Democracy cannot thrive without empowering citizens. In the United States, big business and big government dominate politics thereby limiting most citizens’ political and economic opportunities. To remedy this limitation on democracy, the Green Party offers a comprehensive reform agenda, including:

1. Proportional representation to be realized through choice voting, mixed member voting, party list, and semi-proportional systems.
2. The anachronistic Electoral College should be abolished through a constitutional amendment.
3. Campaign finance reform that includes caps on spending and contributions at national and state levels, or the full public financing of elections.
4. Democracy requires free speech. Therefore, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must enact telecommunications policies that protect the First Amendment rights of viewers and listeners. Moreover, the public should reclaim our public airwaves.
5. Decentralize many state functions in favor of more local participation through, for example, expanded roles for neighborhood boards and associations and citizens’ rights to initiative, referendum, and recall, and more community involvement with nurturing and educating children, preserving natural and cultural resources, and protecting people from crime.
6. Increase voter participation by urging universal voter registration and an election-day holiday.
7. Statehood for the District of Columbia.

The Green Party recognizes the right of self-defense but is committed to non-violence. America now faces the aftermath of the Cold War with its bloated military budgets, dangerous nuclear weapons, and major troop deployments overseas. Reducing militarism and relying on arms policies remains key to enhancing global security. Diplomacy, a strong economy and humane trade relations are key to enhancing global security. With this in mind, the Green Party offers several solutions, including:

1. Cut the military budget by 50% over the next ten years.
2. Begin immediate negotiations to abolish nuclear weapons, and cease all funding for the development, testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons.
3. Implement a peacetime economy.
4. Support democracy and human rights including adequate food, health, housing, social services, and security.
5. All nations should abide by World Court decisions.
6. The economic blockade against Cuba should cease.
7. Improve relations with Mexico with better border policies and reciprocal economic opportunities.
8. Address the needs of political exiles and refugees including Russian Jews, mid-East Kurds, Tibetans, and Haitians.
9. Build on the "Earth Charter" of the 1992 U.N. environmental Earth Summit.

A quality education is central to a strong and diverse community. The Green Party proposes fundamental changes at the national and local levels, within the public and private sectors, and in the classroom and at home.

1. All people have a right to life-long learning.
2. Choices should be expanded to include magnet schools, site-based management, schools within schools, home-based education, bilingual education, continuing education, job retraining, mentoring and apprenticeship programs.
3. Education should be creative, noncompetitive, culturally diverse, and encourage students’ active involvement.
4. Along with interpersonal learning, curricula should utilize distance learning and computer- interactive education.
5. Funding formulas should be adjusted to avoid gross inequalities among districts and schools.
6. We support state-funded day care and after-school programs.
7. Teachers should be given professional salaries and status.
8. Schools should not expose students to commercial advertising.
9. We support tuition-free college and vocational public education.
10. In the absence of tuition-free post secondary education, loans should be repayable in proportion to future earnings.

The U.S. is the only industrialized country without a national heath care system. Unfortunately, our private insurance system often excludes the poor, those with pre-existing conditions, and terminates insurance when the healthy become ill.

1. The Green Party considers access to health care a human right, and thus supports universal coverage of comprehensive benefits.
2. We support a single-payer national insurance program. The program would be publicly funded but privately delivered thereby ensuring competition and choices for patients. This system would save small business an estimated $900 billion.
3. Cost savings would also be achieved through global budgets, national fee schedules, and streamlined bureaucracies.
4. The Medicare Trust Fund would be replenished through cutting waste and fraud, eliminating costly unnecessary services.
5. Medicaid must also be adequately funded.
6. Preventive medicine requiring a healthy environment, better eating habits and adequate exercise will be emphasized.
7. More attention should be paid to women’s health issues such as reproductive health, breast cancer, family planning, and the right to a safe and legal abortion, and to the needs of the handicapped and mentally ill.

An unjust society is an unsustainable society. Poverty, violence and despair undermine our ability to meet modern challenges. Injustice permeates the workplace and the criminal justice system, and current arrangements perpetuate discrimination.

1. Economic and workplace democracy must be expanded in management/labor negotiations.
2. We endorse reform for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). Reform must address large plant closings.
3. The Green Party supports the legal right to organize and join unions with democratically elected leadership.
4. Mediation should be the major form of resolution for workplace disputes.
5. We support the right to strike without being permanently replaced.
6. We must address America’s prison system, which is rife with injustice and discrimination.
7. Responding to crime needs positive approaches that restore communities and build hope, responsibility and a sense of belonging.
8. The cycle of violence must stop. Law enforcement needs to firmly address violent crime, street crime and trafficking in hard drugs.
9. Legislation addressing white-collar crime and corporate crime must be enacted and enforced.
10. We oppose the death penalty.
11. We support the ‘Brady Bill’ and thoughtful, carefully considered Gun Control.
12. We oppose racial profiling and police brutality.
13. We support federal funding for Rape Crisis Centers and Domestic Violence Shelters. We call for rape and domestic violence prevention and educational programs. Stiffer penalties should be levied against those found guilty of domestic violence.
14. Victims’ rights must be protected. This includes victim-impact statements and restitution.
15. Victimless crimes such as the possession of small amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized.
16. Industrial hemp should be legalized.
17. We support affirmative action.
18. We support the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in all areas of life.
19. The federal government must repair its relations with Native Americans. This includes the recognition of the sovereignty of tribal governments, the honoring of our treaty obligations, and the reform of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).
20. Provide affordable housing for all Americans.

A comprehensive environmental program must be implemented to avoid a global ecological crisis. The Green Party offers a policy of conservation, efficiency and clean renewables.

1. We call for energy policies that include funding of energy research, credits for alternative and sustainable energy use such as solar, wind, hydrogen, and biomass, and taxes and fines on energy waste.
2. We urge Congress to immediately address global warming and climate changes. Chlorofluorocarbons, hydrochlorofluorocarbons and other related ozone-depleting substances should be banned as soon as possible.
3. We support the establishment of federal, state and local Groundwater Protection agencies to establish standards for water use and to protect our aquifers from over use, depletion and contamination.
4. Gasoline and other fossil fuels should be gradually phased out. Until then, fuel efficiency standards should be raised (45 mpg by 2005), low-efficiency vehicles should be taxed, and rebates should be offered for high-efficiency vehicles.
5. Enact mandatory carbon-reduction measures and carbon-emissions standards.
6. Rapidly replace harmful, polluting energy systems such as nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Natural gas power plants should be utilized until truly clean renewables are fully implemented.
7. True-cost pricing that reflects the cost of products, including ecological damage and externalities caused during the manufacturing process, must be adopted to achieve accurate financial accounting.
8. Phase out all nuclear technologies such as nuclear reactors, reprocessing facilities, nuclear waste incinerators, food irradiators, and all commercial and military uses of depleted uranium.
9. Implement proper nuclear clean-up and disposal programs.
10. Environmental justice requires that poor communities and minorities should not bear an unfair burden when it comes to the disposal of toxic wastes.
11. Public regulation or public ownership of utilities should be encouraged to advance efficient policies.
12. Protect forests with a ban on industrial timber harvesting on federal and state lands, a ban on clear-cutting, and a reduction of road building on public lands.
13. Ban indiscriminate wildlife "damage control practices" and abolish the Wildlife Services agency.
14. The Green Party opposes the damaging polices of corporate industrial farming that harms animals, damages air and water quality, harms aquatic life, undermines family farming, decreases the nutritional value of food, and genetically alters food without adequate testing.
15. We support the specification and adoption of high standards for organically grown food.

Public and private ownership should be understood within the context of social and ecological responsibility. The Green Party believes that production and commerce can be socially responsible and democratic.

1) We support economic diversity — a combination of private businesses, decentralized democratic cooperatives, publicly owned enterprises, and alternative economic structures that evaluate success in terms of human and ecological needs and profits.

2. Our economic system should emulate natural systems by recycling and designing closed-loop systems for durable goods — to be perpetually reassembled and disassembled.
3. We challenge the propriety and equity of "corporate welfare" in the form of tax breaks, subsidies, payments, grants, bailouts, the unenforcement of laws and regulations, and access to our public resources such as land, forests, minerals, intellectual property and government-created research.
4. Price fixing and anti-competitive actions of large corporations should be confronted.
5. Corporate executives should be held personally liable for harm that results from their decisions.
6. We should establish a living wage for all persons.
7. We encourage more community involvement through town meetings, locally owned small businesses, local production and consumption, consumer co-ops, credit unions, incubators, and micro-loan funds.
8. We oppose the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and the World Trade Organization (WTO), because they threaten the constitutional power of Congress and limit the participation of citizens.
9. The Green Party wants an effective form of the Tobin tax that calls for a small sales tax on cross-border currency transactions. Even a small tax of .01% to .05% would raise $75 billion and $250 billion annually that can be utilized for reducing world poverty, funding international peacekeeping, and addressing environmental problems.
10. Federal, state and local governments should provide financial assistance to family farmers.
11. We support an extension of the "Community Reinvestment Act" that assists with housing loans, small business loans, loans to minority-owned businesses, community development projects, and affordable housing.
12. We endorse wide-ranging insurance industry regulation.
13. We support strong anti-trust regulation.
14. The Federal Trade Commission should cautiously evaluate and guide mergers wherein the combined sales of the companies exceed $1 billion.
15. We recommend the establishment of a federal Technology Assessment Office to examine the impact and prospects of technology on our quality of life and environmental health.
16. We advocate higher taxes for mega-corporations, a reduced military budget, and entitlement reductions for those who can afford it.
17. We support increased funding for Social Security, public housing, higher education, public transportation, environmental protection, Medicaid, supplementary security income, children, the elderly, and the disabled. The Green Party opposes the privatization of Social Security.