On January 23, 2017, Kyle Kulinski, the host of Secular Talk, and Cenk Uygur, the host of The Young Turks, founded The Justice Democrats, a progressive coalition that aims to remove every corporate backed democrat of congress and build the party from scratch, which is exactly what the party needs.

These are a few key points from their platform:

1. “Make the minimum wage a living wage and tie it to inflation.”

This is just common sense. People who work hard and work full time shouldn’t live on the edge of poverty, or worse. CEOs should sacrifice a bit from their massive salaries to actually pay their employees.

2. “End the failed war on drugs.”

The war on drugs were meant to make our streets safer but, prohibition has only made drug cartels more powerful, it has increased crime, and has made drugs more dangerous due to lack of enforced safety standards. The goal should legalization, taxation and regulation. Free societies should allow individuals to decide what they put into their bodies, if not, it is not a free society. Non-violent drug offenders should not be grouped in with the worst of society and should be pardoned.

3. “End unnecessary wars and nation building.”

The United States runs over 800 military bases worldwide at a cost of over 100 billion dollars. Many of these bases are in places where we do not need any military presence. Essentially we are wasting money that could be spent on creating jobs and rebuilding infrastructure.

4. “Ban arming human rights violators.”

The United States recently gave billions in weapons which were in turned used to continue the Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen, killing thousands of civilians. The US continues to send Egypt arms as they continuously crackdown on peaceful protests. Israel received billions of dollars in military aid from the US in September and promptly announced new settlements in the West Bank. We should not be  funding foreign countries who know consistently go against what we consider to be our most basic values and violate international law.

5. “Pass a constitutional amendment to put an end to Washington corruption and bring about election reform.”

Easily the most important one of them all. The idea of politicians and campaigns being allowed to take billions of dollars from donors is antithetical to American democracy. Super PACs must be banned and a clean public financing system must be created to to make sure our government is free from the corrupting hand of corporations and billionaires. We need our politicians to be thinking of policies that will benefit the people first and foremost instead of their donors.

Numerous opinion polls in the United States show all of these ideas to be overwhelmingly popular. If the Democratic party refuses to embrace a more progressive platform, they will only continue to lose to Republicans in elections to come and it will be the fault of the establishment wing of the party.