WASHINGTON, D.C. — On Labor Day 2016, Green Party leaders and candidates called for living wages, Single-Payer health care, cancellation of student debt, defeat of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a Green New Deal to end growing economic inequality, and conversion to a system based on ecological economics.
“The United States desperately needs a party for working people, a party that rejects corporate contributions and influence and serves ‘We The People’ instead of the One Percent,” said Dr. Margaret Flowers, Green candidate for the U.S. Senate from Maryland.
Green presidential nominee Jill Stein published a Labor Day statement: “Labor Day: Time to Reflect on Economic Reality and Remake Our World“.
Greens said that the two established parties cannot claim to represent working Americans and urged voters to be skeptical of populist campaign-season rhetoric from Hillary Clinton, given her record as First Lady and U.S. Senator, and from billionaire real-estate mogul Donald Trump.
Green Party leaders said that both of the major parties would continue to lead the U.S. in the same dangerous economic direction, towards greater oligarchy, less security for working people, and a shredded safety net for the needy.
“We’re not a party of millionaires and billionaires. Greens are working people. We’re struggling to make ends meet. We demand wages and the economic means to enable all of us to live comfortably and raise a family,” said Gary Stuard, Green candidate for the U.S. House, District 32 in Dallas, Texas.
The Green Party and Green candidates support:
Livable wages, especially the demand for a $15 hourly minimum (“15 Now”)
Single-Payer national health care (Medicare For All)
Fair trade instead of “free” trade: rejection of the TPP; renegotiation of NAFTA and other pacts to guarantee jobs, protect working people, and defend the environment and public health in the U.S. and other signatory countries
Preserving and strengthening Social Security: raising the income cap on contributions from the wealthy to offset projected shortfalls instead of reduction and privatization schemes that force working people to gamble their retirement savings in the high-risk Wall Street casino
Workplace democracy and organizing rights: strengthening the right of workers to organize and hold membership in democratic unions; repeal of Taft-Hartley Act restrictions.
The Green New Deal: a national plan to stop the advance of global warming and invest in a sustainable future by employing millions of Americans in public works and other projects to build a Green economy ( http://www.gp.org/green_new_deal )
Ecological economics: A new system that rejects capitalism, which is not ecologically sound, socially just, or democratic, and that contains built-in structures that advance injustices
“[W]e will build an economy based on large-scale green public works, municipalization, and workplace and community democracy… This model of worker and community empowerment will ensure that decisions that greatly affect our lives are made in the interests of our communities, not at the whim of centralized power structures of state administrators or of capitalist CEOs and distant boards of directors.” (Green Party platform, http://www.gp.org/economic_justice_and_sustainability_2016 )