Five hundred citizens clearly signing a petition will get a Senator to attend; considerably fewer names a U.S. Representative. (Photo: Architect of the Capitol)
It's Your Congress, People! Make It Work for You!
Just 535 humans (Senators and Representatives) need your votes far more than they need fat cat campaign contributions
Congress is the Constitutionally delegated repository of the sovereign authority of the people (the Constitution which starts with "We the People," not "We the Congress!"). Most of the changes, reforms, and improvements desired by a majority of people have to go through Congress. Incentives for change often start with Congressional elections or grass-roots organizing. But sooner or later, change has to go through the gates of our national legislature on Capitol Hill.
This point is so obvious that it is astonishing so many reformers fail to regularly hammer home that we must intensely focus on Congress.
Just 535 humans (Senators and Representatives) need your votes far more than they need fat cat campaign contributions.
Guess what the following twelve redirections or changes have in common with one another?
- A living wage, much higher than the long-frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
- Full Medicare for all or what is called a "single payer" system covering everybody, with free choice of doctor and hospital, is much cheaper and has better outcomes than the present complex, bureaucratic, price-gouging, claim denying, profits-first chaos in the U.S.
- Moving swiftly to a renewable, solar-based, wind-powered, more efficient energy system, that diminishes climate disruption and toxic pollution.
- Cleaner air, water, soil and food for a healthful environmental for today and for coming generations.
- Clean elections reform and strong, enforceable laws against public corruption.
- Criminal justice reform, especially regarding non-violent offenses and additional reforms of sentencing and prisons.
- Stopping taxpayers from being required to pay for very costly corporate welfare, or what conservatives call "crony capitalism" in all its many forms.
- Enforcing the criminal and civil laws against corporate rip-offs, thefts, hazardous products, and hearing the voices of workers, consumers and those from beleaguered communities (especially on the public's airwaves unfairly controlled by the monetized gatekeepers called radio and television stations).
- Protecting access to justice for wrongfully injured people to have their full day in court with trial by jury as demanded by the country's founders and our Constitution.
- Protection of the public lands - the national and state forests and the national parks and wilderness regions from corporate profit-driven encroachment and despoliation.
- Re-evaluating the loss of lives from unconstitutional, boomeranging wars abroad that spread death and destruction abroad making more people our enemies. These wars have also taken trillions of taxpayer dollars from rebuilding our community infrastructure - schools, highways, bridges, public transit, libraries, health clinics, drinking water/sewage works, and environmental cleanups.
- Make it easier for consumers, workers, and small taxpayers to band together for civic action and a powerful seat at the table with big businesses and their government toadies.
These twelve advances have the following in common:
(1) They have majority public opinion support - in some cases huge support- which means many liberal and conservative voters agree, which can produce an unstoppable political movement.
(2) Most of them cost nothing or little to implement, bringing more efficiencies and less damage to our society. Wisdom is less expensive than constant folly or deep greed!
(3) They are understandable. People relate to the experiences, agonies, and dreams for a better life and livelihood for themselves and for their families.
(4) They provide people with a sense of empowerment and accomplishment - traits necessary for a worthy democracy to work. Cynicism and withdrawal begin to be reversed in favor of engagement and new civic institutions needed by our posterity.
(5) They all have to go through our Congress - a good majority of only 535 people whose names we know become much more responsive to citizen action, people-driven town meetings, civic agendas, and democratizing procedures inside Congress.
Start by inviting the old and new members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to your town-meetings. Five hundred citizens clearly signing a petition will get a Senator to attend; considerably fewer names a U.S. Representative.
When you have them face-to-face with no flak, you'll see what "we the people" can accomplish. It has happened before in American history; it must happen again. (For more advice, see ratsreformcongress.org).
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Congress is the Constitutionally delegated repository of the sovereign authority of the people (the Constitution which starts with "We the People," not "We the Congress!"). Most of the changes, reforms, and improvements desired by a majority of people have to go through Congress. Incentives for change often start with Congressional elections or grass-roots organizing. But sooner or later, change has to go through the gates of our national legislature on Capitol Hill.
This point is so obvious that it is astonishing so many reformers fail to regularly hammer home that we must intensely focus on Congress.
Just 535 humans (Senators and Representatives) need your votes far more than they need fat cat campaign contributions.
Guess what the following twelve redirections or changes have in common with one another?
- A living wage, much higher than the long-frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
- Full Medicare for all or what is called a "single payer" system covering everybody, with free choice of doctor and hospital, is much cheaper and has better outcomes than the present complex, bureaucratic, price-gouging, claim denying, profits-first chaos in the U.S.
- Moving swiftly to a renewable, solar-based, wind-powered, more efficient energy system, that diminishes climate disruption and toxic pollution.
- Cleaner air, water, soil and food for a healthful environmental for today and for coming generations.
- Clean elections reform and strong, enforceable laws against public corruption.
- Criminal justice reform, especially regarding non-violent offenses and additional reforms of sentencing and prisons.
- Stopping taxpayers from being required to pay for very costly corporate welfare, or what conservatives call "crony capitalism" in all its many forms.
- Enforcing the criminal and civil laws against corporate rip-offs, thefts, hazardous products, and hearing the voices of workers, consumers and those from beleaguered communities (especially on the public's airwaves unfairly controlled by the monetized gatekeepers called radio and television stations).
- Protecting access to justice for wrongfully injured people to have their full day in court with trial by jury as demanded by the country's founders and our Constitution.
- Protection of the public lands - the national and state forests and the national parks and wilderness regions from corporate profit-driven encroachment and despoliation.
- Re-evaluating the loss of lives from unconstitutional, boomeranging wars abroad that spread death and destruction abroad making more people our enemies. These wars have also taken trillions of taxpayer dollars from rebuilding our community infrastructure - schools, highways, bridges, public transit, libraries, health clinics, drinking water/sewage works, and environmental cleanups.
- Make it easier for consumers, workers, and small taxpayers to band together for civic action and a powerful seat at the table with big businesses and their government toadies.
These twelve advances have the following in common:
(1) They have majority public opinion support - in some cases huge support- which means many liberal and conservative voters agree, which can produce an unstoppable political movement.
(2) Most of them cost nothing or little to implement, bringing more efficiencies and less damage to our society. Wisdom is less expensive than constant folly or deep greed!
(3) They are understandable. People relate to the experiences, agonies, and dreams for a better life and livelihood for themselves and for their families.
(4) They provide people with a sense of empowerment and accomplishment - traits necessary for a worthy democracy to work. Cynicism and withdrawal begin to be reversed in favor of engagement and new civic institutions needed by our posterity.
(5) They all have to go through our Congress - a good majority of only 535 people whose names we know become much more responsive to citizen action, people-driven town meetings, civic agendas, and democratizing procedures inside Congress.
Start by inviting the old and new members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to your town-meetings. Five hundred citizens clearly signing a petition will get a Senator to attend; considerably fewer names a U.S. Representative.
When you have them face-to-face with no flak, you'll see what "we the people" can accomplish. It has happened before in American history; it must happen again. (For more advice, see ratsreformcongress.org).
Congress is the Constitutionally delegated repository of the sovereign authority of the people (the Constitution which starts with "We the People," not "We the Congress!"). Most of the changes, reforms, and improvements desired by a majority of people have to go through Congress. Incentives for change often start with Congressional elections or grass-roots organizing. But sooner or later, change has to go through the gates of our national legislature on Capitol Hill.
This point is so obvious that it is astonishing so many reformers fail to regularly hammer home that we must intensely focus on Congress.
Just 535 humans (Senators and Representatives) need your votes far more than they need fat cat campaign contributions.
Guess what the following twelve redirections or changes have in common with one another?
- A living wage, much higher than the long-frozen federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour.
- Full Medicare for all or what is called a "single payer" system covering everybody, with free choice of doctor and hospital, is much cheaper and has better outcomes than the present complex, bureaucratic, price-gouging, claim denying, profits-first chaos in the U.S.
- Moving swiftly to a renewable, solar-based, wind-powered, more efficient energy system, that diminishes climate disruption and toxic pollution.
- Cleaner air, water, soil and food for a healthful environmental for today and for coming generations.
- Clean elections reform and strong, enforceable laws against public corruption.
- Criminal justice reform, especially regarding non-violent offenses and additional reforms of sentencing and prisons.
- Stopping taxpayers from being required to pay for very costly corporate welfare, or what conservatives call "crony capitalism" in all its many forms.
- Enforcing the criminal and civil laws against corporate rip-offs, thefts, hazardous products, and hearing the voices of workers, consumers and those from beleaguered communities (especially on the public's airwaves unfairly controlled by the monetized gatekeepers called radio and television stations).
- Protecting access to justice for wrongfully injured people to have their full day in court with trial by jury as demanded by the country's founders and our Constitution.
- Protection of the public lands - the national and state forests and the national parks and wilderness regions from corporate profit-driven encroachment and despoliation.
- Re-evaluating the loss of lives from unconstitutional, boomeranging wars abroad that spread death and destruction abroad making more people our enemies. These wars have also taken trillions of taxpayer dollars from rebuilding our community infrastructure - schools, highways, bridges, public transit, libraries, health clinics, drinking water/sewage works, and environmental cleanups.
- Make it easier for consumers, workers, and small taxpayers to band together for civic action and a powerful seat at the table with big businesses and their government toadies.
These twelve advances have the following in common:
(1) They have majority public opinion support - in some cases huge support- which means many liberal and conservative voters agree, which can produce an unstoppable political movement.
(2) Most of them cost nothing or little to implement, bringing more efficiencies and less damage to our society. Wisdom is less expensive than constant folly or deep greed!
(3) They are understandable. People relate to the experiences, agonies, and dreams for a better life and livelihood for themselves and for their families.
(4) They provide people with a sense of empowerment and accomplishment - traits necessary for a worthy democracy to work. Cynicism and withdrawal begin to be reversed in favor of engagement and new civic institutions needed by our posterity.
(5) They all have to go through our Congress - a good majority of only 535 people whose names we know become much more responsive to citizen action, people-driven town meetings, civic agendas, and democratizing procedures inside Congress.
Start by inviting the old and new members of the House of Representatives and the Senate to your town-meetings. Five hundred citizens clearly signing a petition will get a Senator to attend; considerably fewer names a U.S. Representative.
When you have them face-to-face with no flak, you'll see what "we the people" can accomplish. It has happened before in American history; it must happen again. (For more advice, see ratsreformcongress.org).