Inside the Book

Introduction

The American people have made it abundantly clear they want a fundamental change in our nation’s policies, both at home and abroad. The level of dissatisfaction, even repugnance, about what the last eight years have wrought is ever more pronounced.

Three decades ago, conservative ideologues at The Heritage Foundation produced a primer for the “Reagan Revolution” entitled Mandate for Leader-ship. It offered a blueprint for the newly elected Reagan Administration, as well as an overarching philosophy of governance. That philosophy was in reality a philosophy against the role of government and in favor of markets (by which they meant large corporations). Philosopher-philanthropist George Soros has called this approach “market fundamentalism”; others have labeled it neoliberalism. The Heritage Foundation’s mandate called for the systematic shrinking of government and argued that unfettered markets can better solve most problems.

Today, that overarching framework is bankrupt. The failure of government and markets in New Orleans, for health care, for the housing and financial markets—to name just a few of the outstanding current crises—could not be clearer. In James K. Galbraith’s neat phrase titling his new book, we now have a “Predator State.” The chapters that follow set forth a fundamental, badly needed “mandate for change” to reinvigorate government and rethink/rework the role of markets and civil society.

Just as neoliberalism has guided our government on the domestic front since the Reagan years, neoconservatism has been the dominant conservative framework for foreign policy. Under the most recent Bush Administration, this overarching doctrine has shunned multilateralism and international law in favor of reckless, destructive, unpopular unilateralism. It has assumed that the United States should be the global cop, and that it knows best how to advance democracy and prosperity abroad. Iraq, Afghanistan and many other foreign policy disasters have exposed the bankruptcy of this approach. The international policy chapters that follow replace neoconservatism with a new role for the United States in the world, one that emphasizes mutual respect, mutual interests, multilateralism, diplomacy and international law.

This volume is modeled after one that I co-edited with Marcus Raskin in 1988, when I was a full-time Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies—Winning America: Ideas and Leadership for the 1990s (South End Press), aimed at strengthening a possible incoming progressive national Administration. The need for progressive policies—and appointing progressive persons to lead such efforts—is even more urgent now than it was two decades ago.

And so we called upon our IPS colleagues and policy experts from around the country to put forward such policies in each of their areas of expertise. The forty-seven chapters that follow (virtually all written specially for this volume) cover the waterfront—and indeed, the waterfront needs to be covered. There are so very many important areas of national policy that need fixing, having been damaged for so long and so severely by past Administrations’ ultra-conservative, neoliberal actions.

Each chapter is formatted identically: a set of policy proposals, supported by an essay that provides appropriate background and rationale for those proposals, followed by a resource list of relevant readings, organizations, websites.

While the chapters are divided into domestic and international topics, we recognize that this often is a permeable wall—issues like climate change, immigration, agriculture, drug policy, terrorism, nuclear weapons, our wars—to name some of the more obvious areas—have clear spillover from one category to the other. In the case of immigration, we opted for chapters in both categories: one dealing with national policy as to who gets to immigrate, how many, from where, under what rules; the other dealing with how these newcomers—regardless of who they are, how they came here, what their status is—get integrated into U.S. society.

Another cross-boundary issue relates to the substantive topics as well. Most of the issues covered in individual chapters have spillover to other substantive topics. Housing is closely related to health, education and employment, for example; drug policy and the criminal justice system is another example. Inevitably, then, material in some chapters will overlap with and on occasion repeat what is in another chapter. That’s why we’ve prepared a detailed index, which we encourage readers to use liberally.

As right-on as this set of policy proposals is, we recognize that good ideas by themselves rarely are sufficient to sway the political system and its principal actors. It takes organizing, movement-building to bring about response and change. And so, following our broad set of policy proposals, we asked several of the important figures from the community organizing world to say their piece—in the form of responses to specific questions we posed to them.

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Table of Contents

1  Progressives and the Incoming Administration
Robert L. Borosage, Campaign for America’s Future/
Katrina vanden Heuvel, The Nation

Domestic Issues

2    The United States Can Cut Poverty in Half
Angela Glover Blackwell, PolicyLink/
Peter Edelman,Georgetown University Law Center/
Mark Greenberg, Center For American Progress

3    High-Quality, Affordable Health Care for All
Ron Pollack, Families USA

4    The Education (Policy) We Need for the Citizens We Have
Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin

5    The Affordable Housing Crisis: It Is a Solvable Problem
Sheila Crowley, National Low Income Housing Coalition

6    Homelessness: Action to End and Prevent the Crisis
Maria Foscarinis, National Law Center on Homelessness  & Poverty

7    A New Policy for Justice and Public Safety
Marc Mauer, Sentencing Project

8    A Road Map for Juvenile Justice Reform
Douglas W. Nelson/Bart Lubow, Annie Casey Foundation

9    Drug Policy Reform and Neutralizing the Third Rail of Politics
Sanho Tree, Institute for Policy Studies

10    Policies toward the Elderly: Strengthening Social Security and Medicare
Former Congresswoman Barbara B.  Kennelly, National
Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare/
Carroll L. Estes, University of California-San Francisco

11    An Economic Justice Agenda
Dean Baker, Center for Economic & Policy Research

12    Toward a Fair and Adequate Tax System
Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies

13    Ending Extreme Inequality: The Need to Concentrate on Concentrated Wealth
Sam Pizzigati/Sarah Anderson/Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies

14    Re-establishing a Workers’ Rights Agenda
Kate Bronfenbrenner, Cornell University/Dorian Warren, Columbia University

15    Will the Incoming Administration Cut the Racial Trip Wire?
Bill Fletcher, Jr., Black Commentator

16    Turning King’s Dream into Reality
Dedrick Muhammad, Institute for Policy Studies

17    Climate and Energy Solutions for a Secure, Equitable and Sustainable Future
Betsy Taylor, 1Sky

18    Green Jobs in a Sustainable Economy
Jon Rynn, Grist

19    Advancing Women’s Equality
Kim Gandy, National Organization for Women (NOW)

20    Strengthening Families and Creating Pathways to Opportunity
Alan W. Houseman, Center for Law & Social Policy

21    The “Homosexual Agenda,” Revisited
Jaime Grant/Rebecca Sawyer, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force

22    Promoting Full Participation of People with Disabilities
Nancy Starnes, National Organization on Disability

23    A Budget Is a Statement of Values
Miriam Pemberton, Institute for Policy Studies

24    A Food System We Can Believe In
Ben Lilliston/Jim Harkness, Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy

25    Transforming U.S. Transportation
Michael A. Replogle, Environmental Defense Fund

26    Rebuilding and Renewing America: A National Infrastructure Plan for the Twenty-first Century
Congressman Earl Blumenauer, Portland, OR

27    Katrina: A Chance to Do It Right
William Quigley, Loyola University Law School

28    From Newcomers to Americans: An Integration Policy for a Nation of Immigrants
Tomás R. Jiménez, Stanford University, New America Foundation

29    Open the Government, A New Information Policy
Patrice McDermott, OpenTheGovernment.org

30    Media and Communications Policy: Ensuring the Freedom of Expression Essential to a Democracy
Ben Scott, Free Press

31    Restoring Democratic Control over Corporations
Charlie Cray, Center for Corporate Policy

32    Making Our Democracy All It Can Be: An Agenda for Voting Rights and Election Reform
Miles Rapoport/Stuart Comstock-Gay, Demos

33    Restoring Balance to the Federal Courts
Nan Aron/Simon Heller, Alliance for Justice

34    Unleash Democracy: Policies for a New Federalism
Ben Manski, Liberty Tree Foundation/Karen Dolan, Institute for Policy Studies

International Issues

35    Ending the Iraq War and Occupation
Erik Leaver/Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

36    U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan: Rethinking the “Good War”
Erik Leaver, Institute for Policy Studies

37    A New U.S. Policy on Terrorism
John Feffer/Daniel Scheer, Institute for Policy Studies

38    Eliminating Nuclear Weapons
Marcus Raskin/Robert Alvarez, Institute for Policy Studies

39    U.S. Policy on the Global Economy: A New Development Agenda
Sarah Anderson/John Cavanagh, Institute for Policy Studies

40    Elements of a Just International Climate Policy
Daphne Wysham/Janet Redman, Institute for Policy Studies

41    Immigration and Migration Policies for a Sustainable Future
Oscar Chacón, National Alliance of Latin American and
Caribbean Communities/Amy Shannon, formerly with
Enlaces Americas

42    U.S. Policy toward Africa: Advancing a Twenty-first Century Vision
Emira Woods, Institute for Policy Studies/Nicole Lee,
TransAfrica/Gerald LeMelle, AfricaAction

43    U.S. Policy toward the Middle East: Elevating Peace by Resolving Crises
Phyllis Bennis/Farrah Hassen, Institute for Policy Studies

44    U.S. Policy toward Asia: For a Policy of Equitable Engagement
John Feffer, Institute for Policy Studies

45    U.S. Policy toward Latin America: Supporting Democratic    Diversity
Sarah Anderson/John Cavanagh/Saul Landau/
Manuel Pérez-Rocha, Institute for Policy Studies

46    Restoring Government Leadership on Human Rights at Home
Catherine Albisa, National Economic and Social Rights
Initiative/Martha F. Davis, Program on Human Rights
and the Global Economy, Northeastern University/Cynthia
Soohoo, Domestic Legal Programs, Center for Reproductive Rights

47    The Role of Organizing and Movement-Building: The Sine Qua Non
Frances Fox Piven, City University of New York/
Rinku Sen, ColorLines/Eric Mann, Labor-Comm. Strategy Center