What We Stand For

Democracy and the Economy

• Raise the federal minimum wage to $25/hour, tied to the cost of living with no exemptions and no loss of benefits, as a step toward a living wage for all. Extend all full-time protections and rights to part-time workers.
• Guarantee a minimum income of $1000/week for the unemployed, disabled, elderly, students, stay-at-home parents, and others unable to work. Close pay loopholes for elderly, disabled, undocumented, and “temporary” workers!
• Eliminate “independent contractor” status to allow all workers full benefits and labor rights including the right to organize and join unions.
• Transition to a 35-hour work week with no loss of benefits or decrease of weekly pay. Share out the work with the unemployed to create new jobs. Give part-time and gig workers the option to increase their hours up to 35 hours per week. Make flexible schedules and work-from-home options available to workers who need them.
• Create living-wage union jobs for all the unemployed through public works programs to develop mass transit, renewable energy, infrastructure, healthcare, education, and affordable housing.
• Repeal all anti-union laws like Taft-Hartley. Reverse the Janus decision. For democratic unions run by the rank-and-file to fight for better pay, working conditions, and social services. For alliances between unions backed by combined action and solidarity! Union officials should be regularly elected and receive the average wages and benefits of those they represent.
• Organize the unorganized! Unions should launch mass organizing drives, starting in economic sectors with low union density.
• No more layoffs! No more corporate bailouts! Take bankrupt and failing companies into public ownership with compensation only on the basis of proven need to small investors.
• Break the power of Wall Street! For public ownership and democratic control of the major banks.
• Defend and extend democratic rights. End voter suppression, stop gerrymandering, abolish the Electoral College. Lower the voting age to 16.
• Revoke the Citizens United decision that allows unlimited corporate funding in elections as “freedom of speech.”
• Make election days federal and state holidays with guaranteed paid time off! No one should be denied the right to vote because they don’t have a residential address.

Social Services

• For union-led fightback against all attempts to privatize public services! No budget cuts to social services! Increased funding and staffing at the local, state, and federal level.
• Free, high quality public education for all from preschool through higher education. Full funding to dramatically lower student-teacher ratios and improve buildings, supplies, and programs. Stop the focus on standardized testing and the drive to privatize public education. Public funding for union-run apprenticeships in all sectors. Cancel all student loan debt!
• Free, high quality healthcare for all. Massively expand Medicare and Medicaid. Take the insurance, pharmaceutical, and hospital conglomerates into public ownership, and implement publicly funded universal healthcare, including comprehensive sexual, reproductive, and mental healthcare.
• Massive funding increases to Social Security and fight for publicly funded pensions!
• End the War on Drugs and decriminalize drug use. Transfer money currently spent on drug law enforcement to providing addiction treatment, rehabilitation services, and safe facilities.
• Stop the criminalization of youth! Invest in free on-site counseling and psychological services in schools for at-risk youth rather than expanding police presence and furthering the school-to-prison pipeline. Provide decent jobs and housing to offer an alternative to criminal activity.
• For a three-year rent freeze on residential properties and other rent control combined with a massive expansion of high quality public housing. Democratic committees including homeowners and renters should control housing policy. End homelessness! Turn vacant homes into quality, free housing for homeless people.
• Tax the rich and big corporations to fund necessary programs, with no tax increase for working people!

Environmental Sustainability

• For a socialist Green New Deal including massive public works programs with union pay, benefits, and protections to clean up the environment and develop solar, wind, thermal, and wave energy production and infrastructure.
• Fight climate change through massive public investment in renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies to rapidly replace fossil fuels!
• End planned obsolescence and minimize waste and pollution in manufacturing processes.
• Dramatically expand public transportation to provide free, high-speed, and accessible transit funded by taxing big polluting industry, not workers.
• Take the big energy and utility companies into democratic public ownership and use their resources for a massive expansion of green energy infrastructure and mass transit. For a Just Transition for all workers in polluting industries with guaranteed full pay, benefits, free re-training, and new living-wage jobs.

Fight Oppression

You can find our full program about fighting police racism and brutality here.

• Fight discrimination based on race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, gender, religion, disability, age, and all other forms of prejudice. Equal pay for equal work. Equal opportunity for all!
• For a broad, working-class, multi-racial struggle against all forms of racism. Out-organize the far right with democratic structures, elected leadership, and trade union involvement!  Protest far right and fascist groups: no public space for far right and fascist groups! Support targeted communities’ right to self-defense.
• Black Lives Matter! Build a mass movement against police brutality and the institutionalized racism of the criminal justice system.
• End mass incarceration. Release non-violent drug offenders, expunge their records, and provide re-entry assistance, paid for by taxing large marijuana/drug corporations. Invest in rehabilitation, job-training, and living-wage jobs, not prisons! Repeal laws that strip voting right from felons and ex-convicts. Close all private prisons and abolish the death penalty!
• Defend and extend immigrant rights. Abolish ICE. For immediate, unconditional legalization and equal rights for all undocumented immigrants. Fight for the right to asylum, and a real path to legal residency. Reunite separated families and repeal the separation policy. Close the Camps!
• Self-determination for indigenous groups! Labor unions and other groups should fight for land sovereignty for all indigenous peoples. For all U.S. colonies and territories to have the right to choose to become states with full voting rights in the U.S. or declare independence. Any displaced working families to receive full compensation from the Federal Government.
• Fight sexual harassment, violence against women, and all forms of sexism.
• End discrimination and violence against the LGBTQ community, and all forms of homophobia and transphobia. Defend the right to transition and self-identify.
• Fully fund and expand services for all victims of domestic violence.
• Defend the right to choose whether and when to have children. Provide free reproductive services, including all forms of birth control and safe, accessible abortions. Teach comprehensive and inclusive sex education in schools. Guarantee at least 12 weeks of paid family leave for all. For universal, high quality, affordable and publicly run child and elder care.

Anti-Imperialism

• Immediate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. End the use of drone strikes and tolerance of civilian casualties. End the deployment of American forces in other countries. Bring the troops home now! Full funding for veterans’ healthcare and readjustment services.
• Stop U.S. military, financial, and political aid to repressive and authoritarian governments around the world, including Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Myanmar.
• Oppose the initiation and support of military coups against democratically elected leaders.
• End U.S. sanctions and embargoes against foreign countries. Such sanctions hurt working people internationally and do nothing to end oppression.
• Cut the bloated military budget and reinvest the money in social programs. A Just Transition for rank and file military personnel with guaranteed full pay, benefits, free re-training, and new living-wage jobs.
• Shut down Guantanamo and other torture sites. Fair trials for those unjustly imprisoned. Full pardons and releases for political prisoners and whistleblowers!
• End mass surveillance! Repeal all mass surveillance laws and all other attacks on democratic rights.

Build a Workers’ Party

• For a mass, diverse, workers’ party drawing together workers, unions, young people, oppressed communities, and activists from environmental, civil rights, women’s and other mass movements, to provide a fighting political alternative to the capitalist parties.
• Unions, socialist organizations, progressive groups, and others should stop funding the Democratic and Republican Parties and supporting their candidates and instead run their own members as independent left-wing, anti-corporate candidates as a first step toward building a workers’ party.
• Candidates from a workers’ party must refuse corporate donations and, if elected, accept only the average wage of the working people they represent.
• The workers’ party must have a real voting membership to democratically decide the party’s platform and candidates. Membership has the right of recall for all representatives.
• End the Republican/Democratic pro-corporate rule. For working peoples’ administrations and governments that will truly act in the interests of the majority and not for big business.

Socialism & Internationalism

• Capitalism is a worldwide economic system rooted in exploiting human labor and natural resources for the profits of a few. Capitalism is the source of repeated crises and cannot provide a secure life for working people. Every moment it exists, capitalism produces poverty, inequality, environmental destruction, and war. We need an international struggle against this failed system.
• No to corporate “free trade” agreements, which mean job losses and a race to the bottom for workers and the environment.
• Take into public ownership the top corporations that dominate the U.S. economy, including the banking, healthcare, and energy industries. Run them under the democratic management of elected representatives of the workers and the broader public. Compensation to be paid on the basis of proven need to small investors, not millionaires.
• Solidarity with the struggles of workers and oppressed peoples internationally. An injury to one is an injury to all! Build solidarity actions between unions and socialist organizations in other countries. For a workers’ international!
• For a democratically planned economy based on the needs of the overwhelming majority of people and the environment. For a socialist U.S. and a socialist world!