Preamble
This platform was
adopted by the delegates of the membership of the Greens/Green
Party USA (G/GPUSA) at their annual Green Congress, meeting in
Chicago, May 26-28, 2000. It reflects the majority views of the
G/GPUSA membership.
G/GPUSA's national
officers, spokespeople, and National Committee are expected to act
in a manner consistent with the policy framework set by this
platform. In keeping with G/GPUSA's structure of "democratic
decentralism" where accountability is bottom-up, not
top-down, the platform is not binding on the state and local
affiliates of the Greens/Green Party USA.
This platform,
therefore, does not necessarily reflect in every respect the views
of Green Party candidates at any level, including Ralph Nader and
Winona LaDuke, Green Party candidates for President and
Vice-President in 2000.
The Greens/Green
Party USA is the original Green Party organization in the USA. It
carries forward the radical vision of the early Greens based on
grassroots political and economic democracy, nonviolence, social
justice, and ecological sustainability.
Formed as the
Committees of Correspondence in 1984, the annual Green Congress
changed the name to Green Committees of Correspondence in 1989 and
to The Greens/Green Party USA in 1991. G/GPUSA is a membership
organization of individual members who participate in affiliated
local and state organizations and support the organization with
dues scaled to their ability to pay.
Green politics is an
ecological approach to politics that links social and ecological
problems. Ecology studies the relationships among organisms and
their environment. Political ecology brings human institutions and
ideologies into this holistic perspective. [1]
We find that the same
institutions and ideas that cause the exploitation and oppression
of humans also cause the degradation and destruction of the
environment. Both are rooted in a hierarchical, exploitative, and
alienated social system that systematically produces human
oppression and ecological destruction.
For the Greens,
therefore, the fights against racism, sexism, class exploitation,
bureaucratic domination, war, and all other forms of social
domination and violence are central to the movement for an
ecologically sustainable society. In order to harmonize society
with nature, we must harmonize human with human.
The Greens carry
forward the traditional values of the Left: freedom, equality, and
solidarity. We want to create a truly democratic society without
class exploitation or social domination. But Greens expand this
notion of a classless, nonhierarchical society that is harmonized
with itself to include an ecological society that is harmonized
with nature as well. [2]
To the social movements, the Greens say that in
order for humanity to progress toward a democratic society, we
must resolve the ecological crisis so that people are still around
to enjoy democracy. To the environmental movements, the Greens say
that in order to have an ecological society, we must have a
democratic society so that people have the power to choose
ecological sustainability. To survive, we must have ecological
sustainability. To choose ecological sustainability, we must have
the power of democracy.
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Preamble
The Ecolate Party platform includes a plank that
all candidates run as independents on their own merit, hence no
identity politics, no political ideology, no firmly held belief in
political solutions. The need for political policies remains, and
policies shall be provisionally shaped by compelling data
concerning what works, not belief-based opinion.
[1. "Political ecology" is facepalming, should be rephrased: Politicized ecology partly empowers our ideologial perspective (mostly far-left) and movement to impose our feel-good (to us), belief-based solutions universally on all. We love science, we love to pick and choose, like and dislike, to be for and against, and to parse the messages of science types to support our pet agendas like other political animals do or would if they could.]
[2. To avoid being delusional, consider Dunbar's number and the Iron Law of Oligarchy observation. For a classless, nonhierarchical society, keep the number of people in it to 100 to 150 or less. We are presiding over a mass extinction event because we the people, in this global techno-empire as in all prior regional techno-empires, have made choices, responded bottom-up and top down to contingencies such that we do not live sustainable lifes secondary to being self-taught political animals and not understanding what "sustainable" entails.]
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The following platform
planks are the immediate policy goals we support to move us toward
an ecological democracy.
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The following platform planks have nothing to do with what
people like or dislike, want or don't want, are for or against,
but are suggested by the contingencies of survival of organisms
living in a sustainable system governed by natural law.
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An
Economic Bill of Rights
Universal Social Security: Taxable
Basic Income Grants for all, structured into the progressive
income tax, that guarantee an adequate income sufficient to
maintain a modest standard of living. Start at $500/week
($26,000/year) for a family of four, with $62.50/week
($3,250/year) adjustments for more or fewer household members in
2000 and index to the cost of living.
Jobs for All: A guaranteed right to
job. Full employment through community-based public works and
community service jobs programs, federally financed and community
controlled.
Living Wages: A family-supporting
minimum wage. Start at $12.50 per hour in 2000 and index to the
cost of living.
30-Hour Work Week: A 6-hour day with
no cut in pay for the bottom 80% of the pay scale.
Social Dividends: A "second
paycheck" for workers enabling them to receive 40 hours pay
for 30 hours work. Paid by the government out of progressive
taxes so that social productivity gains are shared equitably.
Universal Health Care: A
single-payer National Health Program to provide free medical and
dental care for all, with freedom of choice for consumers among
both conventional and alternative health care providers,
federally financed and controlled by democratically elected local
boards.
Free Child Care: Available
voluntarily and free for all who need it, modeled after Head
Start, federally financed, and community controlled.
Lifelong Public Education: Free,
quality public education from pre-school through graduate school
at public institutions.
Affordable
Housing: Expand rental and home ownership assistance, fair
housing enforcement, public housing, and capital grants to
non-profit developers of affordable housing until all people can
obtain decent housing at no more than 25% of their income.
Democratic community control of publicly funded housing programs.
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A wage free society is alternative. To transition, start
with a maximum income of $30,000/year, and $15/hour maximum wage
to be adjusted downward over a five year period until per capita
consumption of the planet is well below average carrying capacity
to allow for the expected 100-year bad year, the 500-year bad
year, and the 1,000-year bad decade.
Public works programs focused on nature restorancy allow
for full employment.
Wage free society, needs provided for via pon rationing
system.
2-hour to 16-hour day depending on need. There will be
no wage slavery as envisioned by all other parties.
Baseline health care system. Heroic care voluntary,
thereby minimized. No malpractice law suits. Those judged to
practice badly despite training will not provide health care.
During normal adult work period, care provided by an
association of community grandparent volunteers.
For autodidacts: Learning materials, tools, work area,
maker space, lab area, volunteer teachers/safety supervision,
part of local library system.
Materials warehouse and shop provided for home making.
Parents/community provide rolling room for offspring, adjoined
to the parents own throughout childhood to emancipation, which are
designed and built to last a lifetime.
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Grassroots
Democracy
Community Assemblies: Ground
political representation in a foundation of participatory, direct
democracy: a Community Assembly in every neighborhood, open to
all of its residents, acting as a grassroots legislative body,
with its own budget for local administration, and the power (in
concert with other Citizens Assemblies who share a
representative) to monitor, instruct, and recall representatives
elected to municipal, state, and federal office.
A Proportional, Single-Chamber US
Congress: Abolish the disproportional, aristocratic US
Senate. Create a single-chamber US Congress, elected by a system
of mixed-member proportional representation that combines
district representatives elected by preference voting and party
representatives seated in proportion to each party's vote.
Environmental Home Rule: Establish
the right of every state, county, and municipality to restrict or
prohibit the production, sale, distribution, storage, or
transportation of any substance it designates as dangerous or
toxic.
Average Workers' Pay for Elected
Officials: Pay
elected officials average workers' salaries so that they
understand the needs of average people and stop being an elite of
professional politicians with separate class interests.
DC Statehood: Full
self-government and congressional representation for the people
of Washington DC.
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Democracy to decide matters of taste.
Two-Chamber Congress: Biome Representatives—proportional
representation of watershed organisms/environment, including
human, and interwatershed politico-eco-nomic Senate to oversee
long-haul transportation, interwatershed security, and to
determine equitable trade based on emdollars.
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Fair
Elections
Proportional Representation: Elect
legislative bodies by proportional representation where each
party has representation in proportion to its total vote.
Preference Voting: Elect single
offices by majority preference voting where voters rank
candidates in order of preference and votes are distributed
according to preferences in instant runoffs until a winner
receives a majority of votes.
Public Campaign and Party
Financing:Equal public campaign financing and free broadcast
media time for all candidates who agree not to use private money.
Equal free broadcast media time for party broadcasts. Public
financing of parties through matching funds for party dues and
small donations up to $300 a year.
Fair Ballot Access: Federal
legislation to require each state to enable a new party or any
independent candidate to qualify for the ballot through a
petition of no greater than 1/10th of 1% of the total vote cast
in the district in the last gubernatorial election, with a 10,000
signature maximum.
Eliminate Mandatory Primaries: Allow
parties the right to nominate by membership convention instead of
state-run primaries.
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Elections not needed for direct democracy to decide
matters of taste.
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Ecological
Conversion
Ecological Production: Set goals and
timetables to phase out and ban the production and release of
synthetic chemicals and to convert all production to materials
that are bio-degradable, bio-inert, or confined to closed-loop
industrial cycles. Use federal investments, purchasing, mandates,
and incentives to:
Phase out most chlorinated and other
synthetic petrochemicals and phase in natural, biodegradable
substitutes.
Phase out synthetic fertilizers and
pesticides and phase in organic agriculture.
Shut down waste incinerators, phase out
landfills, and phase in full recycling.
Require manufacturers to be responsible
for the whole life cycle of their products by taking back used
packaging and products for re-manufacturing, reuse, or
recycling.
Legalize industrial hemp as an ecological
source for wood pulp, paper, cloth, lubricants, fibers, and many
other products.
Renewable Energy: Invest
non-renewable energy sources in the creation of self-reproducing,
renewable energy systems. Use federal investments, purchasing,
mandates, and incentives to:
Shut down nuclear power plants.
Phase out fossil fuels and phase in clean
renewable energy sources.
Reduce auto-based transportation and
expand pedestrian, bicycle, and rail transportation.
Biotechnology-No Patents on Life; No
Transgenic Organisms:
Ban patents on life forms in order to
preserve genetic diversity and common access to our common
inheritance of nature, including farmers' access to seeds and
breeds.
Ban the release into the environment and
the use in food production of genetically modified organisms
that result from splicing the genes of one species into another.
Environmental Defense and Restoration:
Full funding for anti-pollution
enforcement and toxic sites clean-up
Preserve ecosystems and biodiversity by
strengthening the Endangered Species Act and expanding areas
designated as wildlife refuges and wilderness areas.
Ban old-growth logging, clear cutting, and
strip mining.
End all commercial exploitation of public
lands by private timber, mining, and cattle grazing interests.
Ban off-road vehicles on federal lands.
Decommission National Forest logging roads.
Restoration of public lands degraded by
commercial interests.
Manage federal lands primarily for
ecosystem protection and restoration.
Support large-scale ecological restoration
based on conservation biology.
Environmental Justice: Strengthen
and enforce laws that prevent toxic industries, toxic dumps and
air pollution from targeting ethnic minority communities.
A Just Transition: A Superfund for
Workers to guarantee full income and benefits for all workers
displaced by ecological conversion until they find new jobs with
comparable income and benefits.
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Ecosystem scientists serving the planetary biota
interest who know enough to tender a best guess will guess then
test to determine what practices or policies are needed, what
works and may do more good than harm, as system illiterate
politico-religio ideological chant and cant is irrelevant.
End all fossil fuel use in five years and attempt to
minimize die-off to 50% by adopting Federation policies.
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Sustainable
Agriculture
Fair Farm Price Supports: Reform
farm price supports to cover the costs of production plus a
living income for family farmers and farmworker cooperatives.
Subsidize Transition to Organic
Agriculture: Subsidize farmers' transition to organic
agriculture while natural systems of soil fertility and pest
control are being restored.
Support Small Farmers: Create family
farms and farm worker cooperatives through a homesteading program
and land reform based on acreage limitations and residency
requirements.
Break Up
Corporate Agribusiness: Create family farms and farmworker
cooperatives through a homesteading program and land reform based
on acreage limitations and residency requirements.
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Almost all pesticides are organic, and
fossil fuels are organic. Transition to non-fossil-fuel-based agriculture,
planning for a 90% reduction in agricultural products and 90% of
population becoming farmworkers/small farmers who, during the transition to negative population growth, will farm using human power rather than animal power.
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Economic
Democracy
Eliminate Corporate Personhood:
Legislation or constitutional amendment to end the legal
fiction of corporate personhood.
End Corporate Limited Liability: Make
corporate shareholders bear the same liabilities as other
property owners.
Federal Chartering of Interstate
Corporations
Periodic Review of Corporate Charters: A
public corporate charter review process for each corporation
above $20 million in assets every 20 years to see if it is
serving the public interest according to social and ecological as
well as financial criteria.
Strengthen Anti-Trust Enforcement:
Require breakup of any firm with more than 10% market share
unless it makes a compelling case every five years in a public
regulatory proceeding that it serves the public interest to keep
the firm intact.
Democratic Production: Establish the
right of citizens to vote on the expansion or phasing out of
products and industries, especially in areas of dangerous or
toxic production.
Workplace Democracy: Establish the
right of workers at every enterprise over 10 employees to elect
supervisors and managers and to determine how to organize work.
Worker Control of Worker Assets-Pension
Funds and ESOP Shares:Pension funds representing over $5
trillion in deferred wages account for nearly one-third of
financial assets in the US. 11 million workers participate in
employee stock-option plans (ESOPs). Reform ERISA, labor laws,
and ESOP tax provisions to enable workers to democratically
control their assets.
Democratic Conversion of Big Business:
Mandatory break-up and conversion to democratic worker,
consumer, and/or public ownership on a human scale of the largest
500 US industrial and commercial corporations that account for
about 10% of employees, 50% of profits, 70% of sales, and 90% of
manufacturing assets.
Democratic Conversion of Small and
Medium Business: Financial and technical incentives and
assistance for voluntary conversion of the 22.5 million small and
medium non-farm businesses in the US to worker or consumer
cooperatives or democratic public enterprises. Mandate that
workers and the community have the first option to buy on
preferential terms in cases of plant closures, the sale or merger
of significant assets, or the revocation of corporate charters.
Democratic Banking: Mandatory
conversion of the 200 largest banks with 80% of all bank assets
into democratic publicly-owned community banks. Financial and
technical incentives and assistance for voluntary conversion of
other privately-owned banks into publicly-owned community banks
or consumer-owned credit unions.
Democratize
Monetary Policy and the Federal Reserve System: Place a 100%
reserve requirement on demand deposits in order to return control
of monetary policy from private bankers to elected government.
Selection of Federal Reserve officers by our elected
representatives, not private bankers. Strengthen the regional
development mission of the regional Federal Reserve Banks by
directing them to target investments to promote key policy
objectives, such as high-wage employment, worker and community
ownership, ecological production, and inner city reconstruction.
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Progressive
and Ecological Taxes
Ecological Taxes: Tax pollution,
resource extraction, harmful products, and the use of our common
wealth of natural capital (land sites according to land value,
timber and grazing lands, ocean and freshwater resources, oil and
minerals, electromagnetic spectrum, satellite orbital zones).
Simple, Progressive Income Taxes:
Enact a no-loopholes, graduated personal income tax with equal
taxation of all income, regardless of source. Provide an income
tax credit for each dependent to replace and fully compensate for
the current exemptions and deductions that benefit to the average
taxpayer, such as the home mortgage deduction and medical
deductions.
Eliminate Regressive Payroll Taxes: Fund
Social Security, Health Care, Unemployment Insurance, and Workers
Compensation out of progressive income and wealth taxes.
Guaranteed Adequate Income: Build
taxable Basic Income Grants into the progressive income tax
structure to create a Universal Social Security system that
ensures everyone has income for at least a modest standard of
living above the poverty line.
Maximum Income: Build into the
progressive income tax a 100% tax on all income over ten times
the minimum wage.
End Corporate Welfare: Target
subsidies for worker- and community-owned enterprises, not
absentee-owned corporations. Put subsidies in the public budgets
where they can be scrutinized, not hidden as tax breaks in
complicated tax codes. Progressively Graduated Corporate Revenue
and Asset Taxes
Wealth Tax: Enact a steeply
progressive tax on net wealth over $2.5 million (the top 5% of
households).
Inheritance Tax: Replace the
loophole-ridden estate tax with a no-loopholes, progressive
inheritance tax on inheritances over $1 million.
Stock and Bond Transfer Tax: Encourage
a shift from speculative to productive investments through a
federal stock and bond transfer tax on all securities
transactions.
Currency Speculation Tax: An
internationally uniform tax on currency conversion to discourage
speculation. Revenues from the currency speculation tax should be
channeled through international agencies into ecologically
sustainable, democratically controlled development in poor
countries.
Advertising Tax: A tax on
advertising to fund a decentralized, pluralistic media system of
real public broadcasting, public service broadcasting on
commercial media, and independent nonprofit, noncommercial media.
Federal Revenue Sharing: Reduce
state and local government dependence on regressive sales and
property taxes through federal revenue sharing that combines
centralized collection of progressive and ecological taxes with
decentralized decisions on spending.
Ecological
and Feminist Economic Accounting: Expand the Bureau of Labor
Statistics into a Bureau of Household, Labor, and Environmental
Statistics with revised national economic accounts, statistics,
and indicators that include stocks and flows of natural wealth,
household production, and labor time values. Existing national
income accounts and indicators such as gross domestic product
(GDP) ignore the ecological foundations of the economy and the
value of household production. Ecological accounting will
identify the true costs of resource depletion and pollution and
hence appropriate eco-taxes to internalize full costs. Social
accounting will identify the true value of household production
and its contribution to the economy and social well-being. Labor
time accounting will record and publish the current and dated
labor time for goods and services, establishing the average labor
time required for each product. These labor time values will
serve as shadow prices against which to judge the fairness of
actual market prices.
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100% tax on all income over 1.66 times the minimum wage.
Ban on unsought, non-informative advertising
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Human
Rights and Social Justice
End Institutionalized Racism, Sexism,
and Oppression of People with Disabilities: Strengthen civil
rights, anti-discrimination, and affirmative action laws,
programs, and enforcement.
African American Reparations: A
national commission on reparations for African Americans.
Indian Treaty Rights: Honor all
treaty obligations with Native Americans and Chicanos.
Immigrant Rights: Support the rights
of immigrants to housing, education, health care, jobs, and
civil, legal, and political rights.
Reproductive Freedom: People should
be free from government interference in making their reproductive
choices, including abortion, which should be covered by all
publicly funded medical insurance programs.
Comparable Worth: Legislation to
enable women and minorities to receive equal pay for work of
equal value.
End Discrimination Against Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, and Transgendered People: Outlaw discrimination on
the basis of sexual orientation in housing, employment, benefits,
and child custody.
Same-Sex
Marriage: Legal recognition of same-sex marriages.
Criminal
and Civil Justice Reforms
Abolish the Death Penalt
Prosecute Police Brutality-The Jonny
Gammage Law: Require independent federal investigation and
prosecution of law enforcement officers charged with violating
the civil rights or causing the bodily injury or death of a human
being.
End Political and Racial Persecution by
the Criminal Justice System:Freedom for all political
prisoners and prisoners of racial injustice. Clemency for Leonard
Peltier. New trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Restorative Justice: Establish a
humane criminal sanction system based on prevention, restitution,
rehabilitation, and reconciliation rather than vengeance, forced
labor, and profits for the Prison-Industrial Complex. Restore
full funding for college degree granting programs in state and
federal prisons. Jobs and justice, not more police and prisons.
Legal Aid: Expand funding of legal
aid and public defender programs so all people can have competent
legal representation.
Fight Corporate Crime: Strengthen
laws and enforcement against corporate crime with penalties that
include incarceration of executives and revocation of corporate
charters.
Oppose Tort Reform that Limits Class
Action Lawsuits and Caps Victims' Compensation: The threat of
high victim compensation awards by civil juries must be
maintained as an important deterrent to corporate crime.
Civil Liberties: Support the Bill of
Rights. No compromise on civil liberties and due process for
"national security," "anti-terrorism," or
"the war on drugs." Repeal the 1994 Crime and 1996
Anti-Terrorism bills. End domestic political spying by police,
military, and intelligence agencies.
End the
"War on Drugs:" Decriminalize possession of drugs.
Regulate and tax drug distribution. Release nonviolent drug war
prisoners. Treat drug abuse as a health problem, not a criminal
problem. Drug abuse treatment on demand.
Labor
Law Reforms
Repeal Repressive Labor Laws: Repeal
the Taft-Hartley Act, the Landrum-Griffin Act, the Hatch Act, and
state "Right-To-Work" laws which have crippled labor's
ability to organize by outlawing or severely restricting labor's
basic organizing tools: strikes, boycotts, pickets, and political
action.
A Workers' Bill of Rights: Enact a
set of legally enforceable civil rights, independent of
collective bargaining, which (1) extends the Bill of Rights
protections of free speech, association, and assembly into all
workplaces, (2) establishes workers' rights to living wages,
portable pensions, information about chemicals used, report labor
and environmental violations, refuse unsafe work, and participate
in enterprise governance, and (3) establishes workers' rights to
freedom from discharge at will, employer search and seizure in
the workplace, sexual harassment, and unequal pay for work of
comparable worth.
Expand Worker' Rights to Organize and
Enjoy Free Time:
Majority Card-Check Recognition of
Unions
Strong and Speedy Penalties for
Employers Who Break Labor Laws
Ban Striker Replacements
Triple Back Pay for Illegally
Locked-Out Workers
Unemployment Compensation for Striking
and Locked-Out Workers
Binding Contract Arbitration at Union
Request
Full Rights for Farmworkers, Public
Employees, and "Workfare" Workers under the Fair Labor
Standards Act
Ban Prison Slave Labor: End the use
of US prisoners to produce goods and services for sale to the
public.
Double-Time Pay for All Overtime
Prohibit Mandatory Overtime
6 Weeks Paid Vacation Annually in
addition to Federal Holidays
1 Year Paid Educational Leave for Every
7 Years Worked
1 Year Parental Leave for Each Child
Born with No Loss of Seniority
Right to
Work Short Hours: No discrimination in pay and promotion
against workers who choose to work short hours.
Revitalize
Public Education
Equalize School Funding with Federal
Revenue Sharing: Federal financing of all public education
(instead of by regressive local property taxes) so that every
school has the resources it needs to provide the highest quality
education for every child. Use a simple formula based on student
population with adjustments based on need to help bring up school
quality and student performance in poor communities.
Decentralized Administration: Cut
through stifling centralized administration with site-based
planning, policy-making, and management with participation by
parents and teachers with release-time. Maintain central support
staff for decentrally administered schools.
Class Size Reduction: Federal
legislation and financing to reduce student-teacher ratios in
classrooms to 15 to 1 in all public schools.
Preschool Programs: Federal
legislation and financing for public schools to make available
Head Start-type programs for pre-Kindergarten children starting
at age 3.
After School Programs: Federal
legislation and financing to make available after-school
recreational and educational programs for all school age
children.
Children's Health: Clinics in all
schools to check eyes, teeth, and general health at all grade
levels. Healthy food at breakfast, lunch, and after school
programs. Birth control information at middle and high schools.
Improve Teacher Training and Pay:
Improve the quality of teachers with support for career-long
training. On-the-jobs apprenticeships for teachers-in-training.
Teacher pay scales comparable to other professionals with similar
education and responsibilities.
Multicultural Teaching Staffs:
Strengthen affirmative action programs to recruit and support
ethnic minorities to enter teaching at every level: teacher,
aide, assistant, apprentice.
Tuition-Free Higher Education: Federal
legislation and financing for tuition free education at public
universities and technical schools for everyone who wants it.
Oppose the Privatization of Public
Schools: We oppose all schemes for corporations to pursue
private profits at the expense of public schools and
schoolchildren.
No School Vouchers: No school
vouchers from public budgets for private schools.
No For-Profit or Religious Charter
Schools: Stop the diversion of public funds to for-profit
corporations or religious organizations running charter schools
with unaccountable administrations, uncertified teachers, and
segregated student bodies.
No Commercialization: Stop turning
school children into a captive market for commercial marketing
interests with franchises that undermine democratic funding and
accountability.
No High-Stakes Testing: Stop the
curriculum takeover by commercial standardized test and
test-prep corporations. Stop linking administrator and teacher
pay and student graduation and retention to standardized test
performance. Stop reducing education to answering multiple
choice questions. Put teachers back in charge of ongoing,
genuine assessment in the classroom.
Curriculum for a Multicultural
Participatory Democracy: We support a democratic public
school curriculum that fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and
free expression, that explicitly promotes democratic and
egalitarian anti-racist, anti-sexist, and multicultural values,
that replaces Eurocentric with multicultural textbooks and other
curriculum materials, that does not sort children into academic
and non-academic tracks, and that is academically rigorous with
high expectations for all children.
Support
Bilingual Education: Minority-language children with limited
English proficiency must have instructional programs that build
on their native language and culture while building English
proficiency.
Free,
Diverse and Uncensored Media
Infodiversity: An uninformed people
is not free. Create a vital, democratic, diverse media system,
delinked from corporate profit objectives and able to present a
wide range of issues and ideas in their full complexity, free
from censorship by government or by private corporate power.
Support Nonprofit and Noncommercial
Media: A decentralized, democratic system of public funding
of diverse nonprofit, noncommercial media, including broadcast,
print, film, website, and other cultural production. Funding to
exceed existing support for for-profit media, including lower
mailing rates and tax deductions for donors. Guarantee free,
universal Internet access.
Real Public Broadcasting: Complete
public funding for real public radio and television broadcasting,
with no advertising or grants from private corporations or
foundations. Support a decentralized, pluralistic system of
multiple national networks and local stations, all independently
controlled by boards elected by their publics and their workers.
Regulate Public Airwaves in the Public
Interest: Reassert the public's right as owners of the
electromagnetic spectrum used as broadcast airwaves to regulate
their use in the public interest. Re-appropriate 6 prime-time
hours a day of commercial broadcast time on each station for real
public service broadcasting: ad-free children's and news/public
affairs programming. Fund this liberated time by charging
commercial broadcasters rents for the bandwidths they use, a tax
on sales of commercial stations, and a tax on advertising.
Program this ad-free time under the control of artists' and
educators for the children's programs and journalists for the
news and public affairs programs. Restore the Fairness Doctrine.
Free time for all candidates for public office. Prohibit paid
political ads or require free ads of equal time for opponents.
Redistribute substantial bandwidth concessions to public,
nonprofit, and locally owned commercial stations, including
low-power stations. Increase stakeholder representation on and
public accountability of the Federal Communications Commission.
Antitrust
Actions to Break Up Media Conglomerates: Reform antitrust
legislation to require the break up of corporate giants because
their concentrated power threatens democracy, not just
competitive pricing, especially with regard to media
concentration where a few media conglomerates control the
public's access to information. Require separate, independent
firms for all TV stations, TV networks, TV show producers, radio
stations, newspapers, magazines, book publishers, film producers,
music recorders, Internet service providers, cable TV systems,
cable TV stations, amusement parks, retail stores, and so forth.
Repeal the pro-conglomeration Telecommunications Act of 1996.
Subsidize the existence of multiple newspapers and magazines to
express a diversity of opinion in all communities.
International
Solidarity
A Global Green Deal: Build world
peace and security through a Global Green Deal. First, the US
should finance universal access to primary education, adequate
food, clean water and sanitation, preventive health care, and
family planning services for every human being on Earth.
According to the 1999 UN Development Report, it would take only
an additional $40 billion to Fund Global Basic Human Needs,
an amount that is only 13% of the 2000 US military budget.
Second, the US, which now spends half of the world's military
expenditures by itself, should demilitarize its economy and
reinvest the Peace Dividend in financing and technical assistance
for an Ecological Conversion of Human Civilization to
Sustainable Systems of Production.
Peace Conversion: Cut US military
spending unilaterally by 75% in two years to establish a
non-interventionist, non-offensive, strictly defensive military
posture and save nearly $250 billion a year.
Peace Dividend: Dedicate the $250
billion a year Peace Dividend to the Global Green Deal,
Ecological Conversion, the Economic Bill of Rights, and providing
full income and benefits for all workers and soldiers displaced
by demilitarization until they find new jobs at comparable income
and benefits.
Unilateral Nuclear, Biological, and
Chemical Disarmament: These weapons of mass destruction have
no place in a non-offensive military. The US should set the
example and demand that other nations match our lead before the
proliferation of weapons to countries around the world leads to
mass destruction.
Cooperative Security: Pursue a
"cooperative security" strategy that seeks mutual arms
reductions, progressive elimination of cross-border offensive
capabilities, and further cuts in military spending. The goal is
to progressively demilitarize down to a non-offensive defense of
U.S. national territory using a coast guard, border guard,
national guard, and light air defense system, which would cost
about $3 billion, or less than 1% of current US military
spending.
Democratize the United Nations:
Cooperative security cannot work as long as the United
Nations remains a US puppet. Support reforms to democratize the
United Nations, such as more proportionality and power in the
General Assembly, an elected Security Council, and the
elimination of the Great Power Veto on the Security Council.
A Pro-Democracy Foreign Policy: We
call for a fundamental shift in US foreign policy, from
supporting repressive regimes in the interests global
corporations to supporting the pro-democracy labor, social, and
environmental movements of the people.
Support International, Multilateral
Peacekeeping to Stop Aggression and Genocide
No Unilateral US Intervention in the
Internal Affairs of Other Countries
Close All Overseas US Military Bases
Disband NATO and All Aggressive Military
Alliances
Ban US Arms Exports
Abolish the CIA, NSA, US Army School of
the Americas, and All US Agencies of Covert Warfare
End the Economic Blockades of Cuba, Iraq,
and Yugoslavia
Cut Off US Military Aid to
Counter-Insurgency Wars in Colombia and Mexico
Freedom for Lori Berenson and All
Political Prisoners
Require a National Referendum to Declare
War
End Global Financial Exploitation:
Cancel the debt owed by poor countries to global banks. End the
exploitation of poor countries by IMF "structural
adjustment" policies. Abolish the IMF and World Bank and
replace them with a democratic international financial
institution for balancing international accounts and financing
short-term current account balances.
Fair Trade: Withdraw from the World
Trade Organization, NAFTA, and all other corporate-managed trade
agreements that are driving down labor and environmental
conditions globally. Establish an internationalist social tariff
system that equalizes trade by accounting for the differences
among countries in wages, social benefits, environmental
conditions, and political rights. Tariff revenues to a
democratic, international fund for ecological production and
democratic development in poor countries in order to level up
social and environmental conditions to a high common standard.
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Adult birth certificate (one birth pon per adult) transferable to
offspring. After population degrowth, more than two births per two parents require birth
certificate to be obtained prior to birth, or, assuming
foresight, before cessation of use of birth control. Childless
individuals may give away their birth certificate, but can only
sell to government that can retire certificates to reduce global
population or issue additional certificates to increase population
to match varying carrying capacity.
- To achieve population degrowth, a 2-birth pons per child policy is needed to minimize the Malthusian alternatives.
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