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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	1087
Proposal	2022 Platform Amendment: Preamble
Presenter	Platform Committee Sponsor: Nevada Green Party, South Carolina Green Party
Floor Manager	Chris Stella
Phase	Closed - Adopted
Discussion	07-18-2022 - 08-14-2022
Voting	08-15-2022 - 08-21-2022
Presens Quorum	Two Thirds of Active Accredited States/Caucuses
Consens Quorum	Two Thirds of Yes and No Votes

Background

The current preamble does not properly emphasize the social and ecological emergencies faced today; instead, it frankly promotes a right-wing emphasis on debt, military alliances, and jobs moving overseas that does not reflect the rest of the platform. A full rewrite is necessary to bring the preamble into harmony with the platform, as well as convey that the Green Party understands the urgency of social and ecological crises to which people, especially the youth generation, want to see.

Some inspiration comes from the North Carolina Green Party Platform Preamble (https://www.ncgreenparty.org/platform) and the IWW Constitution Preamble (from https://archive.iww.org/culture/official/preamble/) of which GPUS employees are members.

Proposal

Amend the Preamble to read:

The global political structure is built around a “grow-or-die” economic imperative fundamentally at odds with nature and the survival of complex life, including humanity. Neoliberal capitalism has colonized the world and extracted the wealth from the working classes, especially in the Global South, resulting in growing poverty and susceptibility to the effects of climate, enforced globally by escalating militarism and imperialism threatening nuclear annihilation, and locally by an increasingly militarized and brutal police response. Global corporations have undermined local democracy and replaced self-determination with a bureaucratic oligarchy made up of wealthy business executives with governmental representatives that claim “representative democracy” while acting to restrict ballot access from all but those approved by the oligarchy.

Only an anti-capitalist, anti-racist, feminist Green Party, based in our Ten Key Values including respect for gender diversity and gender equality, is prepared to confront and address the existential threat of climate change, and the social crises at the root of ecological crisis.

The Green Party proposes a hopeful, optimistic vision of future human society. We call, not merely for increased representation, but for self-government from the grassroots, bottom up, via decentralized, confederal direct democracies at the municipal level. We call, not merely for greater oversight or regulation, but for a moral economy, directly planned by the community and implemented by workers managing their own workplaces, that seeks human liberation from all forms of oppression, exploitation, and hierarchy, as well as to create an ecological society in harmony with the rest of nature. We call, not merely for improved wages or working conditions, but for the moral usage of technology and automation to liberate humanity from work and toil itself, such that all people may have the maximum time and resources to spend with their families and friends, build and improve their communities, and participate in civic life.

The Green Party proposes this Platform – parts of which addressing economic and environmental justice we refer to as our Green New Deal – as a set of immediate and short term steps to turn our future vision into reality. We propose bold steps to end poverty; recognize human economic rights such as rights to housing and healthcare; quickly halt carbon emissions and transition to a decentralized, community-based economy built with renewable energy and green industry; and much more. We also propose important changes to make elections free, fair, and more democratic; changes to the court system to focus on restorative and transformative justice instead of punitive revenge; changes to the financial and monetary policy to emphasize public banking and community-based economics.

We recognize that both our short term and long term goals will require a struggle – a struggle against not only class relations but hierarchical relations in general, and that this struggle will continue until the people of the world organize a new Green society based in confederal, direct democracy; social justice; ecological wisdom; and non-violent, peaceful relations. The Green Party therefore advocates a range of tactics to advance this struggle against hierarchy, including non-violent direct actions and issues campaigns, electoral campaigns, referenda and initiative campaigns, and building dual power institutions within and as part of our communities.

Together, we can win an ecological future. It’s in our hands!

Resources

Approval of this proposal will amend the 2020 GPUS Platform.

Contacts:

Nevada Green Party, co-chair: Margery Hanson, nvgreenparty@gmail.com

South Carolina Green Party, co-chair: jalazenby27@gmail.com

Original Author: Garret Wassermann, garret.wassermann@gp.org

References

Current language:

Never has our country faced as many challenges and crises as we do now. Levels of federal revenue are the lowest they have been since 1950 because of tax cuts and breaks for the very rich and for corporations. Government agencies charged with safeguarding public health and safety are operating with slashed budgets that paralyze their efforts. Jobs are being permanently relocated outside the country, while social and educational programs are being gutted. Our food, water, air, and soil are increasingly found to bear toxins and debilitating pollution. Every single level of government—local, county, state, and federal—is operating in the red, running up crushing amounts of debt. Many of our allies and former friends around the world are disgusted with our imperialist foreign policy, militarism, and arrogant corporate behavior. Realizing that our actions will be judged by future generations, we ask how we can draw on the best of our traditions, calling forth a spirit of ingenuity and citizen participation to achieve a free, democratic, just, and responsible society, one that actively responds to the crucial ecological challenges of our time, rather than denying them.

We submit a bold vision of our country’s future, a Platform on which we stand:

Our Ten Key Values as a guide to a politics of vision and action,
A creative, pragmatic plan for a prospering sustainable economy, and
A call to restore and protect a healthy, diverse environment and to cultivate a sense of community at all levels, from the local to the planetary.

We propose a vision of our common good that is advanced through an independent politics free from the control of corporations and big money, and through a democratic structure and process that empowers and reaches across lines of division to bring together our combined strengths as a people.

We, the Green Party, see our political and economic progress, and our individual lives, within the context of an evolving, dynamic world.

As in nature, where adaptation and diversity provide key strategies through which life flourishes, a successful political strategy is one that is diverse, adaptable to changing needs, and strong and resilient in its core values:

Participatory Democracy, rooted in community practice at the grassroots level and informing every level, from the local to the international.
Social Justice and Equal Opportunity emphasizing personal and social responsibility, accountability, and an informing ethic of Nonviolence.
Ecological and Economic Sustainability, balancing the interests of a regulated market economy and community-based economics with effective care for the Great Economy in which we are embedded: the ecosystems of the Earth.

The Green Party Platform seeks to identify the most crucial problems facing our country and offers ideas for responsible action to solve them. Looking to the future with hope and optimism, we believe we can truly correct the course of reckless, destructive governance that has allowed and encouraged the degradation of our ecological life-support systems, gutted our economy, and strained the social fabric to the point of causing material hardship for millions of Americans. Our common destiny brings us together across our nation and around the globe. We act in service to our children and the future generations of all our relations in the Earth community. We act in service to the future we are creating today.

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