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Post by POA on Apr 25, 2004 1:26:00 GMT -5
This is going to be the party platform development thread for civil rights issues. This includes:
1) Ending police brutality
2) Privacy rights, especially the status of the bill of rights.
3) Reproductive rights.
4) Improving the status of minorities.
5) Improving the status of immigrants.
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Post by spikeb on Apr 25, 2004 17:13:39 GMT -5
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Post by POA on Apr 26, 2004 16:59:52 GMT -5
Here's one particular issue I thought of, although it also seems to cross several different branches of government so I'm not sure how it could be addressed.
End the phenomenon where, in cases of police brutality trials, a change of venue is used to choose conservative, suburban, and overwhelmingly white communities so that way the police are likely to evade what ought to be a certain conviction.
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Post by Ropegun on Apr 26, 2004 17:04:19 GMT -5
I agree.
These types of things should be tried where the incident occured.
If a white cops shoots a black man in a black neighborhood, he should be tried in the same black neighborhood. Same if it were the other way around.
If the defense says all jurors are tainted due to media exposure, maybe they'd be more careful about what the media was told. Maybe you'd be able to do two things at once this way?
Peace.
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Post by spikeb on Apr 29, 2004 23:39:29 GMT -5
That seems more like a job for judges and not lawmakers, though.
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Post by POA on May 6, 2004 18:26:40 GMT -5
That seems more like a job for judges and not lawmakers, though. If we want to get anything positive done we're going to have to cross lines like this though. Part of the problem we have right now is that the system has been compartmentalized in such a way that problems that do cross designations such as this typically don't get addressed very well. |
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Post by POA on May 6, 2004 18:32:21 GMT -5
I forgot a couple of big ones in terms of the platform:
1) Legalization of marijuana, with full pardons for everyone who has nothing but convictions related to such on their records.
(This will also eliminate a significant chunk of the felon disenfranchisement that's taken place as well).
2) Dismantle the apparatus of domestic spying on Americans based on their political or religious affiliations, as well as release the records of previous histories of such to the public. Even though the PATRIOT Act is the most currently egregious example of such, this has a long and grim history in the United States. (I think that the FBI recently settled for several million dollars with Earth First! from their destabilization tactics in the 1980s, for example).
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Post by Jay Berner on May 6, 2004 18:35:59 GMT -5
Posted on another thread, but it belongs here:
How do we dodge the charge of anti-semitism you KNOW is going to be leveled at us?
How do we engage Latinos when nobody speaks much Spanish?
How do we get past the racism that will oppose us when we fight for felon suffrage?
How do we approach Arab-Americans?
Why should Native Americans care about the New Democrats? What are we going to do for them?
How do we build a party of minorities and poor folk without scaring off all the white people, without whose vote we cannot win squat?
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Post by POA on May 11, 2004 19:28:10 GMT -5
Another major point:
End the death penalty in those states that still have it, as well as federally. Not only is it racist in implementation, and cruel at a basic level, but it's existence just screams for someone like Ashcroft to extend it to political dissidents (more than it probably already has been already).
IIRC, some states are also resisting the use of DNA evidence in order to help free prisoners that've been wrongfully convicted. Does anyone have further information on this? If not, I'll find more about it myself.
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