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GRAVEL 2020 PLATFORM

Fundamental Political Reform
ABOLISHING THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE
The Electoral College has been responsible for two Presidents within the last three
winning an election without winning a majority of the votes. This system of selecting
presidents was a tool originally created to suppress democracy; historically, it has
empowered slavers and segregationists. The injustice it has perpetuated continue today.
By distorting democracy, it values certain voters (i.e. Floridian Cuban-Americans, Iowa
farmers) over others (most obviously the huge proportion of the population who reside in
cities). The democratic option is direct election of the president.

The United States should:

● Abolish the Electoral College, moving to a system of direct election of the president.

MAKING ELECTIONS FAIR

American elections have been plagued by structural unfairness that has often advantaged
the party in power. From restrictive voter ID laws (such as the Wisconsin law sometimes
credited with delivering the state to Republicans in 2016) to the outright fraud
perpetrated in North Carolina in 2018, American elections have returned to the bad old
days of fraudulent elections like those held in Adams County, Ohio. For America to call
itself a true democracy, it must ensure total fairness in voting and in elections.

The United States should:

● Put all elections to federal offices (House, Senate, and presidential elections) under
congressional oversight. This would make the process of voting both uniform and
fair nationwide.
● Make all voting registration automatic for U.S. citizens upon turning 18.

NATIONAL RANKED CHOICE VOTING

Our current first past the post system of democratic elections does not ask for a majority
in order for a candidate to declare victory. Often times, voters will be asked to vote

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against their conscience and choose the “lesser of two evils.” Ranked choice voting, or
instant run-off voting, allows voters to rank candidates, giving their first vote to their
preferred candidate. A candidate can only assume victory with a majority of first-round
and run-off votes, making every vote count.

The United States should:

● Institute a ranked choice voting procedure for any and all elections currently
functioning on the First Past the Post system, ensuring that the candidate that
people actually want wins, rather than whoever happens to be a better
representation of the establishment.
● Ensure a candidate can only assume victory with a majority of first-round and run-
off votes, ensuring that third-party candidates are not left in the dust and that the
truly most popular person wins.

ADOPTING THE WYOMING RULE

The Wyoming rule is the principle that the House’s representative-to-population ratio
should be equal for all states: to do this, this ratio must be set to that of the lowest-
population state, Wyoming. This ensures that no representative has more power than any
other representative.

The United States should:

● Institute the Wyoming rule, ensuring that each representative in the House of
Representatives has equal power and that each American vote counts for the same
amount.

ABOLISHING THE SENATE AS WE KNOW IT

The U.S. Senate, in its current form, is a deeply inequitable body. Not only do Wyoming
and California, which have wildly different populations, have equal representation, but
(due to the makeup of the states that are overrepresented) white voters are frequently
more influential than their black, Hispanic, and Asian-American counterparts. This means
that popular measures, such as Medicare for All, have virtually no chance in the Senate.

The United States should:

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● Pass an amendment to the Constitution retaining the two-senator structure, but

making the voting power of a state’s senators proportional to the state’s
population. Thus the senator from California would have roughly 68 times the
voting power of a senator from Wyoming. On procedural matters, however, the
one-vote structure would be maintained.

12-YEAR TERMS FOR ALL FEDERAL JUDGES

Whenever a Supreme Court justice dies or retires, there is a bitter partisan war over their
replacement. It is foolish for the fate of decisions like Roe v. Wade or Miranda v. Arizona to
be left up to the accident of whether a jurist dies under a Democratic president or a
Republican one; that Donald Trump may get to nominate three justices in four years while
Barack Obama nominated two in eight years points to the fundamental impracticability of
the current system. Moreover, it promotes jurists staying on far longer than they ought to
for fear of giving their seat to an ideological opponent.

The United States should:

● Limit the terms of all federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, to twelve
years, with the opportunity of renomination or nomination to a different office at
the end of each term.

RESTORING CIVIL RIGHTS

In the rush to enhance security following 9/11, Americans’ civil rights (including the
freedom from surveillance and invasion of privacy) have been thoroughly trampled. There
are currently 17 distinct intelligence agencies funded by the taxpayer through largely
classified budgets, and each operates under its own shroud of secrecy. Spying by the
National Security Agency (NSA), including in collusion with privately-run
telecommunications providers, has affected hundreds of millions of Americans. Such
collaboration highlights that the intrusion into the private life of citizens is not just a
function of a secretive state, but it now also a function of the market, with thousands of
businesses seeking to capitalize on ‘the war on terror’ and therefore disinclined to end it.
This toxic brew has given rise to ‘surveillance capitalism.’ What used to be private (our
personal lives) has become public and commodified, and what should be public (the
government) is becoming private and hidden from view.

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The United States should:

● Abolish the NSA.
● Substantially reduce the size of the surveillance state down from 17 distinct entities,
and reduce the mandated scope of operations.
● Withdraw from the Anglophone-only ‘Five Eyes Network,’ currently comprising
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S.; instead work with and
through multilateral institutions that pursue organised crime, including cyber-
crime.
● End policies and programmes exposed by Edward Snowden, such as PRISM.
● Repeal the Patriot Act and the Espionage Act.

SELF-DETERMINATION AND POTENTIAL STATEHOOD FOR PUERTO RICO AND

WASHINGTON, D.C.
Puerto Rico is an unincorporated territory of the United States. Although its inhabitants
are citizens and have the freedom of movement throughout the rest of the country, they
do not have a vote in Congress. With no say either in presidential politics, Puerto Ricans
have no right of franchise in national politics. This is a denial of political rights, which is
unacceptable in any self-regarding liberal democracy. Conversely, the absence of political
rights comes into sharp relief at times of need, such as in the wake of natural calamity,
where citizens may harbor legitimate concerns about the performance of federal
government. Similar principles apply to our capital: despite being home to 702,000
people, these citizens gain no representatives and do not control their own laws. Taxation
without representation continues to be theft, and these injustices cannot be allowed to
continue. Both Puerto Rico and D.C. need to be allowed to host a legitimate, formal,
binding referendum on statehood.

The United States should:

● Offer Puerto Rico the right to self-determination, which would include the options
of full independence and statehood within the Union. If it was to choose the latter,
it would become the first Hispanic majority territory to do so. By extension, all
Puerto Ricans will obtain full adult franchisement and be eligible to participate in
presidential and congressional elections.

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● Offer Washington, D.C. full statehood contingent on a binding referendum. We

must ensure that the seat of our very nation is not dominated by those who do not
represent its population.

A Foreign Policy of Peace

RE-ENGAGING WITH MULTILATERAL INSTITUTIONS
Over the past few years, the United States has systematically left the multilateral
institutions of the world. This country cannot afford to commit itself to re-isolation and
the “America alone” vision of the world. The only way to sustainable peace and prosperity
around the globe is a commitment to engaging in mutual aid with other countries.

The United States should:

● Rejoin the Paris Agreement and be a full party to its decisions.
● Reverse its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
● Rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, popularly known as the Iran nuclear
deal.
● Commit to providing full humanitarian assistance in accordance with multilateral
commitments.
● Work with other nations to reform the United Nations Security Council, expanding
the P5 to reflect a more global distribution of power.

ENDING THE NUCLEAR THREAT

The United States’ policy of stockpiling nuclear weapons is a disaster in waiting. The
United States must not only seek a world without nuclear weapons, but work actively to
make that a reality. America will be a safer not with a powerful “nuclear deterrent,” but
instead with a world free from this grievous threat. Rapid denuclearization is the only path
forward.

The United States should:

● Sign and ratify the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
● Sign and ratify the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
● Officially declare that the United States would not be the first to use nuclear
weapons.

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PURSUING NON-AGGRESSION ABROAD

For decades, the United States has committed to a foreign policy of aggression and
regime change in the service of a loosely-defined “national interest” (usually contiguous
with American business interests). This has brought nothing but instability and disaster to
the world. From Operation Condor to the 2011 intervention in Libya, these operations,
whether dubbed “humanitarian” or “strategic,” have had a tremendous cost in blood and
treasure.

The United States should:

● Commit to ending the weaponization of human rights as a tool of American foreign
policy.
● Separate USAID from the State Department, and make all foreign bilateral aid “no
strings attached.”
● End all unilateral sanctions against sovereign countries, as sanctions are an act of
war that result in harm and the deaths of innocent people.
● Vow not to invade any sovereign country, such as Venezuela or North Korea,
without a clear and obvious first strike by that nation.
● Pursue friendly relations with all sovereign countries, whether or not we favor their
leadership or economic structure.
● End the use of unmanned aerial vehicles - or drones - for military purposes, as
these have consistently resulted in horrific civilian casualties and fatalities.
● Repeal the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Terrorists.
● Close Guantanamo Bay and pay reparations to all untried detainees, past and
present.

DEPARTMENTS OF PEACE—AND WAR

The Department of Defense has benefitted from its Orwellian moniker for too long: who
could justify cutting “defense” spending? The Founders recognized that “Department of
War,” a name that accurately reflected the purpose and activities of the body, was a more
fitting name. But that’s not enough to push back on the overwhelming power of the
Department of Defense. A Department of Peace, as proposed in 1793 by Benjamin Rush,
should exist to promote peacebuilding and conflict prevention whenever necessary.

The United States should:

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● Rename the Department of Defense the Department of War.

● Create a Department of Peace, under which USAID, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and
the Peace Corps would be organized. As a full member of the Cabinet, The
Secretary of Peace would serve to identify, promote and report on U.S. support to
nonviolent solutions to global problems.
● Commit to parity in budget allocations between the Department of War and the
Department of Peace.
● Abolish the U.S. Space Force and end the militarization of space.

BRINGING EVERY TROOP HOME

The United States has about 800 military bases spread across the world. There are bases
in 80 countries, with about 138,000 troops total deployed across the world. Only 11 other
countries have military bases in other nations; the country with the second-most bases
has at most 40. The environmental and social impacts of these bases (which often cause a
great deal of pollution with severely negative impacts on local communities) are acute,
and resentment surrounding these bases gives rise to anti-Americanism across the globe,
as seen in Okinawa, Japan.

The United States should:

● Close all military bases abroad, beginning with those based in Muslim-majority
countries.
● Bring every American soldier stationed abroad back to the U.S.
● Determine a package of reparations for communities negatively impacted by U.S.
bases abroad.
● Establish a corresponding demobilization and reintegration programme for U.S.
servicemen and women returning home to enable their full and healthy integration
into social, economic, civic and political life.

BIG CUTS TO MILITARY SPENDING

The United States’ military spending dwarfs that of the rest of the world. Much of this
spending is wholly unnecessary; legislators, eager to appear hawkish and confrontational,
appropriate funds that even generals say they don’t need. The U.S., which is unthreatened
by any power on the scale of the Soviet Union, still spends more than it did during the
Cold War. Reports in 2011 revealed that the U.S. was spending more than $20 billion a

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year on just air-conditioning in Afghanistan and Iraq (more than the annual budget of
NASA at that time.) This is a disastrous valuing of ‘guns over butter.’ As President Dwight
Eisenhower said, “every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired,
signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed.”

The United States should:

● Cut military spending by 50 percent. Former Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara said that a cut of this size would have no visible difference in
operations.
● Scrap the F-35 program.
● Repurpose the remaining work of the department of defence towards international
cooperation under civilian and scientific supervision. Its future role should be to
contribute to address potentially cataclysmic global threats, such as those posed by
near-earth asteroids.

COMMITTING TO INTERNATIONAL JUSTICE

The American government uses cyber, diplomatic, financial, economic and military tools
to impose its will on the international rules-based order. It has systematically attempted
to avoid culpability for war crimes in which it has been involved. Not only has it refused to
join the International Criminal Court, but it withdrew from the compulsory jurisdiction of
the International Court of Justice in 1986 after Nicaragua v. United States found that the
covert American war against Nicaragua was illegal. The American government has been
involved in countless war crimes, with their perpetrators often remaining aloof from true
consequences. It is time for the United States to join the rest of the world in enforcing law.

The United States should:

● Join the International Criminal Court.
● Repeal the 2002 American Service-Members’ Protection Act, which protects
government and allied officials and service-people from prosecution for war crimes
by multilateral mechanisms.
● Prohibit all current and former government officials found by Congress to have
committed war crimes from any future government service or to advise and
provide services to government through third parties.

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● Work with the international community (international institutions, regional bodies

and individual countries) to remedy the bias toward prosecuting only African
defendants in the International Criminal Court.
● Re-enter the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice.
● Promote jurisprudence that takes international law into account, in the style of
Justice Stephen Breyer.

OPPOSING ISRAELI APARTHEID

For too long, America has given uncritical support to the Likud government of Israel,
which has enacted racist apartheid-style policies designed to disenfranchise Palestinians.
American leadership, both Democratic and Republican, has watched, both approvingly
and passively, as Israel illegally annexed Palestinian land, encouraging further
encroachment through billions of dollars in military aid, the placement of the American
embassy in Jerusalem, and the recognition of the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

Groups like AIPAC wield far too much influence over our foreign policy, as critics like Rep.
Ilhan Omar, as well as mainstream experts like Professors Stephen Walt and John J.
Mearsheimer, have highlighted for more than a decade. It is time to craft a foreign policy
independent of undue influence by the Israel lobby, and to stop turning a blind eye to the
injustices of the occupation.

The United States should:

● Establish a mature, non-partisan relationship with Israel and its neighbors,
including through multilateral mechanisms, to promote mutual peace, security and
wellbeing.
● End military aid to Israel.
● Refuse to support laws aiming to stifle the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions
movement that cripple freedoms of speech and association.
● Recognize Palestinian statehood or call for a plural state in which Israelis and
Palestinians all enjoy full and equal rights in accordance with the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.

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ENDING SUPPORT FOR SAUDI ARABIA

The United States’ relationship to Saudi Arabia is extraordinarily corrupt. For decades, the
Saudi royal family has used oil money to influence American policy; from From the
prominence of “Bandar Bush” to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman claiming to have
Jared Kushner “in his pocket,” our leaders have been serving Saudi interests for far too
long. Saudi Arabia is a repressive dictatorship which regularly engages in torture and
murder, as seen most recently in the death of Jamal Khashoggi. Its curtailment of
women’s rights has been appalling.

The United States should:

● End all aid to Saudi Arabia.
● End all material and logistical support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

ENDING FOREIGN ARMS SALES

The United States government, in conjunction with companies like Northrop Grumman
and Lockheed Martin, serves as a salesman of death around the globe. American
companies have profited handsomely off conflict abroad; as Smedley Butler observed,
“War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the
profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” The only way to clamp down on the
military-industrial complex, the greatest enemy of the American people, is a hard line
against selling weapons abroad.

The United States should:

● Prohibit American companies from selling arms abroad, including to non-state
actors.
● Withdraw diplomatic backing and public financial support from domestic weapons
manufacturers.
● Work with weapons manufacturers that wish to pivot their business operations and
work forces to peaceful applications of their managerial, network and technological
expertise.
● Collaborate with other countries involved in arms sales towards mutually-agreed
de-militarization of international trade.

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MAKING WAR CONSTITUTIONAL AGAIN

In recent decades, American warmaking has become increasingly extra-constitutional.
Presidents have sent deployments abroad without any real Congressional oversight; the
legislative body, acting contrary to the dictates of the Constitution, has effectively ceded
the power to make war to the president. The War Powers Act of 1973, which was intended
to address this by requiring Congressional approval for any conflict lasting more than 60
days, has been a failure; it has been violated repeatedly. The War Powers Act (which Sen.
Gravel originally supported) must be reformed to ensure compliance with the
Constitution and prevent needless wars.

The United States should:

● Pass the “John Hart Ely Combat Authorization Act,” named for the legal scholar John
Hart Ely (who proposed the bill in the 1990s), which would shorten the Act’s “free
pass period” from 60 days to 20 days; if Congress does not authorize the conflict in
that timeframe, funds for it will automatically be cut off.

A PEACEFUL SOLUTION IN THE KOREAN PENINSULA

Recent years have seen a number of promising developments in the long-simmering
conflict between North Korea and South Korea. Make no mistake: the primary
responsibility for achieving a lasting peace on the Peninsula rests with the Korean people
and their respective governments. This is - first and foremost - their dispute to settle. To
this end, reformist South Korean president Moon Jae-in was elected on an unequivocal
mandate to seek dialogue with the North. This has enjoyed welcome support from the
international community, including from the U.S. It is obvious that the North Korean
government is a troubled one, but its posture can also be partly explained as a response
to American belligerence in other parts of the world (in the last 20 years this has included
the disasters in Iraq and Libya.) As the overwhelmingly more powerful party, the U.S. has
a responsibility to make every effort to de-escalate tensions to enable the two Koreas to
reach an amicable outcome to current and future talks.

The United States should:

● Withdraw all troops from South Korea, in cooperation with the South Korean
government.
● Seek to pursue normal relations with North Korea.

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● Formally declare an end to the Korean War, which was only paused in 1953 with the
Armistice Agreement. Ending hostilities is necessary for the total denuclearization
of the peninsula.
● Continue nuclear dialogue with North Korea through multilateral mechanisms, with
the goal of complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.
● Observe its own Treaty obligations towards denuclearisation.
● Promote cultural exchange between the United States, South Korea, and North
Korea. The isolation of the North Korean people is of benefit of no one.
● Encourage the reunion of North and South Korean families that have been
separated by the war. Whether through digital communications (e.g. video chats) or
in-person, should both governments be amenable.
● Formally apologize to survivors of the No Gun Ri and Jeju Island massacre, meet
with them and South Korean officials on potential compensation.

Attacking Poverty and Inequality

AN AMERICAN NATIONAL FUND
American wealth is overwhelmingly concentrated in the wealthiest five percent of
households; the bottom 40 percent of families own 0.5 percent of the national wealth
while the top one percent own about 40 percent. Social wealth funds, the most famous
example of which is Norway’s, are designed to combat this inequality. An American social
wealth fund, a national version of the Alaska Permanent Fund, would put money in
Americans’ pockets and redistribute wealth.

The United States should:

● Establish an American National Fund (ANF), based on Matt Bruenig’s proposal of an
“American Solidarity Fund,” with funds from the new financial transactions tax, as
well as a tax on initial public offerings and an increased estate tax. Each year, 5
percent of the fund would be used toward a universal dividend for all Americans 18
and older.

BREAKING UP BIG BUSINESSES

The American economy of 2019 is plagued by a problem that some thought was a relic of
the 1910s—monopolies. Industry after industry has become highly centralized and
controlled by a handful of private bureaucratic entities. These include agribusiness, civil

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aviation, banking & consumer finance, communications, food production & retail, health
insurance & health service provision, internet services, news media, retail investment,
social media, ground transport, and so on. Horizontal corporate agglomeration and
vertical integration have produced economic behemoths that control vast swathes of the
market, are unresponsive to consumer demands, and enjoy undue influence over politics
and economy at both national and sub-national levels. Meanwhile, the gargantuan
Amazon, which alongside providing cloud services to 17 federal intelligence agencies,
promises to flex its monopsonistic power over vendors and workers; it may soon reach a
concentration of power rivalling Standard Oil at its height. It is time for the U.S. to return
to the grand tradition of trust-busting and break apart market-controlling businesses. It is
time to return competition to the marketplace that allows innovation and
entrepreneurship to thrive. Our democracy depends on it.

The United States should:

● Use the government’s antitrust authority to break up large businesses. Regulators
should take a much harder line on any mergers and acquisitions by large
companies; the strategic purchase of WhatsApp by Facebook, for example, should
have been halted. Accordingly, Robert Bork’s 1982 guidelines for reviewing mergers
should be shelved and more restrictive ones devised.
● Break up large tech companies immediately. These companies pose a dire threat,
not just to American democracy, but to international peace and security; Facebook,
Google, Amazon, and others pose dangers due to the power they wield over
information and content. In 2018, a U.K. Parliament report described Facebook as a
“digital gangster.” This description is entirely warranted, based on evidence that its
business decisions were “directly linked” to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar, the
Cambridge Analytica scandal, harvesting the data of women’s menstrual cycles
without consent, to cite just three of many transgressions.)
● Hold the executive heads of companies directly and legally liable in the event that
their businesses are found to, for example, be defrauding consumers, producing
goods and services that result in injury and death, and/or publishing materials that
result in acts of violence.
● Promote business adherence to the Guiding Principles for Business and Human
Rights.

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A NATIONAL REPARATIONS TRUST FUND

Over its history, the American government has participated in systematic
disenfranchisement of and disincrimination against significant groups of people, whose
descendents still suffer today. The examples are endless: from slavery to Jim Crow to
redlining, from Native American treaty violations to disastrous policies like the Dawes Act.
It is impossible to ignore the legacy of these policies today, and those who descended
from those impacted by these policies deserve reparations. It is the duty of the United
States government to provide them.

The United States should:

● Create a National Commission on Reparations, to assess claims from descendants
of those affected by discriminatory government policies, including slavery, Jim
Crow, redlining, Native American treaty violations, and segregation in federal
employment.
● Establish a National Reparations Trust Fund (NRTF), funded by an infusion of $30
billion per year from government coffers. The NRTF would be managed in a way
akin to a sovereign wealth fund or the Social Security Trust Fund. Each year, 20
percent of the fund would be paid out; 25 percent of this money would go toward
programs to benefit historically black colleges and universities, Native American
communities, and historical monuments honoring historically disadvantaged
groups, and education in low-income communities hurt by policies like redlining or
trends like white flight. The other 75 percent would be paid out directly to those on
the list of disadvantaged groups. Thus if the NRTF had $280 billion one year, $56
billion would be paid out. $14 billion would go toward programs, and $42 billion
would go toward direct payments. Assuming that 50 million were recipients, this
would mean a payment of $840 per person. Compounded per year, this would
mean tens of thousands of dollars over a person’s lifetime.

EDUCATION AS A HUMAN RIGHT

The inequities pervasive in American education are symptomatic of the broader national
sickness of gross inequality and a refusal to care for the least well-off among us. Many
lower-income people don’t have access to high-quality preschool, giving their children a
disadvantage at the start of kindergarten; this disadvantage is often compounded during
years spent in badly-funded school districts. The obvious fruit of this is lower graduation

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rates and lower matriculation rates in poorer areas. Moreover, the oft-prohibitive cost of
attending a university (let alone attending a graduate program) means that many forego
the possibility or attend cheaper options for post-secondary education. Many lower-
income people who do decide to pursue post-secondary education also take on a
precipitous amount of student debt, debilitating their financial prospects for years.

The United States should:

● Provide free, high-quality preschool education for all with direct funding to states.
● Delink property taxes and education funding, moving to a federal model for school
funding in which all students receive an equal amount of funding.
● Promote the inclusion of climate science, sustainable development and universal
human rights into school curricula.
● Make all public universities and graduate schools absolutely tuition free by
providing funding directly to states.
● Announce a one-time “Student Debt Jubilee,” with all student debt held by the U.S.
government being forgiven.
● Provide debt forgiveness, paid for by the government, of the first $25,000 of private
student loan debt.

HEALTH AS A HUMAN RIGHT

The United States has some of the best specialised health care in the world, for instance
in the treatment of certain cancers. At the same time, coverage is highly unequal and in
effect still inaccessible to millions of Americans. Some of the health data is appalling. Out
of 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)
the U.S. ranks 29th for infant mortality and 26th for life expectancy. Maternal mortality is
the worst in the developed world, and worse than in Iran. Forty percent of adults in the
U.S. are obese, giving rise to an epidemic of chronic illnesses. The mental health crisis has
also reached disastrous levels, affecting women and men in different ways that expensive
clinical responses alone cannot remedy. Government policy, social convulsion, economic
insecurity, lifestyle choices and poor nutrition are factors, but the single largest
impediment to the achievement of health as a human right are health insurance
companies. These private-sector bureaucracies control the market of health care
provision and what medical professionals can or cannot prescribe. With government

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license, they have itemised every conceivable procedure in order to extract revenue from
patients, extending corporate control over the human body. The result? A healthcare
system that costs 40 percent more than the OECD average, and delivers poorer overall
results. The close ties that exist between Congress and the health insurance industry
makes the current status of public health in America an example of both government and
market failure. It is unsustainable.

The United States should:

● Draw on good practices in universal health care provision from around the world in
order to construct the best possible approach suited to the specific profiles and
health care needs of the American population.
● Use resources freed up from the wasteful wars of choice, military overreach, and
generated from revenues raised from progressive taxation of wealth and income,
to offer a publicly-run and -financed national health service.
● With Medicare-for-All as a medium term transitional system, the ultimate aim is a
“Veterans Administration-style healthcare for all,” or “VA4A” for short.
● Institute a single-payer system for all Americans and tax-paying permanent
residents irrespective of income and employment status.
● Provide full coverage as is, to date, provided by private health insurers, including
dental, vision, and hearing services.
● Retain private health insurance companies to provide ancillary health and social
care services.

HOUSING AS A HUMAN RIGHT

There are six vacant homes in the United States for every homeless person.
Homelessness is not a natural phenomenon: it is caused by humans, it is perpetrated by
humans, and in the same way it can be solved by humans. But the problem here is not
just for the homeless: rents continue to skyrocket with an insane and bubbling housing
market that almost seems reeling towards the same situation that we were in before
2008. Housing is a human right, and no person deserves to go through the world without
shelter; but more than this, everyone deserves cheap, affordable housing that meets their
needs and ensures that they never have to worry about evictions just because a paycheck
arrived late or they lost their job.

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The United States should:

● Enact a vacancy tax that targets properties that go without residents for half of the
year or more.
● Overhaul all public housing legislation to ensure that we can and will build more,
build higher quality, and build more equitably: eliminate the “equivalent
elimination” provision of the Wagner-Steagall Act that only allows the construction
of new public housing when an equivalent amount of housing is demolished,
ensure that all future housing projects have considerable operations budgets
rather than front-loading the capital budget, massively increase municipal, state,
and federal capacities for creating public housing, etc.
● Ensure that public housing projects are not creating slums in themselves: public
housing cannot be segregated into its own section of a city or town, but must rather
be spread through it just like any other type of housing. Public housing segregation
is still segregation, and cities must be more equitable, not less.
● As mentioned in the Green New Deal section, remodel zoning laws to be green- and
socially-conscious, lower or altogether remove parking minimums for buildings,
and create cheap and plentiful public transport to make sure that cities across the
country are more equitable and have more housing for everyone.
● Outlaw all anti-homeless architecture, including but not limited to windowsill
spikes, street spikes, slanted benches that make it impossible to sleep, and barred
corners.
● Ensure that access to housing for the homeless is not contingent on income, career,
drug use, or any other metric: it has been proven time and time again that not only
the most ethical but also the cheapest method of dealing with homelessness crisis
is through giving housing first then offering services later, as the mental stability
afforded by having a stable residence is more valuable than any kind of means-
testing.
● Ensure that multi-family public housing communities are run cooperatively and
democratically, where people are in control of their own conditions. Enact
additional legislation to incentivize privately-built or owned complexes to do the
same.
● Never limit pets, children, etc in public housing, as this only keeps the people who
need it away from housing. Similarly, do not means-test: public housing should be

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for everyone, not only the fully impoverished. By opening affordable housing to all,
we can decommodify housing and ensure everyone has a good place to live.
● Enact rent control nationwide with a regulatory agency to ensure that rents cannot
skyrocket and that tenants cannot be exploited.
● Massively increase and expand tenants’ rights.
● Guarantee legal counsel in tenant-landlord court.
● Increase the ease of acquiring community land trusts that develop and steward
affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces, and
other community assets.
● Enact stricter licensing requirements for landlords and stiffer penalties for failure to
keep apartments in good condition.

THE RIGHT TO OWN: COOPERATIVE BUSINESSES

Job insecurity is a terrifying thing, and our economic system mandates that businesses
shut down their stores, lay off their employees, and close their offices in a never-ending
cycle of feast and famine. But while businesses come and go, people’s livelihoods don’t
have to. Based on the U.K. Labor Party’s policy of the same name, the Right to Own would
be a policy of employees being the first to be able to buy out a company when it’s going
under or being sold. They have the right of first refusal: whether it’s being bought by
another company or going out of business, the employees will be able to buy out their
workplace and ensure that they get to control their own business, income, life, and
livelihood.

The United States should:

● Institute a policy of the Right to Own, ensuring that, when a company is being sold
or is going out of business, the first group that has the chance to buy out the
business’s assets and IP are the workers themselves.
● Give grants and/or loans to these businesses if they decide to reorganize as a
cooperative: a corporation that is run democratically by the workers, where each
member of the company votes on management, parts of their contract, the general
direction of the company, and more, with the specifics depending on how the
cooperative decides to organize. These cooperatives are known for extremely high
rates of productivity, worker satisfaction, benefits, and wages.

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● Set up a federal program to help these-- along with all other-- cooperatives, teach
them how to operate, and ensure that they are self-sufficient.

PROTECTING OUR PARENTS, PROTECTING OUR CHILDREN

Parenting in America is incredibly tough: debt, expenses, and a lack of quality schooling or
parental leave breaks people down and leaves both parents and children worse off. By
modeling parental aid off of the Family Fun Pack theory, we can allow parents to live and
breathe without being brutalized by the countless stresses of our system, and allow
children to prosper with all the resources they need to thrive. Right now, the well-off can
afford tutors, pre-schools, child caretakers, and more that create a class divide in child-
raising itself. By helping those parents and children that need it most, we can ensure that
every child gets the support they need and that no parent has to give up their own lives or
careers to take care of their children.

The United States should:

● Implement high-quality, free preschool education for all with direct funding to
states.
● Implement a Baby Box program to give every family a box that contains essential
items like clothes and bottles, with the box itself functioning as a bassinet.
● Institute 36 weeks of parental leave, split between parents; a single-parent
household gives all 36 weeks to the single parent, while in dual-parent households,
each parent obtains 18 weeks but may transfer up to 14 weeks to the other. This
paid benefit will be set equal to 100% of earnings up to minimum wage, plus 66% of
earnings past the minimum wage. All recipients will be entitled to benefits equal to
at least the minimum wage but no more than the national average wage.
● Create a free child care system that all parents are entitled but not obligated to:
those that opt-out receive a home child care allowance equal to the per-child wages
of child care workers.
● Ensure free school lunches for all students up through high school.

SUPPORTING THE LEAST ADVANTAGED

As the cost of living in America has risen, the effect of wages earned has stagnated.
American workers’ buying power has decreased, with every purchase taking a greater hit

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to their paycheck then in years before. As rent and cost of living rise, and as workers bring
in more profit for their employers, their wages must increase.

The United States should:

● Establish a national $15 minimum wage and eliminate the tipped minimum wage.
The minimum wage would be indexed to the Consumer Price Index.
● Invest $1.5 trillion in infrastructure over a ten-year period.
● Institute a Federal Jobs Guarantee to offer jobs of last resort at high wages on the
model of the Works Progress Administration, exerting upward pressure on wages.
These jobs would not be unskilled; instead, these jobs should focus mainly focus on
developing infrastructure (in line with the above plank), and may include job
training in fields like nursing).
● Repeal the Taft-Hartley Act. The law prevents labor unions from amassing any sort
of real power through its ban on secondary boycotts and the infamous “free-speech
clause,” and (by defining independent contractors so as not to be employees)
allows companies to deny their workers real benefits. Repealing the law would be a
first step in re-empowering the labor movement.
● Provide a free public credit registry (as suggested by Demos) to compete with large
credit reporting agencies like Experian and Equifax. The public credit registry would
not charge fees for seeing credit scores, and would require lenders and other
companies that provide information to be wholly accurate.

REFORMING AND NATIONALIZING CORPORATE LAW

A huge proportion of large American corporations are headquartered in Delaware, a
welcoming haven for corporations due to its lax regulations. This means that Delaware
state law on corporations is unduly important, far more influential than that of any other
state. As Kent Greenfield has written: “A corporation headquartered in New York, with all
of its facilities, employees, customers, and shareholders in New York, is beyond New
York’s reach when it comes to matters of corporate governance.” This has tremendous
policy implications, since Delaware state law favors the interest of shareholders over
those of any other party; in 2015, the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court wrote
that “treating an interest other than stockholder wealth as an end in itself…is…a breach of

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fiduciary duty.” Simple changes to American corporate law would bring corporations
under more democratic control, and would allow for other reforms to be made.

The United States should:

● Require corporations that either have more than 300 employees or that have a
revenue of at least $5 million a year to be chartered at the national level.
● Obligate all nationally-chartered corporations to consider the interests of all
stakeholders, especially workers, and not just shareholders.
● Require that half of all board members of nationally-chartered organizations be
elected by employees lower than the 80th percentile in the company’s pay
structure, in the vein of Germany’s “co-determination” system.
● Establish a Corporate Harm Prosecution Agency (CHPA), which would have broad
oversight to investigate, subpoena, and return a binding claim with its findings on
the negative externalities that corporations produce (i.e., the $6.2 billion spent on
welfare each year due to Walmart’s low pay). The CHPA would investigate a
corporation for the negative externalities it produces, then return a verdict. The
corporation and the CHPA would have one year to work out an agreement for how
to amend the problem—for example, Walmart could reduce food stamp usage by
its employees by 50 percent in a way approved by the CHPA. If the corporation fails
to amend the negative externality, the CHPA would have the power to suspend all
stock buybacks and dividends.

A GREEN NEW DEAL

The Green New Deal is an ambitious and absolutely necessary plan proposed in the
House by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Her resolution is an overview of the
goals we desperately need to accomplish to ensure not only that our Earth survives as a
livable and comfortable planet, but also that we live purposeful, satisfied, and healthy
lives. Literally billions of people are at risk from rising ocean waves, a continual warming
of the atmosphere, more dangerous storms than ever, and fertile land that slowly decays
away. We must do everything in our power to stop man-made climate change and, more
than that, make sure that the policies we institute to this end benefit us all. Through clean
energy and infrastructure, jobs, reinvestment, and more, we can not only save the planet
but end up with a healthier country that’s more connected, that has better jobs, and that
provides for everyone.

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The United States should:

● Institute a carbon tax and dividend scheme, as proposed by Matthew Bruenig, with
an initial price of $230 per ton of CO₂ (The amount would be indexed to inflation
and might be raised in the future). All funds from this tax would be redistributed to
households, with poorer households receiving a larger proportion of the tax.
● Cooperate internationally to establishment of a single, harmonized international
carbon trading market to replace the current regime of approximately 50 regional
and national platforms that cover just 20 percent of man-made greenhouse gas
emissions.
● Promote decentralised, mobile technology options to bring climate action to a mass
market. Distributed ledger technologies including blockchain can ‘democratise
climate action’ by empowering individual citizens, consumers, utilities, businesses
(for instance, airlines) and public bodies to participate in carbon sequestration,
offsetting and trading through digital tokens that are officially backed by recognized
and audited carbon credits.
● Establish a Green Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), as proposed by Matthew
Bruenig. The Tennessee Valley Authority Act would be amended to expand the TVA
beyond its current operating area, with the aim of decarbonizing all energy
production by a certain date. In addition to congressional funding, the TVA could
finance its decarbonization efforts with green power bonds guaranteed by the
federal government.
● Ensure a “just transition” economic guarantee for all communities negatively
impacted by the pivot from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy.
● Institute a national Renewable Portfolio Standard, requiring all utility companies to
receive a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources each year. In
the first year, this amount could be set at 15 or 20 percent; within twenty years, it
would reach 100 percent.
● End subsidies and special tax breaks to fossil fuel companies while enacting just as
aggressive or even more aggressive subsidies for renewable energy production: we
cannot give special treatment to pollutants that threaten our planet.
● Introduce a 50% levy on all bank loans to the fossil fuel industry.
● Eliminate all single-use plastics to keep our oceans and landfills from choking with
non-biodegradable matter, and our fossil fuels in the ground. Combine this with a

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push to eliminate all single-use packaging altogether by ensuring that it is 100

percent re-usable, recyclable or compostable.
● Institute new local, state, and national transportation projects, focusing on electric
vehicles and ease of transport. High-speed electric rail, electric buses, subways, and
other projects can not only help the country reach net carbon-neutrality, but can
also help address inequality: our entire country relies on expensive, polluting cars
that many people cannot afford, and having cheap and reliable public transit can
aid transportation to jobs and communities at low to no cost to our citizens.
● Lower or altogether remove parking minimums for buildings, ensuring that we
have more space for people rather than more space for cars.
● Help rebuild our cities: use green and socially-conscious planning new zoning laws
while abolishing old ones to ensure that cities are not class or race-segregated,
have cheap and affordable public transit, have sustainable and green buildings, and
feature public housing areas that ensure low-cost housing for all.
● Modernise levees and related physical infrastructure to be climate- and disaster-
resilient.
● Lower or eliminate industrial animal agriculture subsidies while using these funds
to subsidize independent, local meat and animal product replacements, whether in
the form of simple vegetables, synthesized meat replacements like Beyond Beef,
imitation meat, etc.
● Create a national challenge account to promote citizen-based science, technology
and innovation. incl. but not limited to clean renewables. Combine this with an
enabling environment for science, technology and innovation, such as in the
application of distributed ledger technologies to promote social, economic, cultural,
civil and political inclusion.
● Work with the United Nations to create a tribunal for climate crimes.

PUBLIC BANKING FOR ALL

There is an informal poverty tax in America: the poorer you are, the more fees, expenses,
and costs pile up. Public banking is a fix to some of these problems: by offering beneficial
alternatives to predatory payday loans, banking deserts, and overdraft fees, we can make
sure that people aren’t knocked entirely off their feet for not being rich in the first place.

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● Re-establish banking services within post offices as Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has
put forth, using our pre-existing nationwide infrastructure to benefit people in even
more ways. Include no-cost checking and savings accounts.
● Establish small-dollar loans through these public banks with small dollar amounts
and tiny interest rates, allowing people to
● Ensure that municipal taxes flow through these public banks rather than coercive
behemoths like Wells Fargo, making it so that interest and loans go towards the
public good rather than the profit motive.
● Using Germany’s nation-building municipal banks as a model, along with North
Dakota’s profitable, beneficial state bank, fund major and minor infrastructure
projects through loans made by public banks that consistently offer lower interest
rates and more capital for these public-good projects.

MAKING TAX REFORM PROGRESSIVE AGAIN

The American tax system benefits the very wealthy over the average citizen and the
corporation over the consumer. As inequality has skyrocketed, the tax system has
remained remarkably lax on the wealthy and on large corporations. The American tax
system should be reformed so as to be significantly more progressive; it is fundamentally
unfair for working-class people to be paying a burdensome amount in taxes while wealthy
people benefit from tax cuts.

The United States should:

● Repatriate all wealth currently residing in off-shore tax havens and that are
therefore avoiding taxation, with a one-time tax rate of 24 per cent.
● Institute a tax on all financial transactions - a Tobin spot tax - on all speculative
financial transactions, including but not limited to foreign exchange trading.
● Marginal tax of all income over $1 million at 60 percent, incomes over $5 million at
70 percent, incomes over $10 million at 80 percent, and incomes over $20 million at
95 percent.
● Raise the capital gains tax.
● Eliminate all tax expenditures designed to benefit oil, gas, and coal companies.
● Explore a progressive tax on initial public offerings, to increase as the size of the
IPO increases.
● Eliminate tax expenditures that benefit the wealthy.

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● Cap tax expenditures for households making over $130,000 at $8,000 a year.

AUTOMATIC TAX FILING

The tax prep industry consistently fights for tax filing to be difficult, confusing, and
overwhelming, and they’ve been profiting off of every instance of someone handing the
reins over just to not have to deal with this mess of a system. Through legislation like the
one Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced in 2017, an automatic tax system could benefit
almost all Americans.

● Have the IRS create a free online tax prep and filing program similar to TurboTax or
others, ensuring that almost no one has to pay to file their taxes.
● Ban the IRS from collaborating with tax filing companies as they do right now,
abolishing the corporatized Free File program that less than 3% of the population
uses due to lack of advertising and exacting, confusing eligibility requirements.
● Establish a “return-free” filing option to allow millions of Americans with a
straightforward tax situation to choose a pre-prepared, simple filing process that
comes with their tax return already calculated and immediately redeemed.

Justice for All

ENDING THE WAR ON DRUGS
According to the top Nixon aide John Ehrlichman, The War On Drugs started as a way to
criminalize African-Americans and the anti-war left: and it worked. Marijuana and heroin
were heavily criminalized, leaders were arrested, communities were raided, and lives were
ruined. This war has only progressed and become more bloody since, and is infamous for
ravaging cities, destroying families, and serving as the prime engine of mass incarceration.
This unwinnable war has always functioned as a method of population control, not as a
way to help the addicted or stem the flow of drugs; it is not a coincidence that black
people are arrested for marijuana over three times as much as white people despite
usage rates being about the same. By bringing this war to an end, we will be able to
remove the roadblocks that prevent addicts from getting help and end the pattern of
selectively-enforced felony drug convictions that oppress the poor and marginalized and
that force drug users into the recesses of society. Seventy thousand Americans died of

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opioid overdose in 2017, and we have made this happen. By criminalizing users and
dealers at every step, we offer no alternative but the needle.

The United States should:

● Remove marijuana from the list of drugs on the Controlled Substance Act and add
an amendment to the Constitution to ensure that it is fully legal nationwide.
● Ensure that home growth is legal: even now, as marijuana becomes a billion dollar
industry, Americans are being arrested and thrown in prison for growing a plant
themselves.
● Increase funding for drug treatment programs dramatically. Naloxone must be
provided to protect us from fentanyl, plentiful rehab centers must be run and run
well, and addicts must be helped, not hurt.
● Free all nonviolent drug offenders and expunge their records.
● Ensure that kratom remains legal, which is often extremely helpful for chronic pain
sufferers and diverts individuals from opioid use.
● Decriminalize, legalize, regulate, and tax all drugs, including opioids. No amount of
criminalization actually stops drug use, and so we need to provide safe alternatives
to shady dealers and laced products. We will gain legitimate jobs, tax income,
development, and more importantly the safety of millions of lives more than
before.
● Use taxes on drugs to fund reparations for those unjustly imprisoned for
nonviolent drug crimes, along with the previously mentioned rehabilitation centers.

ABOLISHING THE DEATH PENALTY

The death penalty is a relic of an earlier, more brutish time in American history. No one,
no matter how terrible their crimes, deserves to be put to death by the state; just as two
wrongs do not make a right, an additional death does not ease the awful burden of a
victim’s family members. Nor does it heal the community in any way. Moreover, the death
penalty has repeatedly been shown to be extremely costly, to not infrequently kill
innocent people, and to be racially biased in who is selected to be exected.

The United States should:

● Adopt the “Stevens Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution, named for former Justice
John Paul Stevens (who proposed it in his book Six Amendments): adding the words

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“such as the death penalty” after “cruel and unusual punishments” and before
“imposed” in the Eighth Amendment.

PROMOTING POLICE ACCOUNTABILITY

When a police officer kills an unarmed suspect, they are committing murder. 102
unarmed people were murdered by the police in 2015, and total deaths by police per year
often reaches over 1,000. Between straightforward murder, civil forfeiture without cause,
racial biases in arrests and searches, and the lack of prosecution that almost any of these
offenders have received, it is obvious that America has a police accountability problem.
This has to be solved if we want to say that we are a country of any kind of justice or
freedom.

The United States should:

● Require that all police departments have civilian review boards to review
complaints against police officers, with the power to remove officers.
● Work to abolish the doctrine of qualified immunity, the legal doctrine that protects
police officers from lawsuits if they were executing their official duties: while
potentially fine in theory, it has consistently been used to call any and all
destructive behaviors “official duties.”
● End the 1033 program that transfers excess military equipment to our police
departments, giving terrifying gear ranging from tanks to grenade launchers to
people who are supposed to be protecting our communities, not waging war on
them.
● Abolish the use of public, open carrying for police officers: arms must be kept in
police vehicles or in their stations until they are specifically called for and required.
Too many people die from trigger-happy cops.
● Transition police weaponry towards the nonlethal.
● Immediately transition SWAT weaponry towards the nonlethal to ensure that
SWATing is no longer a death sentence.

ENSURING FAIRNESS IN TRIALS AND SENTENCING

The United States has four percent of the world’s population, but twenty-two percent of
its prisoners. Americans experience extremely long sentences, sentences for far more
nonviolent crimes or those without a victim, and a jailing system that sees massive racial

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disparities in who gets locked up and why. Our trials and sentences are not fitting for a
nation that calls itself the land of the free, and have to be changed if we want to
rehabilitate the hurt rather than locking them up and throwing away the key.

The United States should:

● Make Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) funding for states contingent
on their raising the age of criminal responsibility to 18.
● Massively increase funding and manpower for public defenders, as our current
system ends with over 90% of cases ending by plea bargain due to massively
understaffed and underfunded offices.
● Abolish mandatory minimums for sentencing, as they have shown themselves to be
incapable of taking context, background, previous standing, or vulnerability into
account.
● Abolish voir dire and have all juries be fully, completely randomized without
exception, to ensure that the massive biases against the marginalized in juries do
not remain in place.
● Cap all prison sentences at 21 years (the Norwegian model), with the opportunity
for extensions or reductions in prison time at the end of the sentence based on
likelihood to reoffend and gravity of offense. This makes longer sentences possible,
but not the starting point: serial killers will still be locked up for the rest of their
lives, but someone who simply witnessed a cocaine deal will not.
● Abolish all occupancy clauses that force certain private prisons to always be at a
certain capacity—usually 90 percent— at the expense of the taxpayer if rates fall
below such a threshold. (This will not, of course, be necessary if private prisons are
abolished altogether.)

IMPROVING PRISONS AND COMBATING RECIDIVISM

Prisons should be a place for rehabilitation, where the convicted enter, learn, build
themselves, understand their mistakes, and leave the system as better people. We no
longer even pretend this is the case. People now go to prison not as punishment, but to
receive punishment. This happens increasingly in private, for-profit enterprises whose
incentives are to grow their business through growing the prison population. No matter
how small the offense might be, entering the system can become a life sentence for
women and men, where leaving only means that one cannot get a job, loans, or anything

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they need to live a good and legal life. We are draining our own pockets to pay for torture,
and gain nothing through it: only the pain of those that sometimes need our help the
most.

The United States should:

● Abolish private prisons, as they drive up incarceration rates and sentences while
treating their prisoners like nothing more than a commodity to profit off of.
● Provide full access to high school and college courses to prisoners, and allow
prisoners to qualify for Pell Grants.
● Abolish prison for low-level offenses; courts should decide whom to set free and
whom to keep in jail. Other methods of punishment like fines, community service,
etc. should be emphasized for these crimes, especially nonviolent ones.
● Ban cash bail: true flight risks and dangers to society should be held without bail,
and the rest should not be relegated to only being free if they happen to be rich.
● Ban solitary confinement, as it has been proven to be a tool of torture that ruins
minds, causes hallucinations, and scars people for life.
● Establish a $5 billion per year grant program to refurbish prisons to make them
humane.
● Lift the ban on food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits
for drug offenders.
● Pass a national “ban the box” law, preventing companies from asking job applicants
about their criminal histories in the initial phase of a job application process.
● Make it illegal to charge prisoners for basic amenities: letters and phone calls to
family, books, food, and more should be provided to them, and are not luxuries
meant to bankrupt the poor. More than just taking someone away from the world,
being imprisoned has also become a way to impoverish the family.
● Give workers within prisons the same workers’ rights as those outside of prison:
abolish below-minimum-wage labor that allows private corporations to pay pennies
on the dollar in wages, along with ending rampant labor violations and exploitation,
that is not only cruel and inhumane but that also drives down wages and conditions
for workers who are not incarcerated.
● End the practice of banning certain books inside prisons.
● Abolish provisions in prison guards’ contracts that allow them to refuse to answer
questions to police that are investigating them and make discipline an internal

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affair rather than an external one. Install more accountability procedures into our
prisons to minimize the current rampant abuse.
● Stop sending people back to prison for minor parole violations.
● Enfranchise ex-prisoners and current prisoners: even if someone has committed a
crime, they are still a citizen. Prisoners are under the full control of the state yet do
not even get a say in how it is run.

DECRIMINALIZING COMMERCIAL SEX WORK

Despite cultural changes, the U.S. government has maintained a puritanical approach to
commercial sex work. Many Americans have come to see this work without the blinkered
moralistic view of yesteryear; and they have come to recognize commercial sex workers
as one of society’s most vulnerable communities. Women of color, of migrant
backgrounds, and transgender women often rely on sex work for money. It is time to take
a more rational approach.

The United States should:

● Repeal the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Allow States and
Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), which targeted sites like
Backpage.com that sex workers used to screen clients and ensure safety.
● Encourage states and municipalities to decriminalize all commercial sex work.
● Focus on illegal and coercive sex trafficking, not consenting sex work.

JUST IMMIGRATION REFORM

The Trump administration’s monstrous approach to immigration policy is a humanitarian
and moral catastrophe, one that must be mended immediately. But we cannot simply go
back to how we were under the Obama or Bush administrations: American immigration
policy has been cruel for a long, long time, and we have to do more than simply repeal
what Trump has done.

The United States should:

● Institute a policy of open borders, with absolute freedom of movement into and out
of the United States (with exceptions for criminals attempting to escape the law).
● Observe its international commitments with respect to migrants and refugees (as
set out in the 2016 New York Declaration).

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● Abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and U.S. Customs
and Border Enforcement, which was only founded in 2003 and which has only
functioned as a destructive secret police tasked with promoting fear in immigrant
communities.
● Offer immediate legal status to all undocumented immigrants who have resided in
the country for more than three years on a three-year pathway to citizenship.
● Pass a law against deporting any veteran of the U.S. military.

SUPPORTING LGBTQIA+ INDIVIDUALS

America has a woeful legacy surrounding its treatment of LGBTQIA+ people. And yet they
have shown remarkable perseverance, fighting back relentlessly, whether through Harry
Hay’s Mattachine Society or the more radical efforts of the Gay Liberation Front. It is time
for full equality for all of America’s LGBTQIA+ people, with a special focus on transgender
rights.

The United States should:

● Amend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to prohibit discrimination due to sexual
orientation and/or gender identity in employment, housing, public
accommodations, public education, federal funding, and credit.
● Honor LGBTQIA+ heroes like Marsha P. Johnson and James Baldwin with the
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
● Ban conversion therapy nationwide and make operating a conversion therapy clinic
a crime.

REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS AND BODILY AUTONOMY

It is the government’s role to provide safe and affordable reproductive services to the
people to use as they see fit, not the role of the people to conform to a governmental
standard of proper bodily conduct. With the recent Republican conquest of the Supreme
Court, landmark decisions protecting the right to abortion are under threat. Control over
one’s body is a fundamental human right and therefore must be treated as such by our
government.

The United States should:

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● Pass an amendment to the Constitution guaranteeing the rights of all citizens to

basic bodily autonomy including the rights to contraception, to safe and legal
abortion, and to gender transition. This could be included as part of an updated
Equal Rights Amendment.
● Ban all bills erecting barriers in the way of access to safe abortion, for example
Texas House Bill 2 imposing supply-side abortion restrictions.
● Repeal all laws restricting health insurance coverage of abortion from private
insurance and medicare.
● Ban predatory crisis pregnancy centers which manipulate and shame women into
carrying to term children they are unable to support and replace these dishonest
institutions with government funded clinics which offer strictly accurate medical
information and promote safe responsible use of abortion.

AMNESTY AND HONOR FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS

The U.S. government has been ruthless in cracking down on whistleblowers. Edward
Snowden fled the country for revealing gross government abuses of the human rights of
American citizens and of the peoples of other countries; Chelsea Manning was tortured
for years for revealing war crimes; Reality Winner has been imprisoned for leaking reports
on Russian hacking to journalists. None of these figures, who did as their conscience
dictated, should be in prison. We should celebrate these heroes, not lock them up.

The United States should:

● Pardon whistleblowers, including Snowden, Manning (whose sentence was merely
commuted), Terry Albury, Winner, Julian Assange, and John C. Kiriakou.
● Offer prominent government whistleblowers the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

INVESTIGATING HUMAN RIGHTS ABUSES BY THE GOVERNMENT

The U.S. has been inflamed by a debate over foreign interference in its domestic affairs.
However, successive U.S. governments and media outlets have consistently hidden
obscured their role in undermining or overthrowing the governments of sovereign
countries (including democracies.) According to research conducted by Carnegie Mellon
University, the U.S. interfered in 81 elections in other countries between 1946 and 2000.
U.S. governments have also been intermittently party to human rights violations

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(including aiding and abetting, or carrying out, extrajudicial killings.) The fundamental lack
of accountability and transparency must end: a government cannot be of the people nor
for the people if the people do not know of, or have oversight over, what is being done in
its name and with its tax dollars.

The United States should:

● Release the full, unredacted Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture.
● Launch a formal investigation into U.S. government officials’ ties to human rights
violations in the Arab States region, Asia and the Pacific, the central Asian republics,
Latin America and the Carribean, and sub-Saharan Africa. Examples of such
violations include the No Gun Ri and Jeju Island massacres and involvement in
Indonesia’s Konfrontasi.
● Cooperate with the International Criminal Court as and when required to do so.
● Release the uncensored Mueller Report.
● Grant full citizenship to refugees of the Vietnam War.

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