To the Journal editor:

As part of making resolutions for our new year, We the People resolve to progress justice (United States Constitution,1788).

What is justice?

Justice is revealed in our history when We progressed from justice for few to justice for all.

In our founding we created a minimalist government that used beliefs to create justice for the few wealthy white men.

In our history we progressed through our many revolutionary rights movements when we created an activist government that uses scientific methodological justice to describe conditions and all rights for all ethical justice to evaluate conditions to create justice for all.

Rights are interdependent goods and services that are directly available for all and beneficial for all.

Our rights movements include our Revolution (political rights), Progressive Era (progressive and redistributive tax rights), New Deal (worker rights), civil rights, environmental rights, and feminist rights movements.

Scientific methodological justice includes using accurate facts.

All rights ethical justice includes:

General rights include equality (liberty for all), liberty (liberty for self), activist government, accountability, common good, comprehensiveness, equalities of opportunity and protection, freedoms from exploitation and oppression, participation, privacy, progression, proportionality, sustainability, and transparency.

Economic rights include:

1. To help pay for progressing justice for all and to help prevent deficit spending, raising our progressive and redistribution income tax rate from 37% to 80% for millionaires and to 90% for billionaires with deductions eliminated to ensure all pay their just share of taxes (90% was our top income tax rate from 1950 to 1980. Piketty, Thomas. Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press, 2014).

2. Progressing our national minimum hourly wage from $7.25 to $15.

3. Progressing workplace equality rights, including women receiving equal pay for similar work.

4. Progressing worker rights to unionize, negotiate, and strike.

5. Supporting a $3 trillion COVID-19 economic recession stimulus package that includes aid for the unemployed, workers, small businesses, and local and state government.

Educational rights include lifelong tax-financed and government-run tuition-free education and training.

Environmental rights include stopping human-caused climate change and creating green jobs.

Health care rights include tax-financed and government-run health care with no out-of-pocket costs.

Political rights include freedom of assembly and speech.

Religious rights include freedom of religion.

“For all” includes all workers, retired, disabled, unemployed, and students, and also all races and genders/sexes.

We the People resolve to progress:

Justice for all!

Editor’s note: This letter writer should not be confused with Gordon J. Peterson who worked many years for Swanson-Lundquist Funeral Home in Marquette.