Sign the Contract and join the fight for The Dream
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of "The Dream" at the March on Washington in 1963. Today, the children of immigrants are fighting for the Dream Act, the right to education. Others speak of the American Dream as the right to a decent life, job and home. Langston Hughes, the great poet, asked and described, "What happens to a dream deferred?"
No matter how you define it, a dream will never become reality unless we fight for it.
In July, over 25,000 people got together in living rooms and backyards to discuss what it will take to make the dream of a better life possible in these dire times. That's how the Contract was created; people identified 10 ways to deal with our economic nightmare out of 40 suggestions in over 1,500 gatherings.
Peace Action is working with our allies in labor and the economic and racial justice movements to organize grassroots coalition events in communities and bird-dogging of Congress people across the country.
Join us to fight for The Dream!
Download the full text of the Contract here.
Contract to Rebuild the Dream
10 Critical Steps to Get Our Economy Back on Track:
I. Invest in America's Infrastructure. Rebuild our crumbling bridges, dams, levees, ports, water and sewer lines, railways, roads, and public transit. We must invest in high-speed Internet and a modern, energy-saving electric grid. These investments will create good jobs and rebuild America. To help finance these projects, we need national and state infrastructure banks.
II. Create 21st Century Energy Jobs. We should invest in American businesses that can power our country with innovative technologies like wind turbines, solar panels, geothermal systems, hybrid and electric cars, and next-generation batteries. And we should put Americans to work making our homes and buildings energy efficient. We can create good, green jobs in America, address the climate crisis, and build the clean energy economy.
III. Invest in Public Education. We should provide universal access to early childhood education, make school funding equitable, invest in high-quality teachers, and build safe, well-equipped school buildings for our students. A high-quality education system, from universal preschool to vocational training and affordable higher education, is critical for our future and can create badly needed jobs now.
IV. Offer Medicare for All. We should expand Medicare so it's available to all Americans, and reform it to provide even more cost-effective, quality care. The Affordable Care Act is a good start and we must implement it -- but it's not enough. We can save trillions of dollars by joining every other industrialized country -- paying much less for health care while getting the same or better results.
V. Make Work Pay. Americans have a right to fair minimum and living wages, to organize and collectively bargain, to enjoy equal opportunity, and to earn equal pay for equal work. Corporate assaults on these rights bring down wages and benefits for all of us. They must be outlawed.
VI. Secure Social Security. Keep Social Security sound, and strengthen the retirement, disability, and survivors' protections Americans earn through their hard work. Pay for it by removing the cap on the Social Security tax, so that upper-income people pay into Social Security on all they make, just like the rest of us.
VII. Return to Fairer Tax Rates. End, once and for all, the Bush-era tax giveaways for the rich, which the rest of us -- or our kids -- must pay eventually. Also, we must outlaw corporate tax havens and tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas. Lastly, with millionaires and billionaires taking a growing share of our country's wealth, we should add new tax brackets for those making more than $1 million each year.
VIII. End the Wars and Invest at Home. Our troops have done everything that's been asked of them, and it's time to bring them home to good jobs here. We're sending $3 billion each week overseas that we should be investing to rebuild America.
IX. Tax Wall Street Speculation. A tiny fee of a twentieth of 1% on each Wall Street trade could raise tens of billions of dollars annually with little impact on actual investment. This would reduce speculation, "flash trading," and outrageous bankers' bonuses -- and we'd have a lot more money to spend on Main Street job creation.
X. Strengthen Democracy. We need clean, fair elections -- where no one's right to vote can be taken away, and where money doesn't buy you your own member of Congress. We must ban anonymous political influence, slam shut the lobbyists' revolving door in D.C., and publicly finance elections. Immigrants who want to join in our democracy deserve a clear path to citizenship. We must stop giving corporations the rights of people when it comes to our elections. And we must ensure our judiciary's respect for the Constitution. Together, we will reclaim our democracy to get our country back on track.
