September 29th, 2018 Party Conference

Platform Discussion

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

What to focus on going forward? Discussion

networking with other organizing

• masscann / aclu
• massmesh

open disc with rival interests

• healthy debate
• who dont agree
• who agree
• focus on: discussion vs. an argument

communications -- a platform milestone

• not just irc..
• get on and become members, and discuss.
• is it riot chat? is it tech?
• geography is important, using librarys (or other) for meetups
• Proposed: October Democracy tech meet
• evaluate catagories/features of a given solution
• discord
• hangouts
• riot
• catagories
• voting
• video/voice conference
• streaming
• barrier to participate

observations: what do we focus on?

• most pressuring issue concerning you
• net neutrality, housing
• drm
• sex worker rights && expanding piraten party
• immigration, school, community
• housing
• policing, accountability, body cams
• inequality, fair access to resources re: food justice