“The American Solidarity Party calls upon all levels of government to live out the God-given ideals of human dignity, equality, and fraternity.”

“We support strict accountability for the use of lethal force.”

Here are some more excerpts from the American Solidarity Party’s platform that relate to current events surrounding the killing of George Floyd. Read the full platform on these and other issues here.

Civil Rights 

The American Solidarity Party calls upon all levels of government to live out the God-given ideals of human dignity, equality, and fraternity. The Bill of Rights and later constitutional amendments have recognized rights stemming from these ideals, including the free exercise of religion, freedom of conscience and expression, a fair justice system, and equal protection under the law.

• All levels of government must defend the rights of public assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, understood through the tradition of ordered liberty.
• We acknowledge the persistence of discrimination based on religion, race, ethnicity, and sex, and support laws favoring equal access to the polls, the courts, housing, and education.
• Throughout our nation’s history, racial discrimination has stripped ethnic minorities of their wealth and limited their eligibility to work, ability to own property, educational access, and voting rights at the individual and community levels.
• We recognize the particular forms of exclusion suffered by African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans. These historic injustices should be addressed through reparative and restorative means, such as economic grants and policies which incentivize investment, job-training, and hiring in minority communities, and by continuing dialogue between communities and local governments regarding minority concerns.

Criminal Justice 

Maintaining public peace and order is a fundamental responsibility of government. However, in too many cases our justice system is both harsh and ineffective. Despite having the largest incarcerated population in the world, we have failed to make communities safe or adequately address economic and racial disparities in arrests, convictions, and sentencing. We support reforms to simultaneously ensure public safety, secure individual justice, and reduce the excessively penal nature of the system.

• Criminality is complex, the result of a culture that does not respect human life, the breakdown of traditional social institutions, institutionalized racism, and a prison system that promotes social alienation, recidivism, and deprivation. Federal and state governments must seek to address the causes as well as the effects of criminal behavior.
• We believe that preventing and punishing crime is an essential public service. We oppose the privatization of law-enforcement and penal institutions.
• As public servants, law enforcement officers should be supported and held to the highest standards of professionalism. We support strict accountability for the use of lethal force.
• We are alarmed at the increasing rates of conflict between police and communities, and call for local governments to institute measures that will increase transparency and trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve, including the use of body cameras, civilian review boards, and expansion of community policing.
• We believe that our court system systematically disfavors the poor. We call for an increase in state-level funding for our public defender system, and an end to cash bail, court fees, and programs that allow records to be expunged in exchange for paying higher fees.
• Mandatory sentencing requirements, especially for non-violent criminals, must be overturned.
  We believe that prisons are designed for dangerous criminals. We oppose the imprisonment of those who are simply mentally ill, homeless, or too poor to pay fines.
• We believe that our prison system should be focused on restoring lawbreakers to their community. We support increased funding of programs meant to prepare prisoners for life outside the prison.
  We call for an end to the use of prisoners as slave labor. Prisoners must be remunerated at the minimum wage for work performed.
• Drug addiction remains a social harm. It is vital to find ways of ending mass incarceration while not removing all laws against drugs and other vices. Drug enforcement should focus on distribution and production. Funds currently expended on the “war on drugs” should be directed toward prevention, treatment, and rehabilitation.