Socialist Party of Michigan Candidates Appearing on the Nov. 2nd 2010 Statewide General Election Ballot:
Diana Demers for University of Michigan Board of Regents
(Green Party ballot label*)
James Arnoldi for Wayne State University Board of Governors
(Green Party ballot label*)
SPMI 2010 Statewide Campaign Flyer
The Socialist Party of Michigan encourages all Michigan workers to vote YES on the 2010 General Election Proposal #1 – to convene a constitutional convention for the purpose of drafting a general revision of Michigan’s State Constitution. Correspondingly, we also vehemently demand that the Socialist Party of Michigan be equally accorded the same right and state-recognition as all other Michigan political parties to nominate and certify candidates in the subsequently scheduled partisan election for Convention delegate seats, should this proposal to hold a statewide Constitutional Convention be approved by Michigan voters.
We Socialists, if elected to the delegation charged with re-drafting a new constitution for our state, would seek to establish a process for extending supreme constitutional ratifying authority to a statewide body of community and workplace assemblies, subsequently convened to codify the transfer of power and authority over the affairs of the State of Michigan from the old, nominally “democratic” structures to the new grassroots community and workplace assemblies, and whatever statewide system of legislation and administration they establish.
Central to the tasks of a new Constitutional Convention would also be the adoption of a “Working People’s Bill of Rights,” designed to make clear and concrete the rights of working people in the state to the necessities of life, the means of expression and the power to determine their own futures and those of succeeding generations.
Other central provisions of a new democratic state constitution that Socialists would seek to establish would include:
- The immediate placement of all major corporations and financial institutions under
social ownership and worker control.
- Abolition of the State Senate and expansion of the State House of Representatives into a general state legislature, chosen by proportional representation. All members of the executive cabinet, including directors of state agencies, not directly elected by the people to be chosen from among the elected representatives. All state representatives and executive officers subject to immediate recall at any time. No state representative to make more than the average wage of a skilled worker.
- Sanctioning of fully empowered neighborhood councils and assemblies to administer areas and
communities within cities. Citywide, county, regional and statewide gatherings of community assemblies on a periodic basis to exchange ideas, set policy and coordinate activity.
- Abolition of the right of the state government to stage “takeovers” of community institutions:
courts; school districts; power and water facilities; public transportation; etc.
- Implementation of Instant Run-off Voting in all state, county and municipal elections; and
proportional representation in all legislative bodies. Automatic ballot status for any organization
that holds a State Convention and elects a State Central Committee.
- Full freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of personal privacy, due process, and free exercise of religion through the separation of church and state.Full
equality for all, regardless of race, color or creed, nationality or national origin, gender, sexuality
or sexual identity, age, ability, political affiliation, religion, or citizenship status, including the
immediate repeal and reversal of the constitution’s present provisions barring same-sex
marriage equality and public sector affirmative action.
- The right to meaningful employment, high quality and comprehensive free health care,
and free education from cradle to grave for all Michigan residents
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The very basis upon which the restrictions presented in this year’s Proposal 2 would require a constitutional amendment for enactment is their direct assault on Michigan voters’ most fundamental democratic rights. In constituting an amendment to the State Constitution that would empower the state to bar the subsequent election of individuals upon whom the state has successfully imposed a ‘criminal’ label, regardless of the voter support they may hold; Proposal 2 essentially asks Michigan voters to approve new conditions for their own potential disenfranchisement.
In further draping itself with thinly veiled allusion to the continuing spectacle of scandals surrounding Detroit’s former Kilpatrick mayoral regime, Proposal 2 has been directly fashioned with the intent of further perpetuating the myth of local responsibility for the devastating decline of Michigan’s largest city, while simultaneously serving to further divert public scrutiny from the ubiquitously entrenched system of corporate bribery and corruption, characterizing all levels of our electoral and legislative processes, while operating behind the contrastingly protecting shield of legal sanction. For all such reasons, Michigan workers should resoundingly vote to reject this cynically reactionary proposal.
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*Due to the refusal of the Michigan Secretary of State’s office to recognize the Socialist Party’s ballot status in Michigan this year, the candidacies of Diana Demers for UM Regent and James Arnoldi for WSU Governor will be listed under the ballot label of the Green Party of Michigan, whose supplementary nomination they both also received.