Duval Progressive Caucus
“This Way Forward”
“If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The workers are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists.” -Joseph Ettor, IWW organizer
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Third Thursday Every Month
From 6 - 7 pm
About Us
The Progressive Promise
Advancing justice, dignity, and peace for all.
At the Duval Progressive Caucus, we believe that government must be the great equalizer of opportunity for everyone. We are committed to passing legislation that advances justice, dignity, and peace for all people.
Realizing the goal of a universal, high-quality, Medicare For All health care system.
Advancing the right of every American to retire with security and dignity.
Ending poverty and income inequality and securing a living wage for all people.
Protecting the fundamental right to organize.
Ending mass incarceration and advancing equal justice under the law.
Taking urgent, inclusive, and transformative action on climate change.
Upholding the fundamental reproductive rights of all people.
Ending our forever wars, cutting the bloated Pentagon budget, and prioritizing diplomacy.
Advancing humane, fair, and just immigration laws.
Advancing racial justice and equity.
Tackling systems of oppression and dismantling structural racism and discrimination.
Embedded in our nation’s history is a painful legacy of oppression, racism, and genocide. At the Progressive Caucus, we believe that elected leaders have an obligation to confront this legacy and dismantle the systems of oppression and discrimination that allow racism to persist in this nation. In order for any legislation to be truly inclusive and transformative, it must advance the goal of racial justice.
Advancing racial justice and equity in every policy.
Supporting a truth commission and reparations to address and repair the continued effects of slavery and discrimination.
Transforming our budgets and priorities to reinvest in Black, Brown, and indigenous communities and reimagine the role of institutions that exacerbate injustice and inequality.
Challenging harmful stereotypes and efforts that demonize immigrant, Black, Brown, indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities and actively opposing any legislation or policy that marginalizes those communities.
Taking on systems that privilege the wealthy and powerful to demand a government and economy that works for the people.
We believe elected officials should be beholden to the people, not to wealthy donors and powerful CEOs. At the Progressive Caucus, we reject pay-to-play and revolving door politics and fight for a democracy where the power is in the hands of the people, not concentrated among the rich and well-connected. We reject the failed politics of the past that prioritized the deregulation of financial industries and big polluters and tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations over the well-being of the public. And we support bold policies to close the gap between the rich and everyday Americans and ensure our government delivers essential services to every person in this country.
Ensuring regulation of industry with strong consumer protections.
Strengthening oversight of financial institutions.
Democratizing our society by getting money out of politics, eliminating political corruption, and protecting and expanding access to the ballot box.
Ensuring that all of our economic and tax policies address or decrease income inequality.
Protecting the federal government’s role in delivering essential goods, taking on monopolies, and disciplining markets.
A commitment to sweeping, transformative change.
Recognizing that the problems facing this country are enormous, we are committed to delivering solutions that meet the scale of the crisis. Faced with decades of disinvestment in working-class communities, unprecedented income inequality, and a federal budget that fails to meet the needs of millions, we believe that Congress must take sweeping action to deliver the bold policies that this moment demands. The challenges facing this nation are structural -- and Congress must be deliberate and explicit in dismantling these institutional barriers to prosperity, peace, and justice.
Demanding bold and visionary legislation to address the needs in every community and rejecting incrementalist approaches that fail to deliver urgent transformative change.
Opposing counterproductive and false narratives on government deficits that have led to decades-long disinvestment in low-income communities, communities of color, families, and working people.
Reversing decades-long disinvestment in low-income communities, communities of color, families, and working people.
Delivering structural change that advances the rules for working people and forces the wealthy to contribute to our shared prosperity.
Policies We Believe In
The policy most associated with the “progressive” agenda, Medicare for All, earns 70% support among Americans, despite relentless trash talking by “serious” people.
Americans are united in demanding aggressive action to slash prescription drug prices. Ninety percent of all Americans – and 91% of Republican voters – want to empower Medicare to negotiate drug prices (a policy that could easily reduce prices by 40% or more). Nonetheless, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are split over an aggressive plan to empower Medicare to negotiate and authorize generic competition if drug companies refuse to agree to reasonable prices. Democratic opponents of the bolder measure want to appear “reasonable” – yet nine out of 10 Republicans support a more audacious approach!
Two-thirds of all Americans favor expanding Social Security – not just maintaining it, but expanding it. Republicans favor the concept by a 2-1 margin.
A strong majority of Americans favor doubling the minimum wage to a living wage of $15 an hour. Seven out of 10 Republican voters favor raising the minimum wage.
Three-quarters of voters favor breaking up the Big Banks by reinstating the Glass-Steagall law that separated commercial banking from a more speculative activity like investment banking. Two-thirds of Republican voters favor that approach.
Three-quarters of Americans say the tax system favors the rich and has too many loopholes. Three-quarters say that the wealthiest and large corporations should pay more in taxes. More than six in 10 Republicans agree. Sixty percent of Americans favor a wealth tax on those with more than $50 million in assets.
There are exceptions, but much of the progressive agenda involves restraining corporate power, making health care a right, and reducing the severe inequality plaguing the nation. Those measures have shockingly high levels of support. (Consider: Only three-quarters of Americans correctly state that the earth revolves around the sun.)
When you get down to actual policies, Americans are not concerned with abstract notions of what constitutes “moderate” or “centrist” – and the policies that self-described moderates support are far less popular than what is labeled progressive. This is perhaps because regular people react to policy proposals based primarily on what they think is right and wrong, not on the political class’s obsession with defining a make-believe middle ground that brings everyone together.
Actually, it turns out that everyone can come together – around an agenda built on American values of fairness and justice and a healthy distrust of concentrated power. There is in America no popular constituency to speak of for the drug companies and health insurers, no advocates for Wall Street or extreme inequality. By contrast, there is very broad and strong support for the kinds of policies for which we advocate.
Policy analysts should spend a lot less time arguing about what’s popular and more about what’s right. But if the pundits are going to obsess about the polls, they should at least read them. Americans favor by overwhelming numbers the core of the progressive agenda.
