As previous posters have noted, the Massachusetts Democratic Party is in the process of drafting the 2009 Platform, and is looking to make that process as inclusive and transparent as possible. As the co-chair of the Public Policy Committee for the Democratic Party, I'm interested in hearing from as many people as possible about the Democratic values you think our platform should reflect and what specific policies it should prioritize.
I want to encourage anyone who is interested in this process to attend a Platform hearing - or better yet, host your own. More information is available on the Massachusetts Democratic Party website about how to do this.
However, I know not everyone will have the opportunity to host or attend a Platform hearing - and we want to encourage dialogue in as many forums as possible, including online.
In that vein, I will be holding 10 "online forums" on BlueMassGroup over the next seven weeks to give people the opportunity to make their voice heard. Each forum will focus in on a specific topic (and I ask you to, as much as possible, restrict your comments to that specific topic!) At the end, we'll hold a "catch-all" forum to capture any topics you think we missed.
Typical BMG rules of the road apply - we're hoping to generate civil, substantive discussion about these issues.
For each of these categories, the overall arching questions are: As it pertains to this category, what are our core values as Democrats, and what policies do we think should be included in our 2009 Democratic Platform?
Here is a list of the topics of each of the online forums, as well as the day we'll put up that post. Today starts with Health Care, which I'll put up in a separate post later today.
Topics and Schedule Health Care - 2/13
Elections & Ethics Reform - 2/17
Education - 2/23
Civil Rights & Civil Liberties - 2/26
Economic Growth, Jobs, and Worker's Rights - 3/3
Economic Justice/Poverty - 3/6
Housing 3/10
Environment 3/13
Public Safety & Criminal Justice 3/18
Misc - What Are We Missing? 3/23
