Mission Draft 10-7-2012
Our mission is to establish this Peoples Congress to assemble and deliberate to do six things:
- Declare the self-evident sovereignty of the democratic majority of the American people over our national government and national Constitution
- Reach a critical mass of American citizen members who have awakened to our original sovereignty and inherent political power over our national government.
- Identify the key problems in our national government
- Write a set of constitutional amendments to solve those problems
- Propose a set of amendments as a second Bill of Rights to the American people for ratification by majority vote in a national referendum.
- When and if ratified by a majority vote in a national referendum, these articles will become the law(s) of the land.
Vision Draft 10-07-2012
As a result of fulfilling our Mission, this is the future we see:
- We envision making a abrupt departure from the corporate plutocracy of the past. Ours will be a government no longer vulnerable to parasitic control of corporations and their plutocrats but rather a government of the people, by the people and for the people.
- We envision a modernized, more accountable, more democratic national government as soon as the Second Bill of Rights is ratified by the democratic majority of the American people.
- Our nation will consist of We the People as the trunk of the tree of government organizing and controlling our branches of government to make them serve the democratic majority while protecting the rights of all underprivileged or oppressed minorities.
- Our nation will have a government where we the people exercise our self-evident sovereignty over the government. We will do this through modern methods so common in our states, including the dynamic mechanisms of initiative, petition, and referendum. This will enable us to correct any tendency towards tyranny, or militarism, and the illegitimate influence of money by the executive, legislative or judicial functions of government.
- Our nation will have a legislature that is not doing the bidding of corporations, lobbyists and the rich, but is instead a mirror of the diversity of the American people and works for our happiness and prosperity, liberty and justice.
- Our nation will have a national government that protects the rights of our citizens, that abides by the terms of treaties and laws, foreign or domestic, abides by our Constitution, and solves our environmental problems.
- Our nation will have a low barrier to entry for candidates to represent the diversity of America, by age, income, race, gender, party and political ideology.
- In short, our nation will have a national government where the will of the people shall be the law of the nation.
Strategy Draft 10-07-2012
The broad outline of our strategy is as follows
- We will grow our membership by reaching out with our message about the self-evident sovereignty of the American people over our Constitution and our national government, and how to exercise it.
- We will collaborate with numerous experts and organizations from the fields of political science, electoral systems, election management, democracy enhancement, and more.
(To be footnoted and expanded)
Endorse the Mission, Vision and Strategy of the People’s Congress
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Previous Mission and Vision of the People’s Congress
Mission
We ordain and establish the People’s Congress to represent ourselves, as Americans, as one people, to enable us to alter our government to these ends:
-To create a representative organization of Americans so that they may collectively resolve concerns about their government by working together within a framework specifically structured for their interactions, deliberations, and resolutions, be that amendments, initiatives or legislative remedies.
- To exercise the self-evident sovereignty of the American people over our government and our Constitution
- To secure life and liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness; our general welfare, domestic tranquility and the common defense
- To alter our national government’s structure and dynamics to make a more perfect union so the public policies of our national government come to match the public opinion of our citizens
- To bring about the rule of law in fairly enforcing domestic, electoral and foreign policies
- And to enable the democratic majority of the American people to end the tyranny of the illegitimate rule of wealthy plutocrats and despotic corporations
Mission
We will fulfill our mission in several phases. These include but are not limited to:
- Constituting the People’s Congress with a group of founders, representatives, and members, acting as an interim assembly and people’s organization
- Designing its Bylaws to form itself as a legitimate Amendment 1 Deliberative Assembly of the American people
- Constituting the People’s Congress with representatives of the American people in one of two ways: by election, through free, fair and proportional national elections, or through the jury process by choosing members randomly from each congressional district and other unrepresented groups of Americans.
- Deliberating about the problems and grievances, undemocratic features and missing democratic features and processes of both our current national government and within our second and current Constitution.
- Imagining that we will draw from the innovations in our own state constitutions, as well as those of successful democratic nations. We will consider a range of innovations for improving our government, including the following:
- Instituting dynamic processes for popular control of our government including Initiative, petition and referendum for amending the Constitution; recalling officials; overturning laws; and passing laws
- Creating proportional representation in the House and Senate; eliminating disproportional representation in the Senate
- Looking at the responsibilities of the House, Senate, Supreme Court and the Presidency to make sure that the system implements the policy preferences of the democratic majority of the American people. The branches of our government need to serve the trunk of the tree of government—the people
- Exploring the need for two legislatures and the possibility of merging the House and Senate into one legislature, and other structural changes.
- Revising how legislatures are comprised towards creating a proportional, multi-party electoral system where Congress is a mirror of and microcosm of the American people.
- Incorporating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the UN Charter, and other documents which embody human rights and responsibilities
- Analyze the merits of special seats in Congress such as seats for women, minorities, professors, youth, and more.
- Exploring the merits of Senate filibusters, presidential vetoes, and the Electoral College for presidential elections.
- Creating a new process for electing our president to assure that our presidential candidates campaign to all Americans, and to guarantee that any future president is elected by a majority of those voting.
- Improving our voting processes and standardizing them across America.
- Reexamining the rights, responsibilities and non-democratic functioning of corporations, and eliminating the corrupting influence they have had on our national and local governments.
- Designing and implementing public financing of elections.
- Interpreting private and corporate money in campaigns as preventing one-person-one-vote through bribery and control by the rich and corporations, rather than as political speech
- And more . . .
- Designing constitutional amendments to solve the above-mentioned problems, eliminate the grievances, fix any undemocratic features, and add democratic features and processes, structures and dynamics in our national democratic republic.
- Proposing this group of amendments as a Second Bill of Rights, or a set of Democracy Amendments, to the American people for ratification in a national referendum.
- Presiding over the transition to our altered and improved government and Constitution, if the amendments pass by majority vote in our national referendum.
We envision, through the People’s Congress, that We the American People will end the totalitarian tyranny of the corporate regime, remove its plutocrats from their illegitimate role as puppet-masters of political power, and retire the corrupt officials they have bribed. We will create a modern, democratic national government that is fully accountable to the American people; and thus usher forth a new era of democracy and prosperity for the democratic republic of America.
Former language
And then We the People—the democratic majority—will seize the national government from the undemocratic minority of plutocrats and corporations who have stolen it through the corruption of their power and money.
