32nd Legislative District Democratic Organization

State Platform Report, May 27, 2020

Gary McCaig, 32nd LD representative to the Washington State Democratic Convention Platform Committee

The Platform Committee members accomplished a lot in spite of some major changes and challenges:

  • Zoom meetings instead of in person discussion during the “off” hours and dealing with different technological challenges and knowledge

  • Merging multiple individual planks into 7 and then 8 planks

    • Social Justice

    • Labor and Economic Justice

    • Environmental Justice

    • Education

    • Health Care and Human Services

    • Government

    • Criminal Justice Reform

    • Tribal Relations and Sovereignty

  • Usual lack of time to craft each plank equally well due to the diverse perspectives, passions, and knowledge [Saturday’s meeting took over three time the original scheduled time]

  • Usual late start by the State, in part due to the virus

Each platform representative was assigned to primarily work on one plank. I was:

  • Initially assigned to Government

  • Reassigned to new Criminal Justice Reform plank.

Throughout the process I have tried to keep the LD members informed. I have posted multiple links to google documents of our Work-In-Progress and used FB to announce postings and updates.

As you review the platform please keep in mind that we did our best to follow these guidelines:

  • Recommend that we are concise and to the point to make this a more manageable/readable/useful document.

  • The goal was also to craft (wordsmith?) each item to maximize its acceptance by State Democrats and to minimize the ability to the weaponization of the platform by opponents.

  • The Platform should contain:

    • A One Page Preamble;

    • A short Executive Summary for each plank;

    • Eight Pillars/Planks at 3 pages each, including:

      • We Believe statements: 10 to 15;

      • We Call For statements: 30 for each local, state and federal level column;

      • We Oppose statements: 10 to 15;

  • We did not meet our goal. [see above]

Next Steps:

  • I will post updates as soon as I can after receiving them

  • From the State:

    • If any one person has input - that should be worked through their elected convention delegate(s).

    • Delegates have 4 days to provide proposed revisions to the proposed platform.

    • We will meet one additional time to decide if provided revisions should be included in the platform as our majority opinion, have sufficient support (35%) for a minority opinion to be written and prepared to be voted on by the full convention, or die in committee by lack of support (<35%). (Date/Time of our meeting TBD)

    • The final Majority Report (final platform) is distributed to all delegates, along with any minority reports that were passed out of our committee.

    • Platform goes to state convention, where delegates vote on the platform and any minority reports.