OUR ISSUES
Healthcare Human Rights
It is a moral outrage for a country as wealthy as ours to leave 27.5 million people with no reliable access to health care and tens of millions more with inadequate or overly expensive coverage. In addition, despite spending nearly twice as much as other developed nations on healthcare, our system performs poorly, because the commercial U.S. insurance bureaucracy soaks up as much as one-third of all the money and pharmaceutical interests overburden America with predatory pricing and by avoiding price competition.
Expanded and Improved Medicare For All will save millions of lives and billions of dollars. PDA is fully committed to enacting Medicare For All, with the intention of achieving nothing less than healthcare justice and equity for all Americans.
Equal Rights Amendment
PDA unequivocally supports Equal Rights for all women, and will fight to make sure the Equal Rights Amendment is passed and implemented nationwide.
The Equal Rights Amendment was passed by Congress on March 22, 1972, and sent to the states for ratification. In order to be added to the U.S. Constitution, it needed approval by legislatures in three-fourths (38) of the 50 states. A deadline for state ratification was set, then extended to 1982, but fell three states short. Since then, Nevada (2017), Illinois (2018), and Virginia (2020) have ratified the ERA. Legislation was reintroduced in 2021 to remove the deadline. It passed the House with a bipartisan majority, and is pending in the Senate.
PDA works with allied organizations to educate members of Congress and encourage passage of legislation to remove the arbitrary ratification deadline.
End Corporate Rule
With the Supreme Court‘s 5-4 decision in the Citizens United case in 2010, the floodgates of millions and then billions of dollars have flowed into elections at every level. We have advocated for a constitutional amendment not only to overturn Citizens United, but to declare that corporations are not persons with constitutional rights and that money is not speech. The End Corporate Rule IOT has fought against privatization of the Postal Service, and against the Koch network’s efforts to privatize public education and to foster climate denial. PDA has advocated for Medicare for All and for Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices with the drug companies. We have resisted the privatization of prisons and the massive inequalities in wealth and income exacerbated by the financial sector’s manipulation of the tax code. In coalition with other progressive organizations, we oppose fossil fuel subsidies and the bloated Pentagon budget driven by the greed of defense contractors.
Climate
Recognizing that communities of color and the poor are disproportionately hurt by pollution inherent to our current reliance on fossil fuels and other sources of pollution, we demand that any path forward must address these issues of environmental justice at every turn.
We believe that together we can develop new technologies and approaches to consumption and biodegradable and recyclable materials that will provide a high standard of living for all, while protecting our most valued resources: our earth and our diverse ecosystem.
Voter Protection
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck again, gutting the Voting Rights Act and releasing states with Jim Crow histories from pre-clearing new voting laws with the Justice Department. They could pass whatever restrictions they liked – and they did, burdening mostly the poor, the young, and people of color.
The welcome sight of paper ballots being recounted to publicly confirm results in Arizona and Georgia was testament to PDA’s work and the democracy movement that has grown exponentially since we were trailblazers. Suppression and stealth are being exposed. But the right is fighting back with suppression and gerrymandering in many states, and refusal to pass any federal voting protections. PDA continues to advocate, to organize, and to educate both voters and officials about transparency, increased voter access, and putting the “free” back in free speech by ending the unrestricted buying of candidates and elections.
Economic and Social Justice
PDA is committed to fighting for the multi-racial working class on all issues stemming from economic inequality. We envision a society that guarantees all people the right to life’s basic necessities—and guarantees those rights regardless of income, race, religion, gender, country of origin, or sexual orientation.
Federal legislation is needed to end poverty, homelessness, and massive disparities in the availability of housing, jobs, healthcare, and education. We call for full employment, a raise to the minimum wage, workplace democracy, support for labor unions and organizing efforts, expanding Social Security, cancelation of student debt, and the end to wage, economic, and social discrimination against women in American society.
Real social justice in America demands an end to mass incarceration—particularly for people of color, and an end to the for-profit criminal justice system, including for-profit prisons and detention centers. We need sweeping changes to systemic race-based policing policies and practices, and support redirecting funding into social needs and away from continuing militarization of police departments.
We work toward a future where all people are equal before the law and within society.
End Wars and Occupations
We need a new U.S. foreign policy based on peace, cooperation, and support for human rights and democracy. PDA advocates for the withdrawal of U.S. troops and contractors from endless wars across the Middle East and other areas of the world. We oppose the unbalanced policy of U.S. sanctions on countries of Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, while simultaneously giving political and military aid to repressive governments that are our so-called allies. We support diplomacy and international cooperation, Palestinian rights and the rights of indigenous peoples, and growing calls for peace in conflicts around the world.
PDA works tirelessly with progressive members of Congress to support legislation that divests from the war machine, reduces the Pentagon’s soaring military budgetary priorities, and redirects our tax dollars into healthcare, education, green jobs, and other human needs.
Comprehensive National Immigration Reform
We call for a stop to all raids, detention, and deportation, and an end to the criminalization of immigrant communities. We believe that U.S. Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be abolished and replaced with an agency whose first mission is human rights, fairness, and family unification. We call for a government policy that provides protection and security without walls and militarization at our borders.
We believe that the root causes of migration – Income inequality, U.S. government oppression and support for corrupt governments, and climate change to name a few – need to be thoroughly examined and remedies acted on so that future immigration is, fair, humane, and regulated, rather than chaotic and repressive.
Healthcare Human Rights is part of PDA’s Fund Human Needs/Cut Pentagon Waste platform. We work on the following issue:
The ERA 3 State Strategy team is part of PDA’s Civil Rights/Civil Justice platform. We organize on the web and on the ground through education with the objective of bringing allied groups, organizations (1,000 is our aim), and individuals together from both sides of the political aisle, not only to support us, but to actively participate in our efforts.
End Corporate Rule is part of the We The People NOT We The Corporations PDA platform. We work on the following issues:
In recent years, voters themselves have faced political and even racial obstacles in casting votes and in getting their votes counted.
The Economic and Social Justice Team is part of the following PDA platforms: We the People NOT We the Corporations, Tax Wall Street, Jobs and Fund Human Needs/Cut Pentagon Waste. We work on the following issues:
Instead, we support political and diplomatic initiatives to genuinely promote peace, disarmament and the rule of international law, and to treat terrorism primarily as a crime, not as a pretext for war and global military expansion. Cut the US military budget to its 1998 level and beyond, and bring our troops home to their families. Redirect wasteful military spending to meet real human needs, create jobs and reinvest in America. From nuclear weapons to climate change, the challenges facing the world today are too serious to be sacrificed to the strategic ambitions of any one country, including our own.