| Thanks to our 400 new members! We need to add 600 more members by August 1 in order to survive as a party in Oregon. It only takes 2 minutes to register or change your registration to the Progressive Party! |
![]() |
Proposed Platform
Here is a proposed "Progressive Vision" for the Progressive Party of Oregon. We borrowed it, with permission, from Democracy's Edge. Comments are welcome.
We recognize that people around the world all seek similar things: dignity, security, economic justice, human rights, and a healthy environment.
HUMAN RIGHTS/DIGNITY:
- The U.S. will adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and use all resources to influence our trading partners to do the same.
- In our democracy every vote must count, and the unfair influence of special interest money will be eliminated from elections.
SECURITY:
- We advocate a strong United Nations as the guarantor of world peace; the U.S. military budget will be markedly reduced and the Department of Peace will be instituted.
- The U.S. will never again engage in a preventive war of choice and will only act unilaterally when our security is clearly threatened.
- The U.S will ban all arms exports and use our leverage with our trading partners to influence them to do the same.
- The U.S. will not interfere in the activities of democratically elected governments anywhere.
- The U.S. will have effective gun control.
OPPORTUNITY:
- Every American will have access to a quality education to the full extent of their abilities.
- Every American will have access to guaranteed quality health care, regardless of their financial means.
- Immigrant workers will receive full protection of our labor laws.
ECONOMIC JUSTICE:
- We will work to end poverty.
- Our minimum wage laws will be adjusted to ensure that every full-time adult worker receives a living wage.
- Trade policy will embrace workers' rights, environmental protection, and living wages around the world.
- The "personhood" of corporations will end.
- We believe in a balanced federal budget, except in times of national emergency.
ENVIRONMENT:
- Present and future generations are entitled to a healthy environment; sustainability will be our guide.
- Funding environmentally sound alternative energy sources will be a top national priority.




Don't Forget Software Reform
Great start. I urge you to consider what EU greens added to their platform, this cycle.
"Blank Check Information Technology" is one of the biggest pieces of pork in budgets, from city to Federal level. They have added a plank to open all software contracts to open bids, require explicit requirements and goals, and limit development to open source software.
This is a huge issue and cuts across many of your policy items.
I recently moved to oregon
I recently moved to oregon and registered to vote Progressive. However, i have some issues with your proposed platform.
1. I agree that the US should adhere to the UDHR. However, using "all resources to influence our trading partners to do the same" ends up being a form of imperialism, given the imbalance of resources in favor of the US. For example, the embargo of cuba remains in effect, at least in part, because of the claim by the US government that cuba does not respect what the US considers human rights. The effect of the embargo is often to deny human rights, such as medicine, to cubans. Regardless of one's position on the premise that cuba violates human rights to begin with, the embargo is obviously counterproductive.
One key human right is national sovereignty and self-determination, which is the right of one nation not to be unduly controlled or influenced by another. The US, as a global hegemon, tends to violate this right on a daily basis in many different places simultaneously. This platform plank seems to support such bullying, at least in the economic arena.
I therefore propose eliminating the second clause of the first human rights bullet.
2. I oppose the first bullet of the section on security. The UN was set up in order that the Great Powers could continue to impose their will on the world in the new order that followed the second world war. This is why only the Great Powers have permanent seats and veto power in the security council. So long as the USSR was there as an effective counterbalance to the west, however, the UN was, to some extent, a voice for peace. This changed in 1991. The UN fanned the flames in Yugoslavia, and acts as an occupying imperial force today, on behalf of both France and the US, in the shantytowns of haiti, ever since the invasion of that country by those powers in 2004.
I do not oppose the existence of the UN, but i oppose what it has become, and do not think that now is the time to cede it more power. Unlike even the US government, the UN is answerable to no polity, save perhaps the aforementioned permanent members of the security council, especially the US executive.
3. In the fourth Security bullet, i oppose the use of the words "democratically elected." Again, the issue is sovereignty. Why should the principle of non-intervention be limited to those countries that the US government considers "democratically elected"? Democratically elected governments are not necessarily good ones. Hitler, for example, was democratically elected. Juan Peron in his first administration was not elected, but was wildly popular. The same is true of Ho Chi Minh. The US has no right to impose its form of government on others. Period.
4. The second security bullet, about "preventive war of choice" is awkward and vague. Did you borrow rumsfeld's terminology or what? How about, "In keeping with the UN Charter, we oppose all wars of aggression."
Just friendly suggestions.
Dave
platform
Under economic justice, it says that each "fulltime adult", suggesting that there may be some adults who ar adult only parttime. Pretty cool idea but likely not what you meant.
where can progressive Democrats go
We should follow the actions of Representative Alan Grayson of Florida He has introduced five bills to counter the Supreme Court's decision to accord personhood rights to corporations. It may lead to having many progressive Democrats leave the party and join the Progressives.
Proposed platform and Second Amendment rights
I'm in favor of the Oregon Progressive Party's entire platform, as proposed, with the exception of this plank: "The U.S. will have effective gun control." I urge the party to reject it.
I loathe violence, hate war and oppose the power of the military/industrial complex, but I do not trust it and its mercenaries, police and other "authorities" to be the only legitimate possessors of firearms in our democracy.
Remember, one of the first acts of Hitler's fascist regime was to disarm individual citizens and reserve the right to keep and bear arms soley for members of the military, police and other government agencies and a militia composed of brown-shirted Nazi thugs.
Our Constitution's Bill of Rights contains an explicit recognition of the right to keep and bear arms and an implicit acknowledgment of our need to be able to protect ourselves and to resist domestic, as well as foreign, tyranny.
Progressives, who love democracy and despise despotism, must do our utmost to honor and preserve each of our sacred civil liberties, including this one. We are the heirs of American revolutionaries. It is our sacred duty to be careful custodians of the rights they fought for and the freedoms they bequeathed us.
Second that Second Amendment.
Thank you for speaking up, Steven. I'm also a pro-gun rights liberal. I get that people die due to accidents and malicious acts involving firearms. However it just isn't borne out that gun control will stop this. Education will stop this. Enforcing the existing laws against violence with jail time will stop this, and we can lock up more serious offenders when we release all the nonviolent drug offenders and legalize and regulate drugs. Legalizing and regulating drugs will reduce all types of violence, including gun violence. Keeping me, a responsible citizen, from keeping and bearing arms will only embolden criminals and potentially make me and those I could have protected a victim.
I was just notified by the Oregon Democrat Party Gun Owners Caucus that I'd be removed as a member since I've registered as a member of the Progressive party. It saddened me a bit, as the GOC was the only thing I liked about the Oregon Democrat Party. I'm not willing to be railroaded by anti-gun paranoia into voting against my interests, but I won't abide "gun control" without a vigorous debate.
Proposed platform and Second Amendment rights
Thanks for the comments. Vigorous debate is what this party is about. We will post some polls to ask members their thoughts on this and other subjects.
Gun Control
I think that we should have a gun control policy that allows civilians to use and own guns. Guns are usually only a problem in cities and when criminals and gangs use them for violence. To me that is what an effective gun control policy would look like.
Post new comment