Delegates who go to convention should be enabled to negotiate better party platform planks!

[Baobab]

The convention is just a few months away and I hear nobody talking about huge changes which need to occur in the Dem. party platform. For example, we should stop supporting trade deals that try to take over the world's future - even as jobs are going away globally, for good, and stop the US trying to block affordable public health care and higher education.

Which we are doing, people need to face that reality. Sanders is the only candidate who has a clue about the importance of this. Its not some abstract thing. Look 15 or 20 years into the future and barring some miracle, most people wont be working. Machines will do most work people do today. Its already happening. For that reason , guest worker programs that try to cheapen the value of work should be banned. Now before they become locked in by pending trade deals. Guest worker programs are not the "fix" for artificially contrived "crises" in health care and education. We're being manipulated into a very bad decision which has no basis in fact.

Guest worker programs are not the solution to need to upgrade infrastructure or health care costs. Throwing our doctors and nurses and teachers under the bus to get more bargaining chips for globalization wont fly.

We need a permanent ban on secret trade deals, all of them should be cancelled and we need to start fresh with a system which doesn try to play different groups off against one another (like US workers against developing country workers in competition for the same US jobs)

Also, to get single payer we need to dump GATS. Look at what happened in South Africa.

Thank you

[Skwmom]

1. I'm sure words on a piece of paper are going to be oh so convincing. n/t

[CrowCityDem]

2. Delegates aren't the platform committee.

[Orsino]

3. Yes. Lobby the fuck out of them, as well as the candidates. n/t

[MineralMan]

4. Delegates will be voting on the platform.

It's being finalized by the Platform Committee, even now. That's one of the functions of the Convention.

The time for substantive changes to the platform was while it was being formulated. Typically, it is adopted with few changes at the convention.

You'll be able to watch the entire convention on CSPAN. You can see how it works there. We're lucky that it will be covered from gavel to gavel. In the past, only delegates and guests got to see it all.

[Baobab]

5. Why the war on public healthcare and public higher education? - not just at home,all around the worl

Here is the biggest problem I see- Why is the US - and apparently the Democratic party- fighting a secretive war on public health care and public higher education - not just at home, but all around the world?


http://www.eua.be/Libraries/publication/EUA_Statement_TTIP.pdf?sfvrsn=2

http://www.pnhp.org/sites/default/files/Nick%20Skala%20GAT%20and%20Health%20Reform.pdf

[MineralMan]

6. I have no idea. I haven't seen the proposed platform, either.

Have you? I've seen resolutions passed by the party here in MN. Single payer healthcare was passed here as a resolution again this year. So was a resolutions demanding free tuition at public colleges.

Those resolutions from state party organizations are part of the process of creating the platform. They begin at the precinct level and are refined and presented at the district and state conventions. Those that pass become part of the state party's platform and are passed along to the national party platform committee. There's a process for this, but it began long ago in the year.

The way to influence the party's platform is to be involved and active in the party. Those who are have input into the process. Those who are not active in the party organization do not have any input. That's how political parties operate.

My advice is to get started today to become an active party organization member and work your way up to leadership. That's how things get done. It doesn't start on DU, I guarantee. I've never met another DUer at any Minnesota DFL Party meeting or convention. Not one. Why is that, do you suppose?

Become active and make a difference. That's always my advice.

[Baobab]

7. Wow, I dont even know where to begin. Frank Zappa said "The rights to you have already been sold".

We are all so out of the loop - That is just part of the problem. The rights to us - the rights to our future and the right to change it, have already been sold. And they have not told us! That is the #1 reason why I act like an angry man regarding HRC - this huge thing which nobody here seems to know or understand. It started with this FTA in 1994- which kicked off a war on the whole worlds future the US is waging through obscure trade policy. Single payer is blocked. Free public hgher education is blocked by this global deal. There seems to be a cover up of this at the highest levels.

[MineralMan]

8. Yeah, well, we all have our priorities.

BTW, I don't respond to unsolicited DU Mail, so don't expect a reply.

Right now, I don't have time to dig into the issues you raise, either. Sorry.

As for Frank Zappa, I've never seen him as a philosophical authority, although I enjoyed much of his music.

[Baobab]

9. since those deals are irreversible we'll have plenty of time to ruminate about them in the future

The URL to one of the papers is in my .sig if you want to read it later