GREEN PARTY PLATFORM
Proposed Revisions and Amendments
Part I, PRA 1 to 31
PRA-1 RE Political Reform
The electoral reform bills proposed by Congress have been openly
discriminatory against third parties, even if the third party candidate
happens to have more support than a major party nominee does. For example,
formulas proposing public financing, dependent on whether the qualifying
candidate is the nominee of a party which polled at least 25% of the last
presidential vote, are opposed by the Green Party.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-2 RE Community
Building Communities that nurture families, generate good jobs and housing,
and provide public services. Creating cities and towns that educate
children, encourage recreation, and Preserve natural and cultural
resources. Building local governments that protect people from
environmental hazards and crime, and motivate citizens to participate in
making decision.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-3 RE Democracy
Democracy must empower all citizens to
-obtain timely, accurate information from their government
-communicate such information and their judgments to one another through
modem technology
-band together in civic associations in pursuit of a prosperous, just and
free society
The separation of ownership of major societal assets from their control
permits the concentration of power over such assets in the hands of the few
who control rather than in the hand of the many who own. The owners of the
public lands, pension funds, savings accounts, and the public airwaves are
the American people, who have essentially little or no control over their
pooled assets or their commonwealth.
A growing and grave imbalance between the often-converging power of Big
Business, Big Government and the citizens of this country has seriously
damaged our democracy....
Corporations have perfected socializing their losses while they capitalize
on their profits.
It's time to end "corporate welfare" as we know it. The power of "civic
action" is an antidote to abuse. As we look at the dismantling of democracy
by the corporatization of society, we need to rekindle the democratic
flame. As voter citizens, taxpayers, workers, consumers and shareholders,
we need to exercise our rights and, as Jefferson urged, counteract the
"excesses of the monied interests".
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-4 RE Free Speech
As Greens, we support those who urge the public to "reclaim the public
airwaves".
The privatization of the broadcast airwaves -- one of our most important
taxpayer assets -- has caused serious deformations of our politics and
culture. The basic problem is that private broadcasters control what the
public owns. And in return for free licenses to use taxpayer property,
broadcasters give us a steady stream of increasingly coarse, redundant,
superficial programming and, of course, exclusively decide who says what on
our public airwaves.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-5 RE Community Involvement
Establish a new model of consumer representation. We urge the creation a
public purpose, nonprofit, democratically controlled membership association
of financial service consumers, with a mandate to inform consumers and
represent consumer, local community and broad public interests in financial
service matters
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-6 RE Direct Democracy
To establish a National Advisory Referendum Act, which will act to inform
the Congress of the public's positions on key national questions.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-7 RE Political Reform
To establish public financing of campaigns through well promoted voluntary
taxpayer check-offs on tax returns.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-8 RE Political Participation
A new democracy "tool box" should be part of a basic civic curriculum in
public education, as a way to ensure the future of democracy.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-9 RE Community Involvement
(note corresponding Resolution 4)
Community-based economics constitutes an alternative to both corporate
capitalism and state socialism. It is very much in keeping with the
Greens' valuation of diversity and decentralization.
Recognition of limits is central to a Green economic orientation. The
drive to accumulate power and wealth must become recognized for what it is,
a pernicious characteristic of a civilization headed, ever more rapidly, in
a pathological direction. Greens advocate that economic relations become
more direct, more cooperative, and more egalitarian.
Humanizing economic relations is just one aspect of our broader objective:
to consciously and deliberately (albeit gradually) shift toward a
*different way of life* -- characterized by sustainability,
regionalization, a more harmonious balance between the natural ecosphere
and the human-made technosphere, a revival of community life.
Our communitarian perspective is antithetical to both Big Business and Big
Government. It distinguishes the Greens and will enable us to make a
unique contribution toward deriving political and economic solutions for
the 21st century.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-10 RE Global Warming/Global Climate Treaty
Climate change presents very real economic and social opportunities for new
and sustainable jobs from new energy technologies, including both energy
efficiency and renewables. Yet, too often, the focus of debate has been
only on the pain of adjustment to carbon reductions, this because of the
influence of multinational business on government policies.
Greens believe the following are possible, if we are to make a start on
protecting our global climate. It is imperative that we strive for no less:
1. An early target must still be set to prevent emissions rising so far
that future reductions become even more difficult. There must be
commitments for 2005.
2. Avoiding loopholes is now even more important than an ambitious target.
Unless a very ambitious target is set, which now seems unlikely, allowing
sinks and trading within the protocol will create such loopholes that no
real reductions will occur. Trading and sinks must be left until there is
much more scientific precision about how they are measured.
3. Nuclear power is not an acceptable alternative to fossil energy. We
should not accept country commitments that depend on increasing nuclear
capability. We must join the solar age.
4. Targets are not enough without credible policies and measures to achieve
them. We urge all governments to table a list of the policies and measures
they intend to adopt to attain their target, for example eco-taxes and
energy performance standards.
5. The Green party endorse the "Contraction and Convergence" model under
discussion at international talks, which as proposed would eventually give
every human being an equal right to the atmosphere, as the most practical
way to achieve justice and participation for developing countries.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-11 RE Global Warming
With only 4 percent of the earth's people, the United States produces more
than 20 percent of emissions. From 1990 to 1996, total US emissions grew by
an amount equal to what Brazil and Indonesia produce every year. Per
capita, the United States emits 85 percent more than Germany, twice as much
as England and Japan, and currently nearly 10 times as much as China.
The Green Party urges the US Congress to act immediately to address the
critical global warming and climate change issues. When the US Senate voted
95-0 to oppose any global warming treaty that does not also bind developing
countries to specific, if smaller, emissions reductions in the future,
which many industrializing countries oppose, it put a roadblock in the way
of progress by all nations.
Vice President Gore, who ran in 1992 as a foe of global warming, calling it
"the most serious threat we have ever faced" and urging that "the rescue of
the environment" become "the central organizing principle for
civilization", must put actions to his words and develop a common ground
agenda with the 3rd world and all those who would be impacted by climate
energy policy.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-12 RE Shipment of Wastes
The Green Party strongly opposes any shipment of high level nuclear waste
across the US to the proposed Nevada waste 'depository' at Yucca Mountain.
The Green Party believes that this proposal is part of a move to refire a
fast-track, commercial nuclear industry, if they can get their unsafe waste
product "safely" disposed.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-13 RE Education - (add) The Arts
Freedom of artistic expression is a fundamental right and is a key element
in empowering communities and moving us toward sustainability and respect
for diversity. Artists can create in ways that foster healthy,
non-alienating relationships between people and their daily environments,
communities, and the Earth. This can include both artists whose themes
advocate compassion, nurturance, or cooperation; and artists whose
creations unmask the often obscure connections between various forms of
violence, domination, and oppression, or effectively criticize aspects of
the very community that supports their artistic activity. The arts can only
perform their social friction if they are completely free from outside
control.
The Green Party supports:
* Alternative, community-based systems treating neither the artwork nor the
artist as a commodity.
* Eliminating all laws which seek to restrict or censor artistic
expression, including withholding of government funds for political or
moral content
* Increased funding for the arts appropriate to their essential social role
at all levels of government: Local, State and Federal.
* Community-funded programs employing local artists to enrich their
communities through public art Programs. These could include, but would not
be limited to, public performances, exhibitions, murals on public
buildings, design or re-design of parks and public areas, storytelling and
poetry reading, and publication of local writers.
* The establishment of non-profit public forums for local artists to
display their talents and creations.
* Research, public dialogue, and trial experiments to develop alternative
systems for the valuation and exchange of artworks and for the financial
support of artists (e.g., community subscriber support groups, artwork
rental busts, cooperative support systems among artists, legal or financial
incentives to donate to the arts or to donate artworks to public museums).
* Responsible choices of non-toxic, renewable, or recyclable materials and
choosing funding sources not connected with social injustice or
environmental destruction.
* Education programs in the community that will energize the creativity of
every community member from the youngest to the oldest, including neglected
groups such as teenagers, senior citizens, prisoners, immigrants, and drug
addicts. These programs would provide materials and access to interested,
qualified arts educators to every member of the community who demonstrates
an interest
* Incorporating arts education studies and activities into every school
curriculum with appropriate funding and staffing. We also encourage local
artists and the community to contribute time, experience, and resources to
these efforts.
* Diversity in arts education in the schools, including age-specific
hands-on activities and appreciative theoretical approaches, exposure to
the arts of various cultures and stylistic traditions, and experience with
a variety of media, techniques and contents.
The integration of the arts and artistic teaching methods into other areas
of the curriculum to promote a holistic perspective.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-14 RE Nuclear Issues/Foreign Policy
Press for the immediate start of the negotiation of a treaty to abolish
nuclear weapons, and for the completion of those negotiations by the year
2002.
Cut off all funding for the development, testing, production, and
deployment of nuclear weapons. Also cut off funding for nuclear weapons
research.
All nuclear weapons be taken off alert and that all warheads be removed
from their delivery vehicles.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-15 RE Foreign Policy
Cut military spending 50% over the next 10 years, and increase spending for
social programs.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-16 RE Campaign Finance Reform
Support 'Clean Election Act' reforms at the state level. Under a Clean
Election Act, state candidates qualify for public funds when they gather a
minimum number of $5 contributions to show their seriousness. Candidates
who qualify receive funding equal to 75% of the average cost of the last
two campaigns. The Act assumes that 25% of all campaign expenses go to fund
raising. Additional "equalizing " funds will go to clean-money candidates
who are outspent by privately financed opponents or targeted by outside
groups making independent expenditures.=20
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-17 RE Political Reform
Provide qualified candidates with 90 minutes of free broadcast time on
geographically relevant radio and TV stations, and a guarantee of
half-price broadcast time above that amount
Require public-financed candidates to participate in at least one primary
and two general election debates with other candidates.
Ban political party soft money.
Suspend incumbents mass-mailing privileges in election years.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-18 Welfare/Workfare - Economic Justice
Oppose welfare reform, workfare, and enterprise zones. Welfare reform and
workfare force welfare recipients into the labor market, pushing wages down
for low-income workers. Enterprise zones provide tax breaks to large
corporations at the expense of locally owned businesses and workers in the
Enterprise zones.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-19 RE Corporate Accountability
Raise corporate taxes. The corporate share of taxes has fallen from 33% in
the 1940s to 15% today, while the individual share has risen from 44% to
73%, according to the Alliance for Democracy.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-20 RE Biological Diversity
Cloning is a challenge to basic Green philosophy. Since the efforts to
clone animals, and eventually, humans, has been undertaken by profit-making
corporations, the purpose behind such projects is to manufacture
commodities. To classify a human (or any part thereof, including human DNA
or body organ) as a commodity, i.e., a piece of property belong to another,
is to reintroduce slavery.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-21 RE Biological Diversity
(to be added where there is not existing Platform language on these positions)
The Green Party supports the following positions:
-a ban on monopoly or patenting of life forms, genomes, cells, molecules,
tissues or organs, whether natural or cloned;
-ban on manufacture or distribution of genetically engineered or transgenic
foodstuffs, consumer products or compounds;
-independently monitored government testing of all existing genetically
engineered foods over substantial periods of time;
-guaranteed free access to seeds and life forms by farmers, including
rights to free breeding and seed exchange;
-labeling of all foodstuffs raised with the use of antibiotics, hormones,
synthetic chemicals;
-ban on use of antibiotics and hormones in raising of food animals;
-protection of traditional and historical genes, genomes and life forms to
promote genetic diversity;
-protection of indigenous collective agricultural practices;
-protection of the evolutionary integrity of genes, genomes, species,
populations and ecosystems;
-no commodification, privatization or monopoly of genetically engineered
life forms;
-no germ line intervention;
-ban on collection of cells or genetic material from indigenous peoples;
-ban on the use of human genetic materials, cells or tissue without
knowledge, consent and compensation;
-mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foodstuffs, consumer products
and drugs, including RBGH in milk;
-ban on distribution of milk produced from cows given RBGH in all schools
and public institutions;
-allow localities and states to enact more stringent laws on genetically
engineered foods, consumer products, chemicals and drugs than Federal
government;
-ban on cloning;
-public information campaign to alert consumers to possibility of allergic
reactions to genetically engineered foods using allergenic foodstuffs such
as Brazil nuts, etc.; removal of all such foodstuffs from markets;
-ban on manufacture and use of genetically engineered chemicals intended to
confer pesticide immunity on plants;
-ban on release of genetically engineered and transgenic organisms into
environment;
-mandatory regular testing of food animals for "Mad Cow" disease and
destruction of those having the disease, ban on incorporation of animal
parts or byproducts in animal feed.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-22 RE Rural Development (add Industrial Farming section)
Factory farming ("industrial farming") threatens to further erode the
family farms and the general quality of life in our rural areas. It is
estimated that over a million family farmers have been driven out of
business by billionaire hog tycoons and billionaire chicken barons. Each
corporate farm puts ten family farmers out of business. Yet family farms
are the basis of community-based economics and essential to rural
development and a healthy, diverse economy. More city-farm linkages that
will generate small-scale markets need to be developed, but the industrial
farming lobby has given the large corporate interests the ability to evade
environmental laws and pay slave wages to their workforces who experience
terribly unhealthy and dangerous conditions.
The consequences of factory farming are devastating. For example, North
Carolina's hogs now outnumber its citizens and produce more fecal waste
than all the people of California. While human waste must be treated, the
virulent waste of hogs is allowed to be dumped into the environment. Open
pits of putrefying animal wastes are allowed to discharge into rivers and
streams. This effluent has caused a host of obvious, and not so obvious
problems. 'Kill-offs' of aquatic life are common, and in incidents outside
Washington DC and in North Carolina over a billion fish died and were
bulldozed into mass graves. Scientists suspect that toxic microbes caused
by this type of waste are responsible for brain damage and respiratory
illness in humans and increasing numbers of reports are surfacing.
Corporate industrial farming is responsible for millions and millions of
beakless chickens crowded into dark cages, digesting large doses of
antibiotics and consigned to short, dreary life of torture. Corporate
industrial farming is responsible for health questions that range from
outbreaks of disease to chronic conditions due to exposure to environmental
hazards. Industrial farming has changed the type of food we eat, and
studies are now demonstrating that nutritional value has been decreased,
with resultant immune system impacts.
The story of industrial farming needs to be told. The Green Party strongly
opposes the rampant and damaging policies of corporate industrial farming
and calls for a national shift away from these practices.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-23 RE Organic Standards
The Green Party supports the strongest "organic" standards. California has
had the highest standards of any state for organic foods labeling. These
standards were authored by those in the industry, growers, manufacturers
and those in the business of livestock raising and feed production.
Proposed USDA standards should be based on the highest standards.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-24 RE Eco-nomics
Greens support a definition of sustainability where we openly examine the
economy as a part of the ecosystem, not as an isolated subset in which
nothing but "resources" come in and products and waste go out and never the
economy and the real world shall meet.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-25 RE Technology/Research Initiatives
We call for a federal Technology Assessment Office to examine how
technology fits in with life on Earth, in our neighborhoods and the quality
of our daily lives.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-26 RE A CALL TO ACTION
>Our Party's first priority is to value-based politics, in contrast to a
system extolling exploitation, consumption, and non-sustainable=
competition.
>We believe in an alternative, independent politics
add " proportional representation"
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-27 RE CALL TO ACTION/Political Reform
>and active, responsible government.
>We believe in empowering citizens and communities. We offer hope and a
call to action
>We demand choices in our political system. Winner-take-all systems almost
always offer voters only one of two choices one of two political parties,
each party with limited appeal to most voters (the number of voters who
describe themselves as "independent" has risen to over thirty percent in
recent polls, with over two thirds of Americans stating they support the
formation of an alternative third-party.)
add "In approximately 80 percent of congressional districts, voters have
only one viable choice because redistricting practices have gerrymandered
the districts to be so tilted toward the Republican or Democrat side,
effectively robbing voters of any choice or substantive campaign debate.
The politicians are picking the voters via redistricting practices before
the voters have a chance to pick their political representative."
>Yet, the US is one of only a handful of "established" democracies that still employ a winner-take-all system. We must work to change this.
>A truly democratic election system should represent the amount of support
a candidate or party receives, and be proportional to the number of seats
awarded in the elected body.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-28 RE Economic Justice
The Green Party opposes the 'privatization' of Social Security. The social
security trust fund, contrary to claims being made by Republican and
Democrat candidates, is not about to "go broke", and as a result needs "to
be fixed" by Wall Street. According to the actuarial figures, this just
isn't so - unless we have depression level economic growth in coming
decades.
Robert Reich states flatly, "Social Security is not endangered [the demise
of social security benefits] is based on the wildly pessimistic assumption
that the economy will grow only 1. 8 % annually over the next three
decades. Crank the economy up just a bit, to a more realistic 2.4% a year
(what the actuary gloomily termed the "high option: projection) and the
fund is flush for the next 75 years."
Incidentally, 2.4% growth is exactly what the White House budget predicts
for the next five years...
Considering that he bottom twenty percent of American senior citizens get
roughly 80% of their income from Social Security and that without Social
Security, nearly 70% of black elderly and 60% of Latino elderly households
would be in poverty, it is critical that the public protections of social
security are not privatized and subjected to increased risk based on
misleading projections of shortfalls.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-29 RE Political Reform [current position is in support of term limits]
[We] are opposed to Term Limits. We are committed to proportional
representation and believe that Term Limits serve no purpose that we
support. [Let member states who endorse T.L. put it in their state
platform, but not in our national platform.]
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-30 RE Education
High school classes should not be over 30. Schools should be designed for
teaching and learning, not warehousing and processing. High school size
should be limited (at most) to 1,500 students.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
PRA-31 RE Criminal Justice:
The advent of a 'prison industrial complex' in the US has become a national
disgrace. The Green Party raises a united voice in opposition to the
terrible inequities within the criminal justice system, the systemic
injustice and prejudice, the lack of adequate legal representation for the
poor and under privileged, the gross punishments mandated under punitive
sentencing laws that fill the jails, prisons and penitentiaries with
non-violent offenders.
The Green Party opposes privatizing of prisons. We support alternative
sentencing for non-violent crimes (i.e. community service) and guaranteed
education within prison - G.E.D. courses and college courses as well as
skill training.
[recommend] [not recommend] [return]
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