Appendix 9

End Poverty Now

• Jobs and Living Incomes for All
• A guaranteed right to a living wage job.
• A living wage minimum wage of $10 per hour.
• A guaranteed minimum income above the poverty line.
• A shorter work week with no loss in pay.
• No cutbacks in welfare, nutrition, health care, or Social Security.

Free Health Care for All

• A single-payer National Health Program to provide free medical and dental care for all, federally financed and controlled by democratically-elected local boards.

Affordable Housing for All

• Expand public housing and capital grants to non-profit housing developers to ensure that all people can obtain decent housing at no more than 30% of their income.

Fair Elections

• Equal allotments of public campaign financing and broadcast media time for all candidates who agree not to use private money.
• Election of legislative bodies by proportional representation (each party gets seats in proportion to their total vote).
• Election of single seats by majority preference voting (voters rank candidates in order of preference).

Participatory Democracy

• Ground political representation in a foundation of participatory, direct democracy: a Citizens Assembly in every neighborhood, open to all of its residents, acting as a grassroots legislative body, with its own budget for local administration, and the power (in concert with other Citizens Assemblies who share a representative) to monitor, instruct, and recall representatives elected to municipal, state, and federal office.

A Domestic Marshall Plan

• A program of massive federal investment in our cities and rural areas for infrastructure reconstruction and economic development.

An Ecological Transition Plan

• Shift environmental policy from pollution control, which hasn't worked, to pollution prevention -not producing toxins in the first place.
• Phase out toxic technologies while phasing in ecological technologies. Use federal investments, purchasing, mandates, and incentives to:
• Shut down nuclear power plants.
• Phase out fossil fuels and phase in solar-based renewables.
• Shut down waste incinerators, phase out landfills, and phase in full recycling.
• Phase out most chlorinated and other synthetic petrochemicals and phase in natural, biodegradable substitutes.
• Phase out synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and phase in organic agriculture.
• Reduce combustion-engine/auto-based transport and expand pedestrian, bicycle, and zero-pollution auto and rail transport.
• A Superfund for Workers to guarantee new jobs at comparable income for all workers displaced by the ecological transition.

Environmental Defense and Environmental Justice

• Full funding for anti-pollution enforcement and toxic sites clean-up.
• Preserve ecosystems and biodiversity by strengthening the Endangered Species Act and expanding areas designated as wildlife refuge and wilderness designations.
• Ban old-growth logging, clear cutting and strip mining.
• End taxpayer-subsidized exploitation of public lands by private timber, mining, and cattle grazing interests.
• Ban patents on life forms.
• Moratorium on the release of genetically-engineered life forms.
• Stop targeting toxic industries and dumps at communities of color.

Sustainable Agriculture

• Reform farm price supports to cover the costs of production plus a living income for family farmers and farmworker cooperatives.
• Subsidize farmers' transition to organic agriculture while natural systems of soil fertility and pest control are being restored.
• Break up corporate agribusiness. Create family farms and farm-worker cooperatives through a homesteading program and land reform based on acreage limitations and residency requirements.

Human Rights and Equality for All

• Strengthen civil rights, anti-discrimination and affirmative action laws and programs to end institutionalized racism and sexism.
• Honor all treaty obligations with Native Americans and Chicanos.
• A national commission to make recommendations on reparations for African Americans.
• Defend the rights of immigrants to housing, education, health care, jobs and civil, legal, and political rights.

Workers' Rights

• Ban permanent striker replacements.
• Reform labor laws to enable workers to organize unions without reprisals from employers.
• Extend the First Amendment rights of free speech, association, and assembly into the workplace.
• Extend workers' rights under federal labor laws to all public employees and farmworkers.

Women's Rights

• Defend women's right to abortion and financial access to abortion.
• Strengthen laws on domestic violence and sexual harassment in the workplace.
• Pass comparable worth legislation to enable women and minorities to receive equal pay for work of equal value.

Children and Youth Rights

• Free, quality child care for all, federally-financed and community-controlled through democratically-elected local boards.
• Free, quality public education for every child, from preschool through graduate school.
• Equalize per-pupil funding of public schools.
• Multicultural and multilingual education at all levels.

Gay and Lesbian Rights

• Outlaw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment, benefits, child custody, and legal recognition of same-sex marriages.

Legal Justice

• Abolish the death penalty.
• Establish a humane criminal sanction system based on prevention, restitution, rehabilitation, and reconciliation rather than vengeance, forced labor, and profits for the "jail-industrial complex."
• Strengthen laws and enforcement against corporate crime.
• No compromise on civil liberties and due process for "national security," "anti-terrorism," or "the war on drugs."
• Treat drug abuse as a health problem, not a criminal problem.
• More jobs and justice, not more cops and jails.

End Militarism

• No U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of other countries.
• An immediate 50% cut in military spending.
• Close all overseas military bases.
• Dismantle all nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
• Abolish the CIA.
• A Peace Conversion Program to guarantee new jobs at comparable income for all workers and soldiers displaced by demilitarization.

End Corporate Welfare

• Eliminate subsidies and tax breaks that benefit America's wealthiest corporations and households at the expense of working people.

Progressive Tax and Budget Policies

• Oppose the Balanced Budget Amendment and all budget deals that lock priorities in years before the conditions in which they operate.
• Separate operating and investment outlays in federal budgeting.
• Balance federal operating budgets while paying for progressive priorities by deep cuts in military spending, an end to corporate welfare, and higher taxes on the unearned income and wealth of the super-rich (instead of borrowing from and paying interest to them).
• Set a maximum income of ten times the minimum wage and structure it into a more progressive income tax.