Deval Patrick vision statement [View all]

[brooklynite]

For Everyone, Everywhere
The moment is precarious – and also full of possibility. The public is asking big questions and insisting on big solutions. Renewing the American Dream requires we deliver on an Opportunity Agenda, a Reform Agenda, and a Democracy Agenda.

But we can’t make meaningful and lasting change to our policies without also changing our politics. That means governing not for the next news cycle or election cycle, but for the next generation. Not just to beat the incumbent, but to shape a better future for everyone, everywhere.

Opportunity Agenda
An Opportunity Agenda is about growing the economy out to working people and the marginalized, not just up to the well connected. In a global economy where knowledge is power, that means investing time, ideas and money in education, innovation and infrastructure.

Education from pre-K to community college, and right through workforce development and retraining, because education is the single best investment the public can make in its own collective future.

Innovation because it is our competitive edge in the world. That means cultivating industries like clean tech, precision manufacturing, robotics, gaming, cybersecurity, transportation, green construction and biotech, to name just a few of the economic revolutions underway or within our grasp.

And infrastructure because it is the platform the public builds to enable personal ambition and private investment. That means roads, rails, bridges, airports, train stations, broadband and a modernized efficient electric grid. That means school buildings and parks, laboratories and libraries.

Reform Agenda
A Reform Agenda is about making meaningful fixes to the big systems that consistently fail to meet modern needs. This means a health care system that provides access to high-quality, low-cost health services everywhere and for every single individual, bar none. This means an immigration system that provides for both border integrity and human dignity, that encourages the determined and creative whose values align with ours to make their home here. This means a justice system that focuses less on warehousing people than on preparing them to re-enter responsible life.

Democracy Agenda
A Democracy Agenda is about fixing the many devices that have crept into our political system to engineer outcomes at odds with the public will. The hyper-partisan gerrymandering where the Party picks the voter rather than the other way around. The voter suppression and other gamesmanship used to make it harder for your vote to count. The explosion of dark money into elections. The influence of paid lobbyists. We must root these out and return power to where it belongs: with the people.

https://devalpatrick2020.com/vision/