rather than incarceration based on retribution and vengeance. We do not want race and class to serve as the primary determinants of punishment. And we want an end to the death penalty. We believe that the prison-industrial, criminal injustice complex of today still operates in many respects as a vestige of slavery. And just as punishment was meted out disparately for Blacks and whites during slavery, these conditions persist today. For example, in the state of Virginia, a white person could only be sentenced to death for murder, but slaves could be sentenced to death for 71 offenses. Today, according to “Minding the Gap,” despite higher drug use by White Illinois teens, African American youth who make up 15.3% of Illinois’s youth population, are 59% of youth arrested for drug crimes, 85.5% of youth automatically transferred to adult court, 88% of youth imprisoned for drug crimes, and 91% of youth admitted to state prison. Disparities permeate the system from the laws enacted, to those who enact the laws, to those who enforce and interpret them. Paul Street reports in Black Agenda Report, “one in three Black males will be sent to state or federal prison at some point in their lives compared to one in six Latino males and one in seventeen white males.” Writer Tim Wise writes, “According to FBI data, the percentage of crimes committed by African Americans has remained steady over the past 18 years, while the number of Blacks in prison has tripled and their rates of incarceration have skyrocketed.” Clearly, it is time to rethink prison policy and the criminal justice system upon which it rests. Just as prisons for profit underscored profitmaximizing strategies, we need to explore new terrains for justicemaximizing policies, including prison abolition. We need public policy solutions that focus on reconciliation and restorative justice. Racism should not be rewarded with profits. |
Cross posted from ALeftIndependent blog
Republican party workers.
A vote for Cynthia is a vote for McCain.
Your more Republican than I will ever be.
Its Demopublicans like you that reaffirm the rightness of my leaving the Democratic Party.
As long as people like you prove that there is no difference between the Democrats and Republicans I need say nothing at all to make my point. Thanks for the help.
What a thug you are. A bully and a thug.
The Democratic Party marginalizes and tries to evict people with views like McKinney. If you agree with her on this and other issues, there is really no place for you in the Democratic Party.
Personally, I’m through voting for Democrats. They don’t represent my views, and there’s no point in my giving them my vote anymore.
So, be honest. Just say that you are voting for McCain.
A vote for McKinney is a vote against choice, for war with iran, for 100 years in Iraq. She has no chance of winning, and you divert votes from the Democrat.
Pro-choice?
Pro-public schools?
if you answer any of these honestly, you must vote democratic.
I agree honesty is important. And I honestly am not voting for McCain, or for a Democrat. I only have one vote, and I honestly don’t want to give it to somebody who doesn’t speak for me.
I think that the Democrats have spectacularly failed the nation over the past 7 years. Everything that Bush did — the war in Iraq, the destruction of the US economy, the state security apparatus, the right-wing judiciary — was all accomplished because the Democrats couldn’t be troubled to stand up and say “NO”. And I’m supposed to reward these jokers? And when somebody in the party like McKinney did stand up and did oppose the Administration, they were shunned, and in McKinney’s case essentially kicked out of the party.
I’m not voting for any Republicans, but I’m sure not voting for any Democrats either. Not any more. Honestly.
and you are lying to yourself.
A vote for a green is a vote for a republican.
The Greens are really really stupid. We had this conversation in 2000. Many greens seem as stupid as boxes of fucking rocks.
Voting for Greens is voting for Republicans.
When was the last time you heard a mainstream Democrat attack the War on Drugs?
The War of Drugs has not ended drug use in America, or made much progress at doing so. It has landed many thousands of people in jail for ridiculously terms at ridiculously lavish levels of government expense. And the people who get thrown in jail are highly disproportionately blacks, although there is little difference between blacks and whites in actual percentages of drug users.
So if you want to end the War of Drugs, does it do any good at all to vote for a Democrat?
You can call me whatever names you like. It’s not going to get me to buy what you’re selling.
A vote for McKinney will make drug laws worse.
We live in a 2-party system. A vote for a 3rd party candidate is a vote for the candidate you do not like.
If you don’t understand that, you’re simply an idiot. And I don’t argue with idiots.
I’m tired of being told I only have two choices, when that obviously isn’t true.
If only you were right, and the Green Party carried the idiot vote, they’d have a chance of winning this thing.
You are a hate mongering demagogue. A typical thug Democrat.
People like you are what drove me out of the Democratic Party.
Voting for Jim Crow Democrats who I know will then spit in my face is no different from voting for Republicans who I know will then spit in my face.
Screw them all.
I vote for candidates who reflect and respect my pluralistic values for America. If the Democrats want to WIN my vote the need to respect and reflect my social justice values rather than spit on them as Democrats have done my whole life.
We went thru all this crap in 2000. The Nader MORONS all said “Oh, a vote for Ralph the FUCKING ASSHOLE is a vote for purity. Al will win.” Well, Al didn’t win, and we are now in Iraq.
And you FUCKING GREEN BOZOS are STILL at it with your FUCKING GREEN BULLSHIT. Take that SHIT and SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASSHOLES.
I don’t want a war with Iran. I don’t want President McCain.
Petulant much, screamer?
How come you don’t rile at the 300,000 DEMOCRATS in Florida who voted for Bush in 2000?
How come Democrats and Gore refused to participate in the law suits against the purging of hundreds of thousands of minority voters from the Florida voter rolls?
No! Instead you attack the people who have more social justice values than you do. You look, act and sound like a Republicans demanding the votes of Americans who you, CLEARLY from your writing here, have nothing but contempt for.
When the Democrats reflect and respect my social justice values I will support them. Democrats today, with you are a leading indicator, absolutely do not reflect or respect my values.
Your just a bunch of Jim Crow thugs.