Sherrod Brown
Sherrod Brown, a six-term Democratic Congressman from Ohio, is the author of Myths of Free Trade, to be published in August.

Democrats must insist on labor rights and environmental standards in every trade agreement. If workers at the bottom cannot win the right to organize and bargain collectively for livable wages, safer workplaces and economic and political freedoms, then wages and living standards in rich and poor nations alike will continue to be pulled downward.

About half our imports now come from developing nations, most with repressive, autocratic governments. These governments are a magnet for US corporations seeking low wages, docile work forces and weak enforcement of environmental and labor standards. Only free trade unions with the legal power to bargain collectively can force multinational employers to share the wealth that the workers create for their companies. That is what labor unions did in the West. With the assistance of US trade negotiators, that is what they can do in the developing world.

When the world's poorest people can buy American products rather than just make them, then we will know that our trade policies are finally working.

Eric Schlosser
Eric Schlosser is the author of Fast Food Nation and Reefer Madness.

The United States must declare an end to the war on drugs. This war has filled the nation's prisons with poor drug addicts and small-time drug dealers. It has created a multibillion-dollar black market, enriched organized-crime groups and promoted the corruption of government officials throughout the world. And it has not stemmed the widespread use of illegal drugs. By any rational measure, this war has been a total failure.

We must develop public policies on substance abuse that are guided not by moral righteousness or political expediency but by common sense. The United States should immediately decriminalize the cultivation and possession of small amounts of marijuana for personal use. Marijuana should no longer be classified as a Schedule I narcotic, and those who seek to use marijuana as medicine should no longer face criminal sanctions. We must shift our entire approach to drug abuse from the criminal justice system to the public health system. Congress should appoint an independent commission to study the harm-reduction policies that have been adopted in Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands. The commission should recommend policies for the United States based on one important criterion: what works.

In a nation where pharmaceutical companies advertise powerful antidepressants on public billboards and where alcohol companies run amusing beer ads during the Super Bowl, the idea of a "drug-free society" is absurd. Like the rest of American society, our drug policy would greatly benefit from less punishment and more compassion.

James K. Galbraith
James K. Galbraith is chair of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction, www.ecaar.org.

Bush and Cheney inherited peace and prosperity--and squandered them. Today, war is part of our economic problem. War costs money and lives. It wastes resources, pushes up prices, depresses business investment. And it distracts public attention from pressing problems at home, most of all the need to create 5 million new jobs urgently and 5 million more within a few years.

Democrats pledge to use the tools necessary to return to full employment, including public spending, revenue sharing, progressive taxation, low interest rates and global strategies that respect workers' rights, foster exports and regulate finance. Achieving this will require a new dedication to realistic, affordable, collective security. We must strengthen our alliances and the United Nations. We must cut useless programs such as missile defense. Most of all, we must seek to disengage from Iraq--an occupation for which no justification now exists.

As we do so, the challenge and opportunity of energy security must be faced. America must invest in conservation, renewable energy, hybrid vehicles and in a comprehensive reconstruction of our transport and housing patterns over time, to face the present instabilities of our energy supply and the eventual future of an oil-short world. We can build an America that is prosperous and secure, and we can create millions of new jobs and renew the middle class. Democrats place this great public-private project before the American people, and we promise action.

Our other great human challenge is to care decently for the rising tide of elderly Americans in the decades ahead. Democrats recognize that Social Security and Medicare are the great bulwarks against poverty for all older Americans. We pledge to protect, preserve and never to privatize those programs. Finally, we pledge to provide comprehensive health insurance and decent drug coverage to all Americans at long last.

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