2020 Platform Discussion

Platform Topics

Need to integrate these from the Boston meeting

• Housing first
  • everyone has a place to live, providing stability and improving state of mind
  • not solely focusing on people who are homeless, but recognizing the increasing cost of housing
• Education reform (but not the neoliberal kind)
  • Fix the infrastructure of our schools
  • Use technology (only where needed?)
  • Centering on student empowerment and help for students to succeed at what they are good at and support them where they have challenges
• Criminal justice
  • reducing policing and incarceration
  • Increasing harm reduction policies.
  • Less punishment, more restorative justice

Quality Health care for all including dental and mental health care (expanded medicare for all)

• Implement community based mental health and wellness programs for those who need it
• We are already paying for everyone
• Merge VA into Medicare for All
• Cuts administrative costs and profits of the private system
• Retrain administrative workers if needed
• Negotiate drug and other medical prices
• Impose consistent prices
• Using compulsive licensing of patents for drugs
• Ending evergreen patents
• Having better funding for drug research that shifts reward system to target health problems not profits
• Better research into the effectiveness of drugs

Education

• Putting Students First
• Innovation in funding that reduces per student disparities in funding. Raising the bottom
• Encouraging critical thinking
• Maximizing the tools available to teachers
• Empowering teachers

Criminal Justice

• Decriminalizing victimless crimes
• Focus on restoration, rehabilitation & education not punishment
• End Civil asset forfeiture
• Fair principles and wages for prison labor
• No disenfranchisement of prisoners. No taxation without representation
• Adequately fund pubic defenders
• Community policing & end arrest/citation quotas
• No private prisons
• Train police in conflict resolution, make them peace officers not police officers
• Make police files public automatically
• No privacy for police while on the job
• End cops being above the law
• Do not break the law to enforce the law

Workers Rights

• Pro-union, card check not vote
• OSHA on every work site including government. Keep safe for all involved.

Public Transportation

• Fund MBTA and other public bus systems so they can expand quality, reliability and service
• Maintain roads so they are safe
• End tolls & surveillance on the Pike, Tobin bridge and Boston tunnels

Government Funding and Taxation

• Use systems thinking and true accounting

Housing & Homelessness

• We have an affordability problem
• More cost effective to provide housing for people who are homeless
• Incentivize keeping housing owned by people in the community, not for use as a speculative investment
  • Transaction tax paid by non-occupants?
• Improve renters rights: better recourse
  • Fund outreach to renters and owners about their rights and obligations

Drugs

• End the drug war: Decriminalize ala Portugal. Focus on addiction as a public health issue.
• Fund Needle exchange programs and programs to help people to deal with addiction
• Treat addiction as a disease not a crime
• Continue to support the legalization of cannabis and its use for those it helps
• End drug testing for government programs

National Security

• End TSA: No more security theater
• End the wars

Data Privacy: Protecting the privacy of the individual, not the state.

• Discard information once you are done processing it.
• What of GDPR should be here? Not right to be forgotten.
• Stop gathering of license plate/surveillance data or expire after X weeks. Do not share with private entities.
• Retain public data locally.
• Body/police surveillance camera data must be available by the accused at a minimum

Economy

• People first; end corporate subsidies
• Measure the people’s economy, not the stockmarket
• Honest accounting that measures the true benefits and costs of the commonwealth
  • Use these metrics to make better judgements about government policy
• Government policy should promote competition not monopoly

Right of Repair/You own what you purchased

• Software/media you paid for and download cannot be revoked
• Cannot deny someone legal process using software.
• Lock you out of your house/reposes your car w/o legal decision
• Should not be a felony to modify or examine the software/hardware you purchased
• Companies should not be able to take back stuff you already paid for
• Copyrighted works should eventually become part of the public commons (No Mickey Mouse Law)

FOIA

• All data paid for by the public should be on-line and machine readable/searchable (with personal privacy exceptions)
  • That includes all branches of government
  • No scanned documents without OCR
• Reduce the time for agencies to respond to requests to 10 days
• Consolidate oversight and enforcement of FOIA into one separate agency
  • Under gov appointed by gov/elected by the people? (look at OCPF?)
  • Change from legal process to automatic fines for when out of compliance of the law
  • Use fines pay for bringing agencies into compliance technologically
    • This saves tax payers money, simplifies the process
  • Agency would have regulatory power and can set guidelines/rules (technologies/vendors that have worked)
  • Agency can review rules/tech of other agencies and call them out accountable for non-compliance

Immigration

• Make Massachusetts be a sanctuary state
• Abolish ICE
• Establish a path to citizenship for all immigrants
• No taxation without representation; limited voting rights
• Should be a judicial process for deportation with true due process
• Honor agreements regarding asylum seekers and treat them with dignity and due process
• Streamline process to move from one student to worker visa status
• Immunity (amnesty?) for immigrants reporting crime

https://masspirates.org/wiki/March_10th,_2019_Boston_Regional_Meeting https://masspirates.org/wiki/September_29th,_2018_Party_Conference

Platform Order

What would we implement in our first 100 days of achieving power?

• Citizen surveys of police and school systems and municipal government (13 and older)
• End solitary confinement
• Fair pay for fair work (even prisoners)
• Open government additions
  • Removing exemptions of the open meeting law for all three branches of government
  • Actual enforcement of open meeting law and FOIA
  • All data paid for by the public should be on-line and machine readable/searchable (with personal privacy exceptions) That includes all branches of government
  • No scanned documents without OCR
  • All bills have to be voted on in committee
  • All votes have to list who the individual votes
  • Reduce the power of house speaker/senate president
  • Remove legislative loopholes (no votes in out of session periods). Spell out limits on emergency sessions.
  • Require bills only include content relevant to the original purpose of the bill
  • Expand whistleblower protections (suggested after the meeting)
• Full decriminalization of private consensual activities and implement effective harm reduction strategies.
• Change the law to use IRV/RCV
• Fully fund the MBTA and all public transit systems
• Pass net neutrality bill
• Have a mock budget with taxes and spending
  • Include money for energy conservation fund
  • Solar credit?
• Close the fusion centers
• Stop any support for ICE and other related agencies. Prohibit county sheriffs from helping ICE
• Try to increase competition in oligopolies esp. media
• Promote training for creating cooperative operations and tomorrow’s leaders (e for all?)

What would we implement in our first year of achieving power?

• Restorative justice approach for minors
• Implementing changes based on survey results
• Within the first year exonerate and wipe records of all private consensual crimes
• Basic right education
• Fund the development of public transit in Mass.
• Development of high speed broadband in Mass.
• License requirement
  • law students have to teach kids their rights
  • psychology students to help homeless
• Education
  • Expand financial decision making/responsibilities education
  • Teaching labor rights and struggles
  • Bring back home economics and food preparation
• Require state (MEMA) and municipalities do a climate change/storm risk assessment
  • Must include food security, housing, transportation

What would we implement longer term?

• Decentralize federal/state government to county/regions and municipalities
  • Reconstitute county governments to make them elected and able to solve regional problems
• Removal of laws that no longer apply especially if they are harmful to individual rights
• Expand the ballot initiative and direct democracy. Institute a people’s veto