If I’m going to be asked to support a presidential candidate other than the one I’ve been supporting, these are the things I still need to see concrete evidence of:
1. Vocal and actual opposition to any policy—governmental policy or party policy—that disempowers or discriminates against people on the basis of wealth or rank, or on the basis of their criticism of the privileges of people with wealth or rank. That includes condoning the use of quasi-military force against peaceful protesters who have the nerve to challenge the status quo.
2. Vocal and actual opposition to financial corporations that engage in racial discrimination. This includes banks found guilty of peddling subprime mortgages to ethnic minorities and illegally foreclosing on them at higher rates.
3. Vocal and actual opposition to a justice system that gives the powerful who prey on us more protection than it gives us. There is no equal protection under the law if bosses and bankers are protected by preferential treatment, or if cops can kill a man in cold blood and walk free.
4. Vocal and actual recognition of the right to privacy, and a reaffirmation of the Fourth Amendment. The dismantling of protections against unwarranted search, surveillance and seizure must end.
5. Vocal and actual recognition of the rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories to a nationality.
6. Vocal and actual support of the right to peaceful assembly. Regardless of who or what is being protested.
7. Dismantling of pay-to-play politics and other obstacles to ballot access.
8. Reaffirmation of Social Security in its current form, and sincere effort to preserve the health of the system without reducing benefits or privatizing any aspect of it.
9. Vocal and actual commitment to just and favorable wages and working conditions for all workers. No union-busting or support for union-busters. No condoning of employers who interfere with organizing drives. No bargaining away a meaningful minimum wage before the negotiation even begins.
10. Vocal and actual commitment to ensuring a decent standard of living for all Americans, including food, clothing, housing and health care. This includes adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act, because the private sector has shown that it does not respond to regulatory, market or moral pressure. It also includes rejecting the austerity agenda.
11. Vocal and actual commitment to public education directed to the full development of the human personality, regardless of which children it serves. This means rejecting the drive toward narrow curricula oriented solely toward preparing low- and middle-income children for futures in the workplace, reinforced by an excessive regime of standardized testing. It means confronting and condemning the hidden curricula that teach children of the affluent elite to be independent and analytical while teaching children in poverty to obey, follow routines and parrot back answers.
12. Vocal and actual recognition of the rights and dignity of people in all nations, and their equal entitlement to these and other human rights. This means making human rights a top priority of U.S. foreign policy and setting a moral example that inspires other nations to advance instead of alienating them with our obvious hypocrisy. No more excusing the human rights regimes of countries like China and Saudi Arabia, and no more pushing for trade agreements that elevate the desires of corporations and obscenely rich individuals over the rights and needs of working men and women and their families.
Every one of these policies is an internationally recognized human right. Not universally honored, perhaps, but at least recognized, in a document that owes its existence to a former Democratic first lady. So the bar is hereby set.
If a candidate cannot commit to all 12 of these policies, then that candidate is tacitly admitting that those radical authoritarians on the right wing, those neo-Confederates and budding Brownshirts, those polished patricians who plead for decorum as they tighten the screws on us, may actually be on the right page about a few things. And I reject that.
We have a battle to win: the battle between equality and domination, between the fulfillment of our rights and honoring of our dignity and their disappearance, and either we fight that battle with all our heart, with all our commitment, or we lose it. All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. Everyone is entitled to these things, regardless of sex, regardless of color, regardless of language or nationality or citizenship. There are no second-class human beings; there are no nobodies. I was not born to be dominated. None of us was.
And under no circumstance will I vote for my own domination.