Who We Are and the Mission of Green Party Power
We are an ad hoc group of Green Party activists who believe the Green Party must take steps to build power so it can impact the duopoly parties, win elections and transform the nation. While many of us play roles in local,and state Green parties as well as the national Green Party, this site is independent of the Green Party of the United States and open to participation by all Greens.
At the foundation of creating a more effective Green Party is recognizing that we are an opposition party that challenges the political establishment. This requires the party to be independent of the two establishment parties, the Democrats and Republicans, which are funded by Wall Street, militarism and other big business interests.
We began this project in the fall of 2016 with a call to emphasize the independence of the Green Party, especially from the Democratic Party and putting forth idea for building political power for the Green Party. By 2017, more than 500 Greens had signed on to the Green Party Power Project. To understand our goals and how we hope to achieve them see “Building Green Power for 2018 and Beyond.”
Like the popular social movements of our times we believe the United States needs radical transformation, not reform. The United States suffers from numerous emergency situations to which the current power structure is unwilling or unable to respond. Among those crisis issues are:
- Economic inequality that creates a growing rich-poor divide. The bottom 25% of people are in debt with 0 wealth and half of workers earn under $31,000/year and while a tiny minority hoard wealth and live in excessive luxury;
- A failed healthcare model that results in tens of thousands of annual deaths just from lack of access to healthcare, tens of millions without access to care and restricts healthcare providers from serving their patients while serving the interests of healthcare profiteers such as the insurance and pharmaceutical industries and investors in for-profit healthcare;
- Unending wars and militarism that continue the costly and deadly US empire, which creates chaos around the world;
- The climate crisis that is already upon us but is denied and inadequately responded to because of corruption created by big energy interests and profiteers of the failed status quo; and
- Deeply embedded racism that makes all these problems worse for communities of color and results in widespread police violence and mass incarceration, as well as tens of millions living in poverty with little help of escape.
These are just some of the many crisis problems the nation faces to which the US political system is unable to respond. The ultimate issue is a crisis of democracy due to deep corruption throughout the political system. The democracy crisis ensures an oligarchy where only the wealthiest are represented and the urgent necessities of the people and planet are not met.
Green Party Power operates outside of the Green Party for simplicity but we are active in local, state and national parties and are operating in a transparent way so local, state and the national Green Parties will take on some of the issues we are raising.
The organizers of this project include:
Ajamu Baraka
Chris Blankenhorn
Adrian Bouturiera
Bruce Dixon
Margaret Flowers
LuAnne Kozma
Gini Lester
Andrea Mérida Cuellar
Kevin Zeese