Every Revolution Needs a Convention Of, By & For the People (with video)

I don't know the best way to continue what the Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter and Bernie helped ignite, a true people's movement: a/k/a a People's Revolution. Do we work to change the Democrats from within or become an outside force for change? I just know one thing. We can't stop.

For myself, right now I'm working to create a People's Platform, a shared set of values and policies we can all unite behind, one voted and ratified at a People's Convention. In the following YouTube video, Jack Pollack, one of the principal organizers, has something important to tell you about what this event means and why you should get involved:

[video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu9IJl9jUzM&feature=youtu.be]

The People's Platform will be presented by Sanders delegates on the floor of the DNC for debate before the entire convention. It will also be used as an organizing tool for activists working to keep our movement alive. Whatever comes next, and no matter how many organizations arise after the DNC is done, progressives will still need to keep the fire burning, working to bring real change to our country and its undemocratic political system. The People's Platform will be employed to help unite as many of them as possible around a set of principles, values and policies that, no matter how each one of them intends to advance a progressive agenda, all can support.

Now some details on what You Can Do to Make this Event a Success.

The current issues that are going to be included as planks in the People's Platform, which were previously voted for in an online poll, include the following:

Getting Big Money Out of Politics
Racial Justice
Electoral Reform
A Living Wage
Income and Wealth Inequality
College for all and Student Debt Relief
Climate Change
Healthcare for All

Don't see an issue you care about included? Tell me about it in the comments and I will pass it along.

Better yet, here's a list of things you can do to make The People's Convention work:

1. Volunteer

Join a working group to help other like minded people with any of the following:

Communications / writing
Press / PR
Media creation
Social media
Outreach
Fundraising
Event structure
Event logistics
Website development
Volunteer coordination
People's Platform - development
Other

2. Draft your own Platform Plank

Maybe you would prefer to prepare your own draft on one of the issues, or on a issue important to you that us not listed above. No problem. If you join as a volunteer, you can submit your own draft, or, if not just send what you've written to Jack Pollack at jack@thepeoplesrevolution.org and/or Shana East at shana@thepeoplesrevolution.org.

All members of The People's Revolution will vote on each plank that is submitted. The one with the most votes will be included in the People's Platform to be presented at the People's Convention in Philadelphia, July 23rd. But you need to hurry. The final draft of the platform will be completed no later than June 30th.

4. Attend The People's Convention

If you are going to be in Philadelphia anyway, plan on going to the convention on July 23, 2016 – two days before the DNC Convention begins - at the Arch Street Meeting House (ASMH) at 320 Arch Street in Philadelphia, PA. This is the first major pro-democracy event in a week of rallies, marches, demonstrations and protests. It will help set the tone for what follows. Why attend? Here's why:

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.

For transportation options and directions go to this link.

3. Donate

The People’s Convention is sponsored by: The People’s Revolution, an initiative of InterOccupy – a fiscally sponsored project of the Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ). AFGJ a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

Donations are tax deductible and any amount, even as little as $1.00 would help defray the costs. I've donated already, and if you can send some of your hard earned cash to support this project it will be most appreciated.

4. Share this post on social media: Facebook, Twitter, reddit, etc.

It's easy to do. Copy the url to my essay and post it on your favorite social media sites. We all know traditional media will continue to ignore us. So, please, pass the word. This is a bottom up movement, and the more of us that participate, even in something as seemingly insignificant as sharing this on Facebook or Twitter, or emailing your friends, the better.

The bottom line: all we have is each other. If we want change we have to work for it. I am done working to elect more of the same politicians with the same corporate baggage who won't do what needs to be done to save our future. My plan is to work for changing the conversation we are having with one another. My plan is to work to enact policies that work for everyone, not just the 1 percent. I want real democracy, not the false facade that has be fostered upon us by our nation's two corrupt major political parties and a compliant mainstream media.

I believe The People's Convention is a very good place to start the next step of my journey at fighting to transform America into a better country. I ask you for your support of this worthy cause.

Thank you all for your time,

Steve Searls a/k/a Steven D
(Find me on Twitter @StevenDBT)

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Comments

I would add Drug Reform, treatment instead of incarceration.

And Prison Reform.

And abolish payday lenders and create Post Office banking.

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Steven D's picture

Thanks

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Steven D's picture

to include Drug reform, Prison reform and Payday Lenders.

What is post office banking?

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

If you google Bernie Sanders Post Office Banking, there are a lot of articles explaining it. (I'm not trying to be not nice here, just saying there is a lot to this that I don't think I'm capable of explaining in a great way as others have done.)

I picked this one:

Sanders: If you are a low-income person, it is, depending upon where you live, very difficult to find normal banking. Banks don’t want you. And what people are forced to do is go to payday lenders who charge outrageously high interest rates. You go to check-cashing places, which rip you off. And, yes, I think that the postal service, in fact, can play an important role in providing modest types of banking service to folks who need it.

...

In fact, Sanders’s idea is quite sensible. “Postal banking”—which just means that post offices run savings accounts, cash checks, and perform other basic financial services—is common in most of Asia and Europe, and only about 7 percent of the world’s national postal systems don’t offer some bank-like services. Postal banking is a really good way to reach people who haven’t had access to standard savings accounts. One estimate figures that more than 1 billion people have used post offices for making deposits.

...

The reason why this would be so useful in the U.S. is that somewhere between 20 and 40 percent of the population has to rely on check-cashing or payday-lending services, which in some places charge usurious rates that send people into spirals of recurring debt.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/bernie-sanders-lets-...

This is basic banking, nothing elaborate.

There are people who can't get a checking account, thus no debit card, and then have to pay a fee to get a pay-as-you-go credit card, keep refilling it and having to pay a fee. That's just one thing.

I can't say I'm an expert on this, but I can say that I'm very lucky that I don't have to deal with payday lenders or have to pay a fee just to get a credit card just to be able to order something online or make a credit card or checking account payment over the phone.

And there is another plus from this, not just helping people, but helping keep the Post Office system in place after the ridiculous law that the republicans passed that they have to have I think it's 5 billion in the bank in order to pay pensions and benefits (for people who haven't even been born yet.)

Frankly, I'm disappointed that Obama and the Dems didn't reverse that awful law while they had a majority in both Houses for a short time.

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Steven D's picture

Income Inequality plank. I will pass this along. Thanks

Steve

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Wink's picture

from 1911 until 1966 when congress, apparently, decided it was no longer necessary.
"Postal banking was America's most successful experiment in financial inclusion - a problem we face again today."
It's among the progressive causes that could easily be enacted (except for the objection from the RW). God forbid the Giant Banks see a little competition.

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the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.

but I think it's too many issues under one umbrella, especially the payday lenders because it includes all the poor and low income people of all colors, but the most important thing is that it gets addressed no matter under what topic.

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Steven D's picture

what say you?

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Sorry, I don't know... but just as long as it gets addressed.

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Add TPP and other foreign trade deal reform?

What Foreign policy issues should be added?

Or would it be best for the People's Platform to concentrate on domestic issues?

Cannabis of the Federal Controlled Substance Act list?

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Steven D's picture

The original issues were voted on by an online poll, which, admitttedly is not as inclusive as one would like.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Steven D's picture

If you have some ideas on a draft plank for these issues let me know.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Steven D's picture

could be slotted into plank on Income Inequality. I will pass along

Thanks

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

is huge in my book.

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from within and found that they were used up and tossed aside. We don't have the power that they did so change, in my view, will have to come from outside.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Steven D's picture

after Reagan beat down the air traffic controllers.

Plus Labor wasn't unified. Teamsters supported Reagan I believe.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

the Teamsters out and got his way. In my view it was a mistake because it took a major union out of the federation. In addition, the Teamsters were more militant that the Carpenters or many other craft unions and could easily have tipped the scales in labor's favor given the right circumstances, something the smaller trade unions could not.
And, yes, the first time the Teamsters supported Reagan - a mistake of course - a mistake even given that Carter was poison for industrial unions.
It's also worth remembering the Air Traffic Controllers were a Republican union and had a non-labor lawyer, F. Lee Bailey as their lead attorney and sometimes spokesperson.

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

Meteor Man's picture

and see what other issues concern them besides Racial Justice. Be right back.

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Meteor Man's picture

I checked in with Deacon and he confirmed that The Ten Point Program for racial justice presented by The Black Panthers in October of 1966 continues to be a determinitive outline of their goals:

What We Want
What We Believe
1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.
2. We want full employment for our people.
We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

. . .

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to supper, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

More at: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/bpp.html

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"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn

Infrastructure equals jobs.

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This is promising.

As to your question: We could try taking over the Democratic Party from within or we could try making the Green Party viable. Whatever we try, we have a better chance of success if we function together, almost a unit. My gut reaction is that working with the Greens is more realistic. Heck, if Bernie could not get a fair shake from the Party as one of its Presidential candidates....

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Steven D's picture

this year, in both Presidential and down ballot races, to have a chance to reform the party back to what it once represented. Otherwise inertia and the money flow will, in my opinion, make any effort to change the Dems from within an exercise in futility.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

By the time the oligarchy is ready to cede the Democratic Party to the peasants it's good name will have completely reached it's expiration date. Purulent and without any residual value.

Either merge with the Greens or start a People's Party, or a Democratic Socialist Party, or 99%er's Party. The Democratic party is over.

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Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all."
- John Maynard Keynes

IowanX's picture

Lambert here: Clinton’s presumptive nomination comes with a number of key policy decisions that liberals Clinton voters, Limousine Liberals and the Democratic Party that enables them must own “going forwards,” as we say:

1. Corruption. To protect Clinton, liberals have adopted the majority doctrine in Ctizens United: Only a quid pro quo is proof of corruption.

2. Transparency. To protect Clinton, liberals maintain that high government officials can, at will, privatize their communications to shield them from FOIA.

3. Militarism. To protect Clinton, liberals minimize her AUMF vote, ignore Libya, ignore Honduras, ignore Ukraine, and treat unwavering support for Israel as an unqualified good.

4. Health. To protect Clinton, liberals reject Medicare for All.

5. Working Class. To protect Clinton, liberals deny that there is or can be a working class electorate. The electorate is only to be viewed through the prism of identity politics. Two category errors follow: The “white working class” is deemed to be racist, by definition, and the non-white working class is erased. Consequently, it’s impossible to think through the universal effects of the FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) sector on the working class, nor its differential effects on particular working class identities. This is not an accident.

That’s quite a platform. And if you’re thinking the Democrat Party isn’t the Democratic Party you knew and loved, that’s not an accident either. This has been a wonderfully clarifying primary, for which I congratulate all the players.

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blazinAZ's picture

1. Reproductive and bodily rights: Protecting and expanding the rights to safe contraception and safe and legal abortion, self-determination for all people about their own bodies (including the right to use public bathrooms, the right to not be raped, and to walk unmolested and unharassed on the street). I want to see men involved in fighting against rape culture and for women's rights. Etc., etc.

2. Dismantling the war machine; starving the Dept of Defense, Homeland Security, and the military; closing military bases on foreign soil, eliminating the drone and targeted-kill programs -- while simultaneously providing high-quality services to the veterans who have been abused, spit out, and abandoned by the same machine. Etc., etc.

3. Prison abolition and disarming police; treatment or drug maintenance programs rather than incarceration; legalization of cannabis (at minimum, and maybe all drugs); community-based restorative justice rather than punitive reactivity; real consequences for police, elected officials, and rich people for their illegal, immoral actions. Etc., etc.

Let's do it!

blaze

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There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka

Steven D's picture

All Good. I will look for some way to get those added.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

blazinAZ's picture

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There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka

WindDancer13's picture

at minimum protecting social security and stepping away from making this a police state (surveillance, Patriot Act, etc.) Oops...almost forgot one that we absolutely can not do without...Protect the Internet! And where is stopping wars?

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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.--Aristotle
If there is no struggle there is no progress.--Frederick Douglass

Steven D's picture

Noted

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

IowanX's picture

This IS a good discussion to have, and frankly it's hard to boil down a "list" of "demands" that doesn't start looking like a Festivus Airing of Grievances. I think your post and the comments are all valuable. I want to add one more list into the mix, which overlaps quite a bit with the points above.

I've been reading Naked Capitalism for awhile, Yves Smith and NC's co-author, Lambert Strether of CCorrentewire, worked through a similar exercise, a couple of years ago, with a lot of reader feedback. Now their readers may not overlap completely with C99 readers, but based on their results, it's not a bad match. Here is their list:

The 12-Point Platform
1. A Living Wage
2. Medicare for All
3. Tax the Rich
4. Job and Income Guarantee
5. Debt Jubilee
6. Retirement Security
7. Post Office Bank
8. Free Public Education, K-16
9. Enforce the Bill of Rights
10. End the Wars
11. Clean Air, Water, Soil, and Food
12. Carbon Negative Economy

The 12 Reforms
1. Net Neutrality
2. Fairness Doctrine
3. Local Ownership of Media
4. Public Campaign Financing
5. Electoral Integrity
6. Self-Organizing Web-Based Citizen Deliberation
7. MMT Macro-Economic Policies
8. Preserve and Expand the Commons
9. More Co-operatives, Fewer Corporations
10. Justice Starts at the Top
11. Strategic Non-Violence
12. Points and Reforms Are Indivisible

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Steven D's picture

thanks

Steve

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

But several Bernie organizers and allies are also meeting in Chicago next week.

http://www.thepeoplessummit.org

There's definitely reason for optimism.

Beyond the moral argument, and an argument from the standpoint of delivering services in a more efficient and cost-effective manner -- e.g. in the case of Medicare for all, free public tuition and even Post Offices that provide banking in underserved communities -- all of these approaches have a secondary benefit in that they will reduce the amount of money in politics. This is part of the reason that there is so much resistance from industry groups.

In a round about way we are all paying for the lobbying that is being done against our interests. The checks may be written by those interests, but the funding comes from higher costs that are effectively passed along to all of us. They also get to keep the higher profits than they otherwise would in a political system that put people first.

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Steven D's picture

Several of the People's Convention folks will be there attending.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

elenacarlena's picture

climate change and switching to renewable energy immediately, racial justice and reforming laws and training regarding the police, and income inequality and a stronger safety net. You have these, but that's my vote.

One I don't see on here is education before college - as I understand it, schools are a mess - perhaps do away with all the testing or just use it as a guideline. Fund all schools equally and don't give any money to private schools, to stop resegregation. Children aren't learning, and all the things we had - art, music, even recess - have been taken away in the push for ever higher scores in core courses.

Also a national guaranteed basic income - the Holy Grail of progress, IMHO, no more worry about keeping a job and no more jumping through hoops to prove you "deserve" government help. If not that, then Housing First programs nationwide.

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blazinAZ's picture

I'm so glad you brought that up. It is clear to me that one of the best ways to help marginalized, oppressed, and impoverished people is to simply hand them money. Being poor takes a lot of work, and if people can have their basic needs met (e.g., Maslow's hierarchy) they then have time and energy to read and get educated, to make art, to grow their businesses, to run for office, to help others, to raise their children, and to do work that satisfies them.

If we gave $40,000 or $50,000 annually to every adult in the United States who currently makes less than that amount, it would still be vastly less money than we spend on the military, incarceration, food stamps, unemployment insurance, etc., etc.

Still hoping for a peaceful world,
blaze

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There is no justice in America, but it is the fight for justice that sustains you.
--Amiri Baraka