While our vision for American Renewal embraces a broad agenda, requiring profound and permanent structural and systemic reform, currently all of our energies are focused on an electoral strategy, intended to restore true, representative democracy in this country.
Why is this so?
Surely, there are many urgent and critical issues which deserve our immediate attention.
- Getting rid of Citizens United.
- Transitioning America to sustainable energy.
- Comprehensive election reform and getting money out of politics.
- Protecting the oceans and addressing climate change.
- Eliminating corporate personhood.
- Breaking up the big banks.
- Nationalizing the Federal Reserve.
- Eliminating tax loopholes and taxing offshore accounts.
- Stopping the unnecessary wars and bringing our troops home.
- Giving amnesty to immigrants who have lived here a long time.
- Setting minimum nutritional standards in school lunches.
- Stopping corporations from shipping jobs overseas.
- Increasing the budgets for food-safety testing.
- Reducing air, water, and ground pollution.
- Giving relief to people with underwater mortgages.
- Stopping unscrupulous bank foreclosures.
- Subsidizing college tuition fees.
- Hiring more teachers.
Yes . . . these are all admirable, some are critical, some urgent.
Unfortunately, with the mayhem, gridlock, and treachery that passes itself off these days as our legislative process, and the current crop of pay-for-play corporate lapdogs who pass themselves off as legislators, NONE OF THIS WILL GET DONE!
None of it can get done.
Our democracy is broken.
Our political system is sick, some say terminally ill.
It’s poisoned with money, corrupted by legalized bribery, blighted with a foul plague of cronysm and shameless power brokering.
So . . . we have no choice.
We must fix the system first.
We must reclaim our democracy.
Then we can get on with making our country great again.