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John --
The Green Party: Leading the way on social
progress
“Marijuana should be legalized, though its legal use should be
restricted to adults.”
That’s what the very first platform of the Illinois Green Party
declared – in March 2000. As Illinoisans get ready to
celebrate the legalization of recreational cannabis in Illinois in
2020, it bears recalling that Greens were pushing for this 20 years
ago. Marijuana legalization was a mainstay of Rich Whitney’s 2006
Green Party campaign for governor, and the calls for legalization,
decriminalization of drug offenses generally, and other sweeping
criminal justice reforms have been central to many Green campaigns
ever since then.
It took the corporate political parties nearly 20 more years of
pressure and persuasion to finally come around to that common-sense
position (and the bill signed into law still had its shortcomings).
They were too beholden to the covert racism of the “war on drugs” and
the influence of the prison-industrial complex to end prohibition of
cannabis. They finally came around only when the crushing costs of
maintaining the system of mass incarceration helped push them into
it.
That same first platform of the ILGP also called for “universal
entitlement for all residents to comprehensive health care benefits
including preventive, curative, rehabilitative and long-term care,”
through “single-payer health insurance, publicly administered and
funded, delivered by a non-profit system.” Today, of course, the
demand for “improved Medicare for all” is supported by a strong
majority of the American people and is grudgingly making headway even
within the Democratic Party (albeit painstakingly slow and with
innumerable efforts to water it down) against the powerful health
insurance lobby and its allies. Once again, the Green Party was way
ahead of the curve.
We also called for the passage of living wage laws – a forerunner
of today’s “fight for 15.”
There hasn’t been very much social progress in the U.S. in recent
years – there has been a lot more regress – but where progress has
occurred, the Green Party has been on the cutting edge. Consider
marriage equality. In 2004, Jason West, the Green Party mayor of New
Paltz, New York, performed the first “out” gay and lesbian marriages,
despite being charged with a criminal offense for doing so. He stated
at the time: “Just wait 10 or 20 years and this will be normal.”
We have been in the forefront of the struggle for ballot integrity
and fairer voting systems like ranked choice voting – now slowly but
surely coming into use at the state and local level.
We have long been among the loudest voices sounding the alarm on
the climate crisis, and the broader environmental crisis (now
recognized as a mass extinction event) from our very inception. Though
some try to downplay it, the concept of the Green New Deal came from
the Green Party. In December 2005, in accepting the Greens nomination
for governor, Rich Whitney declared: “I will fight for a ‘New Deal’
for sustainable energy development in Illinois.” The comprehensive
federal Green New Deal proposal of the Green Party also
greatly predates the watered down version now promoted by some
Democrats. And we are still the only party that recognizes the central
importance of putting an end to U.S. militarism and war if we are to
win the struggle for a healthy eco-system.
We could cite a number of other examples of how we understood, long
ago, the direction society had to go in order to create a better
future for humankind and all life on the planet.
So why does the Green Party consistently lead the way on social
progress? First, the Green Party is based on values and
principles – our Ten Key Values. Most Democratic and Republican
candidates are political prostitutes for the plutocracy, trying to
appeal to voters with sloganeering, bombast and appeals to
emotion.
Second, the Green Party and its candidates categorically
reject corporate campaign funding and financial support,
direct and indirect. We run to serve the good of the people, the
working class and the underserved, not corporate profiteers. We are
not for sale and cannot be bought. We are serious about building a
government of, by, and for the people, not government to the highest
bidder.
Third, the Green Party is a movement-based party.
We are involved in the day-to-day struggles of the peace,
environmental, labor, human rights and social justice movements, the
movements for single-payer health care, eco-socialism and a solidarity
economy, education and tax reform in Illinois, the growing movement
for monetary reform – and much more. We aspire to represent
these movements on the electoral field, so our platform is informed by
these movements.
The failings of our social system and government today are not due
to a lack of solutions. For the most part, we know what the solutions
are, because these movements have already done the work of figuring
out how to solve the problems they are struggling against.
What is lacking is not solutions but the political will to
implement them.
That is why it is so vitally important to support the one political
party that uncompromisingly stands up for those movements, the one
party that stands firmly for genuine social progress. If the people
leave politics to the powerful few, the powerful few will continue to
dominate.
2020 will be an important year for the Illinois Green Party. At the
top of the ticket, we face the monumental task of getting our
presidential and VP candidate on the ballot, in a state with one of
the most oppressive ballot access laws in the country. At the local
level, we have some outstanding candidates running for The Metropolitan
Water Reclamation District in Cook County, and we expect to run a
number of competitive campaigns for county office in Southern Illinois
and elsewhere.
We can make some breakthroughs in 2020 – but we need your help to
do it. A political party is only as strong as its members make it, by
what they do or fail to do. Here are some things you can do to make
2020 a banner year for the Green Party:
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Become a duespaying member of the Illinois Green
Party. Becoming a duespaying member is a requirement for
participating in our decision-making. For “us” to succeed,
you need to be an active part of “us.” We are not
asking a lot – standard dues are just $60 a year, and only $12 a year
for persons of low-income – but we do ask you to make this modest
contribution to help our efforts to build a better future for all
Illinoisans.
-
Support our statewide petition drive for ballot
access. We’ve done it before, but it is always a huge uphill
climb to collect at least 50,000 signatures from registered voters. We
will have more details forthcoming as we get closer to the March 24,
2020 start date. Your volunteering to collect at least a few
signatures is critical to our success. Meanwhile, you can help us get
a head start by donating to our ballot access fund, to help us
supplement our volunteer efforts with paid petitioners.
-
Get involved! Think about running for local office or
volunteering for a campaign. Help promote and participate in Green
Party events. Contact us, either through your nearest chapter, or by contacting [email protected].
Here’s to building a stronger Green Party, and winning some
more races, in 2020!
Ongoing/Reminders:
- Please sign and share this petition
calling upon Governor Pritzker “to use his authority as governor of
Illinois to impose an immediate ban on the granting of all new
drilling permits for oil and natural gas that use any and all forms of
hydraulic fracturing.”
- Please support the Embassy
Protectors Defense Committee.
- DuPage Greens January Meeting, Wed. Jan.
8th, 7-8:30pm, DuPage Greens Office, 213 S. Wheaton Ave, Wheaton, IL,
Main Floor Conference Room, Facebook
Event. The proposed agenda will be emailed to members prior to the
meeting. Note that our meetings are always held at 7 pm on the second
Wednesday of the month. If you cannot make it, please send us a
message to request an update.
Illinois Green Party Outreach
http://www.ilgp.org/
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