The Pacific Green Party of Oregon today called for a "Real Green New Deal" that addresses not only the climate crisis but also the corporate control of our government and economy.
While Democrat presidential candidates and Senators Jeff Merkley and Cory Booker, along with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced their support for a Green New Deal, based on language and issues the Green Party has been promoting for almost twenty five years, the Democrats' version ignores the economic inequity and rampant corporatism at the heart of our current environmental crisis.
The Green New Deal is a four part program for moving America quickly out of crisis into a secure, sustainable future. Inspired by the New Deal programs that helped us out of the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Green New Deal will provide similar relief and create an economy that makes our communities sustainable, healthy, and just.
Part of a platform that has been crafted in dialogue among environmental activists, deep ecologists, urban planners, social justice activists, and committed reformers the ideas at the core of the Green New Deal have been at the heart of Green Party politics for more than a quarter century.
Our country cannot truly move forward until the roots of inequality are pulled up, and the seeds of a new, healthier economy are planted. Thus, the Green New Deal begins with an Economic Bill of Rights that ensures all citizens the right to employment through a Full Employment Program. It will create 25 million jobs by implementing a nationally funded, locally controlled direct employment initiative which will replace unemployment offices with local "employment offices." These locally controlled offices will offer public sector jobs which are "stored" in job banks in order to take up any slack in private sector employment.
The Democratic version of the Green New Deal, while well-intentioned, cannot succeed within the framework of a Democratic Party that supports endless war overseas, military intervention in the Middle East, the destabilization of popularly elected governments such as in Venezuela; and that misdirects the public from true international security by crafting and revitalizing cold war narratives. Fundamentally, a Democratic Party version of a Green New Deal will ultimately fail because it will be beholden to the very corporate interests that are ultimately responsible for global warming and environmental devastation worldwide.
In contrast to the corporate values of the Democratic Party's version of a Green New Deal, the Green Party's Real Green New Deal addresses economic inequity and insecurity at home through a bottom up approach to environmental and social justice. The Real Green New Deal will support workers' rights including the right to a living wage, to a safe workplace, to fair trade, and to organize a union at work without fear of firing or reprisal. The Green New Deal also recognizes the right to quality health care, to be achieved through a single-payer Medicare-for-All program; the right to a tuition-free, fully funded, locally controlled public education system from pre-school through college. It would also forgive student loan debt from the current era of unaffordable college education and recognize the right to decent affordable housing and a moratorium on all housing evictions and foreclosures.
The Green Party's Green New Deal proposes a real, meaningful transformation which will enable local communities to successfully transition into a Green New Economy. This will be done by addressing workers' rights and the rights of the elderly and differently-abled; attending to the basic health care needs of our citizens, and by acknowledging the failures of a Democratic and Republican led century of failure.
For more information on the Green New Deal please visit http://www.gp.org/green_new_deal
For more information on the Pacific Green Party of Oregon, visit www.pacificgreens.org
For background information on the Green New Deal, see https://theintercept.com/2019/02/02/green-new-deal-aoc/