The Democratic National Convention starts on July 24, 2016. But it’s not the only convention in Philly. And it with won’t be the only organization voting on a platform. Because if you want a platform for real progressives (and not the once every four year ones) to run on, you should ask the people what they want and let them vote on it.
And that is exactly what The People’s Convention, to be held in the historic Arch Street Meeting House in Philadelphia on July 23rd, is all about. Today, as we speak, ordinary citizens, some of them delegates for Bernie Sanders, but many of them people who are simply fed up with our current sham democracy where both parties represent the interests of the 1 percent, are working to draft their own platform, one based on the concerns of the 99 percent.
The People’s Convention will be open to the public, and everyone will have the right to vote to ratify it. Here is a short list of policies that people voted for in an online poll to include in the People’s Platform: Getting Big Money Out of Politics; Racial Justice; Healthcare for All; Climate Change; A Living Wage; College for all and Student Debt Relief; Income and Wealth Inequality and Electoral Reform (ending voter suppression laws and expanding the right to vote).
But why have a platform by the people, for the people and of the people? That’s not just a rhetorical question and to answer it let me quote from the May 31st press release by the organizers of the event:
The People’s Convention is a pro-democracy event intended to set the stage for a new era of people-powered politics. Our plan is the ratification of a collectively written People’s Platform. This platform will consist of the issues which are most pressing to our country’s civic health.
We also hope to create a space for grassroots organizers and organizations to network and build relationships. This networking should establish the foundation of an ongoing movement intended to transform American politics for the better.
The marches and rallies planned for July 24-28, are all fine and good, but they won’t have any lasting effect unless the political revolution that Bernie Sanders has helped inspire transforms itself into a viable, sustainable movement, one that can influence our politics at all levels, from the local to the national. It can’t rely on one individual. Bernie himself has said repeatedly, real change can only come from the bottom up, not the top down.
The webpage for the People’s Convention emphasizes the importance of creating a grassroots platform if we want to sustain a progressive political movement:
The People’s Convention in Philadelphia [is] a grassroots attempt to reclaim our democracy by uniting behind a common policy framework, rather than a personality or party. Leading up to our first People’s Convention this summer, grassroots organizers from around the country will work together to formulate a People’s Platform: a unifying set of ideas, beliefs, and values that will help define the movement.
This platform will also serve as a critical mechanism to hold elected officials accountable; public representatives who pledge to uphold this platform, but fail to do so through their votes and other public behaviors, will no longer be eligible to seek endorsement or support from The People’s Revolution.
As Jack Pollack, one of the co-founders of the organization, The People’s Revolution, which is focused on making the The People’s Convention a reality, said In These Times, the whole point is to insure that the movement sparked by Bernie doesn’t end with Bernie:
The People’s Revolution envisions “Bernie without the Bernie,” says Jack “Jackrabbit” Pollack, who in October cofounded the group with fellow Sanders organizer Shana East. “What Bernie has shown us is that you can actually rally people around a set of policies that are really all going in a positive direction.”
The People’s Revolution sees Sanders as a critical partner in building a broad issues-based progressive movement to ensure the promise of the campaign—“A Future to Believe In”—becomes a reality. At the People’s Convention, the group plans to develop and ratify a People’s Platform to present to the Democratic National Convention and set an agenda for the broader movement.
That’s right, actual Bernie Sanders’ delegates will present this platform on the floor at the Democratic National Convention. Indeed, many of Sanders’ pledged delegates are already involved in helping to draft the planks of the People’s Platform. But they aren’t the only ones.
Anyone can go to The People’s Convention website and sign up to help out, and you don’t need to live in Philadelphia to be involved. This is a nationwide effort in which anyone can participate. Even of you can’t attend the People’s Convention in Philadelphia, you can be involved in helping draft the platform, or spreading the word by volunteering for the Communications, Press and Social Media working groups. Or help out with fundraising.
So, who is behind this effort? I thought you’d never ask.
Jack Pollack is a long standing activist for progressive organizations. Here is his bio:
Jackrabbit Pollack is a founding member of Interoccupy.net, affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2012, he participated in the grassroots disaster relief to hurricane Sandy known as Occupy Sandy. He has provided logistical support for groups fighting for racial justice such as SURJ, Ferguson Action, and Movement for Black Lives. In April of 2015, he began work as one of the core members of People for Bernie with whom he worked through July.
And here is bio of his co-founder, Shana East:
Shana East is a grassroots organizer located in Chicago, Illinois. Last year she began her foray into electoral politics, working on Chuy García’s mayoral campaign team. She then went on to be a founding member of People for Bernie, before co-founding the volunteer-run Illinois for Bernie and The People’s Revolution along with partner Jackrabbit Pollack in summer 2015. More recently, she was the Illinois Digital and Volunteer Coordinator on Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign.
I support the People’s Convention. I’m a volunteer working to spread the word on blogs, reddit and other forms of social media. I urge you to share this post on Facebook, or on Twitter, Instagram, reddit or on your own blog. If you belong to a progressive organization or volunteer group for Bernie, your organization can become a sponsor of the People’s Revolution to network and cross promote each others events.
But even more than that, I urge you to make a tax deductible donation so that everyone who wants to attend the People’s Convention, even homeless people, can do so free of any charge.
Your tax deductible donation doesn’t have to be all that large to make a difference. I donated $10 when I signed up, but any amount, large or small, is welcome. Here is the link to their donation page: Donate to the People’s Convention
The primaries are coming to a close soon. Bernie will be taking his campaign to the Democratic Convention. But we need to bring our revolution to Philadelphia as well, and not just by marching and attending rallies, but by working together through a truly democratic process to craft a set a principles, policies and values that we can all get behind. The People’s Convention is a critical step in reclaiming our democracy from the 1 percent that has hijacked our political process by buying the support of politicians in both major parties. I ask for your help in any way you can, from volunteering, spreading the word or donating whatever amount you can, in order to make The People’s Convention a success.
Thank you for your time,
Steven D
At some point during the 1930s 0r 1940s, the labor movement and the Democratic Party had the fusion of an outside movement and an inside-the-party movement that brought a good part of the labor movement inside the Democratic Party and created a long-term Democratic majority in the Congress.
A similar thing happened between 1946 and 1980 in the Republican Party. In 1968, the YAFers were absorbed into junior levels of the Nixon administration. In 2000, they became key figures in the Bush administration.
How movements get their agendas absorbed into major parties’ big tents instead of being completely co-opted is a key tactical discussion in progressive circles, some of whom are loyal Democrats.
Having the two conventions understand each other instead of unleashing the police to suppress the “outsiders” is the key to Democratic victory in November. Are the major players big enough to understand this and to make it happen. Undoing the current political crisis depends on it.
One thing that needs to be emphasized is that H. Clinton is the most pro-war candidate still standing.
Of course, since the sixties it’s been pretty much bipartisan warring with a few exceptions by congressional Dems here and there.
A recent review of the Russian press shows that they are afraid that H. Clinton will start WWIII. I’ve seen a half dozen articles alluding to this over the last few weeks.
In yesterday’s speech Hillary said that Trump can’t be trusted with the nuclear football. But he’s not really a threat, certainly not without the backing of the military-industrial complex, and they are nowhere to be seen on Trump’s bandwagon. And Bernie’s lack of foreign policy, except to say that other countries should be fighting their own wars and that a number of wars connected to Hillary have been unsuccessful (unless success is defined by creating failed states) is not very warlike.
However, since she helped writing pro-Vietnam speeches for Melvin Laird in 1968, Hillary has been onboard with just about every war that America has fought.
Ponder if Clinton is our next president: Aside from her general tough militaristic generalities, she keeps talking about imposing a “no-fly zone” over Syria. Has anyone wondered what would happen if Clinton got her wish?
First off, Clinton has been calling for a “no-fly zone” long before Russia got involved. For the years prior to the Soviet intervention on behalf of Assad ISIS (and the other Sunni gangs like al-Nusrah) have been flourishing. It turns out that Erdogan’s son had a big money-making trade going with ISIS, weapons and more ISIS recruits moving south from Turkey and large caravans of trucks carrying crude oil from ISIS-controlled oil sites north into Turkey, where Erdogan’s son took control. Much if not most of those supplies to ISIS from the House of Saud and the Sunni gulf states traveled the same route. US weaponry that predictably falls into the rebels’ hands seems to have come from Lebanon as well as across the Turkish border.
All of that changed when Russia began flying sorties in Syria. The border of Turkey, while not hermetically sealed, is not supplying the steady support for ISIS and al-Nusrah. Since last fall al-Nusrah and ISIS have been suffering military defeat after military defeat.
So back to the original question: What happens when H. Clinton imposes a “no-fly zone” over Syria? Will Russia pack up its airbases and go home? Will Syria stop bombing ISIS? Of course not. That means that those people worried about Trump’s ego should look to Hillary’s.
If her “no-fly zone” is the same as what exists today, then she will have backed down, allowing Russia to control events in Syria. If American jets take out a few Russian jets, though, what will be Russia’s reaction? We know that after Turkey shot down a Russian plane the Russians moved in S-500 antiaircraft missiles, very competent weapons, maybe the best antiaircraft missiles around today. Good enough to knock out any planes over Syria and southern Turkey.
So we will have a shooting war against a nuclear military power. Despite Obama’s soft-peddling, NATO has been moving troops and mechanized armor units along the Baltic states’ borders with Russia. There are US anti-ballistic missile sites in Poland and Romania. Mutual Assured Destruction is being replaced, and its replacement suggests that the Strangeloves who run our country are willing to bet we could win a nuclear war. How does that make the Russians feel? Does Clinton make a counterthrust at the Russians in Syria if she shoots down Russian jets and they retaliate? Do some “renegade” Nazis from Ukraine cross the border into Russia? The US has been arming Salafists since the Mujahadeen and bin Laden began getting SAMs from the US during the late seventies. The Chechen “rebellion” turns out to have been the US (and their allies the Sauds) giving the bloodthirsty lot there weapons and aid for terrorist attacks in Chechnya. The Boston Marathon bombers seem to be some kind of blowback from the CIA’s work in that region. In short, the Russians have spent the last twenty years or so stamping out brushfires that the US has set around them. Will H. Clinton escalate, whether or not there’s a confrontation in the skies over Syria?
Decades ago there were two prevailing theories on how the US should handle the old Soviet Union. There was the “containment policy”, that is, carve out the world between us and the Russians and not interfere with each other’s spheres of influence. The competing philosophy, which has become US policy for some time now, has been to “rollback” Communism wherever it is.
America has still been in “rollback” mode since the fall of the Soviet Union, suggesting that Communism wasn’t the ultimate goal of American foreign policy. As each war unfolds, as each regime change occurs, it appears obvious that the US’s military goal has been to control the world’s energy supplies, to include the massive oil and gas deposits in Russia and the former Soviet nations in Central Asia.
One can point to each military move and see it as another move to isolate Russia and gain control of the world’s energy.
It’s not just oil and gas, it’s the means to move the energy from source to destination that is part of the US strategy. Iraq would seem obvious, but what about Syria, Ukraine or Afghanistan, where there are no appreciable energy deposits? Russia supplies a lot of natural gas to Europe. A fair share of that crosses via pipelines across Ukraine. Europe is a big market for energy. Understand?
Afghanistan is a little less obvious. While Afghanistan has no oil to speak of, it is between that big pool of oil in Central Asia and the growing market in India and Southeast Asia. During Carter’s administration Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski was behind arming the Mujahadeen against the Soviets there. Fifteen years later Brzezinski was heading the Unocal plans for a pipeline from Turkmenistan through Afghanistan and Pakistan to India, where Western (American) corporations were relocating our factories and jobs. Those negotiations broke down between the US and the Taliban in the summer of 2001. The rest, as they say, is history.
Syria has some, but not much oil and gas compared to countries to its east. In 2011 Syria had a choice of pipelines to run across its territory to the Mediterranean and Europe. There was one offer by Qatar, to send its natural gas across newly conquered Iraq to Syria and perhaps up to Turkey on the way to Europe. Instead, Assad chose a pipeline from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, to the Mediterranean.
2011 marks the point in history where the House of Saud, Qatar and other Sunni states began, with Washington’s approval and aid, to supply what became ISIS with weaponry, money and a recruitment program for Sunni radicals to fight a “holy war” in Syria.
H. Clinton seems to have been onboard with the rollback strategy since 1968. How much farther will she roll back before Russia shoots back?
Actually not true;
Trump only needs ONE person to agree with him to launch a nuclear war.
The Secretary of Defense.
That’s it. If Trump says fire, and the Sec of Def agrees we are in a nuke war.
BTW Donald Trump will get to name who he wants in that position, and he just might pick somebody like John Bolton.
Would a republican controlled senate say no?
Trump in the white house is much scarier if you game out how the situation could very well unfold.
Given how unreliable he is at keeping his word when making deals, do the republicans think he wouldn’t go back on any agreement he made to get the nomination and party backing before the election, After he wins and is sworn in? Cause that is what they are betting on, in the deals they are trying to strike up with him before the convention.
After the convention they have bound their futures to him and his word.
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Hillary as president might scare you, but Trump presidency is a nightmare for most rational people.
And NO, I do not think she nor the people around her will try to start another war.
They already have five separate countries involved in shooting wars within their borders, they can play with right now, and a few teetering on the brink of civil war. They can push SOF into both current and future wars to gain a better outcome for their neo-liberal patrons.
A full scale shooting war especially with Putin isn’t a concern for me, because Putin cannot win that one, either on the battle field or at home. So he will not go there, and there is no advantage for her to be gained by going there either.
The smaller conflicts are good enough for the MIC right now, and those wars are where the resource spoils the neo-liberals need exist. South America is where I see Hillary trying to flex her military-political muscles. Putin care little about that, china on the other hand wouldn’t be pleased, but it currently doesn’t have the capability to project it’s force that far.
Yes a war hawk, but with a neo-liberal purpose, and blowing up the planet does not serve that purpose.
Most strategic thinkers can draw that conclusion from the German and Japanese attempts in the middle of the last century.
We both have thus no world wide wars since then from either side.
In this equation, Trump is the ONLY wildcard, and here he is even more dangerous to our democracy than even his supreme court picks might be.