December 4th, 2019 IRC Meeting

Platform Discussion

Platform Topics

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

Projects

Goals for Q1 2020:

• Organize meetups
• Organize election
• Organize Fundraiser(s)
• Organize candidate trainings
• Revise platform

Regional Meetings/Events

Leader: jokeefe

• Holyoke Meetup canceled
• Worcester meetup moved to Spring 2020.

Video Newsletter

Leader: Joseph

• Next pirate news recording?

Democracy and Dogfood (Tech)

Next meeting will be December 8th, 11am-1pm, Diesel Cafe, Somerville. Topics are:

• find discussion/voting system;
• update CCTV cameras to include older cameras outside North America we didn't include;
• write an app to record the location/ownership of CCTV cameras;
• set up torrents for PirateCon videos (creynolds);
• post remaining audio for PirateCon talks (srevilak).

Tabled Projects

Computer Donations

• jokeefe contacted friend who refurbishes computers for a non-profit
• Archived https://piratenpad.de/p/MassPiratesComputerDonations - move to wiki

FOSS Tutorials

Worcester farm group is interested in having some FOSS tutorials. Perhaps:

• how to do basic labels in GIMP,
• work through a few sample spreadsheets related to seed cost and
• similarly applicable real-world situations, depending on the needs of the group

Basically how to do graph design & product management with open source tools. Malt will put together a one paragraph description of what we need and we can mail it out to ask pirates to help.

Fight bills to make the Film Credit Permanent

H.2419 would make the film tax credit permanent. It is supposed to expire in 2023. The bill has 100+ signatures this time around. jokeefe will submit testimony.

Upcoming Events

• 12/8, 11am-1pm, Democracy and Dogfood (Tech) Meeting, Diesel Cafe, Somerville
• 12/3, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting,
• 12/10, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting, Democracy Center, Cambridge
• 12/17, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting, Encuentro 5, Boston
• 12/24, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting
• 1/?, 11am-1pm, Democracy and Dogfood (Tech) Meeting, ?
• 1/7, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting, ?
• 1/14, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting, Democracy Center, Cambridge
• 1/21, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting, Encuentro 5, Boston
• 1/28, 7-9pm, Mass MeshNet Tech Meeting
• Spring 2020, ?, Worcester Meetup
• Spring 2020, ?, Springfield Meetup
• Spring 2020, ?, Boston Meetup

Participants

Observers

• igel[m]
• davidd
• hvxgr
• Deffy
• haskal[m]
• MikaelaSuomalainen
• ChanServ