Peoples’ Assembly Organizing Committee

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Organizing Agenda

Moving beyond the “Wall Street model of human liberty.”

The ever expanding burdens thrown onto the backs of working people are not only unreasonable, oppressive and unfair, these burdens have grown too big for working people to shoulder. In response, Occupy Portland's Labor Outreach Committee has launched a Peoples’ Assembly Organizing Committee tasked with organizing, planning and facilitating the democratic development of a peoples’ budget centered on democratically addressing the primary economic interests of ordinary working people.

Upcoming Events

Community Assembly to Create a People's Budget

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Purpose

Occupy Portland’s Labor Solidarity Committee invites all people to join us in a Community Assembly to create a people’s budget that works for all of us. Our intention is to launch a campaign and action plan to achieve a city budget and spending proposal that addresses the primary concerns we all share, such as jobs, no cuts to services, housing, transportation, health care, education, etc. We plan to outreach to labor unions, community groups, Occupy, and the broader 99% to join us in a fightback against the planned city cuts to essential services, while putting forth a budget for the 99%.

Other details
Why do some observers compare the collapse of neoliberal capitalism to the collapse of the Soviet Union?

“The collapse of the Soviet system was a pretty extraordinary event, and we are currently experiencing something similar in the developed world, without fully realizing what’s happening.”[1]


Contact Us

Main Info Page
Facebook Pages

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Downloadable Flyers

See Also

References

  1. ↑ George Soros on the Coming U.S. Class War


Links to Documents

(Short version.)
(Long version -- draft.)
(Shorter, updated list.)
(Fuller list.)
This document contains DRAFT proposals that began with suggestions and ideas that emerged during inaugural meeting to plan for a Community Assembly Meeting for a People’s Budget, which took place on Thursday, January 26, 2012 in Portland, Oregon.

Contact Us

Group Homepage: http://groups.google.com/group/peoples-assembly
Group Email: peoples-assembly -AT- googlegroups -DOT- com
Info Page on PortlandGeneralAssembly.org: Community Assembly to Create a People’s Budget

Attend Our Meetups!

Join our discussion list -- http://groups.google.com/group/peoples-assembly

We generally schedule meetings on Wednesday evenings from 5:30 - 7:00. Please connect with us through our mailing list to receive all time/date/location updates.

Past Events / Meetings

A Budget for the Rest of Us
Who: Occupy Portland’s Labor Solidarity Committee
What: Strategy Session
When: Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 7:00 p.m.
Where: Oregon Fair Trade Campaign Office
Address: 310 SW 4th Ave., Suite 436, Downtown Portland

In addition to our group discussion list, a number of our wiki pages use the possessive of peoples, as in indigenous peoples. It's likely, however, that the possessive of people, as in We the People, will appear more often in the discussions we have and in the documents we craft.

See Also

<section begin=Creating_a_People.27s_Budget />

Creating a People's Budget

Participatory Budgeting

Chicago Alderman Joe Moore explains to a New York audience why "in many respects, by giving up power (to constituents) I ended up having more power, because this was the single most popular thing I had done in my 19 years as member of city council."

A. Philip Randolph - Freedom Budget

Forty-five years ago, the A. Philip Randolph Institute issued “The Freedom Budget,” in which a program for economic transformation was proposed that included a job guarantee for everyone ready and willing to work, a guaranteed income for those unable to work or those who should not be working, and a living wage to lift the working poor out of poverty. Such policies were supported by a host of scholars, civic leaders, and institutions, including the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; indeed, they provided the cornerstones for King’s “Poor Peoples’ Campaign” and “economic bill of rights.”
This paper proposes a “New Freedom Budget” for full employment based on the principles of functional finance. To counter a major obstacle to such a policy program, the paper includes a “primer” on three paradigms for understanding government budget deficits and the national debt: the deficit hawk, deficit dove, and functional finance perspectives. Finally, some of the benefits of the job guarantee are outlined, including the ways in which the program may serve as a vehicle for a variety of social policies.
After the March on Washington, Dr. King, Randolph and Thomas worked together to promote the groundbreaking “Freedom Budget,” which proposed:[1]
  1.  the abolition of poverty
  2.  guaranteed full employment
  3.  full production and high economic growth
  4.  adequate minimum wages
  5.  farm income parity
  6.  guaranteed incomes for all unable to work
  7.  a decent home for every American family
  8.  modern health services for all
  9.  full educational opportunity for all.
  10.  updated (and expanded) Social Security and welfare programs.
  11.  equitable tax and money policies

Second New Deal

Second Bill of Rights

This is FDR's proposed second Bill of Rights that was filmed after he delivered his State of the Union Address via radio on January 11, 1944.

Poor People's Campaign

(Superb analysis: The Poor People’s Campaign — 1968 [in contrast with] The “Occupy” Movement — 2011)

Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

This document is the budget published by the Congressional Progressive Caucus for fiscal year 2012. Its Executive Summary begins with this paragraph:
Budgets are more than collections of numbers; they are a statement of our values. The Congressional Progressive Caucus Budget is a reflection of the values and priorities of working families in this country. The “People’s Budget” charts a path that keeps America exceptional in the 21st century, while addressing the most pressing problems facing the nation today. Our Budget eliminates the deficit and stabilizes the debt, puts Americans back to work, and restores our economic competitiveness.

Additional Articles & Resources

"90 percent of the workforce is unorganized. They're organizable. This 90 percent of the workforce are not people who are rich. They're people who need unions. They need to raise their wages. They need to be able to face their employers with some strength rather than the weakness of an individual facing a corporation. So there's a reservoir of possibility there for organizing."
See the sections "What are the problems?" and "What are the solutions?" for useful ideas.

Federated General Assembly

The Federated General Assembly (FGA) project is building a new web platform that combines community organizing techniques and ideas, lessons and patterns from social networks, web standards and best practices, all together with the very real ecosystem of Occupy itself: occupations & their working groups, the values and principles, and all the coordination & communication challenges.

Peoples Assemblies Network

Includes Peoples Assemblies News and Peoples Assemblies Groups.

Real Jobs Creation

Tired of the bullshit from self-styled "job creators"[2] who can't seem to stop yammering endlessly about all the mythical "jobs" that our overly generous cuts to their taxes are supposedly "creating"? Maybe there's a more straightforward way to actual, tangible, real-wage jobs...

Here's an emerging trend in Portland: When the city says it's handing out tax dollars to keep "green" businesses in town, chances are the money's actually being paid to those businesses' landlords.

<section end=Creating_a_People.27s_Budget />

Grammatical Confusion?

“Peoples’” or “People’s”?

Either way works for this group!

References

  1. ↑ King Versus the Tea Party: From the Poor People's Campaign to Occupy
  2. ↑ Boehner Peddles Republican Job Creators Myth
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