When I talk about the 21st-century Economic Bill of Rights, I am pretty immediately asked, “But what does this mean in terms of laws, in terms of real policies, and funding?”
My first answer is an honest, “I don’t have a detailed list of how we achieve these things, but we have lots of ways to get there.”
The 21st-century Economic Bill of Rights doesn’t bind our hands in saying that we must use one policy or another to secure the rights.
We must realize that each part of the 21st-century Economic Bill of Rights is part of a broader picture — one where our state politics and economics maximize the potential of our citizenry and minimize the amount of economic waste, lost productivity, and political instability that is associated with extreme levels of inequality and high levels of economic insecurity.
That is a very broad picture.
But we shouldn’t confuse a very broad picture with fantasy.
As I’ve said before, at the very least, legislators should be able to agree that the rights in the 21st century Economic Bill of Rights are rights that we should be working toward securing for all West Virginians.
Beyond that, our legislators should be able to hold up each piece of legislation before they vote on it and say, for example: “I’m voting for this law because it moves us toward securing affordable broadband for all West Virginians.”
Or, they may say, “I’m voting against this law because it would prevent a community from collecting air monitoring data and make it impossible for them to sue to protect their right to a clean environment.”
As a legislative tool, I think that is worthwhile on its own.
But I also think we should be proactive in securing these rights, and as a delegate, I would aim to promote legislation to directly secure each right in the 21st-century Economic Bill of Rights.
Let’s take the right to access affordable broadband internet, for example.
Securing the right to affordable broadband internet should be a top priority for state lawmakers, especially in this post-pandemic world and in the world of remote learning and remote working. Likewise, with the rise and necessity of telehealth in West Virginia and paperless billing, e-filing for taxes, and accessing VA or Social Security benefits – the case for a right to affordable broadband internet builds itself.
In West Virginia, I believe the legislature should be moving to break the natural monopolies held by corporations like Frontier and should move to permit and even fund municipalities and counties to explore community network solutions, including building out their own telecom infrastructure if appropriate and necessary.
This is not a wild-eyed suggestion. Here’s a map of over 900 communities served either by municipal networks or cooperative networks, including rural counties like Jefferson County and small municipalities like Ranson: https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map
Notably, there are no such programs in West Virginia as of this writing, nor are there any laws preventing such programs. This is a prime place for the state to step in and help prime the pump for rural communities to fix the failure of the market to service these communities in West Virginia.
The first step to accomplishing this is to say, “We believe all West Virginians have a right to affordable broadband internet.”
Then we have to say, “We are going to work directly to figure out how this can be accomplished building from the local level up, and we are not going to leave any community behind.”
Then, we pass a law or a suite of laws to achieve our goals. To do so, our lawmakers must stand firm in the face of the inevitable flood of corporate money that will pour into our legislature to prevent us from breaking their monopolies.
Securing an economic bill of rights won’t be easy. But again, it is not fantasy. These are concrete goals that our legislature, consciously or not, is actively either working toward or against.
In recent legislatures, the trend has clearly been to deny these rights, whether by denying women’s healthcare through a blanket abortion ban or by marginalizing and harassing trans individuals with targeted legislation.
They’ve also attacked all down-on-their-luck West Virginians by making more strict work requirements and curtailing people’s earned unemployment benefits. They’ve attacked a right to education by shoveling public funds into private schools that are not prevented from discriminating.
It's easy to see how legislators can work against an Economic Bill of Rights without acknowledging those rights. That’s why this campaign is putting these rights front and center and demanding that we work together to secure every one of these rights for every single West Virginian.
And to every right included in the 21st century Economic Bill of Rights, there will be those who will say it is impossible.
Some will say it’s impossible because they don’t believe in our communities or our state, and others will say it’s impossible because they are paid to tell us about all the necessities that we can’t have (while some corporation just happens to be selling it at an inflated price).
It’s our job to say that it’s not only possible – but it is inevitable. Because in the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
The only question is: will we help to secure political and economic justice in West Virginia? Or fight against it?
Thank you for reading,
Troy N. Miller
Democratic Candidate for WV House of Delegates, District 98
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