Happy 2019!
We’re staying busy as we head into the year that will begin the presidential election cycle.
On January 17 at 8 pm EST we had a conference call featuring Howie Hawkins talking about the Green New Deal. Howie recently ran for Governor in New York with the Green New Deal as part of his platform.
Here is a recent episode of CPR Metro radio featuring Margaret Kimberley interviewed by Don DeBar about a recent conference hosted in Dublin, Ireland about a campaign by a coalition of peace organizations to close down American military bases internationally. Both Kimberley and DeBar have supported New York and national Green Party politics for a long time and this conversation is a truly enlightening one you will not hear on the mainstream radio channels.
This month progressives nationwide are talking about a Green New Deal, and, while mainstream media is saying that insurgent Democrats came up with this, we beg to differ!
We applaud the efforts of Democrats for finally adopting what the Global Greens began to work on in 2006 while noting that the delay of 12 years is very significant when it comes to climate change. Simultaneously, we are seeing National Improved Medicare for All impact the news cycle. The Green Party is changing the political dialogue and agenda in the United States more than people realize!
The Green Party has been advocating for a massive jobs and public works program to transition our energy infrastructure rapidly over to renewable energy under a Four Point Plan. The project truly began in 2006 with a Global Greens ‘Green New Deal Task Force’. It was brought into American Green political campaigns by Howie Hawkins when he ran for governor in 2014. Next Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka highlighted it in their 2016 presidential campaign while many more American Greens have run campaigns using it since. Part of this plan includes reduction in support for the largest polluter on earth, the Pentagon, through our anti-imperial planks. In 2016 we adopted ecosocialism to create a truly equitable ecological economy and grassroots democracy with an intersectional lens.
We would not be facing a climate crisis if the two parties had responded to the people and science on climate change, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved by Medicare for All, and untold heartache and suffering would have been avoided if Green anti-imperial policies had been adopted.
Our Green New Deal is formulated as a set of transitional demands with the understanding that fundamental structural change, moving us away from logic of a capitalist market system and towards a radically democratic reconfiguration in the United States, is the only way that a program for change can occur. Unlike the model advocated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Green Party proposal emphasizes public programs, not Wall Street ideas, and calls for a transformational change in energy production and the structure of the economy based in grassroots democracy.
We are in an ecological and economic emergency that requires fundamental system change. The American financial system is deeply connected to the multinational fossil fuel industry in ways that go well beyond the realm of what is attainable within the Democratic Party without a third party movement creating external grassroots pressure on elected officials.
For instance, the US dollar is linked to the Saudi Arabian oil barrel via a process known as petrodollar recycling, a complex system that came into existence when America went off the gold standard in the 1970s. Extrication from this is a complicated and intricate process that would dismantle much of the economic landscape that we occupy currently. When we say we need system change, we mean it and this is part of the reason why. Neither of the duopoly parties will take on this challenge without an external pressure being created by a third party because it is in their vested material interests not to do so. As Saudi Arabia continues to be a feature of the news cycle in relation to the war on Yemen and the brutal killing of reporter Jamal Khashoggi, we regretfully see this as an insurance policy that will maintain the security of the Saudi royal family regardless of humanitarian protests.
Historically, third parties have always developed progressive policies in coalition with popular movements and incubated them while building support before the mainstream is forced to adopt them. With single payer healthcare, Green Party US platform has advocated it since Ralph Nader ran for president in 2000. Every year since, 25,000-30,000 people have died because they do not have insurance. The lack of access to healthcare is an urgent national crisis that is causing unnecessary deaths and pain. The Democrats are finally acknowledging this, with 123 Democrats co-sponsoring the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, HR676, legislation based on the work of the Physicians Working Group who advocated for single payer.
The House bill contrasts with the bill introduced in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, S1804, which falls short in a number of areas, including no coverage for long term care and allowing for-profit providers to participate in Medicare for All. (See this comparison between the Senate and House bills.) The Senate bill came from compromises within the Democratic Party, the House bill from the single payer movement, and the Green Party sides with the movement.
We hope the Democrats will take other parts of the Green agenda as well. Green candidates have been calling for a 50% reduction in the Pentagon budget since the beginning of this century in contrast to the duopoly’s expanded military spending. We opposed the Iraq, Afghanistan, Libyan and Syrian wars. On November 29, 2018, a delegation led by the Green Party went to the International Criminal Court to urge a full investigation of crimes by Israel against Palestinians (click here to read about the Green Party US’s letter to the ICC). We advocate a foreign policy of diplomacy as opposed to militarist interventionism. The duopoly’s War On Terror has cost the United States $6 trillion neither the Democrats nor Republicans are willing to cut the military budget.
Image from National Priorities Project.
Even while some Democrats are taking on some of our issues, we do not expect either party to adopt a Green New Deal, Improved Medicare for All or seriously curtail militarist policy unless they are pressured by a grassroots movement and by a third party that gains political support.
The stronger the Green Party becomes in your state and nationwide, the more likely we will see positive changes. Even without winning office, Greens are impacting the direction of the country in instance where they are working in the grassroots. It is the combination of a mass movement and a viable progressive third party that will advance an agenda that will transform the nation. Help us get stronger. You can make a difference by supporting your local Green Party and building it into a dues-based membership organization.
“Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.”
Artist Statement:
Prof. Cedric J. Robinson’s oeuvre, which sought to define the coordinates of what he called the Black Radical Tradition, is inspirational during Trump time. As a Green, I seek to actualize system change as opposed to limiting the range of this movement to electoralism. I think the history of the events in 2004 are still instructive moving forward.
Music from Jukedeck – create your own at http://jukedeck.com
Cindy Sheehan, longtime antiwar activist and organizer, is speaking on her Women’s March on the Pentagon on Oct. 20 and 21. Green VP nominee Ajamu Baraka, Lead Organizer of the Black Alliance for Peace, will talk about the importance of the march and offer critical insights about how Green Party activists and progressives in general should approach the issues of war, imperialism, and militarism.