Click here to download this letter as a Word document.
Click here to view the current Democratic State Platform on the Mass Dems web-site.
Click here to download the current Democratic State Platform as a Word file.
Click here to download the newly proposed draft Platform as a Word file.

Email info@masscare.org with your name, city or town, and organizational affiliation to sign this letter.

Dear Massachusetts Democratic Party Delegates,

This year the Party’s Platform Committee has proposed a dramatic rewrite of the state Platform, eliminating almost all references to particular policies, replacing them instead with references to broad goals and values. We write to you as fellow delegates, as city and town committee activists, as members of advocacy organizations, and as concerned Democrats who are working to make these values a reality on the ground, to urge that you oppose watering down the platform at the upcoming State Convention.

The current Platform references support for existing and proposed policies that are deeply embedded in social movements. The proposed new Platform obliterates acknowledgement of the Party’s roots in these grassroots efforts, and instead enumerates a bland list of values and goals that would significantly erode its ability to connect with broader community movements, and even to distinguish the Democratic Platform from other parties -who share most of these broad end-goals, but interpret them differently.

For its stance on education, the newly proposed Platform eliminates reference to caps on charter schools, opposition to high-stakes testing, METCO funding and commitment to desegregation, and opposing the casualization of teaching through the growth of part-time and adjunct staff. Instead, it offers a bland paragraph supporting “high-quality educational opportunities” for everyone, and a list of broad goals to be supported such as closing achievement gaps and college affordability.

The new platform drops an entire section on housing that included support for portable, public housing subsidies, fair housing laws, and legislation that prevents red-lining. Virtually all that is left is a line that the Party will support “[a]ffordable housing and rental assistance.” For health care, the new draft removes single payer reform, a constitutional guarantee of access to health care, and safe provider staffing in favor of extremely broad goals such as high quality health care and “full implementation of health care reform.”

The word “immigrant” has been expunged from the newly proposed document, and along with it support for immigrants’ right to organize into unions, equal rights for undocumented workers, prevailing wage policies, indexing the minimum wage to inflation, and no public funds for union busting.  The new platform also drops any reference to national war spending, opposition to the Patriot Act, affirmative action, American Indian tribal sovereignty, stem-cell research and the embodiment of marriage equality in the constitution.

The Democratic Platform needs to stand for both principles and the programs that bring those principles to fruition.  If the Platform doesn’t support programs that delegates believe in, our legislators will not be held accountable to a Party base. Moreover, it is in the realm of real policy that the Party is able to connect with the broader social movements that have brought us our most human social and economic reforms and that will continue to move our history along the arc of humanity.