Yes we can

Yesterday afternoon we had a platform meeting for Obama in our teensy home. We managed to squeeze about 32 people in, with standing room only. I was blown away by the thoughtful and passionate discussion and with the ideas that came from the meeting. I've gone back and forth over whether to post the platform I eventually wrote from the meeting here; ultimately, I think it is a useful thing to do. My one regret was the lack of time in this process. We needed to make our issues heard but we didn't have time to actually write the platform as a group. I only hope I did those remarkable people justice in what I have written.

The campaign asked if there was anything that stood out or stories that I wanted to share. This is what I told them:

We had very strong opinions expressed by articulate and intelligent people. One man told us about working full time and yet no having health insurance. Another told us of her experience in the educational system in another state and the extreme inequity of it in comparison to the education in Texas. I spoke about disability and the idea that we are not equal if equality is not enforced. My husband spoke about being an atheist and being excluded from moral consideration based on the majority's view of faith.

The greatest thing, though, was the palpable excitement over the ability to talk to and listen to people who share your dream for a better nation. We pledged to get together again, independent of the campaign, and explore these issues and other issues in more depth. It was wonderful to see such engagement on the faces of all involved and such a willingness to accept the words of others as valid and worthy of consideration. I don't know why, but we had a truly wonderful group of people.

The platform:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

With these words, we do act, believe and inspire a nation of citizens, as individuals and as a collected people. The foundation of an undeniable equality for all people is the most basic statement of issue we can choose to recognize. The nature of equality being one of action rather than rhetoric, we have chosen these issues to particularly endorse as necessary for equality to be realized:

1. Environmental concerns. Without a stable and sustainable environment we lose the necessity of all other issues, individually and collectively. As reason driven beings we are called by duty to act as considered participants in the use and protection of nature. Just as you do not build a home on shifting sand, you cannot build a nation on a dying world. If we seek a better future by the work we do today, we must first ensure that a future is possible. It is of vital importance that our actions as humans do not take more from our environment than they give; for this reason, our responsibility in the daily quest for equality is one that must recognize that equality cannot be reached if there is not a place for it to reside.

2. 1. Healthcare as a right, not a privilege. When we endorse the idea in our first declaration of intent that all people are guaranteed life through the very nature of life itself, we assert that life must involve action. Life is not static: we cannot stand still, we cannot go backwards, we cannot go sideways. Forward motion inheres itself to life and is not separable from the mechanism and definition of life itself. Because of that progression, people biologically degrade and require intervention to progress until the final limit of their existence. Holding it true that all people are the rightful owners of their own biological life, we must allow people to pursue that life with all access to equality. If you provide some of the people with access to healthcare but not all of the people, you are enforcing the idea that only some people are deserving of the fundamental necessity of intervention against pain and treatable disease. If healthcare exists but only for the people who arbitrarily possess more opportunity of access to it, the principle and the practicality of equality cannot exist.

3. Veterans’ affairs. When we ask others to protect us we give them the proxy to our liberty. Doing so imposes a huge burden on the entrusted person and it forces us to recognize that burden with all amelioration of harm done in the name of our liberty. We ask the people who serve in our military to carry an impossible burden when we ask them to carry it alone. If we do not ask that the burden be carried only temporarily and with equal access to the benefit of our proxy, we are asking our soldiers to subvert their equality. We have the profound responsibility to morally and physically pay for the ability to hand off the protection of our liberty to others. The way we have treated the people who serve in our military is shameful. We must take up the burden they have carried when they return from service and we must make sure their equality is enforced when they are not here to ensure it themselves. It is profoundly humbling to know that another person would die for your safety, for your comfort, for your equality; it is because of that knowledge that we owe every veteran, every serving soldier, and every military family member the debt of care, safety and dignity. Without them, there is no Us, there is no society. Without the enforcement of their equality in all things, we cease to recognize equality in its most basic function: the necessity of a shared burden.
   

4. People with disabilities require and are entitled to equal access in society. All people possess the inherent biological equality that exists in the nature of a human being. However, all people also possess differences in abilities that require nuanced movement in respect to our individuality. If you accept that human equality is based solely on membership in the human species, you must accept that any difference does not degrade that equality. Further, if a significant portion of your society is unable to access the public mechanisms of society, those people are practically and ideologically segregated and cannot call themselves full members of society. Equal access to all things public is a fundamental right declared in our democracy. Just as we do not force African Americans to have separate access to public spaces, services and opportunities, we should not force people with disabilities to segregate themselves according to ability. Yet, the only way a citizen of the United States can force compliance of access on public enterprise is to hire legal representation and sue the noncompliant entity. The burden of access cannot fall on the people who do not possess access in the first place. It is in the equality of access that we are endowed with our citizenship in this country. Without that access we are spoken of as equal, but not equal in actuality. We are not equal when people who share our inherent biological equality cannot participate in society; equality is enforced by the necessity of access for all people, regardless of ability.

5. Balanced budget. Our society is based on the arbitrary and inherently valueless idea of monetary equivalence. With the recognition that our value extends before, during, and after value has been accorded to an idea of value through money, we must also acknowledge that the monetary trust we afford our government should not be taken from us with a lack of accountability. It is for this reason that we require our government to conduct the business of society, the thing that requires monetary value, in a way that does not put undue burden on the citizens of our country. When a budget is overextended and lopsided in nature we cannot possibly enforce equality for those who are forced to accept less than the people who benefit from unnecessary and valueless excess. The very nature of equality demands balance in all things and this must remain true for our ideas, both practical and lofty. Without balance in the business of government and the trust fund of the people, equality will degrade until it is measured solely by the idea and not the actuality.

6. Cessation of borrowing from Social Security. It is necessary in society that, while all people are equal, some people will garner less in the way of monetary value than others. Humans possess different abilities which cause them to need and provide different services in society. It is also a fundamental component of equality that all people, no matter their ability have access to a dignified existence. It is for that reason that Social Security is necessary for people who have not or are unable to provide themselves with enough money to live once they are no longer able to contribute to society by working. We accept this as true and necessary just as we accept that our government is pledged to protect our interests. Our interests are not served when the government abuses our trust by taking the money we pay toward a better dignity in society for every citizen and uses it to further something that is not related to that trust. You do not put your money in a trust with the expectation that the money will be used against your consent. Furthermore, the acknowledgment of a lack of intent to pay back the forcefully borrowed money violates our trust so profoundly that it imposes a false dichotomy of us versus them on the relationship of citizen to government. Whenever we are forced into the role of prisoner of circumstances due to our government’s misdeeds we are unable to pursue or even acknowledge equality.

7. Education is a necessity. When we choose to live in society, we choose that society to protect our interests and the interests of our neighbors. If society does nothing more than protect our physical interests, or protect the property we are holding at that moment, society will fail. It is the duty of our government to protect the entirety of our interests and to do that in the best way available. When our government enforces a lack of equity in educational standards it is furthering the cycle of discontent and lack of opportunity that creates problems for every citizen in society. Education, the thing that allows us to function as the considered beings we are, is necessary in its equality of access. We cannot know that we possess the ability to read if we do not know what reading means. Accordingly, we cannot know that we possess the ability to live productively and harmoniously in society if we do not know how to learn and progress. The cycle of generational poverty has caused an enormous gap in educational resources that must be bridged for society to prosper. When we are judged as a society based on the success of our citizens, the deficit of educational standards will define our entire society. As adults possessed of educational gifts, it is our duty to insure the success of our future generations through our own hard won success. Our equality in education translates our equality in society and the world. Without it, we are equal without the ability to recognize it, act on it and believe it.

8. Election reform. It is vitally necessary that a society acts in the best interest and through the voice of the people in that society. Society, after all, is the thing we become when we stand unified with others. We cannot possibly be unified or represented by a society that does not allow us to choose the direction and leadership of our collective interest. When the very few and arbitrarily lucky possess more of a voice in the way a society is chosen and acted out, equality does not exist. It is imperative that we find ways to enforce the idea that all people have the right to be heard and all votes count. It is for this reason that election reform must commence and must be the enforcement of the idea that we are all equal in our right to the direction and leadership of society.

9. Foreign affairs. When we were attacked on September 11^th we saw two very important things: the pain of betrayal on the most basic level and the sublimity of support on the largest level. We saw horror in the name of an unknown and unworkable idea first, then we saw the true nature of our recognized compassion and equality in the tears, outstretched hands and inclusiveness of the rest of the world. We saw German football (soccer) players crying so hard they could not take to the field of play. We saw London punk rockers laying flowers down next to a peer of the realm. We saw the shock and recognition of the world community for the horror we were experiencing. It was in that moment, that unlikely and horrible opportunity, that we could have created and enforced so much good in the world. Unfortunately, we chose the exact opposite path into destruction and continual, repetitive horror. It is for this reason that we must, terribly must, employ diplomacy and reason in our relations with other countries. We must recognize the sovereignty of other nations as equal to our own and we must recognize that war is only a solution in the most extreme, tyrannical situations. If we protect our borders why should we storm the borders of others? We must go forward with the recognition that all people are equal and deserve to pursue their own happiness in their own way as long as it does not infringe on the liberty of others. We have done the exact opposite of that in the Middle East and it must stop, now, before the equality we subvert is our own. We must renew our commitment to the world at large by renewing our commitment to the International Court, the United Nations, and our endorsement of the Geneva Conventions. Greater men and women than us have gone before and laid down our duty to equality of treatment and responsibility; it is our current duty to recognize that gift.

10. The return to science. There has been a push in recent years to conflate faith with science in education and in public policy; this agenda is one of exclusion and is divorced from the natural world as we are able to understand it. While faith is a wonderful thing and a thing we must be allowed, it cannot be a thing that is forced on others. The very nature of faith is one that must be gotten to through a leap, not a shove. The community of scientists in the United States is strong, varied and purposeful in their willingness to work toward an equality of biology. It is through science itself that we have the understanding of that biological equality and it must be supported as a thing itself. We don’t think of a “dark age” as possessing any elucidation in science; rather, we think of it as a time when people adhere to an idea over reality and force others to adhere to it as well. We cannot know what another person’s understanding of an idea truly is; we can only know what our biological capabilities guarantee. Ideas are arbitrary in practicality and can only be recognized as fact when they are scientifically verified. It is for that reason that science must prosper for our understanding and treatment of our biological lives and equality to continue.
    

Edited to add:

I think we need to emphasize:
1.More & better funding/oversight on public transportation (good for the environment & energy conservation): national rail service, coordination of urban public transportation intrastate.
2.A BALANCED approach to the Middle East, one that accentuates a solid two state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, where Israel exists in security & peace in pre-1967 borders, & the Palestinians have a viable, healthy state wherein BOTH Hezbollah & Hamas agree to recognize Israel's
right to exist & disarm their organizations & work w/ the Palestinian government as partners, not adversaries. Where corruption & hoarding of oil profits are rooted out in ALL Middle Eastern countries, so that the people benefit from the wealth instead of oligarchies & Western oil companies. And that the U.S. use diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy in dealing w/ Iran. We withdraw from Iraq.
3.A Health Care plan based on the Congressional Health Care Plan as proposed by Sen. Obama.

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