Though the winter remains our current meteorological companion, it is during this season that the efforts to ensure that in August of this year in an hospitable locale our national summit for social justice is empirically realized.

Thus, what is it that we must address to guarantee that this event shall occur? Initially, permit me to formulate what I believe are the most appropriate agenda components.

Item One: From sources that are established global theologies, and secular humanist proscriptions as well as those ideologies that undergird various forms of democratic theory, to fashion the specific normative predicate, i.e. the value system upon which all institutional structures shall be constructed to create and sustain a nation in which social justice is both ascendant and enduring.

Item two: To formulate those systems of macroeconomics and politics that both translate the previously cited value system into operational reality, that unceasingly ensures the capabilities of our populace to implement and retain those laws, policies, and programmatic initiatives to sustain a society that is maximally equitable and affords each individual the opportunity to achieve the full spectrum of their human potential and by so doing contribute to the collective welfare that is societally extant.

Item three: To construct a strategy which utilizes the entirety of those elements and organizations and the persuasive influence they represent to become vigorous and unceasing proponents of the social justice agenda we have fashioned in the quest to fully implement throughout our culture this prescription for an equitable America.

Item four: To devise a specific chronology of deployment that reflects the duties and responsibilities which each member of this progressive coalition agrees to assume, as well as the human, institutional, and financial resources required to implement this national campaign.

In order to accomplish the previous goals a sustained series of activities must be commenced at this moment. Among the specific tasks required to achieve this result during the summer of 2019 are the following:

To initiate a dialogue with various elements of the progressive coalition that is currently extant, including such entities as non-profit social welfare agencies, advocates of community economic development, proponents of criminal justice reform, organizations committed to comprehensive solutions to immigration challenges, those on the forefront of the imperative quest to mitigate global warming, and other institutions whose raison d’etre reflects initiatives to eliminate racism, sexual harassment and the misogynistic abuse of women in this society, and other social pathologies.

Integral to this continuing dialogue will these discussions address the desire of this “community of activists” to participate in this summit and the specific roles, duties, and responsibilities during this unfolding event they wish to discharge.

In concert with these individuals we shall form a planning committee that will formulate the agenda of activities, i.e. plenary sessions, discussions, seminars, and other presentations of which this event shall be comprised.

Simultaneously, we at the Fund For An Equitable America shall initiate a fund generation effort to obtain the resources required to sponsor this event, as we concurrently engage in discussions with various institutions throughout the nation to select that locale most appropriate in terms of receptivity, as well as geographical and logistical considerations, and scheduling availabilities to ultimately determine the site for this summit that would be most optimal.

It is our hope and expectation that at the conclusion of this event armed with a specific and comprehensive vision of a socially just society and the strategy to implement this paradigm, that in concert with those discussions and conversations in which our electorate is engaged throughout this year and more intensively throughout 2020, that our recommendations and suggestions shall enrich and enlarge the parameters of that dialogue and provoke our fellow citizens to consider in a posture of audacious contemplation the prospective reality that the transformation of this nation is feasible and within our grasp if we can summon the volition and the requisite exertions required to actualize a national future of unprecedented equity, opportunity, and interpersonal harmony.

This is the noble and imperative task to which we must allocate our labors and “the better angels of our nature” if we wish to rescue this culture from its contemporary tragic trajectory and its ultimate unraveling either in the crucible of armed and insurrectionary conflict, or a descent into the disintegrative reality of a fascist state in which an infinitely augmented democracy and any hope for its vibrant and seminal realization is forever foreclosed.

The quadrennial madness of the quest for the presidency is upon us. Beyond the perpetual hubris and prevarication that fuels his statements and actions, Donald Trump will pursue in perpetuity his wish to never be absent from either the White House or the airwaves and of course his twitter account that social media source of dissembling, hate, and malevolence, unceasingly spews his deformed perspectives.

With regard to the Democratic candidates though certainly more enlightened and compassionate and infinitely more competent than our current chief executive, we will be inundated during the course of this electoral cycle with innumerable proposals and policy recommendations to remediate our cultural malignancies and the mammoth inequities with which our society is riddled.

In some partial manner though various elements of these suggested legislative or programmatic initiatives may ameliorate aspects of the contemporary tragedy that is at the epicenter of our national existence, you may be certain that what is forthcoming from these candidates will in no substantive, and more importantly comprehensive context reflect a sufficiently broad and inclusive vision of what is required to transform this nation from a polity which is the captive of a miniscule coterie of plutocrats and all that flows from that reality as it relates to the distribution of wealth and influence and the perpetuation of those among us who dwell in poverty and others who are clinging desperately to the lowest rungs of middle-class membership.

At this critical moment in the history of our republic what is required to in some authentic and sufficiently capacious conceptual manner address the enormity and the severity of those forces and institutions that are responsible for the maintenance and enlargement of those decisions and determinations that continue the erosion of our financial welfare and the unceasing diminishment of our capabilities, is an exercise of unparalleled intellectual audacity.

To effect the realization of those innovations that shall reverse these trends and augment the quotient of social justice that is extant, to which I have previously referred no less than an imperative process of social engineering is required.This is the moment in our country’s chronology when we must begin anew the process that animated the establishment of our nation more than two centuries ago, when our founding fathers provoked by a ferocious desire to create a government that would by its embrace of certain democratic notions and the institutional constructs necessary to operationalize these concepts came together in the city of Philadelphia during a sweltering summer to engage in these crucial discussions and deliberations

These constructs have served us in the support of America’s continuance for more than two centuries, though in retrospect there was much that distinguished this experiment in representative democracy that was defective and deficient, from its inception, and more relevantly in the those final decades of the twentieth century and throughout the current time frame have we witnessed the further diminishment of our opportunities and mobility of much of our populace and the ever-receding efficacy of our citizens to create and implement those initiatives which would liberate them from their impoverishment and their impotency to effect more salubrious public policies.

In recognition of these grim and tragic societal circumstances since the advent of the new millennium various scholars and activists throughout this nation have been united by the quest to formulate a response to the inquiry “What systems of government and economics might we create and implement which would both rectify the egregious inequities that are extant in the United States, and simultaneously usher in an era of our national life and consciousness in which considerations of social justice are operative and ascendant?”

Among those individuals and institutions engaged in these intellectual musings and speculations are Norman Kurland, The Democracy Collaborative, my organization The Fund For An Equitable America, and many others.

Though much has been accomplished by these efforts the optimal result i.e. the formulation of a comprehensive vision for a socially just America remains unfinished at this moment. What in my view is required is a national symposium that gathers these individuals together for an extended period of time for the purpose of formulating and finalizing a document that reflects both the normative frame of reference and the institutional structures to execute these values that may then be submitted to the citizens of our nation for their consideration as an option that contains the potential to transform this country into a society which will augur a new era for all of us in which poverty, economic insecurity, lack of opportunity, racial injustice, and other forms of prejudice and discrimination are consigned to the dust bin of our history and we may embark on a path that shall lead us to a future of collective equity, individual material security, and the potential to actualize the personal potentials that inhere within us all.

In a subsequent post I shall address what in my view are the requirements in a logistical, financial, and chronological regard that must be addressed to accomplish this national summit for social justice during the summer of 2019 and the prospective role and participation that those of you who believe in the critical validity of this activity may play to ensure its realization.