December 22nd, 2013 Issue Meeting

Notes from a discussion on the pirate party platform:

We should take a position against austerity.

We should take a position for prison reform. In particular, it's a travesty when we privatize prisons, and write minimum occupancy rates into the contract. This leads to unnecessary incarceration, and leads to poor treatment of inmates for the sake of profit.

We should take a position against the war on drugs. Different demographics (white, black, latino) use drugs at roughly the same rates. People incarcerated for drug crimes are predominantly black. (see Michelle Alexander's The new Jim Crow). Today's drug laws are just a form of racial discrimination. Enforcement of drug laws is highly selective.

We should support universal broadband access. There are many places in the US (and even places in Massachusetts) where broadband access is limited.

We can't have a competitive economy if a sizable chunk of our population doesn't have access to good education, good housing, and good healthcare. As a society, there should be a floor that no one falls beneath.

See http://itep.org/ for information on demographics and taxes.