Friday, June 11, 2010

Now that the primary is over, raise your voice for working families

WFP logoImage via Wikipedia

Got this in the mail today:
Imagine a political party that works its butt off to elect progressive Democrats—and the day after the election, works just as hard to hold them accountable to stand for progressive values.

That's exactly what the Oregon Working Families Party is. And it's why, as a fellow Oregonian, I'm writing to ask you to help support the WFP today—not with money, but by changing your voter registration to the Working Families Party.

3,000 people have already joined up. But the Oregon WFP needs to get to 10,000 members by August 4th to earn permanent ballot status. That'll allow the WFP to continue to represent the voice of working folks in Oregon and make sure Democrats know they need to stand with progressives to win elections this fall—goals that align so closely with those of many MoveOn members, including me.

Can you change your voter registration to be with the Oregon Working Families Party today? With online voter registration, it only takes a minute. Just click below to get started.

http://oregonwfp.org/register/moveon

The WFP, which is rapidly gaining steam in Oregon, is a close ally of MoveOn in other states, where we've worked together to elect progressives and fight for health care reform.

Don't worry—this is no pie-in-the-sky "spoiler" party. Here's how it works: Working Families Party members interview candidates and grill them on the hard questions. Then WFP endorses the candidates who commit to fighting for our progressive values.

On your election ballot, Democrats who have earned the WFP nomination are listed with both parties—Democratic and Working Families—next to their names. It's the WFP seal of approval to show voters which candidates are real champions for regular folks, not special interests. There's no spoiler effect, but voters get a new way to vote their progressive values—and candidates can see how important the progressive vote is on Election Day.

As The Oregonian put it, WFP's goal is to "influence state policy by uniting rural and urban voters around kitchen table economic issues that matter to working people."1 WFP has a great record of success in other states, electing progressive Democrats and winning on issues from green jobs to health care reform.2

Oregon just recently started online voter registration, so now it's even easier to switch your voter registration to the Working Families Party. It only takes a few minutes, and you can still, of course, vote for any candidate you want in the upcoming general election this November.

Help build the progressive party: change your official voter registration to be with the Oregon Working Families Party today:

http://oregonwfp.org/register/moveon

Thanks!
Here's their issues page. Works for me.

The Working Families Party fights to improve the lives of working people and their families by focusing our government on things that make our jobs better, provide security for our families and prosperity for our communities. That includes:

  • Affordable healthcare for all Oregonians where our health, or lack thereof, is not dependent on individual wealth and subject to private profiteering; we support national single-payer health care consistent with the principles of H.R. 676.
  • Opening doors to opportunity through higher education and technical training that does not result in indebtedness for our citizens.
  • Affordable housing, a stop to predatory lending practices, investment in new affordable housing development, and protection of existing affordable housing.
  • Promotion of green family wage jobs whose legacy leaves a clean, secure, and sustainable environment for our children.
  • Supporting fair trade, defending our jobs against outsourcing, wage and benefit cuts, and corporate raiding.
  • The right to organize and reach a first contract free of intimidation, discrimination, and illegal terminations.

Click here to read the full 2008 platform of the Oregon Working Families Party.

To promote these values, the Oregon Working Families Party is currently working on two critical issue campaigns:

A Public Bank for Oregon. The OWFP is working with a broad coalition of organizations to promote the creation of a State Bank of Oregon, modeled after the 90-year-old Bank of North Dakota, which would use money that belongs to the state to invest in job creation, education, and homeownership here in Oregon, rather than giving that money over to big banks to continue to line their pockets. Click here to read more, and to sign our petition encouraging legislators to support this commonsense proposal.

Disability Insurance for all Oregonians. Many of Oregon’s working families live with the knowledge that on any day they could get injured or sick and find themselves unable to work. The OWFP is working on a proposal to create a statewide disability insurance program, modeled after California’s highly successful “SDI” program, which covers all workers in the state.

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If you've got the sun, you'd be crazy not to jump on this

Who will be able to keep the lights on?Image by Serge Melki via Flickr

They're handing out free money for making your home or business pollute less while giving you a way to generate energy for yourself even during power blackouts on the grid -- what's not to like? If you are a residential customer with good southern exposure or a business, church, or nonprofit with a big roof, you're crazy not to investigate this.
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