Green Rainbow Party Platform Working Group

This page is for developing the Green Party Platform. Before participating in the edit, please contact volunteer@occupyboston.org. It's important for the editing group to have read through the background info and be up to speed on what the group is going. The group that started this intends to work this draft on their own before asking people who haven't been participating in the meetings to have a chance. We anticipate publishing an invitation for others to participate within a couple of weeks.

Meeting participants, please edit at will. If you want a lesson on how to use the wiki, please contact Brian or Terra. or write to volunteer@occupyboston.org to set up a phone tutorial time. Most lessons take about 5 minutes. Also, you can get "real time" help from the Occupy Boston techs, by choosing "Working Groups" on the left, choosing "OBIT" and then going to the online forum. They are speedy and great.

Target Audience for this Document

Potential and Existing Green-Rainbow Party Members. People interested in a sustainable future for human kind.

NOTES to Wiki participants

Terra: I put an inquiry in to OBIT admin to ask how to do "notes", rather than brackets, which appear to be rather cumbersome for a group this large. Please use brackets for now, or for huge notes, I'm creating a new page for each one...so debate there, and keep "the results of the debate" on the main page. If this convention doesn't make sense, please let's talk on email or something, or create a page about making huge notes.

1) Preamble

Green-Rainbow values embrace actions based on understanding the interconnectedness of everything on Earth; respect for life and its creativity; and reliance on the humility of humans to accept their fallibility relative to the power of the collective universe. Principles implied by the Green-Rainbow Party Ten Key Values include a vision of the common good and are structured to enable all to realize this good. [Terra: is this a note to "National"? a comment about the national platform? or should it be referenced as the opinion of the state-level platform?]

The Green-Rainbow Party of Massachusetts, on the 10th anniversary of its founding, endorses the platform of the Green Party of the United States.

The Green Party of Massachusetts and the Rainbow Coalition merged in 2002 on the basis of their shared values and aspirations (footnote on merger statement of 2002). [Terra: do we want to say something about wanting a "strong [commons]"?]

With special interests dominating the halls of government now, we seek structures and processes to enable all residents of the Commonwealth to contribute their reason, wisdom, and energy to meet our current and future challenges.

As such, we seek methods to encourage and facilitate inclusiveness and transparency in government, including [Participatory Budgeting].

When major economies are staggering from financial speculation in the world-wide system controlled by the increasingly powerful, we acknowledge the interdependence of all beings on earth, while favoring decentralization of decision making on government and economics, in view of the reliability of locally based economies.

Terra Note about "favoring local based economies"

Where social relations are blighted by unfairness, increasing inequality, and lack of opportunity, we look to the talents and wisdom of Massachusetts residents to rebuild the social order, shifting source of needed revenues from tax on our (diminishing) income and purchases to taxing consumption of resources, taxing advantage created by society, and Taxation Based on Accumulated Wealth taxing accumulated wealth.

Terra Note about using the word "unfairness"

2) Proposed Platform text

At a time of severe cutbacks in spending, fiscal reform of State government operations requires full-cost accounting for all government approved projects to reduce ecologically destructive waste of natural resources and to increase employment. Continuous auditing of expenditures, both physical and monetary, must be instituted in such a manner as to prevent further transfer of wealth from the less to the more affluent.

To remedy the political (social and economic) harm that attends excessive and continuing growth in disparities of income, we seek legislation needed to achieve these goals; the eradication of poverty, the local assurance of a livelihood, freedom to pursue personal ambitions, and security of domicile. Among the means to these ends are; rational taxation, the institution of a state-owned bank, the establishment and funding of independent ecological research, and the development of a sovereign wealth fund.

Effective democratic deliberation and decision making at the local level -- town, city, ward, neighborhood, and also decisions whose ecological validity is largely regional, may require the formation of citizen assemblies in addition to those already instituted in law as local governments. Such consultative and decision making bodies should be chosen openly and freely by those most directly involved in their outcomes, protected from the undue pressure of competitive private corporations whose choices. and demands on our communities are driven by the need to maximize monetary gains.

Commonwealth law to protect the land held in common and also the fundamental necessities of life, water, air, and freedom of movement must allow for the sharing of resources within and between local polities. Encouraging local initiatives and local markets, whether cooperative or private, must replace the use of tax revenues to subsidize large corporate enterprises.

The Commonwealth, through its courts, is charged with the protections of all natural persons residing within the Commonwealth from invidious discrimination. Wherever this is in doubt, it shall be the duty of the Attorney General to conduct a thorough investigation, and failure of that office to so is an actionable offense.

All state institutions and private institutions must avoid policies that increase debt, especially debt that jeopardizes social liberty or inhibits the ability of persons to make reasonable choices as to employment, and other creative endeavors. Debt forgiveness may be necessary to protect the physical and social environment from the production of waste. The use of local scrip should be encouraged.

Criminal law requires a careful examination of the use of violence to counter violence, as well as the testing of non-incarceration in the protection of the common good. The current prison system provides a glaring instance of unjust waste of human and physical resources. Imprisonment for non-violent but legally defined offenses remains an invidious discrimination that can no longer be ignored.

Growth in GDP is not a requirement of good government. The Commonwealth and its self governing communities should be left free to innovate, and improve the quality of life of their inhabitants through social interaction rather than increase of wealth. The institution of universal health care remains one of the chief tools of reducing ecological waste in human affairs. Health care accompanied by the required freeing of medical practice from the constraints imposed by insurance corporations, and removing the burden imposed on private employers provides a powerful tool for reducing the waste of non-productive overhead.

A program of educational reform in the public school system should be pursued at the local and regional levels. The only role of State government shall be to see to it that all schools are supplied according to the needs of the children they serve. This approach will entail increasing the resources to deal with poverty and its consequences for children. The content of compulsory education cannot be fairly determined by job markets. Principles of democratic education are well understood and need but to be applied.

Electoral reform to ensure maximal choice in representative government requires State financing of candidacy for public office, majority election, and should also allow for representation of opinion at least as effectively as representation and conciliation of conflicting interest. Preferential balloting for single office in both primary and general elections allows for responsible and democratic choice in a way that the current system denies. Political diversity in the Commonwealth as a whole should be represented in its legislative bodies; and districts of roughly equal population should be drawn on the ground of shared ecological concerns of these populations.

Private corporations in the business of mass transportation, communication, and energy production must be held fully accountable for the maintenance of their infra-structure and the attendant costs, especially the wasteful consumption of non-renewables. The utilization of the noted social resources by households, government agencies, industry and commerce must be made as efficient and ecologically sound as possible.

Our politics emphasize social preparedness. No matter how advanced our technological means, we are not in charge of all planetary or local events. Hurricanes, epidemics, droughts, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes are no more selective in choosing their victim than a nuclear attack or accident. While climate change of a kind that raises sea levels may be anticipated, there are periods when geological events may assume catastrophic proportions. Healthy communities will show the greatest levels of caring and the least reliance on agencies of violence.

3) Alternative Platform text

Democratic Government, Sustainable Economy, Healthy Society

• To provide opportunity for MA residents to participate in their own governance, as many decisions as appropriate should be delegated to citizen assemblies at the relevant level--neighborhood, town, region-- either currently constituted (e.g. town meetings) or assembled with government support (e.g. consultative bodies).

• To assure representation of the widest range of perspectives, candidates for public office should receive financial aid. Ranked choice voting, with requirement of majority of votes for election, should be instituted to broaden participation and expression of opinion.

• Conduct of governmental affairs in the interest of the common good would benefit from measures promoting transparency, including continuous auditing of expenditures--fiscal and material. Periodic review should be built into legislation which relates to changing conditions. Special care is needed to identify legislation which facilitates transfer of wealth from the less to the more

affluent.

• Obligation to protect the commons, land, air, water, ecosystems, and residents’ proper enjoyment thereof, embodied in Commonwealth law, entails full funding of environmental research and teaching at state universities, professional staff, long range regional planning, outreach programs, and local initiatives.

• The Commonwealth should reexamine the relevance of its current vision of enterprise and economic development, giving due credit to the value of locally based and cooperative enterprise, and to public management of certain services, e.g. public utilities.

• Subsidies and tax breaks for corporation on basis that they provide employment must be carefully weighed…International trade agreements which give special protection to corporations doing business in Commonwealth should be examined: EOHED should make appointments to a commission to study and enact this.

• Managing state finances with a state owned bank could cut costs of service and borrowing, infrastructure financing, and nurture strong local banks.… State and municipalities can use power eminent domain to intervene positively in bank foreclosures…

• Shifting taxation from income and sales to resource use and to wealth can assure revenues for government operations as economic patterns shift. This basis is needed to be able to enact universal basic income. [Should there be description of vision here? ]

• Civil and Personal rights, Rights of immigrants and disabled. The reason we have government is so that freedom and wisdom prevails over strength and oppression.

• Adequate and equitable funding for public schools, outreach programs and libraries so that residents may realize their potential contributions in the civic, economic and personal spheres should be assured by the state, while municipalities are responsible for their operation.

• Change current prison system and criminal law must change

REFERENCE DOCS/LINKS for Participants

Green Party Working Group Reference Docs