Move To Amend

My advice, for what it is worth, to my activist friends in Move To Amend:

I hope your organization, Move To Amend, has a way to track the outcome of which precinct caucuses have the resolutions introduced and which precinct caucuses pass the resolutions in the different parties.

It took us six years before we could get a resolution in support of single-payer universal health care passed by the State Convention of the MN DFL because those placed in charge of resolutions passed by the precinct caucuses kept saying the resolutions never made it to their committee.

We had to finally take photos of the resolutions as they were placed into the envelopes to prove the resolutions were being passed and then once the resolution was forced to be brought before state convention delegates it was passed by a boisterous 72% majority; but, those who refused to support the resolution immediately went to work in their same dirty ways to undermine this resolution.

We face the same kind of contemptuous opposition when it comes to the Minimum Wage. The Minnesota DFL has one of the best resolutions now part of its platform on the Minimum Wage that is based on a resolution I wrote which was passed by hundreds of precinct caucuses across the state, yet not one single Democrat in the state legislature, nor the Governor, is paying any attention to the resolution.

My point:

Unless there is a very well organized campaign to back up these resolutions and follow them through to legislation and then insisting the legislation actually gets implemented the best resolutions mean very little.

A perfect example of how these politicians even evade enforcing the "law of the land" when they actually turn the concerns of the people into laws is the case of Affirmative Action.

In this case, a smiling Hubert H. Humphrey stood beside President Lyndon B. Johnson as Johnson signed into like his Executive Order #11246, as Affirmative Action is known.

Humphrey was all to pleased to see Affirmative Action signed into law and forcefully carried out in Mississippi but here in Minnesota Affirmative Action has never been enforced.

So, while Move To Amend may become the "law of the land;" don't be surprised if these corrupt politicians ignore the enforcement of its intent the very same way these politicians ignore the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights when it comes to just about everything else.

This is why I suggested at the Uniting People Forum in Duluth that we need to create and build an alternative anti-monopoly political party and organization like the socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party and its grassroots back-bone the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Association which ultimately Farmer-Labor Governor Elmer Benson forged into a mighty "People's Lobby" or "People's Front" and in this way very important and significant reform expanding democracy and improving the lives and livelihoods of Minnesotans became a reality.

But, let's not get lulled into thinking because the majority of the people support the excellent initiatives of Move To Amend its goals and objectives even should they become the "law of the land" will be enforced without the constant involvement and mobilization of the people through an alternative working class based progressive people's party like the old socialist Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party which was the most successful alternative to date to the thoroughly corrupt Democratic and Republican Parties looking out for Wall Street's interests, assets and profits.

It is simply too much to expect that a thoroughly corrupt Democratic Party like the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party which brought into existence the Indian Gaming Industry here in Minnesota which has resulted in over 44,000 Minnesotans working in loud, noisy, smoke-filled casinos at poverty wages and without any rights under state or federal labor laws and a party which refuses to take action to stop the mining companies from swindling the workers out of their pension funds is going to live up to what Move To Amend is for.

I would call to your attention the obituary of Elmer Benson, arguably Minnesota's most honest ever politician and just as popular as socialist Governor Floyd B. Olson, written up in the LA Times and his feelings about the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party and how he lived to resent and despise his own role in this merger of the two parties:

http://articles.latimes.com/1985-03-16/business/fi-27186_1_minnesota-politics

Governor Rudy Perpich also lived to taste the wrath of his own Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party when they dumped him after he proposed turning the Taconite Tax into a real tax to wholly fund public education in place of this regressive Property Tax system where you have Democrats and Republicans in the State Legislature saying they are opposed to tax hikes but on the local levels their bureaucrats are constantly raising these regressive property taxes under the guise of "increased property values and assessments."

Rudy Perpich, after meeting with his long-time friend Gus Hall--- a meeting that these corporate owned Democrats despised--- also came to the conclusion that some kind of new political party similar to the old Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party was going to be needed if serious reforms were going to be won.

And, as we know, Paul Wellstone was probably murdered as he was tinkering in his mind with this idea, too, as he fought a lonely battle with the warmongers in both political parties.