Party
for Mutualism and Cooperation
(Proposal
for the State of Oregon)
A potential
political party
(at the
municipal, county, state, and federal levels)
to promote
cooperation, mutuality, voluntary action,
entrepreneurialism,
egalitarian markets,
and
transparency in government.
C.O.R.E.
and the movement for a cooperativist party would like to partner with
and garner the mutual support of all varieties of social service
agencies and charities, local government and local business groups,
cooperative and mutual banks and other enterprises, labor
organizations, and citizens' and consumers' interest groups.
They are
especially interested in coordinating with Street Roots (and - outside of Oregon - the North American Street Newspaper Association and the International Network of Street Papers), local Occupy
chapters; Food Not Bombs; advocates for Cascadian independence;
veterans' and retired persons' groups and communities, homeless
people willing to volunteer; and independent and retired accountants,
paralegals, public defenders, and public relations agents willing to
give legal, financial, and other advice.
GOALS
1.
Voluntary Cooperation in Government, the Economy, and Society
2.
Mutuality and Independence in Government and Business
3.
Local Banking Over National and Foreign Banking
4.
Governance, Banking, Business, Labor, Social Services, and Justice
5. Growth
of the Third (Voluntary) Sector
6.
Alliances in Business, Trade, and Governance
GOALS
1.
Voluntary Cooperation in Government, the Economy, and
Society
To
build a state- and local- level political party in Oregon in order to
represent the lower and middle classes; by partnering with and
garnering the support of credit unions, mutual banks, and cooperative
banks, to invest in the improvement of local and community
government, justice and social programs, enterprise and labor, and
the self-sustainability of the volunteer sector.
2.
Mutuality and Independence in Government and Business
To
promote cooperation, mutuality, reciprocity, autonomy, and
independence - over dependence and parasitism - in interactions
between citizens and government, workers and businesses, and their
representatives; and to insist that any good or service which the
state deems compulsory upon the citizens to purchase or possess, be
provided by the state imposing the requirement.
3.
Local Banking over National and Foreign Banking
To
reverse the trend of the people losing possession of their homes,
properties, and enterprises to national and foreign banks – and
their children and loved ones to child protective services and the
prison system – by increasing local determination over policies
regarding banking and investment in government and enterprise, and
child care, parental rights, education, and the rights of the
accused.
4.
Governance, Banking, Business, Labor, Social Services, and
Justice
To
improve the provision of goods and services to the people through
governmental and personal avenues; especially with regard to local
governance, banking and finance, credit and lending, sustainable
development and improvement of businesses and properties, independent
workers' rights and collective bargaining reform, housing and
transportation, mortgage foreclosures and abandoned property,
homesteading laws and settlers' laws, adverse possession (or
squatting), social welfare and homelessness, child care and
education, police transparency, civil liberties, regulation of the
legal professions, jury nullification, and awareness of corporate
personhood and corporate government.
5.
Growth of the Third (Voluntary) Sector
To make
viable the independence and self-sustainability of the Third Sector
(the sector of voluntarism, cooperation, mutuality / reciprocity, and
community), to bring about its separation from the state, and to
bring about its secession from the private-public partnership of the
establishment economy; through a bipartisan, multipartisan, or
non-partisan general strike; and / or through growing a political
party infrastructure capable of purchasing landed jurisdictions from
existing governments for the purposes of reorganizing the political
environment for the development of bio-regionalism.
6.
Alliances in Business, Trade, and Governance
To build
coalitions between business alliances, and building combination
aid-and-trade associations / trade organizations / economic and
industrial unions into a cooperating and amicably competing group of
non-statist international agencies providing economic and social
governance and operating on a diverse array of cooperativist
principles of governmental and entrepreneurial planning models.
POLICY
AREAS
I.
Reform and Development of
State, County, and Municipal Government
II.
Reform of the Banking Industry and the Financial System
III. Reform of the
Housing Industry and the Property Rights System
IV.
Reform of Social Welfare: C.O.R.E., Homelessness, Mutual
Aid and Charity, Education
V.
Reform of the System of Credit to and Development of
Business
VI. Reform of the
System of Rights of Unionized Laborers and Independent Workers
VII.
Reform of the Criminal and Civil Justice Systems, and of the
Regulation of the Legal Professions
I.
Reform and Development of
State, County, and Municipal Government
1.
Transparency
2.
Local Government
3.
Government Investment
4.
Local Business Alliance
5.
Consumer and Political Advocacy
6.
Private Communities
7.
Bio-Regionalism
8.
Cascadian Independence
II.
Reform of the Banking Industry and the Financial System
1.
Free and Egalitarian Markets
2.
Finance and Market Regulation
3.
Investment and Commercial Banking
4.
Credit and Interest
5.
Banking, Investment, and Credit
6.
Banking and Lending
7.
Coopetration in Banking
8.
Treasury and Monetary Policy
III. Reform of the
Housing Industry and the Property Rights System
1.
Public Facilities
2.
Settling, Homesteading, and Squatting
3.
Unoccupied Public and Commercial Properties
4.
Unoccupied Transportation Properties
5.
Parks and Communal Lands
6.
Cooperative Housing
IV.
Reform of Social Welfare: C.O.R.E., Homelessness, Mutual
Aid and Charity, Education
1.
C.O.R.E. Values in Activism
2. Reciprocity
in Social Service Provision
3.
Access to Public Facilities
4.
Aid-and-Trade
5.
Aid-for-Work
6.
Education and Schools
7.
Child Custody and Protection
8.
Voluntarism in Social Services
V.
Reform of the System of Credit to and Development of
Business
1.
Local Business Development
2.
Social Purpose of Business
3.
Independent and Cooperative Business Organization
4.
Cooperative and Mutualist Business Investment
5.
Coordination Across Stages of Production
6.
Cooperative Business Association
VI. Reform of the
System of Rights of Unionized Laborers, Independent Workers, and the
Unemployed
1.
Egalitarian Workplaces
2.
Collective Bargaining
3.
Unemployment and Non-Collective Labor
4.
Third Sector General Strike
VII.
Reform of the Civil and Criminal Justice Systems, and of
the Regulation of the Legal Professions
1.
Tort Reform and Class Action
2.
Non-Violent Crime
3.
Police State
4.
Rights of the Accused and of Juries
5.
Regulation of the Legal Professions
POLICIES
I.
Reform and Development of State, County, and Municipal
Government
1.
Transparency
Increase
voluntarism and transparency in interactions between citizens and
agencies of government.
2.
Local Government
Increase communal
autonomy, the self-determination of localities, subsidiarity,
municipal home rule, and multiple-federalism.
3.
Government
Investment
Promote sustainable,
egalitarian, and transparent investment in - and improvement to
development of - state, county, and municipal governments;
through fostering an environment conducive to cooperation between
credit unions, mutual banks, cooperative banks, multi- stakeholder
community development cooperatives, and non-profit community
organizations (in the vein of the Free Detroit Project).
4.
Local Business
Alliance
Promote cooperation
between sympathetic local businesses and alliances / associations /
partnerships thereof, local chambers of commerce, and locavore
groups and other domestic production advocacy groups.
5.
Consumer and
Political Advocacy
Promote cooperation
between sympathetic citizens' and consumers' interest and advocacy
groups, political action committees, legislative caucuses, and
political parties in state and local government.
6.
Private
Communities
Allow community
experimentation with the Georgist single-tax (Land-Value-Tax) model
of private community organization.
7.
Bio-Regionalism
Promote cooperation and
understanding between the governmental establishment, Cascadian
independence groups, and other groups and individuals promoting
bio-regionalism.
8. Cascadian
Independence
Build coalitions in order
to grow the movement's political economy; so that the states of
Washington, Oregon, and Idaho are permitted to constitutionally
and independently secede from the government of the United States,
and that the province of British Columbia is permitted to
constitutionally secede from Canada; so that neighboring landed
jurisdictions within the Cascadia watershed may be sold to other
states or provinces, or to the national governments, in order to
settle the borders of Cascadia through constitutional, legal,
diplomatic, peaceful means oriented towards friendly trade.
II.
Reform of the Banking Industry and the Financial System
1.
Free and Egalitarian
Markets
Promote the freeing of
the markets, and move towards the perfection and completeness of
markets and of competition; promote fair and amicable competition
and diversity in markets for the provision of goods and services;
and promote equal access to the factors of production as a
condition for legitimate participation in markets for individuals,
firms, and communities alike.
2.
Finance and Market
Regulation
Promote just policies in
finance and market regulation; through de-incentivizing and punishing
the imposition of high transaction costs that cannot be justified
by the need to provide for the costs of administration (including
unreasonable bank fees), deceptive and fraudulent
profit- calculation practices, intrinsic and systemic risk of
externalization such as social-cost and free-rider problems, high
leverage (i.e., high ratios of speculative assets to tangible
assets), collateralization of debt obligations, pernicious
lending, and insider trading and manipulative speculative behavior
in short selling.
3.
Investment and Commercial
Banking
Promote
the separation of investment banking from community commercial
banking by implementing Glass-Steagall-type legislation at state
and local levels of government, and the restoration of
Glass-Steagall-type legislation at the federal level.
4.
Credit and Interest
Procure
for the people easy credit and low interest rates; not low because
they are set artificially
low by cartels of pernicious lenders, but low because
markets would naturally favor modest
growth rates, egalitarian investment and liability,
and low transaction costs.
5.
Banking, Investment, and
Credit
Promote cooperation
between sympathetic non-profit and not-for-profit banks, savings
banks and savings-and-loans, labor banks, resource banks,
partnerships, trusts and trust funds, corporate credit unions,
Accumulating (ASCAs) and Rotating (ROSCAs) Savings and Credit
Associations, multi-stakeholder co-operatives, limited-liability
companies, non-capital stock corporations, investment and
investment services agencies, registered investment companies,
holding companies, insurance and insurance services agencies,
credit and credit counseling services agencies
6.
Banking and Lending
Promote fair and
egalitarian banking and investment by preventing the revocation of
the federal tax exemption for credit unions, and by promoting
adequate taxation of – or the giving of adequate social
dividends from the profits of – pernicious lenders in the private
and public sectors not operating on mutual and cooperative banking
models.
7.
Cooperation in
Banking
Build and promote
cooperation between sympathetic credit-union leagues and cooperative
interbank networks.
8. Treasury and
Monetary Policy
Promote just treasury and
monetary policy by opposing usury and fractional reserve banking; by
allowing states [as North Dakota is doing] to establish state
banks (especially if they are non- profit or not-for-profit; or
operate on mutual or cooperative principles); and by allowing
communities, social groups, enterprises, and alliances thereof to
experiment with alternative currency by issuing their own labor-
and resource- backed currencies (for example, in the manner of
Mountain Hours of Summit County, Colorado).
III. Reform of the
Housing Industry and the Property Rights System
1. Public Facilities
Augment the rights of the
homeless to access public and common utilities and services, augment
the rights of evicted tenants and victims of mortgage foreclosures
to seek compensation from landlords, and increase penalties for
fraud and gambling by landlords.
2. Settling,
Homesteading, and Squatting
Reform laws related to
the rights of settlers, homesteading, and squatting; including by
amending the state's requirement of ten years of exclusive
occupancy for adverse possession.
3. Unoccupied Public
and Commercial Properties
Support sustainable
improvements to the development of abandoned and unoccupied public
and
private properties; such
as residencies and commercial offices; schools and hospitals; and
unincorporated, undeveloped, underdeveloped, blighted, and
low- property-value properties and areas.
4. Unoccupied
Transportation Properties
Support sustainable
improvements to the development of abandoned and unoccupied
transportation infrastructure properties; such as parking garages,
highways, bridges, train system properties, airports, and other
lands managed by the Oregon Department of Transportation; in addition
to seasteads and mobile floating occupations and residencies, and
subway systems (in future Portland, or in large cities in other
states as the movement develops and spreads).
5. Parks and Communal
Lands
Permit housing on - and
support sustainable improvements to the development of - communal
farming lands; community public parks; state forests, camping
grounds, and other lands; and national forests, camping grounds,
and other lands in the state (besides parks and wildlife
preserves).
6. Cooperative Housing
Supplement deficiencies
and deficits in the provision of shelter to the people; through
promoting cooperation between sympathetic building and housing
cooperatives and utility cooperatives, through providing
volunteer-based temporary shelter at agencies offering aid-for-work,
and through restoring use of and developing abandoned housing
facilities and habitable areas.
IV. Reform of
Social Welfare: C.O.R.E., Homelessness, Mutual Aid and Charity,
Education
1. C.O.R.E. Values in
Activism
Improve the image of the
disadvantaged by promoting activism which respects C.O.R.E. Values
(Clean, Organized, Respectful, and Energetic), promoting
understanding and respect between
the homeless and
disadvantaged, and residents, tourists, police, and providers of
social welfare services.
2. Reciprocity in
Social Service Provision
Insist that any good or
service which the state deems compulsory upon the citizen to purchase
or possess as a condition of exercising basic freedoms and rights
– be it identification and travel documents, legal paperwork and
legal representation, health insurance, justice and security, or
access to public facilities and social programs – be provided by
the state imposing the requirement.
3. Access to Public
Facilities
Improve access to and
information of common and public facilities in public areas - for the
public in general and for the disadvantaged and homeless in
particular - by promoting cooperation between sympathetic churches
and rescue missions, food pantries and activist feeding groups,
other charities and non-profits, mental health and addiction
clinics, hospitals, and homeless- positive businesses and
individuals; and by distributing maps showing locations of public
facilities, such as the aforementioned establishments, as well as
drinking fountains, electric outlets, shelters, and restrooms.
4. Aid-and-Trade
Improve
the coordination and efficiency of the delivery of personal social
welfare by building a mutual aid society into an aid-and-trade
association; through promoting cooperation between sympathetic
charity organizations, mutual support and mutual aid networks,
mutual organizations, mutual and friendly societies, fraternal
organizations, building societies, benefit and benevolent
societies, burial societies, non-profit and not-for-profit non-stock
corporations, non-commercial organizations.
5. Aid-for-Work
Build aid-for-work
agencies, and associations thereof, for disadvantaged persons wishing
to volunteer and access employment services – including
immediate care (for spouses, children, and pets) and education for
children – by coordinating with state and local public service
agencies (including parks and recreation departments, and animal
food and care services such as Pongo and Paws), veterans'
administrations and groups, adults' and seniors' groups (clubs,
lodges, fraternal organizations, etc.), retired person's
organizations, retirement homes and retirement communities.
6. Education and
Schools
Supplement deficiencies
and deficits in the provision of education to the youth of the
public;
through providing
volunteer-based education at agencies offering aid-for-work, through
coordinating with cooperative educational institutes, and through
restoring use of and developing abandoned school facilities.
7.
Child Custody and Protection
Fight for the unity of
families and the proliferation of the human species, by combating and
reversing the alienation of the proletariat from its biological
product (i.e., the next generation); through pursuing parental
rights' reforms, including through liberalizing laws allowing and /
or mandating the taking of child custody by child protective
services for parents failing to meet arbitrary and unreasonable
societal standards of adequate and appropriate provision of food,
medicine, shelter, housing utilities, and various forms of
insurance - as well as for failing to pay off debts and to obey
laws against non-violent activities - and through raising awareness
of corporate government, corporate citizenship, corporate
personhood, Strawman Theory and Capitis Deminutio.
8. Voluntarism in
Social Services
Promote the independence,
mutualization, and syndicalization of social service bureaucracies,
by
diminishing the need for
compulsory taxation to fund the administration of the pertinent
programs, through promoting volunteering and voluntary giving as
solutions to deficiencies and deficits in both public and private
social service provision.
V.
Reform of the System of Credit to and Development of
Business
1. Local Business
Development
Promote sustainable
improvements to the development of occupied and unoccupied business
offices and logistics properties and private-sector landed
property, through finance and planning of business and commercial
banking at the state and local levels.
2. Social Purpose of
Business
Improve the social
benefit of trade and commerce by coordinating the activity of
sympathetic fair- trade businesses, social-purpose businesses and
ventures, social enterprise agencies, profit- and surplus- sharing
agencies, benefit corporations, social economy organizations, and
enterprises supporting the payment of social dividends.
3. Independent and
Cooperative Business Organization
Accede
to the re-framing of government as a business in popular political
culture; by embracing business-oriented solutions to social
problems; through promoting the uplifting of the lower and middle
classes through entrepreneurialism and cooperative business
organization; by encouraging divestiture of enterprises from
non-sympathetic established business alliances and state and local
chambers of commerce; by raising awareness about corporate
government, citizenship, and personhood; and by coordinating
investment and aid between sympathetic Third Sector enterprises.
4. Cooperative and
Mutualist Business Investment
Build
community business alliances on cooperative and mutualist principles,
by choosing cooperative enterprises and mutualist enterprises as
members, and promote mutual aid and investment between such
enterprises and associations.
5.
Coordination Across Stages of Production
Coordinate
cooperation between sympathetic enterprises in the various stages and
sectors of trade, through partnership with:
a. Producers' and
Manufacturers' Groups
(including producers'
cooperatives, artists' cooperatives and artisans' guilds, farmers'
and agricultural cooperatives, industrial trade and craft unions
and guilds, and industrial societies);
b. Retailers' and Trade
Groups
(including retailers'
cooperatives, cooperative retail and commercial banking institutions,
industry trade groups, employers' associations, and cooperative
grocery and drug stores);
and
c. Consumers' and
Customers' Groups
(including consumers'
rights and consumer advocacy agencies, state consumer action
networks, customers' and consumers' cooperatives, purchasing
cooperatives, and consumer-driven health care cooperatives).
6.
Cooperative Business Association
Build business alliances
into coalitions thereof, confederations of cooperatives, cooperative
wholesale societies, trade associations, and trade
confederations; and promote coordination with cooperative
corporations (such as those operating on Mondragon and similar
models) and the National Cooperative Business Association.
VI. Reform of the
System of Rights of Unionized Laborers, Independent Workers, and the
Unemployed
1. Egalitarian
Workplaces
Promote the proliferation
of egalitarian management by labor in enterprise, and the operation
of workplaces on cooperativist, mutualist, syndicalist,
guild-unionist, and entrepreneurialist principles.
2. Collective
Bargaining
Incentivize and encourage
the spread of collective bargaining agreements which support the
rights
of individual workers;
such as members-only collective bargaining, dual-unionism, minority
unionism, and other agreements which minimize the risk of
free-rider problems in worker representation.
3. Unemployment and
Non-Collective Labor
Augment and broaden the
provision of workers' and bargaining rights through the creation of
homeless persons' and welfare recipients' unions, and through
coordinating cooperation between sympathetic unemployed person's
unions, freelancers' unions, and groups promoting New Mutualism.
4. Third Sector General
Strike
Wage a bipartisan,
multipartisan, or non-partisan general strike in order to promote the
end of exploitation, to raise awareness of the movement's
coalition-building, and to bring about the secession of the Third
Sector from the establishment economy (the private-public
partnership).
VII.
Reform of the Civil and Criminal Justice Systems, and of the
Regulation of the Legal Professions
1.
Tort Reform and Class Action
Oppose
tort reforms which inhibit the rights of juries to award compensation
to victims; and take steps to make viable large-scale class-action
lawsuits against the beneficiaries of improper government largess,
and of corruption in government and business.
2.
Non-Violent Crime
Promote
the abolition of mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines for
non-violent crimes at the state level; repeal and/or liberalize
vice laws against alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and illicit drugs
with medicinal uses; and lower and/or remove obstacles to non-violent
felons' rights and abilities to find employment, purchase health
insurance, travel outside the United States, and vote.
3.
Police State
Combat
and prevent the spread of tyranny, arbitrary coercion, and
disproportionate force in the delivery of police services to the
public; through increasing the transparency of police activities to
the public (including by urging communities to experiment with
affixing surveillance equipment to police offices, vehicles, and
uniforms); and through keeping the weapons of war off of the
people's streets by passing legislation at the community and state
levels which ban the active domestic use of tanks and drones.
4.
Rights of the Accused and of Juries
Promote
the rights of the accused and of jurors and juries; by supporting a
restoration of the civil liberties protected by the Fourth, Fifth,
and Sixth Amendments, and an augmentation of the rights of the
accused and of Miranda Rights; by increasing awareness of the rights
to represent and defend oneself in court, and to an adequate
defense, and of plea bargaining; and by discouraging the
prosecution of those charged with distributing literature on public
grounds which promotes the awareness of juries' rights and jury
nullification.
5.
Regulation of the Legal Professions
Increase
public transparency of the regulation of the legal professions, by
pursuing investigation of state and local bar associations, legal
guilds, and law enforcers' and other public employees' unions, in
order to punish and counteract attempts by the professions to defend
attorneys' stature and compensation against the risk of widespread
self-defense in court by the accused (including by ending the
self-management of the legal professions; preventing the disbarring
of licensed attorneys for questioning the propriety of the
jurisdiction of courts; increasing transparency into the signing of
anti-corruption and constitutional support oaths by judges,
prosecutors, and political representatives; and preventing the
unfounded dismissal of prospective jurors in voir
dire (jury
selection processes) for reasons which may stem from prospective
jurors' degrees of legal and constitutional knowledge).
For more information, please contact:
Joe Kopsick
Phone: 608-417-9395
E-Mail: jwkopsick@gmail.com
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