Programmatic Points

The resonance of the Bernie Sanders campaigns of 2016 and 2020 showed the skeptics that there is a constituency for progressive change in this country. For decades the Green Party has been reaching out to that constituency in our own distinctive way. My campaign is doing so this year as a participant with the 2024 “New Jersey Green 13” slate of candidates.

The Green Party stands for many of the reforms associated with Bernie Sanders and also advocated by Jill Stein:

. Progressive taxation, a Universal Basic Income, and a higher minimum wage (to counter our country’s obscene levels of income and wealth inequality).

. Universal healthcare coverage via a Medicare for All system.

. Free tuition at public universities.

. Labor rights, including the right to unionize.

. Break up "too big to fail" financial institutions.

. Transfer money from the bloated military budget toward funding social programs.

. End the corporate capture of our governmental agencies.

. Gun control (ban military-style semi-automatic weapons; close loopholes that allow buyers to skirt regulations when making a purchase at a gun show; implement more extensive background checks).

. Criminal justice reform (address the scandalous situation that there are more people incarcerated in the U.S. than in any other country; legalize marijuana in order to terminate a misguided prohibition reminiscent of the disastrous alcohol prohibition a century ago).

Those reforms are critical and would result in a higher quality of life for all Americans. But the Green Party goes beyond the amorphous “democratic socialism” of Bernie Sanders. We call for thoroughgoing systemic change. Toward that end we stress the importance of an electoral system overhaul.

Bernie’s hero was Eugene Debs, who was a stellar candidate of the old Socialist Party. Debs said: Have no faith in either the Republicans or the Democrats. Bernie used to convey the same message, arguing that both of the establishment parties are beholden to wealth and Wall Street. But he seems to have lost his independent inclinations since getting elected to the Senate. So it’s now the Greens leading the charge to free the electorate from the longstanding domination of the duopoly.

We all should welcome the prospect of replacing the exclusionary “only-two-significant-parties” system with an inclusive multi-party democracy. Surely voters would benefit from being able to consider more than just two viewpoints. Here are the key changes that would level the playing field, eliminate the “spoiler problem,” and liberate the American electorate:

. Institute full public financing of elections; get the corrupting influence of corporate and private big-donor money out of politics.

. Abolish the Electoral College and elect the president via national popular vote using ranked-choice voting.

. Eliminate gerrymandering by enacting proportional representation.

. Repeal discriminatory, anti-democratic ballot access restrictions designed by the establishment parties to suppress competition.

. Ensure open debates on public channels and provide an ample amount of free public airtime for all ballot-qualified candidates.

. Replace partisan oversight of elections and the presidential debates with independent, non-partisan election commissions.

The idea of systemic change might seem intimidating. But if our current trajectories are unsustainable and unjust then it’s crucial that we advance bold initiatives like the Green New Deal. It was the Green Party that first ran candidates for office featuring that comprehensive program more than fifteen years ago. Jill Stein featured it in her first campaign for president in 2012. It had such resonance that the Democratic Party started to promote the same slogan. But their version is tepid and attenuated. What’s distinctive about the original version, the one Jill Stein continues to advocate for, is that it centers on the need for system change.

What’s wrong with the current system? In a nutshell, it prioritizes profit-motivated development over environmental imperatives and human values. The growth-oriented institutions of industrial capitalism tend to be ecologically and socially irresponsible. One dire consequence is that habitat is being destroyed to the point where nature could be facing a Sixth Mass Extinction of species. Such a catastrophe would undermine the basis for human existence if current exploitative trajectories are not reversed. Meanwhile, from a social standpoint, the globalization of the economy has been obliterating local community life for decades. Employment by the impersonal mega-corporations feels precarious and alienating. High divorce rates indicate that the atomized nuclear family is stressed, lacking the communitarian supports needed for its members to thrive. Rootlessness and loneliness manifest in a pervasive undercurrent of depression and malaise. Life under consumer capitalism is competitive and expensive, dominated by economic and cultural elites. So it should not be surprising to see how many people feel disregarded by and dissatisfied with the current system.

The Green Party’s ecosocialist version of the Green New Deal uniquely addresses both aspects of the modern crisis, the ecological and the social. What the Democrats have offered is superficial and inadequate. A Real Green New Deal is needed to transition rapidly from an economic system that is destroying our only home to a sustainable society built around human needs and protecting life on Earth:

. Invest in renewable energy infrastructure across the nation, including wind, solar, tidal, and geothermal, with battery and energy storage; build a nationwide, publicly-owned smart electricity grid.

. End all forms of subsidies to the fossil fuel industry; create an Office of Climate Mobilization to coordinate policy changes and other needed interventions to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.

. Support the use of natural systems to absorb carbon.

. Work gradually toward regionalizing the economy; shift resources from the center back toward our communities and bioregions.

. At the national level, transfer some of the billions going toward armaments production toward funding the manufacture of renewable energy and clean transportation technologies; in doing so we could generate millions of good-paying union jobs that green the economy.

. Ensure a Just Transition for workers shifting from the fossil fuel and other extractive and polluting industries.

. Take the energy industry and all railroad systems into public ownership using a democratic federated structure, with municipal and regional utilities.

. Ban all forms of fracking, mountaintop removal, tar sands mining, and new fossil fuel infrastructure; phase out nuclear power, a toxic, dangerous, expensive, and uninsurable (and unneeded) technology.

. Prioritize energy efficiency and conservation; require new buildings to demonstrate zero emissions by 2035 and retrofit existing buildings; subsidize installation of heat pumps to replace fossil fuels for heating and cooling.

. Chemicalized and industrialized corporate agribusiness is driving family farmers off the land, rural America into depression and ecosystems to collapse while failing to end hunger and malnutrition; the corporate agribusiness model is also depleting water aquifers and soils and driving insects to extinction, all leading to the collapse of ecosystems

. Provide technical and financial assistance for regenerative organic agriculture, permaculture, and sustainable forestry; socialize big agribusiness and dismantle the corporate oligopolies that control the farm input industry (seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, machinery) and the food and fiber processing industry into cooperatives and public enterprises democratically owned by and serving consumers and working farmers.

. Transition to sustainable food systems that will ensure environmental health, economic profitability for working farmers, and social and economic equity; at the same time implement a rural reconstruction program that revitalizes humanly-scaled agriculture and local community life, one that reintegrates town and country.

“We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.”

-- Chief Seattle