Green Party (United States)

In United States politics, the Green Party has been active as a third party since the 1980s. The party first gained widespread public attention during Ralph Nader's presidential runs in 1996 and 2000. The FEC-recognized national committee of the party is the Green Party of the United States (although there remains also a mostly-defunct separate Green national political organization, the Greens/Green Party USA).

Key values

The Ten Key Values of the Green Party were drafted by that party in 1984. They form the philosophical basis for the platforms of the present Green Party of the United States and Green Party of Canada, and most provincial and state parties.

Related Topics:
1984 - Green Party of Canada

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The ten include and expand upon the Four Pillars of the Green Party originated in Europe and practiced by the worldwide green parties. The Global Greens Charter, signed by many of these parties in Australia in 2001, was based on the Ten Values and Four Pillars, reduced to Six Principles for brevity.

Related Topics:
Four Pillars of the Green Party - Worldwide green parties - Global Greens Charter - Six Principles

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The ten values are still used by most of the state and provincial parties in North America.

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Over 20 years of use, there are many different explanations of what the ten original terms mean, and many policies that represent examples of the principles in action, but the terms themselves are relatively constant:

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• Community-based economics, e.g. LETS, local purchasing, co-housing
• Decentralisation, e.g. via Bioregional democracy, sustainable agriculture
• Ecological Wisdom, e.g. ending human-caused extinction, promoting ecological health
• Feminism, e.g. Health security especially for mothers and children, and thus a focus on environmental health
• Grassroots democracy, e.g. via electoral reform to improve deliberative democracy
• Non-violence, e.g. via de-escalation, peace processes
• Personal and global responsibility, e.g. moral purchasing, voluntary simplicity
• Respect for diversity, e.g. via fair trade, bioregional democracy
• Social justice, e.g. harm reduction rather than zero tolerance
• Future Focus/Sustainability, e.g. measuring well-being effect over seven generations, leading to what is called seven-generation sustainability

External explanations:

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• http://gpo.ca/election/platform/2003/values_toc.htm - an illustrated version
• http://www.global.greens.org.au/charter.htm
• http://www.greenparties.org/documents/tenkey.html
• http://cagreens.org/platform/10k.htm
• http://www.radicalmiddle.com/ten_key_values.htm