The Principles of MarchOnHarrisburg are the defining agreements that unite us and provide for the maximum freedom and creativity of all members while ensuring that our individual efforts work in harmony to advance our common goals.
MISSION: Make Corruption Illegal and Take our Democracy to Where It’s Never Been.
MarchOnHarrisburg works to end corruption and move Pennsylvania from the 8th most corrupt state into one of the least corrupt by passing a wave of democracy bills to end excessive money in politics, end gerrymandering, and secure and expand the right to vote.
STRUCTURE
Decentralized Structure: Leadership is distributed throughout our organization within local chapters, working groups, and a steering committing. Members and teams are autonomous in all matters and actions that are consistent with these Principles.
Democratic Cooperation: We practice democratic collaboration to maximize participation, effectiveness, and empowerment. We take collective responsibility to listen, maintain respect and dignity, and strive toward consensus decision making when possible, and defaulting to majority decision making when necessary.
Inclusion: We welcome all who embrace these Principles and work to create an empathetic and inclusive community in which everyone is affirmed and supported in developing as a leader, including people of color, women, LGBTQ people, low-income people, immigrants and others who are marginalized. We strive to overcome racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and all forms of oppression, suppression, and repression in the MarchOnHarrisburg community and in our world.
Leadership as Service: We affirm and respect leadership not as dominance, ego gratification, or profit-seeking, but as an act of service and responsibility and a process of development and empowerment.
Volunteerism: MarchOnHarrisburg is a volunteer-driven organization, with support from three staff members.
CORRUPTION IS THE ‘ROOT’ ISSUE
Government is how we make collective decisions, and until we fix the ways our government makes decisions, we will continue to not make good collective decisions. Systemic corruption and the subversion of democracy make our government responsive to ruling class special interests. This leads to policy violence toward the working class and results in massive suffering.
DEMOCRACY IS THE SOLUTION
When people and our communities are able to participate in the decisions that govern our lives, we make decisions in the public’s interests, rather than in the interests of corporations. When public officials are accountable to the public, they will be public servants, rather than employees of an oppressive ruling class.
LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
We strive to develop leaders who are clear, confident, competent, committed, and connected, and grow the Pennsylvania democracy movement. All success or failure in our goals of making bribery illegal and building democracy are dependent on the primary goals of leadership development and movement building.
WE PRACTICE NONVIOLENCE
We are a nonviolent movement and we maintain nonviolent discipline. We wage peace because our goal is to end the ongoing war between the working class and a government that oppresses us with policy violence on behalf of a greedy ruling class. Dr. King called nonviolence, “The sword that heals,” because it is an active and tenacious soul-force that works through our natural desires for love, responsibility, and service, and it leads to peaceful resolutions.
Nonviolence forces the encounter between we the people and our government, and insists that they serve us instead of the idolatrous urges of concentrated greed and power. All of our tactics are rooted in nonviolence, and our nonviolent direct actions are escalations that follow other less intense nonviolent encounters.
NONPARTISAN
MarchOnHarrisburg believes that the rampant corruption in the government is not and has never been limited to one political party or politician. We are nonpartisan and do not endorse political candidates or political parties. While we do not endorse political candidates or work within electoral politics, we do run a Democracy Page outreach program to better educate constituents and voters on candidates’ positions on our democracy issues.
AUTONOMY AND COLLABORATION
Leadership is distributed throughout the organization within the board, the staff, the chapters, and the working groups. Everyone is encouraged to show up as their true authentic selves, and contribute their own unique talents and humanity to the movement. Members and teams are autonomous in all matters and actions consistent with these principles and our handbook, and are responsible for practicing democratic collaboration to maximize participation, effectiveness, and empowerment. We take collective responsibility to listen, maintain respect and dignity, and strive toward consensus decision making when possible, and defaulting to majority decision making when necessary.
WE WORK WITHIN COALITIONS
MarchOnHarrisburg participates in coalitions for democracy issues and within coalitions that are fighting for a broader movement for justice and compassion, such as the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call For Moral Revival, which is demanding an end to the war economy, systemic racism, systemic poverty and ecological devastation.
MORAL FUSION ORGANIZING
We organize across all lines of division. We welcome all who embrace these principles and work to create an empathetic and inclusive community in which everyone is affirmed and supported in developing as a leader, including people of color, women, LGBTQ people, poor people, immigrants, and others who are marginalized. We strive to overcome and dismantle racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and all forms of oppression in the MarchOnHarrisburg community and in our world. We work to overcome the white supremacist foundations of the United States. We work to make people feel welcome so we can build a democracy movement that reflects the diversity of the people of Pennsylvania.
