WHEREAS, we stand in solidarity with all persons around the world who cherish democracy, and we are compelled to speak about the very real threats to democracy in America today; and

WHEREAS, according to the Journal of Democracy, two-thirds of millennials believe it is not essential to live in a democracy. The source of this despair is the failure of politicians over a generation to use the tools of democratic government to help make working people’s lives batter. Instead, our politics has for decades marched relentlessly toward helping make the rich richer and powerful corporations and Wall Street more and more powerful; and

WHEREAS, we are defining a program and concrete action plans designed to define a working people’s agenda that will hold politicians accountable and restore working people’s confidence in our democracy; and

WHEREAS, we must build solidarity and confront those who would divide us. Our doors must be open to all who work in America; and

WHEREAS, we must utterly reject calls for division among working people and efforts to exclude any part of the working class from the labor movement; and

WHEREAS, we must stand up against hate and scapegoating wherever it appears in our nation. We seek a nation where we value each other and a labor movement that defends the dignity of all people; and

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that we will stand against racism, homophobia, transphobia, islamophobia, sexism, or bigotry and any kind of hatred and every form of politics that seeks to divide working people; and

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we will stand for the idea that every person is of equal dignity – that we are a country ruled by the principle of one person, one vote; not one dollar, one vote; and

THEREFORE, BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that we utterly oppose fascism and reject the idea that those who fight fascism are the same as those who raise the swastika and put on the white hood. There is no moral equivalence between the men and women who fill our military graveyards and the armies of hate they defeated.

THEREFORE, BE IT FINALLY RESOLVED, that we will remove from elected office anyone who threatens our democracy, and we call upon every person who holds elected office and who seeks to hold elected office to affirm these principles.

Submitted by Francis Nichols III, DC-Baltimore Chapter

Approved August 25, 2018