Gate Io Trade Disabled

regarding activism

Vast disparities of wealth, environmental destruction, excessive arms buildup...
these and many other policies are all the precise opposite of what most people wish for.
These things can benefit only the few although they may eventually lead to total destruction.

The power of money ensures the continuance of non-representational government in the United States and around the world.
Little effective opposition exists within governments, so activism - political action outside of political institutions - remains the most viable force for change.
Widespread activism promoting economic and racial justice and environmental sanity may be the critical factor determining whether or not we can leave to the next few generations a physically decent world, and an essentially decent society.

representation

There is no obvious alignment between majority opinion and government policy concerning major policy issues. ¹
Common sensibilities are frustrated by the framing of issues in terms put forth by those with inordinate wealth, political power, or media control. ^{gate io mot de passe de fond oublié}

human nature

To continue to allow the impulses of power and greed to dictate economic and political policy is to commit ourselves to global disaster.
If ethical behavior is not systemic in the regulatory functioning of society, un-ethical behavior will win out in competative systems of power. ³
Our evolved responses are mismatched with relevant cues in the modern world. The fact that normally intelligent people could want to sacrifice the safety and well being of their species, including their own decendants, seems to require that assumption, ⁴ indicating, among other things, that we have no inherited basis for the process of selecting good leaders. Natural impulses don't exist to help us recognise and enable good leadership in this vastly altered environment. The rational mind is our only effective tool.

the power of unions

The notion that human labor is a commodity, allowing wages to be determined by the economy of supply and demand, is inhuman. The inhumanity is most stark at the bottom where there is always willingness to work for subsistence wages, and even less than subsistence wages, when the alternative is no income at all.
Without organized resistence, we continue with disfunctional political systems run by the business class. The apportionment of generated wealth in this country, as controlled by those political systems, is extremely skewed.
Just as workers a century ago had to organize to resist brutal treatment at the hands of corporate and government power, organization is desparately needed today.
Corporate powers work insessantly and illegally to keep the less privileged from effective organization. ⁵

unionization

This web site is for the formation of what's called political unions... "union" as in "labor union" rather than a unification of diverse political states, or an association of political parties. A new union here can be a first attempt at publicly presenting a political cause, or it can be an ancillary voice of a mature movement.
The intention here, though, is to formalize members' commitment.
Similar to the commitment of a member of a labor union to participate in a strike in the eventuality that a strike is called, a political union here provides a plan for a specific political action, and delineates the corresponding future conditions necessary to trigger that action.
The call to action may be conditioned, for instance, on the number of committed members growing beyond some minimum threshold. For example it could require 50 members before presenting a specific demand at the next school board meeting, or 200,000 members before calling for everyone to gather at the state Capital.
If the specified conditions are not met, say within a specified time, then the commitment is dissolved.
When you join a union, you are commiting to participate if the conditions are met and the action is called.

scope

The range of interest here is not limited in principle. An effective union may arise to address limited or local issues, or federal and international policy.
Racist and other hate based and illegal activities will not be supported, of course, a policy that includes comments on this site.

structure

A union is represented here by:
1. a statement of its political position
2. a statement of the action to which one is committing when signing up as a member of the union
3. the conditions under which members may be called upon to honor that commitment
4. a membership database

creating a new union

To create a new union, you, as a self-defined union manager,
use the New Political Union form
to define the union's intent, including the action to which members are committed.
It's assumed that unions may also have their own separate web site(s).

becoming a member

To become an active committed member of a union, go to the sign-up section at the end of the desciption page of that union, available through the union list.

Footnotes ...seem superfluous as the referring statements seem obvious. These references are just some readily available examples of research concluding the same.

1. For example, from Cambridge University Press
Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens :
Clearly, when one holds constant net interest-group alignments and the preferences of affluent Americans, it makes very little difference what the general public thinks. The probability of policy change is nearly the same (around 0.3) whether a tiny minority or a large majority of average citizens favor a proposed policy change.
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2. For example, from the American Journal of Political Science
Issue Framing and Public Opinion on Government Spending :
The general argument in this study has been that political actors employ issue frames as tools for achieving their own objectives. If that is the case, then the empirical results presented here demonstrate unambiguously that issue-framing effects can have immediate and far-reaching political consequences, by changing the apparent content of American public opinion in systematic ways.
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3. For example, from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Winning a competition predicts dishonest behavior :
Studies 1 and 2 demonstrate that winning a competition increases the likelihood of winners to steal money from their counterparts in a subsequent unrelated task. Studies 3a and 3b demonstrate that the effect holds only when winning means performing better than others (i.e., determined in reference to others) but not when success is determined by chance or in reference to a personal goal. Finally, study 4 demonstrates that a possible mechanism underlying the effect is an enhanced sense of entitlement among competition winners.
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4. From Mismatch: How Our Stone Age Brain Deceives Us Every Day
Another mismatch is our struggle with present-day leadership. The way we organise and manage things these days differs rather from that of our ancestors roaming in small groups across the savannah...
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5. From the Economic Policy Institute
Unlawful :
The data show that U.S. employers use a wide range of legal and illegal tactics to frustrate the rights of workers to form unions and collectively bargain.
...
This combination of illegal conduct and legal coercion has ensured that union elections are characterized by employer intimidation and in no way reflect the democratic process guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act.
(and just look at current (September 2023) NLRB charges against Starbucks)
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