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 Dear Friend, Please read this email. I do need your help! As we close out our first quarter of 2024 I hate to sound like a broken record. Worse, I hate to sound like a bean counter at a multinational corporation. But financial returns to Elections Canada do matter. Making sure we are running in the black does matter. Certain economic realities are shared between the business world and politics. But the reasons the Green Party exists have nothing in common with a for-profit corporation. Greens stand alone as a political party, less interested in power for its own sake than in bringing that power to the powerless. We exist to be a force for transformational societal change. Every day, Greens fight against nearly impossible odds to make the changes the world needs. We confront the deep injustices embedded in our society. We celebrate and elevate that which makes us a fairer, more decent community of communities. We need your support to do it. I believe Canadians share a set of common values. While the U.S. embraces the narrative of “rugged individualism” – everyone for themselves – Canadians overwhelmingly want a society where we care for each other. A society that measures our success by how we treat our most vulnerable citizens or most endangered species. Decades ago I was on a national tour with Maude Barlow and US economist David Korten, confronting the threat of transnational corporate rule. And Korten said, “we are no longer in a contest between “isms” not between socialism and communism, or capitalism. We are in a struggle between life and money.” Our extractivist capitalist economy turns living things into dead and commodified things. Living forests to pulp and tissue paper, living fish to fish sticks. Our work is to shift our society to one that flourishes when we increase the health of the living world. We do this by shifting our economy to one that more closely resembles a healthy ecosystem. At COP28 in Dubai last December all nations on earth, including Canada, called for a “circular economy.” This is huge. A circular economy, like a healthy ecosystem, has no waste. All parts of the economy create new wealth and health. In a circular economy, we convert vicious cycles to virtuous circles. People need hope and nothing inspires optimism like being able to see and describe a viable future. We have critical by-elections coming up soon, in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg. We need to invest in communication tools to share a clear and detailed vision of the world we want. We must be able to communicate effectively why our democracy and our planet need to build and grow the Green movement. We have an enormous opportunity to make deep and transformative changes in the next 18 months, but to do so, we really need your help. Can you do two things to help right now?
For us to make all the difference in the world, we need to pull together and believe we can! Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Elizabeth
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