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90 Progressive Leaders and 20,000+ Activists Ask Candidates: "Do You Support Our Populist 'Economic Agenda for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity and Economic Justice?"
Group says economic prosperity agenda that challenges corporate power will energize Democratic base—and win support of some Trump supporters
Feb 20, 2019
A large and growing number of Democratic activists and thinkers have joined together to pledge to fight for an economic agenda that can win the support of a broad majority of American voters. And they are demanding that politicians - including presidential candidates - tell voters where they stand on the 11 planks of the group's economic agenda. And they vow to share candidates' answers online.
The 90 well-known progressives - many of them leaders of the "resistance" to Trump and organizers of 2018 election victories - who wrote and signed the Agenda for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity and Economic Justice represent a group that goes well beyond any one issue or activist network. They are a diverse mix of millennials, GenXers and Baby Boomers, and many of them have long histories of working on one or more of the 11 planks of their shared economic agenda. All agree that the country needs bold systemic change. And they believe that "for too long, leaders of both major political parties have allowed the wealthy and the giant corporations to exercise far too much influence over the political decisions that shape American life."
To talk with Pledge Signers, contact Jacob Sorrells: 301-807-1459
The full Pledge/Agenda has been signed by over 20,000 people.
One of the organizers of the group, Roger Hickey, Co-Director of the Campaign for America's Future, said the Pledge represents yet another indication that the country is moving in a progressive direction. And, he said, "This economic agenda is broadly popular with strong majorities of American voters." He cited a section of the group's new website which assembles recent polling showing great support for the 11 planks of the economic agenda. "Most Americans - base voters, a majority of independents, and many disillusioned Trump voters - all hard-hit by growing inequality and angry about a system they see as rigged by the wealthy - will vote in great numbers for candidates who campaign for a comprehensive plan for growth, investment and economic justice."
Another signer, Nancy Altman, President of Social Security Works, said, "Criticizing Trump is important - and there is plenty to criticize - but it's not enough. Visionary political leaders, FDR among them, have always fought for working Americans. The roadmap in the Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity, and Economic Justice, of which I am a proud signer, shows the way."
Other Pledge signers include former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, economists Thea Lee, Robert Pollin and James K. Galbraith, African-American activists Rashad Robinson and Janet Dewart Bell and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, feminist leaders Gloria Steinem, Nita Chaudhary and Toni Van Pelt, think tank directors Heather McGhee, Dorian Warren, Chuck Collins, and Angela Glover Blackwell, environmental leaders Bill McKibben, Annie Leonard and Michael Brune, labor leaders Leo Gerard, Larry Cohen, Randi Weingarten, Chris Shelton, and Bonnie Castillo, business leaders, like Leo Hindery Jr. and Charles Rodgers, activists and public intellectuals, like Manuel Pastor, Robert Borosage, Maria Echaveste, Jeff Faux, Heather Gautney, Eddie Glaude Jr., Zephyr Teachout, Richard Eskow, and Naomi Klein. Signers also include leaders of "resistance movement" groups, including MoveOn, People's Action, Democracy for America, Solidaire, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Center for Popular Democracy Network, Public Citizen, Working Families Party, Ultra-Violet, Progressive Democrats of America, and Our Revolution.
As they release their agenda, signers made it clear that the group will not endorse candidates; however they will ask candidates - including candidates for president - to outline publicly their plan for addressing 11 planks of their Pledge. And make those answers public on a website that compares all the candidates.
They also make it clear that, no matter the outcome of the next elections, they will continue to honor their pledge to build a movement for economic change - a movement that all future office-holders will have to deal with.
Below is a simple version of the Pledge and its economic agenda - grouped into 5 broad themes - followed by the complete, detailed version that has now been signed by 20,000 people and counting.
We will (continue to) resist Trump. But resistance is not enough.
We therefore pledge that:
- We will fight for good jobs, sustainable prosperity and economic justice.
- We will work to build a movement that can make that agenda a reality.
Real change begins with a clear and coherent vision of a better America, and with citizens' movements dedicated to bringing that world into being. We offer this agenda for economic change in that spirit. (See full Agenda here - or below - view the prominent signers.)
I. Jobs for All - by Investing in Rebuilding America and a Green New Deal
- Jobs for All - Created by Rebuilding America
- Invest in a Green New Deal
II. Fight Inequality
- Empower Workers to Reduce Inequality
- Opportunity and Justice for All - With Focus on Communities Harmed by Racism
- Guarantee Women's Economic Equality
III. A New Social Contract - for Income and Retirement Security - and Healthcare and Education for All
- Medicare for All - And Shared Economic Security
- High-Quality Public Education - Pre-K to University
IV. Stop Corporations, Banks and the Wealthy from Controlling Our Economy and Our Democracy
- Make Corporations and the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share
- Close Wall Street's Casino
- Rescue Democracy from the Special Interests
V. A Global Economic Strategy for Working People
- A Global Economic Strategy for Working People
Full Agenda (below and online at this link):
Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity and Economic Justice
I. Jobs for All - by Investing in Rebuilding America and a Green New Deal
1. Jobs for All - Created by Rebuilding America
We should commit ourselves to providing a high quality job (with good wages and benefits) for everyone willing and able to work. This cannot be achieved through tax cuts for the rich.
We support a large national investment program to put millions of American to work rebuilding America, creating useful employment for young people and for the millions of workers made unemployed by the deindustrialization of America.
The rebuilding and modernization of our basic infrastructure -- from roads to rail to water and energy systems --will stimulate robust growth and it will make our economy more productive. This initiative should be linked to public service jobs -- in everything from national service to cleaning up parks and cities. As a first step, the next administration should guarantee that every young person graduating from school can get a decent job.
2. Invest in a Green Economy
Catastrophic climate change is a clear and present danger. The United States should lead the global green industrial revolution that builds strong and resilient communities.
That requires strategic public investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency that will replace a carbon-based economy with a clean and sustainable energy system, creating jobs and opportunity, particularly in communities of color that have borne the worst consequences of toxic corporate practices.
Renewable energy and energy efficiency are already rapidly expanding. But we need a public commitment to meet clear goals to replace carbon-based energy sources, create new green energy industries, and meet global emission targets. The country that leads in these areas will capture jobs generated from markets across the world.
II. Fight Inequality
3. Empower Workers to Reduce Inequality
Inequality has reached new extremes. As the corporate elite pulls in incomes, perks, and tax breaks beyond the imagination of kings, wages for the rest of us have stagnated or declined - and more and more jobs have become contingent and part-time, with low pay and few benefits.
Robust economic growth and full employment, if we can achieve it, will force employers to bid up wages. But the key to reversing inequality is strong unions. We pledge to fight for the right of workers to form unions and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits. Guaranteed labor rights should be complemented by action to lift the floor under every worker by guaranteeing a living wage, paid sick and vacation days, and affordable health care. We must curb CEO compensation policies that give executives personal incentives to plunder their own companies. And we should use the tax system to reward companies that pay their workers a decent proportion to what they pay their executives.
4. Opportunity and Justice for All - With Focus on Communities Harmed by Racism
Full employment should provide opportunity for all. But special attention must be invested in those communities harmed by the legacy of Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, deindustrialization, and destruction of the public sector.
Scapegoating on the basis of race, nationality, gender, or sexual orientation works to the detriment of all of us and to the benefit of those minions of corporate and Wall Street power who would divide us. Neglected urban and rural communities, working people victimized by the worst economic and social effects of neoliberalism must be given targeted attention and investment. Fundamental reform of our criminal justice system, an end to mass incarceration, and targeted investment in areas of need are all central to meeting the promise of economic justice.
Establishing a fair and humane immigration policy that stops the criminalization of communities of color should be a top priority. Our immigration policy should put the sanctity of families at the forefront--grounded in human, civil, and labor rights. We cannot allow our communities to be divided by anti-immigrant and xenophobic hysteria. And we must all work hard to end the racism and xenophobia that have historically been used to divide America's working class majority from working together to win economic justice and prosperity for all.
5. Guarantee Women's Economic Equality
Until 1920 most women could not vote in federal and local elections. And until very recently, women's economic rights -- to own a business or even control wealth or property -- were severely limited.
We have now gone from a society in which women were expected to handle home and family work to one where women are expected to earn money in the workplace -- and still take care of home, children, and family.
We should guarantee that women earn the same pay, protections and opportunities as men in the workplace and in society - including strengthened laws for reporting and preventing sexual harassment. Women must also be guaranteed affordable health care and the right to make choices about their own health and reproduction. Families must have access to high-quality child care, and all women must be guaranteed paid leave from the workplace for childbirth, illness and vacation, and a secure retirement -- with Social Security credit for work in the household.
III. A New Social Contract - for Income and Retirement Security--and Healthcare and Education for All
6. Medicare for All - And Shared Economic Security
Health care is a right, not a privilege. And that requires moving to a Medicare for All universal public health care system. Our fight to defend Obamacare from Trump and his allies is a crucial first step to a promise of quality health care for everyone. In addition, America needs a more robust social insurance system.
Every worker deserves a secure retirement-- and we will work to create new pension systems, while we secure Social Security by "lifting the cap" that now exempts wealthy people from paying their fair share of Social Security taxes. We will strengthen and expand America's shared security programs -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food support and housing assistance. No one in America should go hungry or homeless. Greater shared security makes the economy more robust by making our society more fair - and giving all people the confidence that comes from solidarity.
7. High-Quality Public Education - Pre-K to University
Every young person must have the right to high-quality, free public education from preschool through college. Public education must be controlled by the public -- not by corporations -- and not by charter school hucksters who take public subsidies without assuming the responsibility to educate all kids, regardless of special needs.
This requires that every community, in partnership with the Federal Government must have the financing necessary to strengthen public schools, providing the necessary basics - preschool, smaller classes, summer and after-school programs, and skilled, well-paid teachers with rights on the job.
College education or skills training should be available without tuition at all public universities as a right of civic membership -- as was the policy in many states in the 1950s and 1960s. Education should be a public good that benefits all of society, not a commodity that indentures students to debt. We call for a national student debt jubilee that will cancel the debt burden imposed upon several generations seeking an education. Free college and debt cancellation will not only allow students and former students to live their lives without that burden, but it will also stimulate economic growth and unleash new civic activism.
IV. Stop Corporations, Banks and the Wealthy from Controlling Our Economy and Our Democracy
8. Make Corporations and the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share
Our public investment/growth and justice agenda requires tax revenues. Yet the corporations and the rich do not pay their fair share in taxes--even though they pocket the greatest benefits from public investments.
Our tax code rigs the rules to favor the few. Multinationals pay lower tax rates than small domestic businesses. Billionaire investors pay lower rates than their secretaries. Top income tax rates have been lowered even as working people face ever-higher sales taxes and fees.
It is time for the rich and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. It is time to shut down the tax havens and tax dodges that enable companies to avoid taxes altogether. We should lift the cap on Social Security taxes, so rich people pay the same percentage of their income as the rest of us. We should tax the income of investors at the same rates we tax income from work. We need clear, simple, progressive corporate and individual taxes, closing loopholes and exemptions. And a tax on financial transaction can produce significant revenues. A fair tax system will allow us to invest in an economy that will work for all.
9. Close Wall Street's Casino
Financial deregulation has devastated our economy, and it has protected banks that are too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to jail.
The financial casino fosters ever more dangerous speculation, while investment in the real economy lags. The resulting booms and busts devastate families and small businesses.
In a new age of corporate concentration, American must revive the concept of anti-trust action to reduce corporate power. We need to break up the big banks, levy a speculation tax, and provide low-income families with safe and affordable banking services. We should crack down on payday lenders and other schemes that exploit vulnerable working families, offering instead safe and inexpensive banking via the postal system.
10. Rescue Democracy from the Special Interests
Big money has corrupted our democracy. Some might say democracy is not part of an economics agenda. But the same financial elites and corporations that buy and sell politicians use that political power to rig the economy so the top .01 percent gets massively richer while incomes decline for the rest of us.
The Citizens United decision gave corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. We pledge to reverse it, through a constitutional amendment, if necessary.We will stop the attack on voting rights which has escalated just as a new majority of people of color, young people and working women has begun to exercise new power. We will fight for public financing of elections that bans corporate and big money - and for electoral reforms, like public matching of small donations, so people's candidates can compete with the candidates of the plutocrats. Finally, we pledge to change national and local political party structures so that progressive candidates get a fair shake in the nominating process and in general elections. And we will build a new progressive majority that can take back our democracy and our economic system.
V. A Global Economic Strategy for Working Americans
11. A Global Economic Strategy for Working Americans
Our global trade and tax policies have been created for and by multinational companies. We must renegotiate trade deals and rethink tax policies that benefit the already-wealthy, while they encourage the export of whole American industries, drive down pay and worker protections, and harm the environment.
We need more but balanced trade, and global standards that protect the rights of workers, consumers and the environment.
That requires a crackdown on tax havens, currency manipulation, and deals that allow corporations to trample basic labor rights here and abroad. Finally, we need new policies that allow us to help existing US industries, by having our government buy American, policies that are now outlawed by trade deals. And we need active investment policies that grow new cutting-edge industries, like green energy systems. Our current national security policies commit us to policing the world. The result costs lives and drains public resources. We need a real security policy that makes military intervention a last resort, and focuses on global threats like climate change, poverty and inequality. We should reduce military budgets and properly support humanitarian programs.
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Resisting Trump Is Not Enough: 20,000 Activists Ask Democratic Candidates Where They Stand on Bold Agenda
The message behind a new pledge is this: "Yes, fight Trump – but Americans also want to hear big solutions to the large economic problem our country faces."
Feb 20, 2019
Suddenly Americans are debating big ideas that used to be off the table.
New ways to raise taxes on the rich and big corporations have been proposed by candidates Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders.
A Medicare-style public health system to expand coverage and cut costs has the support of millions and many Presidential candidates - even as we defend Obamacare.
The Green New Deal has been swept onto the national debate by the dynamic grass-roots Sunrise Movement and by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and colleagues in Congress. With new urgency, sponsors call for massive public investment to retool our economy to stop global warming and create the next generation of good jobs.
Perhaps because of the huge public support for these big ideas, Donald Trump has tried to tar them with the old Cold War scare word: Socialism. This is likely to backfire - just as the Southern racists' attacks on civil rights workers as "Communist agitators" just helped spread the movement. SNCC organizers were greeted at Mississippi doorsteps with "We are so glad you Communists have come to help us vote."
Some cautious Democrats have greeted these big ideas with a warning about the dangers of going too far. "Stick to attacking Trump and his policies," they lecture, "that's what helped us win in the Congressional campaigns 2018."
But over 90 well-known veterans of the successful 2018 campaign have signed a bold new Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity and Economic Justice. And these initiators (including myself) have now been joined by 20,000 (and growing) grass-roots activists. Our message is "Yes, fight Trump - but Americans also want to hear big solutions to the large economic problem our country faces."
The Pledge document declares:
We will (continue to) resist Trump. But resistance is not enough. We therefore pledge that:
- We will fight for good jobs, sustainable prosperity and economic justice.
- We will work to build a movement that can make that agenda a reality.
Real change begins with a clear and coherent vision of a better America, and with citizens' movements dedicated to bringing that world into being. We offer this agenda for economic change in that spirit.
The group challenges the inside-the-beltway idea that Democrats need to choose between candidates that are "electable" and those who champion a bold agenda for change. Our signers make the case--and cite extensive polling--that the voters want candidates who know how the system has been rigged against working Americans. They argue that the most electable candidates are the ones with a plan to "un-rig" our government and to grow the economy and reverse inequality.
Note: I was one of the authors of the Pledge, and we found a great deal of enthusiasm from leaders we invited to join us, including the following leaders and thinkers:
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich; economists Thea Lee, Robert Pollin and James K. Galbraith; African-American activists Rashad Robinson, Janet Dewart Bell, and Dedrick Asante-Muhammad; feminist leaders Gloria Steinem, Nita Chaudhary, and Toni Van Pelt; think tank directors Heather McGhee, Dorian Warren, Chuck Collins, and Angela Glover Blackwell; environmental leaders Bill McKibben, Annie Leonard, and Michael Brune; labor leaders Leo Gerard, Larry Cohen, Randi Weingarten, Chris Shelton, and Bonnie Castillo; business leaders like Leo Hindery Jr. and Charles Rodgers; activists and public intellectuals Manuel Pastor, Robert Borosage, Maria Echaveste, Jeff Faux, Heather Gautney, Eddie Glaude Jr., Zephyr Teachout, Richard Eskow, and Naomi Klein. Signers also include leaders of "resistance movement" groups, including MoveOn, People's Action, Democracy for America, Solidaire, Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Center for Popular Democracy Network, Public Citizen, Working Families Party, Ultra-Violet, Progressive Democrats of America, and Our Revolution. See all 90 initial signers.
The group will not endorse candidates. Individual signers will make those decisions on their own. But the group will ask candidates to tell Americans where they stand on the 11 planks of our economic agenda. And we will publish those positions on the website. Here is the Agenda that all signers of the Pledge have endorsed.
Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs, Sustainable Prosperity and Economic Justice
I. Jobs for All - by Investing in Rebuilding America and a Green New Deal
The first two planks of the group's agenda call for a strategy for economic growth and job creation that grows out of large-scale public investment to address real and pressing needs of our economy. They represent a dramatic contrast to the perpetual Republican "economic growth" plans which always involves tax cuts for the wealthy (and shredding important regulations). Progressives, often characterized as "redistributionist," clearly have a plan for sustainable economic growth.
1. Jobs for All by Rebuilding America
This plank takes seriously the warnings of the American Society of Civil Engineers, who have been ranking our infrastructure with marks of D or worse for decades. It also allows progressives to show they have a plan to achieve one of the major promises of candidate Trump, who has failed to deliver on infrastructure because he capitulated to the billionaire corporate wing of his party by giving away the revenue he needed in order to give them massive tax cuts.
2. Invest in a Green New Deal
The Green New Deal plank calls for retooling the US economy to dramatically reduce carbon pollution and make our systems, from housing to transportation much more energy efficient. It sets a goal of dramatically reducing carbon pollution in order to meet (and exceed) the goals set by the UN Climate Panel in order to stop the disastrous warming of the planet. And, as the labor-environmentalist Apollo Alliance told Americans a decade ago, this transition can be a boon to the economy, creating a new generation of good jobs and putting us on the path to sustainable (not wasteful growth that will lead us off a cliff. If we act quickly, we can also become a global leader in the new manufacturing industries we need to create the green transition.
II. Fight Inequality
3. Empower Workers to Reduce Inequality
Lots of people (and candidates) are now talking about growing inequality and trends finding that the 400 richest Americans control more wealth than the bottom 60 percent. One essential key to raising wages and reversing inequality is strong unions. So signers pledge to fight for the right of workers to form unions and bargain collectively for better wages and benefits. Guaranteed labor rights should be complemented by action to lift the floor under every worker by guaranteeing a living wage, paid sick and vacation days, and affordable health care. We must curb CEO compensation policies that give executives personal incentives to plunder their own companies. And we should use the tax system to reward companies that pay their workers a decent proportion to what they pay their executives.
4. Opportunity and Justice for All - With Focus on Communities Harmed by Racism
In theory full employment and labor rights should provide opportunity for all. But we insist that special attention must be invested in those communities harmed by the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, segregation, discrimination, deindustrialization, and destruction of the public sector. Neglected urban and rural communities and working people victimized by the worst economic and social effects of neoliberalism must be given targeted attention and investment. We also call for a fair and humane immigration policy, fundamental reform of our criminal justice system, an end to mass incarceration and targeted investment in areas of need are all central to meeting the promise of economic justice.
5. Guarantee Women's Economic Equality
Addressing women's economic problems will improve our economy for all. We should guarantee that women earn the same pay, protections and opportunities as men in the workplace and in society - including strengthened laws for reporting and preventing sexual harassment. Women must also be guaranteed affordable health care and the right to make choices about their own health and reproduction. Families must have access to high-quality child care, and all women must be guaranteed paid leave from the workplace for childbirth, illness and vacation, and a secure retirement - with Social Security credit for work in the household.
III. A New Social Contract - for Economic Security, Healthcare, and Education
6. Medicare for All - And Shared Economic Security
The group declares health care is a right, not a privilege. And that requires moving to a Medicare for All universal public health care system. Our fight to defend Obamacare from Trump and his allies is a crucial first step to a promise of a high-quality and cost-effective health care for everyone. In addition, America needs a more robust social insurance system. Every worker deserves a secure retirement-- and we will work to create new pension systems, while we secure Social Security by "lifting the cap" that now exempts wealthy people from paying their fair share of Social Security taxes. We will strengthen and expand America's shared security programs -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, food support and housing assistance. No one in America should go hungry or homeless. Greater shared security makes the economy more robust by making our society more fair - and giving all people the confidence that comes from solidarity.
7. High-Quality Public Education - Pre-K to University
Every young person must have the right to high-quality, free public education from preschool through college. Public education must be controlled by the public, not by charter school hucksters. This requires that every community, in partnership with the state and Federal Governments must have the financing necessary to strengthen public schools, providing the necessary basics - preschool, smaller classes, summer and after-school programs, and skilled, well-paid teachers with rights on the job.
College education or skills training should be available without tuition at all public universities as a right of civic membership -- as was the policy in many states in the 1950s and 1960s. Education should be a public good that benefits all of society, not a commodity that indentures students to debt. We call for a national student debt jubilee that will cancel the debt burden imposed upon several generations seeking an education. Free college and debt cancellation will not only allow students and former students to live their lives without that burden, but it will also stimulate economic growth and unleash new civic activism.
IV. Stop Corporations, Banks and the Wealthy from Controlling Our Economy and Our Democracy
8. Make Corporations and the Wealthy Pay Their Fair Share
Our public investment/growth, green transition, and justice agenda requires tax revenues. Yet the corporations and the rich do not pay their fair share in taxes--even though they pocket the greatest benefits from public investments.
It is time for the rich and corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. It is time to shut down the tax havens and tax dodges that enable companies to avoid taxes altogether. We should lift the cap on Social Security taxes, so rich people pay the same percentage of their income as the rest of us. We should tax the income of investors at the same rates we tax income from work. We need clear, simple, progressive corporate and individual taxes, closing loopholes and exemptions. And a tax on financial transaction can produce significant revenues. A fair tax system will allow us to invest in an economy that will work for all.
9. Close Wall Street's Casino
Financial deregulation has devastated our economy, and it has protected banks that are too big to fail, too big to manage, and too big to jail. The financial casino fosters ever more dangerous speculation, while investment in the real economy lags. The resulting booms and busts devastate families and small businesses.
In a new age of corporate concentration, American must revive the concept of anti-trust action to reduce corporate power. We need to break up the big banks, levy a speculation tax, and provide low-income families with safe and affordable banking services. We should crack down on payday lenders and other schemes that exploit vulnerable working families, offering instead safe and inexpensive banking via the postal system.
10. Rescue Democracy from the Special Interests
Big money has corrupted our democracy. Some might say democracy is not part of an economics agenda. But the same financial elites and corporations that buy and sell politicians use that political power to rig the economy so the top .01 percent gets massively richer while incomes decline for the rest of us. We pledge to reverse the Citizens United decision which gave corporations the right to spend unlimited money in politics. We will stop the attack on voting rights which has escalated just as a new majority of people of color, young people and working women has begun to exercise new power. We will fight for public financing of elections that bans corporate and big money - and for electoral reforms, like public matching of small donations, so people's candidates can compete with the candidates of the plutocrats. Finally, we pledge to change national and local political party structures so that progressive candidates get a fair shake in the nominating process and in general elections. And we will build a new progressive majority that can take back our democracy and our economic system.
V. A Global Economic Strategy for Working People
11. A Global Economic Strategy for Working Americans
Our global trade and tax policies have been created for and by multinational companies. We must renegotiate trade deals and rethink tax policies that benefit the already-wealthy, while they encourage the export of whole American industries, drive down pay and worker protections, and harm the environment. We need more but balanced trade, and global standards that protect the rights of workers, consumers and the environment. That requires a crackdown on tax havens, currency manipulation, and deals that allow corporations to trample basic labor rights here and abroad. Finally, we need new policies that allow us to help existing US industries, by having our government buy American, policies that are now outlawed by trade deals. And we need active investment policies that grow new cutting-edge industries, like green energy systems. Our current national security policies commit us to policing the world. The result costs lives and drains public resources. We need a real security policy that makes military intervention a last resort, and focuses on global threats like climate change, poverty and inequality. We should reduce military budgets and properly support humanitarian programs.
We will see what impact the Pledge/Agenda will have on the 2020 political debate. The multiple-candidate field will create a dynamic very different from 2016. But polling shows a wide spectrum of voters want politicians to talk about (and fight for) a bold economic agenda. Senator Bernie Sanders got historic support in 2016 because he talked about an agenda that challenged corporate power and put forward a plan for big economic change. And, because Hilary Clinton didn't want to be crosswise with that progressive agenda, she took positions she might not have - and walked away from the TPP trade deal, which was very unpopular with the Democratic base. And, thanks to pressure from Sanders supporters, the Democratic Platform was more progressive than ever. Unfortunately, Clinton didn't talk about it much.
Bernie Sanders just got into the 2020 race this week, rightly reminding interviewers that many of the ideas candidates are now discussing - and that our Agenda is promoting - first gained respectability and widespread support as a result of his pioneering 2016 Presidential campaign. This year many other candidates are embracing some of those ideas. Using and online comparison, we will publicly keep track of the economic agenda positions each of these candidates take. What the voters will have to determine how much each candidate really means his/her promises - and whether they are willing to fight for the jobs, wages, pensions - and their economic futures - of working Americans.
Who knows? Some of the best candidates may cancel each other out. Even if the eventual nominee ends up being the most conventional Democrat in the race, all progressives will work hard to get rid of Trump. And after that we will unite to organize to push the new President--and a larger Congressional majority--to fight for a plan for economic transformation. This Agenda will not go away, no matter who wins the elections. Because the growing number of Americans who are endorsing the Pledge to Fight for Good Jobs, Sustainable Growth and Economic Justice see themselves as enlisting for a long-term movement for change - not just for the next campaign.
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Don't Punish the Dreamers--Punish the Corporations Driving Forced Migration
The perpetrators of the "crime" are those who wrote the trade treaties and the economic reforms that made forced migration the only means for families to survive.
Sep 12, 2017
The "dreamers," young recipients of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program--are the true children of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). More than anyone, they have paid the price for the agreement. Yet they are the ones punished by the administration of President Donald Trump, as it takes away their legal status, ability to work and right to live in this country without fear of arrest or deportation. At the same time, those responsible for the fact they grew up in the United States walk away unpunished--and even better off.
I'm not talking about their parents. It's common for liberal politicians--and even Trump himself, on occasion--to say these young people shouldn't be punished for the "crimes" of their parents, who brought their children with them when they crossed the border without papers. But parents aren't criminals any more than their children are. They chose survival over hunger, and sought to keep their families together and give them a future.
The perpetrators of the "crime" are those who wrote the trade treaties and the economic reforms that made forced migration the only means for families to survive. The "crime" was NAFTA.
In a just world, U.S. trade negotiators would rewrite the treaty to repair the damage done to communities on both sides of the border, especially in Mexico. They would ensure that those forced to migrate--dreamers and other immigrants--have legal residence where they now live. They would change the rules of the relationship between the United States and Mexico, so that the income and lives of working people and the poor aren't sacrificed to produce profit opportunities for big corporations. And their new agreement would punish those corporations responsible for the vast increase in poverty following NAFTA's passage.
While the Trump administration and a Republican Congress are certainly not going to negotiate any changes like these, the first step in making change possible is telling the truth.Nowhere is this more important than in relation to NAFTA and immigration policy. It's impossible to understand the outrageous injustice of deporting the dreamers without acknowledging the reasons why they live in the United States to begin with.
The treaty had an enormous impact on Mexico, producing a wave of forced migration of millions of people. The World Bank in 2005 found that the extreme rural poverty rate of 35 percent from 1992 to 1994, prior to NAFTA, jumped to 55 percent from 1996 to 1998, after NAFTA took effect. By 2010, 53 million Mexicans were living in poverty, and about 20 percent live in extreme poverty, almost all in rural areas.
People were migrating from Mexico to the United States long before NAFTA, but the treaty put migration on steroids. In 1990, 4.4 million Mexican migrants had come to the United States. A decade later, that population more than doubled to 9.75 million, and in 2008 it peaked at 12.67 million. About 9 percent of all Mexicans now live in the United States. About 5.7 million were able to get some kind of visa, but another 7 million couldn't.
In the first year of NAFTA, one million Mexicans lost their jobs, by the government's count.Jeff Faux, founding director of the Economic Policy Institute, told In These Times that "the peso crash of December, 1994, was directly connected to NAFTA."
The treaty then forced yellow corn grown by Mexican farmers without subsidies to compete in Mexico's own market with corn from huge U.S. producers, subsidized by the U.S. farm bill. Corn imports rose from around 2 million to more than 10 million tons from 1992 to 2008. Mexico imported 30,000 tons of pork in 1995, and by 2010, this number jumped to 811, 000 tons. As a result, pork prices dropped 56 percent, and Mexico lost over 120,000 jobs in pork production.
NAFTA prohibited price supports, without which hundreds of thousands of small farmers found it impossible to sell corn or other farm products for what it cost to produce them. The CONASUPO system--in which the Mexican government bought corn at subsidized prices, turned it into tortillas and sold them in state-franchised grocery stores at subsidized low prices--was abolished. The price of corn to farmers fell by 66 percent, and the price of tortillas jumped by 279 percent in NAFTA's first decade.
In Dreams Deported, published by the UCLA Labor Center, dreamers describe their memories of forced migration, retold in their families. Vicky's family in Mexico "was too poor to pay for her mother's medication and Vicky couldn't find a job to support her parents." Renata Teodoro remembers, "My father had been working in the United States for many years, and we survived on the money he sent us."
Rufino Dominguez, former director of the Oaxacan Institute for Attention to Migrants, said in 2014, "NAFTA forced the price of corn so low that it's not economically possible to plant a crop anymore. We come to the U.S. to work because we can't get a price for our product at home. There's no alternative." About 2.5 million rural Mexican farmers and farmworkers were driven out of work or off their land.
Urban workers felt NAFTA's impact as well. The average Mexican wage was 23 percent of the U.S. manufacturing wage in 1975. By 2002, it was less than an eighth. In the 20 years after NAFTA went into effect, the buying power of Mexican wages dropped, and the minimum wage fell by 24 percent. A U.S. autoworker earns $21.50 an hour, and a Mexican autoworker $3. A gallon of milk costs more in Mexico than it does in the United States. It takes a Mexican autoworker over an hour's work to buy a pound of hamburger, while a worker in Detroit can buy it after 10 minutes. But Mexican workers in the GM plant making the Sonic, Silverado, and Sierra produce the same number of cars per hour that the workers do in U.S. plants. The difference means profit for GM, poverty for Mexican workers and the migration of those who can't survive.
Congress was warned that NAFTA might increase poverty and fuel migration. When the deal passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) in 1986, Congress set up a Commission for the Study of International Migration and Cooperative Economic Development to study immigration's causes. Its 1990 report recommends negotiating a free trade agreement between the United States, Mexico and Canada. But it cautioned, "It takes many years--even generations--for sustained growth to achieve the desired effect." Meanwhile, the study warned of years of "transitional costs in human suffering." Nevertheless, the negotiations that led to NAFTA started within months.
In a statement giving its current position on the trade talks, the AFL-CIO argued that "all workers, regardless of sector, have the right to receive wages sufficient for them to afford ... a decent standard of living," and to prohibit export of products made by companies paying less. Progressive Mexican unions and community organizations support this principle, because it would give workers and farmers a future at home, where they live.
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, a leader of the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations, which fights for immigrants' rights in the United States, told In These Times, "We need the ability to stay home with jobs and incomes that can support families--the right to not migrate." But without changing U.S. trade policy and ending pro-corporate economic reforms, millions of displaced people will continue to migrate, no matter how many walls are built on the border. If people bring their children with them, that's no more than any of us would do to avoid the breakup of our families.
Defending the dreamers and the rights of all migrants in the United States is intimately connected with changing the policies that uproot communities and force families into the dangerous journey through the desert and across this country's southern border. Tearing down the wall instead of building a new one, and closing the detention centers instead of filling them with dreamers, is as much a part of renegotiating NAFTA as ensuring that Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill never again drive farmers off their land, or forcing General Motors to pay a wage that won't send workers home to hungry families.
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