By Jeff Klein
You can be forgiven if you never heard about the Democratic Party state convention in Springfield on September 13. After all, the major media, including the Boston Globe, did not deem it newsworthy when the party representing all Massachusetts members of Congress, the governor and the majority of our state legislature met to discuss the party platform.
But nevertheless, that convention did happen, and Massachusetts voters should have been informed.
Of course, the Democratic Party platform has rarely been publicized and few aspirants for public office are held accountable to it. That should change. If we are to have a meaningful “small-d” democracy, then the voters and the Democratic Party members should discuss and have a say in what the party stands for.
That wasn’t the intent of the insiders and bureaucratic leadership of the Democratic Party. Despite conducting what was called a statewide “listening tour” prior to the convention, it is clear that the weak platform proposed by the leadership did not reflect the values and priorities of most party members.
For Democratic Party insiders, the annual conventions are an inconvenience rather than an opportunity to discuss and respond to the issues of the day. As in the past, they took up nearly all the convention time with a succession of mind-numbing speeches by elected officials, full of stale platitudes, while allowing only a few minutes to discuss the party platform. They even proposed to cancel the platform conventions altogether.
Elected convention delegates would have none of it. Most were outraged by the proposal to end the platform conventions, and they also shouted down an attempt by the chair to block a discussion of alternative platform proposals. Without much ability to amend the proposed platform language, an overwhelming majority voted to keep the 2021 platform, which was stronger – though not strong enough – on labor and civil rights.
On the other hand, there was no ability to address urgent national and foreign policy issues. Years ago, Massachusetts Democratic Party insiders invented a rule that only state and local issues could be considered in the platform. This is despite the fact that Massachusetts citizens have died in unnecessary and illegal wars, while our state taxpayers are billed tens of $billions annually to support a bloated Pentagon budget.
Massachusetts taxpayers have also paid hundreds of $millions to subsidize Israel’s war machine that is bombing and starving people in Gaza. Some delegates distributed flyers pointing this out and demanding an end to US taxpayer funding of arms to Israel, but this is not considered “a Massachusetts issue” by party insiders.
Many citizens in Massachusetts and beyond have been losing faith in the effectiveness of government to represent their interests. This is partly due to the atrophy of our political parties at the grassroots — and also their increasing dependence on insider control and corporate funding.
If we are to restore a genuine belief in the possibilities of democracy, then the party which represents the majority of Massachusetts voters should reflect their values and priorities. When delegates to a Democratic Party convention try to make this happen, shouldn’t it be newsworthy?
Jeff Klein, a retired union president, is a member of Dorchester’s Ward 13 Democratic Committee and was a convention delegate.
