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John Miksad: New Year’s Resolutions for a nation

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Many of us make resolutions at this time of year. These are some of the New Year’s Resolutions I’d like to see my country make.

The United States resolves to: 

  1. engage with all nations to reduce or eliminate the real threats of climate change, pandemics, and nuclear war that face us as a global community.
  2. work with all nations to create meaningful and verifiable cyber security treaties to eliminate the threats posed by cyber warfare to the people of the world.
  3. work tirelessly for justice and advocate for human rights.
  4. end all arms races…conventional weapons, nuclear weapons, space weapons, and chemical and biological weapons. Convert weapons sales and military aid to other nations into humanitarian aid where its most needed.
  5. honor the sovereignty of all nations and the international justice system.
  6. sign and ratify international treatiesthat foster peace, reduce human suffering, and promote human rights and commit itself to abide by the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
  7. work relentlessly for peace and pursue international dialog and diplomacy with all nations in order to avoid the use of military threat of violence.
  8. work to democratize international institutions including the United Nations, IMF, World Bank, and others so that all nation’s interests are fairly represented.
  9. end active support for all nations that commit systemic violence, oppression, or human rights abuses.
  10. end the demonization of others.
  11. focus on the needs of humans and the ecosystems needed for life by:
  • Working to:
  • ensure everyone has access to clean water.
  • ensure every citizen has knowledge of and access to nutritious food.
  • address the drug, alcohol, and sugar addictions in this country in a compassionate and constructive way.
  • eliminate for-profit prisons.
  • make sure every child has access to high quality education (including higher education) regardless of zip code or income level.
  • eliminate poverty with actual plans and targets.
  • eliminate homelessness with actual plans and targets.
  • ensure a living wage, sick time, and benefits for all workers.
  • restore faith in its government by embracing the democratic ideals promised in its founding documents and carrying out systemic reforms to realize them.
  • advance our culture by ending racism, bigotry, misogyny in all of its forms.
  • understand and reduce the root causes of violence in all its forms.
  • phase out the brutality of industrial farming.
  • create a sustainable economy; one that does not require endless consumerism and infinite growth on a finite planet.
  • create a sustainable agriculture model.
  • convert the military and fossil fuel industries to sustainable and life sustaining industries and protect all employees affected from economic harm using all means possible including federal paid wages and benefits during the transition, and by:
  • Making sure no citizen who has worked their entire life and has done all the right things needs to work beyond 65 years old to financially survive.
  • Providing universal physical and mental healthcare for all of its citizens.

Can we start today?

John Miksad is chapter coördinator with World Beyond War and a new grandfather.

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