Pledging a
steadfast commitment to “firm
progressive principles,” Progressive
Democrats of America (PDA) was
founded
in 2004 to help propel the “long,
patriotic, nonviolent, and ultimately unstoppable process” of
moving the Democratic
Party ever-further to the political left.
As PDA phrases it, the organization's ultimate objective is to “rebuild
the Democratic Party from the bottom up” and “transform”
it—along with “our country”—by
promoting “policies that serve the broad public interest, not just
[the] private interests” of “corporate elites.”
To
advance these goals and set in place “a
lasting majority” for Democrats in Congress, PDA, which enjoys
a particularly
close relationship with the Congressional
Progressive Caucus, employs an
“inside/outside”
strategy whereby it collaborates
not only with the Democratic Party
itself (inside), but also with pro-Democrat, leftwing activist organizations and nonprofits
(outside).
The major social and
political issues upon which PDA focuses its efforts include the following:
End
Corporate Rule: Charging that “corporate
lobbyists and donors have managed to get between our legislators and
us [the American people],” PDA deplores the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling
which—while leaving intact a federal law prohibiting corporations and unions from making
campaign contributions to politicians—nullified a provision barring
such entities from paying for political ads made independently of
candidate campaigns.[1]
Election
Integrity: In an effort to eliminate “voter
suppression” and “disenfranchisement,”
PDA calls for “restoring
the voting rights of felons upon the completion of their [prison]
sentence, probation and/or parole.” By PDA's reckoning, the current
system—wherein 35 states place
various restrictions on felon voting rights—is racist,
given that blacks and Hispanics are statistically overrepresented among convicted
felons nationwide. PDA likewise
opposes Voter
ID laws on grounds that they allegedly
discriminate against nonwhites.[2]
Economic
and Social Justice: Claiming that the
“enormous wealth disparity between the top 1% and the rest of
America is an unsustainable economic and social injustice,” PDA
supports the enactment of living
wage laws; the imposition of a “Robin
Hood Tax” designed to force banks,
hedge funds, corporations, and wealthy individuals to pay
their “fair
share” in taxes, which they allegedly
have been failing to do; and the expansion of Affordable
Housing programs, whereby taxpayers subsidize the cost of rental
units for low-income tenants.
End
War and Occupation: Asserting that
“terrorism and instability have increased wherever the U.S. has
intervened militarily,” PDA rejects “the false premises of an
ever-expanding 'global war on terror.'” Further, the organization contends that
the U.S. government should: (a) “treat terrorism primarily as a
crime, not as a pretext for war and global military expansion”; (b)
explore “political and diplomatic initiatives” that “genuinely
promote peace, disarmament and the rule of international law”; and
(c) cut the nation's military budget “to its 1998 level and
beyond.” “Wasteful military spending,” PDA elaborates, should
be “redirect[ed]” immediately “from
destruction to creation, from war to peace, from military spending to
social spending, from sickness to health, from selfish desires to
universal needs.” Foremost among those needs are
“healthcare, education, nutrition, decent housing and jobs.”
In
addition, PDA demands “complete U.S. withdrawal” from all
theaters of foreign war, the use of “diplomacy to prevent war and
end sanctions on Iran,” and the cessation of drone strikes and all
other “targeted killing” operations.
Healthcare
Human Rights: Calling it a “moral outrage
for a country as wealthy as ours” to leave “60 million people
with no reliable access to health care and tens of millions more with
inadequate or overly expensive coverage,” PDA advocates a
single-payer, government-run healthcare system.
Stop
Global Warming: Accepting the premise that greenhouse gases
produced by human industrial activity are responsible for potentially
catastrophic global warming, PDA impugns “the U.S.
political-economic system”—typified
by “greed and corporate power” that “dominate the public
good”—for fostering a “nearsighted
focus on short-term profits instead of serving our long-term needs
and the welfare of future generations.” To address the issue of
global warming and other environmental concerns, the organization advocates the
imposition of a carbon
tax; opposes hydraulic
fracturing, oil
drilling, and nuclear energy; and advocates
mainly a reliance upon “green energy” derived from solar and wind
sources.
End
Mass Criminalization: Noting that “the
United States has 5 percent of the world's population but holds
one-quarter of the world's prisoners,” PDA charges that “the
prison industrial complex has a vested interest in keeping people
locked up.” In particular, the organization characterizes the
privatization of prisons as an unethical scheme designed to profit
from the tragedy of criminality; condemns the so-called
“school-to-prison
pipeline” that purportedly funnels many abused
and neglected nonwhite youngsters into the criminal-justice system
without justification; alleges that “stop-and-frisk”
policies employed by law-enforcement constitute racist violations of the civil
liberties of nonwhite minorities; and opposes mandatory minimum
sentences for drug offenses.
The core of activists who originally established PDA
came from the failed 2004 presidential campaign of Ohio Congressman
Dennis
Kucinich. The late Tim Carpenter, who was Kucinich's deputy
national campaign manager in '04, founded PDA and served as its national director until his death in April
2014. Previously, Carpenter had been a key
organizer for the presidential campaigns of Jesse
Jackson (1988) and Jerry Brown
(1992).
The television and film actress Mimi Kennedy, also a
key supporter of Kucinich, has been PDA's advisory board
chair since 2004. Kennedy studied
Nonviolent Theory and Strategy with Rev. James
Lawson and was a founding member of Artists
United to Win Without War.
An
organizational supporter
of the Free
Gaza Movement, PDA exhorts Israel to “meet its obligation to
recognize the Palestinian people’s inalienable right to
self-determination,” “end its occupation and colonization of
Palestinian lands,” and put an end to its “immoral and illegal
acts.”
[1] That nullification was based on the premise that the
First Amendment prohibits
Congress from censoring any entity's right to engage in, or to fund,
political speech.
