What does the Pirate Party stand for?
In short, we stand for an open, participatory society which gives everyone a voice, and empowers everyone to live a healthy, productive life to their full potential. Check out our platform to learn how we want to achieve that.
How are you different from other third parties?
We’re focusing all our efforts on building our movement from the bottom up, getting elected and enacting change locally before shaking up the state and national scene. That’s the only way to effectively challenge the two-party system, and we feel other third parties have abandoned this strategy.
We also focus on policies that:
- work best for the working people and
- are approved based on evidence that it’ll work. We strive for an open and free culture, and that means we will fight for what works best for the working class so EVERYONE can live freely and openly.
Do you support digital piracy?
Yes. The Pirate Party affirms that current copyright law is not good for the public or for creative professionals, and only actually benefits a small minority of corporate executives. We support reforms to copyright law which legalize the freedom to share, while more effectively helping creative professionals make a living.
Why are you called “Pirate”?
A few reasons:
- We’re part of the international Pirate Party movement, the fastest growing political movement in the world.
- We support the legalization of sharing movies, music and other art online, so our opponents would call us the Pirate Party anyway.
- We feel it’s better to reclaim that name.
- We’re a little rougher around the edges, as you might expect when you’re made up of real, working class folks. Also, historically, pirate ships had a tradition of egalitarian radical democracy, and provided a refuge for social outcasts and escaped slaves from a society unfriendly to them.
- The revolutionary, egalitarian, libertarian and fully democratic systems on their ships. The idea that the fruits of your labor belonged to those who worked for it. The idea of having a trusted leader democratically chosen and replaceable just as easily. The spirit of democracy and unity in the face of tyranny with the Edelweiss Pirates in Nazi Germany. Trying to live in an open and free culture, a democratic and egalitarian one, has always been a Pirate thing. That is the spirit of piracy. The name “Pirate”, and all the history and imagery included in that, is something we will not back away from. It is one we shall embrace with open arms. We are Pirates.
- It got your attention, didn’t it?
