From Keystone Research Center (http://www.keystoneresearch.org):
We want to tell you and other long-term supporters of the Keystone Research Center and the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center about our new project that we launched today — We The People.
Please sign up as a supporter of the campaign here.
Over the years, working with an ever-growing number of partners, we have broadened our approach to creating shared prosperity. From a shop that mainly conducted research and policy analysis, we have taken on advocacy and the development of messages that allies with reach have taken into political battle. In the last five years, we’ve worked with a loose coalition of advocacy groups, social services agencies, and labor unions to engage the public in advocacy on budget and other issues.
We and our partners, old and new, are now taking our work a step further. We’ve recognized that we are not just up against opposition to individual public policies in Harrisburg, but a narrative that says the path to prosperity in this state is cutting spending as well as taxes, especially on the rich and corporations. Because of that narrative, the issues most often discussed in Harrisburg are far from the concerns of most Pennsylvanians.
We know — indeed, we’ve demonstrated — that this long dominant narrative is not true. We know that what people can afford to buy drives our economy and that the path to prosperity is raising the living standards of working-class and middle-class Pennsylvanians. And we know that, over the long term, economic growth and opportunity for all will only come if we create an educated and well-trained workforce.
So, with our partners in the advocacy and labor communities, we decided to create We The People, a campaign that puts forward a different agenda, one built on the real concerns of everyday Pennsylvanians.
Learn more about the campaign and join here.
As we developed our agenda, we wanted to make sure that we understand the concerns of the people of Pennsylvania. So, over the last two months, the PBPC, along with more than 15 state-wide allies, traveled all over Pennsylvania to host and participate in 13 community conversations. PBPC also commissioned a scientific poll to make sure that what we heard from the 400 people who attended our community conversations represented the opinions of Pennsylvanians at large.
So today we are excited to launch our We The People campaign!
We The People is a nonpartisan campaign that aims to make state government work for all of us. Our agenda was created from the ground up, by people who came together in these meetings across Pennsylvania. We found broad agreement on what we want from the commonwealth, and have together created a pro-active agenda that truly works for working-class, middle-class and other underrepresented Pennsylvanians.
This agenda stands against the corporate- and donor-sponsored narrative in Harrisburg that has continued to shrink revenues and defund vital programs. Together, we all stand for:
- Fair wages and strong unions
- Quality K-12 schools for all, affordable public higher education, and worker training that leads to good jobs
- Truly affordable and accessible healthcare, housing, and food
- Good roads, bridges and transit
- Clean air and water
- Fair taxes
- A secure democracy
We launched this campaign today with a press conference in Harrisburg, a new website wethepeoplepa.org, a new Facebook page, Facebook posts, a video about the campaign, and emails to tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians about this project.
In the weeks ahead, we hope to do events in every part of the state with you and your fellow Pennsylvanians. We hope to work with you to announce the campaign locally, to invite more people — and candidates for office — to join us, to hold candidate forums and town halls and to do other events that help Pennsylvanians see that we are determined to create a new direction in our state. If you would like to help create these events or have ideas for others, email Adrienne Standley at adrienne@wethepeoplepa.org.
When you look at our website, you will see we are starting with a basic agenda. As we move forward, we will add more specific proposals informed by our conversations with you. You and your networks will have opportunities to help us flesh out our plan on Facebook, through conference calls, and elsewhere.
This campaign is not meant to replace any of the amazing work already being done by our partners in this campaign. The aim of We The People is to provide organizations, unions, and grassroots groups with a new narrative. Our agenda is a tool that you can use to help win the argument that the time has come for a new direction in our state and to create a situation in which Harrisburg’s policy priorities become, as they should have been all along, the priorities of We The People.
Please join the campaign at http://wethepeoplepa.org.
Leave a Reply