Green Party Of Canada

9 Pages 2216 Words

king various forms. The most familiar is the present day question that is posed as to whether the Green Party must give priority to social and economic justice first, or to the environment.
Other debates focused on whether a Green economics does and must lean more towards Socialism or towards Capitalism; towards reform or revolution; towards being true to principles at all times or towards some form of compromise. One important group within the Greens argued for a transformational philosophy which looks to move beyond these oppositional categories to find new ground for the economy, social change, and principled action. This group eventually took the lead in moving the Greens towards state wide parties and then national political organization; first with the Green Politics Organizing Committee (1989-’91), then with the Green Politics Network (from 1992), which in turn led to the creation of the Association of State Green Parties (ASGP) in 1996. ASGP changed its name to the Green Party of the United States in 2001.
Local groups, in addition to having steady debate among themselves about the Ten Key Values, also engaged in a variety of actions. Campaigns were launched, for example, to stop nuclear power plants, to stop waste-to-energy plants and promote recycling, to push for affordable housing, ban clear-cutting of the forests, and promote universal, single payer, health care insurance. Other projects involved back to the land experiments, community radio stations, cooperatives of many kinds, and community supported agriculture.
But gradually the Greens turned their attention to issues of democracy and to what they saw as the breakdown of the political system, the unraveling of connections between parties and voters and of the voters’ confidence in the party system as a whole, and the consequent failure of public policy to respond adequately to pressing problems. Greens would increasingly put it to themselves, why spend so much...