EXCERPTS FROM THE GREEN PARTY PLATFORM
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The Green Party of California
P.O. Box 480578
Los Angeles, CA  90048
(213) 31-Green
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Democracy and Electoral Reform

A true multi-party system of government with proportional 
representation and multi-member districts at all levels will 
return power to citizens.  All campaigns should be publicly 
funded, with limits on spending and advertising and qual access 
by all parties to the media for political debate.  Make all 
records of government officials public.  Decentralize money and 
power at all levels of government;  return power to California 
communities lost due to revenue limits (Proposition 13).


Education

Quality public education is the basis of a caring, democratic 
society. Quality can be fostered by greater variety of choices 
and full, democratic participation by parents, teachers, and 
students.  The form and content of education should reflect the 
skills and characteristics needed to create a sustainable, 
multicultural society.  These include high self-esteem, social 
skills, literacy, a second language, conflict resolution skills, 
critical thinking, parenting, and an understanding of ecology, 
democracy, history, science, and technology.  Schools and 
colleges should be models of social responsibility, particularly 
in investment, hiring, community relations, and research.


Health Care

Health care should be equally available to everyone, through 
public financing.  Emphasize total health and prevention over 
symptoms suppression and drugs.  Support better prenatal care.  
Patients should have the right to choose their own forms of 
treatment and to see evaluations of health care providers.  
communities, through elected boards, should decide how to spend 
local health funds.


Recycling/Waste Reduction/Toxics

Our motto must be Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.  Sustainable resource use 
requires an end to subsidies to resource extractors.  The full 
cost of extraction should be included in the prices of products.  
The government should provide a recycling model and a market for 
recycled products.  Reduce unnecessary packaging and encourage 
packaging that simplifies reuse and recycling.  support research 
to replace toxic substances used in manufacturing, and 
neutralize, at the point of production, those that cannot be 
eliminated.  Ban the exporting of toxics.  Producers must be 
responsible for the costs of health effects and cleanups;  the 
legal burden of proof should be on toxic producers rather than 
the public.  Ban CFCs and replace them with existing 
alternatives.


Sustainable Energy/Public Transit

Conserve energy.  Require efficiency of vehicles, appliances, 
building, and industrial machines.  Phase out fossil fuels and 
nuclear power;  switch to cleaner fuels such as hydrogen and 
alcohol, and renewable energy such as solar, biomass, and wind 
power.  Reduce dependence on cars through support of public 
transit, particularly light and heavy rail;  avoid building 
freeways.  Encourage multi-use zoning and other planning methods 
that reduce commuting.  Oppose offshore and Alaskan oil drilling.


Ecologically Sustainable Agriculture

Convert to methods of farming and distribution that preserve the 
soil, conserve water and energy, reduce pollution and dependence 
on oil, and produce high-quality, healthy food.  Support and 
retrain farmers who convert to organic methods.  Ban chemical 
pesticides, animal growth hormones, and agricultural genetic 
engineering, and stop irradiating food.  End the spraying of 
poisons on communities.  Ban the exporting of poisons and the 
importing of food and spraying with banned chemicals.  Require 
healthful, humane treatment of farm animals, and stop 
subsidizing the cattle and poultry industries.  End subsidies to 
agribusiness, including water rights, grazing on public lands and 
industry control of university research.  Impose pollution fees 
on chemical fertilizers.


Economic Justice

The tax structure should promote economic democracy:  reduce 
income taxes on low and moderate incomes;  reduce sales taxes;  
increase taxes on land and resource use and on unearned income;  
and return unspent public funds as a citizen's dividend.  Include 
the true cost of pollution, depletion, disposal, and health 
effects in the prices of products, thereby making non-polluting, 
safe products more competitive.  Assist businesses and employees 
to convert from a war economy to a sustainable peace economy.  
Make decent housing affordable to all.  Reduce housing costs by 
discouraging speculation in land through shifting taxes from 
building to land, and by placing low income housing in public 
land trusts.  Provide basic shelter, health care, and social 
services to the homeless for immediate relief.  Create jobs 
through job sharing and encouraging small businesses and 
cooperatives.  Emphasize training and stable employment and 
equality for workers, rather than maximizing profits.


Pro Choice

Women have a fundamental right to decide if and when to have 
children.  Abortion must be safe, legal, private, and available 
to all women.  Emphasize prevention of unwanted pregnancies 
through support of family planning, sex education, and public 
health care.  Simplify the adoption process and support family-
oriented measures such as child care, preschool, and school lunch 
programs.


Human Rights/Native Americans

We support the equal rights of all regardless of age, race, 
gender, disability, language, religion, ethnic or national 
origin, or sexual orientation to equal opportunity and equal 
justice, including the right to housing, child care, education, 
employment, child custody, self-determination, respect and 
dignity and participation in decision-making.  We oppose censorship
and the civil abuses of the "war on drugs".  The federal 
government should acknowledge injustices done to indigenous 
peoples;  recognize the sovereignty of Indian nations, including 
the right to full control of tribal lands;  and respect the 
rights of tribes to their ancestral remains. 


Disarmament

U.S. foreign policy should be based on diplomacy and self-
determination, not military intervention, threats, and 
subversion.  Defense spending should be reduced by 50 percent 
immediately, which will create a large peace dividend.  Close all 
foreign military bases.  Use U.S. troops abroad only as part of 
U.N. peace-keeping forces.  Stop production, testing, and 
storage of nuclear weapons and end international shipments of 
plutonium.  No first strike use of nuclear weapons.  Keep weapons 
out of space.  California must convert to an ecologically 
sustainable peacetime economy.  Our public universities should 
not oversee weapons and other military research.


Forests

Enact "Enactment of Forests Forever" (Proposition 130), a Green 
Party initiative would have meant protection of California's 
small remaining stands of ancient forests and preserved jobs.  
Carry on work by advocating a ban on clearcutting.  Restructure 
our land use policies to be sustainable.  Retrain logging and 
mill workers.  Reforest.  Replace -- develop wood substitutes 
such as hemp.  Ban the importing of beef and wood products from 
vital forests.  Use foreign aid and reduction of Third World 
debts to encourage true land reform and promote sustainable-yield 
harvesting of indigenous products.


Ocean Protection

Sign the Law of the Sea Treaty that calls for global sharing of 
ocean resources.  Protect our oceans by adopting The Ocean 
Protection Act (H.R. 3751), which would ban new offshore oil 
drilling in the 145 miles off the California coast.  Protect 
marine mammals by banning drift-net fishing in our oceans and the 
importing of products from countries that use drift nets.  
Enforce the Marine Mammal Protection Act, and adopt the Boxer 
bill requiring labelling of tuna caught through "purse seine" 
fishing.