greenpolitics.ca

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Like the struggle to protect the environment, this blog has always been about democracy. Democracy is never served by covert decision-making, but perhaps even more important is that the environment and non-human species will never protected by manipulative, self-serving, and secretive human-centric politics. The best of greenpolitics.ca is now available in book format
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Years of activism have convinced me that we are not going to protect the environment, slow down global warming, or achieve world peace and a just society, unless we have a biocentric and participatory democracy that gives people the right to decide issues that impact their lives, and which respects Nature. We need a new kind of politics. We need Green politics. Here is the full text of that speech.

As polls show public support for the Green Party of Canada rising steadily to between 10% and 12% nationally and up to 15% here in BC, the tension between possible electoral success and the party’s set of basic Green political values becomes even more apparent. The problem is that most party members have no knowledge or understanding of core Green values.

This is the second of a two-part series on restructuring Green political parties in accordance with Green values. The first part of this series considered the democratic deficiencies present in centralised Green parties. This second part presents a non-hierarchical structural model that offers many advantages to revitalise Green parties as dynamic centres of citizen activism.

Despite the intent to create a more democratic political process, many Green parties from the start adopted the same ‘top-down’ hierarchical structure as mainstream political parties. Their leadership progressively sealed themselves off from the party’s grass roots, and in many cases membership and fundraising declined precipitously. This analysis looks at why.

Green politics is not just about the environment. It is far more holistic than that. Green political philosophy is based on an egalitarian, anti-authoritarian, eco-centric, environmentally concerned and decidedly democratic approach to governance. Green principles must not be forgotten by Greens everywhere.

There are basically two kinds of political and social leader — those who seek power over others, and those who lead by example and empowerment. Green politics was never supposed to imitate the ‘top-down’ authoritarianism of the mainstream political parties. Green politics rests on the belief that everyone in a free and democratic society has the right to voice and vote in decision-making.

We cannot continue to flounder around with the outmoded ideas of the past. Our very survival is at stake: the future of this planet and the vitality and well-being of the Green movement in Canada, is on the line. The goal of this discussion paper is to raise the prospect of achieving a regionalized structure for the Green movement, one that will allow it to evolve along fully democratic lines. A secondary aim to outline a new concept of federal organisation, one that can be applied to all national Canadian institutions.