George W. Bush has a sense of fair play. . .
Today I am posting the second excerpt of an article from the August 2nd/9th issue of
The Nation Magazine entitled: "A People's Democratic Platform"
Now onwards to the removal of G.W. Bush, and the restoration, or better yet the re-imaginings of a better and truer democracy!
--D.
Click here for the complete article A People's Democratic Platform
Walter Cronkite
Walter Cronkite is a former CBS news anchor.
The Democrats should pledge to restore the environment to the status of a major concern, putting a new Department of the Environment on a par with State and Defense. At its heart will be a blue-ribbon panel of distinguished scientists who will identify the most pressing environmental problems and prioritize the department's attacks upon them.
The Secretary of the Environment will be an individual with a national reputation as one long dedicated to the cause, fearless in condemning the special interests and their political lackeys. (The platform could promise that Ralph Nader would be offered the post, which would serve to deflate Nader's third-party campaign.)
The Department of the Environment will, during inaugural week, begin the complete reversal of most, if not all, of the outgoing Republican Administration's actions involving the environment, putting into effect stringent air and water regulations and eliminating favored treatment for polluters who are regarded as special interests. The Administration will recognize the Kyoto Protocol and become a leader in reversing global warming, including working to end the world's dependence on fossil fuels.
In addition, the Administration will protect our forests, marshes, lakes, rivers, coasts and wildlife from industrial and commercial development and oil exploration, while recognizing the value of every living thing placed in our care.
Ellen Chesler
Ellen Chesler, a senior fellow at the Open Society Institute, has an essay on women's rights in What We Stand For: A Program for Progressive Patriotism, edited by Mark Green.
The platform should call for immediate US ratification of the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the UN's visionary global treaty for advancing women's rights and opportunities in all aspects of life. One hundred seventy-seven countries around the world have ratified CEDAW, leaving the United States among a handful of "rogue" states, including Sudan, Somalia and Iran, in failing to do so, because intransigent conservatives, opposing both international obligations and women's rights, have exercised a veto.
Adopted in 1979, CEDAW acknowledges the importance of women's traditional obligations as mothers responsible for the raising of children and the preservation of families, but it also establishes new norms. It catalogues a broad range of rights for women in marriage, including property, inheritance and access to healthcare, with an explicit mention of family planning, though not of abortion. It demands equality for women as citizens with full access to suffrage, political representation and other legal benefits, including the right to education free of gender stereotypes and segregation. It establishes their rights as workers deserving equal remuneration and protection from sexual harassment and workplace discrimination.
In a number of countries, ironically now including Afghanistan and Iraq, treaty provisions have been incorporated into democratic constitutions. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently cited CEDAW as an argument for increasing our own government's obligation to promote women's full work-force participation and to protect parenting through paid family leave and subsidized childcare.
We owe CEDAW to ourselves and to women around the world.
Margaret Cho
Margaret Cho is a comedian.
Upholding and expanding the ideology of democracy is a mission far more worthy of our devotion than serving the theology of prejudice. The Democratic platform should state that we believe that a democratic nation does not seek to unite church and state. Our court system must not be the battleground for a holy war. Our current system has led to unbalanced treatment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals. It has also proved unfair to women, leaving out choice in the matter of reproductive rights. When we base our laws on tolerance, not contrition, repentance or faith, we work to achieve a higher ground.
To be continued. . . x-posted in my personal journal
Special thanks to
ethanator for his recent contribution!
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