Key Values of the Greens
If you care about:
  • your future and your children's future
  • the environment
  • social justice
  • democracy
  • peace and nonviolence
...welcome to the Green movement!

People around the world are joining the Greens to bring a new vision directly onto the political stage. Moving beyond old political boundaries, the Green movement is based on timeless values: living in harmony with the land, its creatures, and each other.

If you agree that we've got to change our way of thinking and our actions to preserve this planet, you are probably Green.

Green Party support has come from people of every political leaning, including many who had given up on the political process as a way of creating meaningful change.

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The Crisis of Industrial Society

The industrial society sees the universe as a mechanical system. It sees the human body as a machine, life as a competitive struggle, and calls the waste of scarce resources, "progress." And it will sacrifice anything--the planet's health, our children's future--in its quest for unlimited economic growth.

This warped vision has a corrosive and disastrous effect on our moral and political systems. We've lost our sense of place and community to a materialist, fast-food culture. And military madness and environmental destruction threaten the continued existence of most higher life forms, including human society.

The Green Vision

All things are connected in the web of life. Awareness of the interdependence between the world and its creatures is the root of Green philosophy. We are a part of nature--not above it--and the future of our society depends on our learning to live wisely in our fragile home.

The Green program is guided by this global vision, expressed in ten interconnected Key Values, the basis of Green politics in the United States.

1. Ecological wisdom
The Greens recognize that the Earth sustains all life forms. Whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves.
2. Social justice
Greens find the worldwide growth of poverty and injustice unacceptable and are working for a world in which all can fulfill their potential regardless of their sex, race, citizenship, or sexual preference.
3. Grassroots democracy
The powerless suffer the most from resource exhaustion and toxic pollution. Greens believe in direct participation by all citizens in the environmental, political, and economic decisions that affect their lives.
4. Nonviolence
Greens reject violence as a way of settling disputes--it is shortsighted, morally wrong, and ultimately self-defeating. We are working to end war forever.
5. Decentralization
Power and responsibility must be restored to local communities, within an overall framework of ecologically sound, socially just values and life-styles.
6. Community-based economics
Greens seek a new economics based upon the natural limits of the Earth, which meets the basic needs of everyone on the planet, and is under democratic, decentralized community control.
7. Feminism
The Green movement is profoundly inspired by feminism. The ethics of cooperation and understanding must replace the values of domination and control.
8. Respect for diversity
We honor the biological diversity of the Earth, and the cultural, sexual, and spiritual diversity of Earth's people. We aim to reclaim this country's finest ideals: popular democracy, the dignity of the individual, and liberty and justice for all.
9. Personal and global responsibility
Greens express commitment to global sustainability and international justice both through political solidarity and personal life-styles based on sufficiency and living lightly.
10. Future focus
Like the Iroquois Indians, Greens seek a society where the interests of the seventh generation are considered equal to the interests of the present. We must reclaim the future for ourselves and our children.