INTEGRATED INDIVIDUALS

That Long Promised Land:

The Case for a great American Integration Movement

We, are family.

You. Me. And yes, even “Them”. 

All of us.  

No matter where you come from, who your parents are or how much money you make, you are part of the Great American Family. 

And it’s an amazing family. We’ve got everything a family should. We’ve got the serious go-getters, the care-free dreamers and certainly our share of crazy uncles and aunties. Like any group of relatives, we are bound to disagree sometimes. But we cannot let those disagreements overshadow the love that we have for each other. Unfortunately, that is precisely what is happening in our American family today; and it is due in no small part to the segmenting of our society into disparate sects. 

The Fusion Party aims to heal our rifts and set us on a better path through a grand American Integration Movement. We’ve long been known as a sort of melting pot, with different cultures coming together to merge into this nation that we call home. Perhaps a better metaphor is (or should be), a modern nuclear fusion reactor, wherein multiple entities are integrated with one another to create an entirely new one. This combination unleashes far greater energy than each individual entity is capable of on its own. Here on Earth fusion energy is only accomplished by direct, and intentional integration. 

We are a nation that has long had a strong individualistic tradition. And in many ways that is the key to greater integration; recognizing that we are not a random agglomeration of various tribes, but in fact are a purposeful congregation of unique individuals. Only with this frame of mind can we begin to appreciate each and every American not through their ability to identify with a certain faction, but as an equally integral member of our grand American union. 

Economically, culturally, racially, generationally, geographically, and ideologically, both sides of the political spectrum have chosen to make group identity central to an increasingly “us vs them” mentality that is ripping the country apart at the seams. With a renewed focus on the individual, we can begin to feel the empathy and the obligation required to help our fellow American sisters and brothers who are struggling to realize their American dream. We will do this by acknowledging that some Americans have been dealt a raw hand. Some have made unfortunate decisions. And others have never been shown the kind of true compassion that can transform lives.  

With a once-in a generation investment of time, funds and will – and in recognition of our eternal dedication to each other – the American Integration Movement aims to Lift Every American out of Poverty, establish Safety in Our Streets, and Foster Unity and Social Integration in Our Nation. We’ve gone too far, waited too long and struggled too much to be satisfied with the level of equality in the country that was declared in the name of it. Recrimination is unhelpful. Denial is destructive. And whether you’re a born-and-bred blue blood or a bread-and-butter blue collar American, the time has come to put aside tired ideologies and start building the nation that we were destined to be from our declaration. Because we are THE American Family.

And family sticks together.  

L.E.A.P.

(LIFT EVERY AMERICAN from POVERTY)

“Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness.”

– Khalil Gibran 

Food, Income, Shelter, Health (FISH) Centers

“I had no idea there were so many homeless people in America!” It’s a common refrain from first time visitors to our great country, as well as those on the higher end of the income spectrum every time they pass one of the increasingly prevalent homeless encampments. How did the richest country on earth come to fail so many of its citizens?

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Poverty has many causes – but humans have relatively few basic needs. Those needs can be summed up in the acronym FISH: Food, Income, Shelter and Health. Federally funded FISH Centers are the Impossible Idea that will serve as the long-overdue public safety nets of a nation filled with compassion for those less fortunate.

Federally funded FISH Centers aim to be one-stop shop support systems for the most vulnerable among us, and are intended to put an effective end to the scourge of homelessness in the United States. Congress should appropriate the funds for at least two FISH Centers in each and every Congressional district. Each FISH Center would constitute a large urban facility consisting of four wings:

Food Wing: A high tech vertical farm, maintained by volunteers, which provides a limited number of fresh fruits and vegetables to those under the federal poverty line. With advances in automated delivery systems, this may in time become a cheaper, faster and less fraudulent alternative to federally funded food stamps, distributing healthy foods for reduced or no cost to low-income families and individuals. Nobody in America should go hungry. Highly efficient, community-based vertical farming will ensure that nobody does.

Income Wing: There is no better way to help someone help themselves than by providing assistance in finding meaningful work. FISH Centers will provide on-the-spot resources to the unemployed, including resume review, skill development training and job placement programs. This wing may be staffed by those who have come to FISH Centers looking for assistance themselves, and supplemented by volunteers wanting to make a difference in their community. America will soon undergo a radical shift in the labor market with the arrival of Artificial Intelligence that can perform tasks far more efficiently and cheaply than most humans. With each passing year, FISH Centers will become a more critical safety-trampoline for the millions of displaced workers looking to retool their skills for a 21^st century workplace.

Shelter Wing: Getting Americans off the streets and into housing will prove no easy, or cheap, task. But we must do everything in our power to make it happen. FISH Centers will have several hundred beds available for temporary sheltering of homeless individuals, as well as dozens of more spacious rooms available for families who have nowhere else to turn. Stays at the shelter may come with requirements to attend job-training sessions or mental health checkups, and should not be construed to convey permanent housing. If necessary, FISH staff can refer longer term shelter-seekers to affordable housing, addiction centers, mental health facilities, or they may even assist in reaching out to family members or non-profits who can step in to provide safe housing and the critical love needed to help the homeless get back on their feet.

Health Wing: Community Health Centers are fantastic assets for low-income individuals and families that otherwise may not have access to basic health services. FISH Centers will not become full fledged CHC’s but can act as a screening facility, providing basic medical assessment capabilities such as mental health testing and physical checkups that most of the unhoused population routinely go without. Getting healthy is a critical part of reintegrating back into society. Without hope of good health, despair often sets in, followed by a lack of will to turn things around. FISH Centers will not only provide services for the homeless, but for anyone who seeks walk-in screening for basic health issues, providing an essential frontline in Americas mental health crisis. FISH Centers will offer the potential to save lives not just from the detection of physical causes for concern, but worrisome mental behavior that can lead to suicide or mass shootings, or radicalization that has become all too prevalent in our nation.

The American Builders Corps (ABC Corps)

Establishing the ABC Corps will help carry out the promise of FISH Centers through the development of a federal workforce that will build out a once-in-a generation push to end poverty and raise living standards across America’s poorest neighborhoods.

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The American Builders Corps is the name given to the men and women who will undertake a commitment to construct critical anti-poverty infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, housing and the FISH Centers themselves. Employment with the ABC Corps is open to any American willing to work, and may be structured loosely on military service, though without the same time commitment and stringency. Applicants may be asked to take an aptitude test to determine where they would best fit with the Corps, then given a choice on which type of job / project they are interested in. They may then undergo a “boot camp” style training of several weeks to learn the ins and outs of their job function, and then either be set to work on a local project or volunteer to work on an assignment outside of their local region.

Funding for the ABC Corps is initially set at around $100 billion per year and is designed to last five years. In this time it will employ hundreds of thousands of Americans with good paying jobs that build the projects that will finally turn America’s long War on Poverty around. What is needed to accomplish this victory is not piecemeal solutions of random government aid programs, but a massive push for investment in the communities most affected by America’s troubled history of neglect and discrimination. The ABC Corps will be tasked with building the FISH Centers that will act as the final safety net for Americans most in need, but beyond these game-changing facilities, they will build the infrastructure that is currently lacking in low-income environments, most critically, affordable housing. Housing costs across the nation have skyrocketed to unbelievable levels, aided by unfair zoning laws and a dearth in new construction. Therefore, low-income housing built by the ABC Corps using modern methods such as 3D printing, may allow those who have been trapped outside of the housing market to finally afford their own wealth-building assets.

Additionally, ABC Corps can work with state and local authorities in the construction of a limited scope of infrastructure projects, to include upgrading educational, recreational and healthcare facilities. Just as important as the projects that they ultimately build, the ABC Corps will provide income and in-demand skills for those who want to serve their country and their community, or who have simply been left behind by today’s fast-paced job environment.

  

Federal Youth Investment (FYI)

One thing that almost everyone agrees on in America (hopefully) is that our children all deserve every opportunity to succeed. The role of government therefore, must be to strike a balance between compassionate assistance for disadvantaged children without taking on the role of a literal nanny state. Admittedly this is not always an easy challenge in a nation of 75 million children with vastly different socioeconomic situations. One area in which the government can help children and their parents, be they adopted or biological, is through a proposed Federal Youth Investment (FYI) Program.

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Grants disbursed from this program could go directly to states who choose to expand preschool programs, as evidence is abundant that three and four year old’s who attend preschool have higher rates of achievement than children who don’t. Additionally, parents who’s income falls under the median national household income should be able to, through their USAccount, take up to 1,000 per month up to a maximum of 12,000 dollars, in no-interest loans for the express purposes of childcare, education, or short-term housing needs. These loans would be disbursed to the balance of the parent’s USAccount, which could then be transferred into their personal bank account. The loans would be paid back automatically through the taxes owed on the parent’s income.

Lastly, America’s foster care system needs a major facelift. There are many success stories, but there are also too many parentless children who end up in a life of crime, drugs and poverty because they were not able to achieve the stability they deserved when growing up. To end the cycle of foster children growing up to have children who go into the foster system themselves, FYI grants should be made to states for the purposes of improving foster care systems by drastically streamlining the adoption process, providing greater resources and rights to foster families, and expirimenting with community-based incentives for foster children’s success rates. 

S.O.S.

(SAFETY for OUR STREETS)

“So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable.”

– Christopher Reeve 

The ACE Program: Community Based Incentives 

The ACE (American Community Engagement) Program is a novel concept in which residents of high-crime communities are financially incentivized to help reduce criminality and recidivism.

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A national test program should be implemented in five cities (under 100,000 population) with the highest crime rates in the US. At the beginning of the year, every resident within one of the zip codes located inside the city has the opportunity to sign up for the ACE Program in their city, making them eligible for financial incentives based on reductions in crime for the upcoming year. For example, the city may look at five crime-related statistics, and choose to award $10 to every resident who signed up for the program, for every 1% reduction in those crime rates. The city could benchmark rates of Recidivism, Violent Crime, Property Crimes, Drug Crimes and Other Crimes over the last three years. Therefore, if crime is reduced by 10% in each category, each resident who signed up would be eligible for $500 tax credits distributed directly to their USAccount. Incentives can be raised or lowered depending on funding, or capped at certain thresholds to prevent runaway costs.

Federal funding for a community’s ACE program should run for five years, at which point effectiveness can be accurately measured. The aim is to engage the entire community by giving everyone an incentive to put an end to crime in their community. Precautions must be taken however, to assure that crime reporting is not affected and that statistical manipulation cannot occur. After the initial five years of federal funding for a local ACE program is complete, state and local authorities may decide to continue the programs themselves, or to even expand the incentive structures to include non-crime related incentives – such as suicide rates, unemployment rates, high school graduation rates or any number of other indicators. Community based cash incentives for positive change have the potential to unite people around the common causes that better everyone’s lives; and to save communities trauma and money in the process.

Criminal Justice Reform  

It’s a sad state of affairs when more Americans have a criminal record than a college degree. Our criminal justice system accounts for 20% of the total prison population worldwide, handily beating out notoriously repressive states like Russia and China. And are we safer for it? Nope.

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The endless cycle of poverty, crime, prison — poverty, crime and prison again means our nation has become a convict-producing factory. And a costly one at that, with estimates of the total price of our criminal justice system – including lost earnings, adverse health effects, and damage to the families of the incarcerated estimated at a staggering $1.2 trillion a year.

There are a myriad of proposals out there, from no-money bail to doing away with mandatory sentencing requirements, and they should all be considered with the utmost seriousness and sense of urgency. Elimination of for-profit prisons, reducing case backlogs and decriminalization of certain drug offenses should be top priorities. But the best way to reduce the criminality that hurts us all is to prevent it from happening in the first place. It comes as no surprise that Americans at the lowest end of the income spectrum are incarcerated at rates far higher than Americans who don’t grow up in poverty. Reducing the financial appeal of crime through educational opportunity, meaningful work, and intact families is essential to reducing incarceration rates in America. That is why the success of the LEAP program is so instrumental in breaking the poverty-to-prison cycle that has taken hold of low-income communities.

In addition to systemic changes, a complete rethink of prison culture must be undertaken. Throwing first-time offenders into the fire of a prison culture rife with corruption, racial animus and “tough guy” (or tough lady) machismo does nothing to rehabilitate anyone. American prisons, jails and detention centers must shift from being punitive hellholes to restorative facilities, where access to knowledge, job training and mental health resources are given higher regard. Probation and parole systems too eager to lock up those who have just gotten out must be rethought as well. Everything is on the table.

Gun Violence 

There’s something wrong in America. We all know it. We all feel it. If it hasn’t affected your family or your community yet, it will. It’s only a matter of time. Gun violence in America is a national epidemic. And our inability to curb it is a national embarrassment.

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Before delving into a visceral debate over 2^nd Amendment rights, what the Fusion party would like to do, what it was created to do – is attempt to rise above the most divisive social disputes in order to focus on common ground solutions, rather than play political ping pong with people’s lives.

The first thing we can do to begin to turn the tide in the war on gun violence is to reduce gun lethality. Guns are brute force tools aimed to kill or intimidate. In recent years stun guns have been standard issue to law enforcement officers, a development that has saved many lives and consciences alike. But they are far from a perfect solution. Let’s invest in the science that can improve electrical shock devices to the point where police departments can virtually (but not entirely) do away with lethal firearms. And more importantly, anyone seeking to purchase a weapon for the purposes of self-defense can fully expect to stop any intruder in their tracks with a modified stun gun. These weapons may fire energy burst or even BBs that can penetrate clothing and cause temporary paralysis, but whatever shape they take, they must be a major upgrade over the options available today in order to truly affect the legal gun market. Technology has evolved dramatically since the first muskets were fired over half a millennium ago. Instead of the constant march to make guns more fatal, we can use 21^st century technology to reduce lethality, and give gun owners, law enforcement and even criminals a better alternative when confronted with the split-second choice of whether to kill their fellow American.

 

F.U.S.I.O.N.

(FOSTERING UNITY and SOCIAL INTEGRATION of OUR NATION)

“When so many are lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”

– Tennessee Williams

Building Community

Loneliness is an epidemic, not just in America but across the world. It began well before a global pandemic separated us, and has only been exacerbated by several years of relative isolation.

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Technology has the incredible power to connect us in ways that were once unimaginable, while at the same time isolating us further from real social interaction. One way to build community while encouraging healthy social connections is to build a Federal Volunteer Network. Through USAccounts, groups of people can be formed online who choose projects to volunteer with in their local area, or even in different zip codes if they wish to travel. These networks will bond through service, bettering their neighborhoods and themselves in the process.

Other ideas that can build comradery among Americans could include things such as a national pen pal program, especially one aimed at the elderly who experience even greater rates of social isolation. Public zoning for more walkable, interactive streets and recreational areas for public events would be beneficial. Local committees formed to plan community building events and celebrations in these areas on a more regular basis would also help alleviate the twin killers of loneliness and division in America. Lastly, through USAccounts, residents will be able to divert a portion of their taxes to crowd-funded public projects in their areas; from the construction of a new community center to funding science equipment for a local classroom. Making a difference with your wallet, your time and your abilities may just be the community building X factor this country so desperately needs.

Mental Health

Too many Americans are mentally unwell. The consequences of this crisis don’t just show up in obscene rates of school shootings, addiction deaths and suicides that other countries look upon with horror. They also play out in the day-to-day afflictions of loneliness, self-hatred and unhappy relationships. Both sides of the political spectrum acknowledge the need for better mental health services. It’s time we do something about it. 

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To begin, quality research in the modern dilemmas of psychology, neuroscience and sociology will shed much-needed light on the issues that every American will face at some point in their lives. A concerted effort to train mental health professionals – including professionals who can de-escalate situations alongside law enforcement – should be promoted through educational assistance for those wishing to enter the field.

One of the greatest indicators of poverty is whether or not one’s parents are together. There is therefore a real benefit to children, society and to the state in keeping couples happily married. Up to five federally subsidized marriage counseling sessions per year should be available to those who are willing to seek it to promote healthy families. Additionally, certain mental health services should be readily available, free of cost and for walk in emergency appointments at Federal FISH centers to assist those contemplating violence, crime or suicide.

We are not a healthy nation. Social media trends are exacerbating the problem. The material we view via unfiltered streaming services also have a role to play as we rapidly shift away from a relatively tame entertainment environment previously regulated for extreme content. Lastly, more research should be undertaken to understand the effects that technology has on the human brain, as improvements to virtual reality are destined to soon further blur the lines that millennia of human neurodevelopment have built.

Media Integrity

Who is the number one go-to scapegoat in the country? Politicians. But in second place? The media.

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Everyone loves to blame the media for division, sensationalism and telling outright lies. And with good reason! What passes for journalism has seedily transformed over the last few decades into inflammatory opinion peddling. And while there is nothing wrong with opinion, it cannot take the place of journalism. Not in a healthy society. People need to know where to turn to get answers. Truthful, unbiased and uncorrupted answers. The democratization of news through social media was, for a brief moment in time, hailed as a potential fix to the problem of concentration of power in media. It has since been revealed as a far more corrosive conduit for lies, misinformation and hate – and has therefore been unfairly asked to act as an arbiter of free speech. We have to figure out a better way to get reliable information.

Freedom of the press is among the most cherished, inspired, and unique rights afforded to Americans. Recent efforts to demonize and discredit real, objective journalism are to be reviled as a dangerous authoritarian dive. So what can be done to free us from our dangerously self-affirming news bubbles?

First, its’ on us. Every single one of us must do a better job of seeking truth over searching for validation. There’s no other way to put it. It’s our fault for eating the tasty junk food of opinion news rather than the truth vegetables of objective journalism. We can blame the industry for using deceptive practices to lure us in, or for prioritizing entertainment over substance, but we have to recognize news is big business, and they will do whatever they need to get you to watch, read or click on their product. This is not the healthiest way of disseminating news, but it’s the reality we face.

While maintaining a firm wall of separation in developing content, government can play a role in helping the public discern fact from fiction. The establishment of an official government “snopes” style website that seeks to debunk popular myths would be a start. Allowing taxpayers to send a very small portion of their taxes to help fund local non-partisan newspapers or official news sources such as Voice of America or PBS would also help. Creating a panel of trusted journalists to rate media personalities and their companies based purely on their ability to not tell lies could alleviate the Catch 22 of citizens turning to their preferred sources to validate other sources. And finally, when it comes to sponsored political debates, real time fact checking, rather than post-debate rehashes are a fine idea.

A divisive media environment is one of the biggest reasons we are as divided as we are. While there are no easy fixes, we must come to an agreement on how best to come to an agreement on the facts that define our nation.