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Third Global Greens Congress, meeting in Senegal, passes statement of support for the Occupy Movement, Arab Spring, and other democratic movements
US Greens attend the meeting, which also passes “Rio+20 Summit” resolution in advance of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development
The third Global Greens Congress, meeting in Dakar, Senegal, last weekend, has adopted a statement of support for popular democratic movements around the world, including Arab Spring, the Spanish Indignants, and the Occupy Movement. The statement is appended below.
More than 400 Greens representing 76 countries including the US met in Dakar from March 29 to April 1 for the third Global Greens Congress . Dakar was chosen to highlight the growing presence of Green Parties in Africa and the strength of the Green Party (Fédération Démocratique des Ecologiste) in Senegal “Congratulations to Senegalese Green Party Leader for becoming Senegal’s Minister of Environment,” African Greens, April 5, .
“The Global Greens Congress in Dakar was a truly invigorating and inspiring event; invigorating due to all the great discussions and workshops with some of the 400 or so Greens present, and inspiring because of the real successes of Greens in Europe, Asia and Africa,” said Mr. Marsh, California Green, elected Global Greens Congress delegate, and a member of the US Green Party’s International Committee. “Congratulations to the people of Senegal for achieving a truly democratic presidential election and succession just before our Congress began, and to the Senegalese Green Party for a fantastic job of organizing under the uncertainty leading up to the election.”
The Global Greens Congress also passed by consensus the “Rio+20 Summit” resolution in preparation for the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, to be held June 20-22 in Brazil. The resolution addresses the need to move toward a Green economy around the world, to curb that advance of global warming and provide for the development and sharing of green technologies, food sovereignty, employment in Green jobs, and other urgent goals. The resolution is based in part on the “Green New Deal” agenda supported by many US Green candidates.
The next Congress will be held in Europe, either in later 2016 or early 2017. Previous Global Greens Congresses were held in Brazil in 2008 (http://www.globalgreens.org/brazil2008) and Australia in 2001 (http://www.globalgreens.org/canberra2001). Before the Global Greens existed, a non-delegated planetary meeting of Greens was held in Brazil in 1992, in conjunction with the UN Conference on Environment and Development, of which the Rio+20 Summit is the next step.
Global Greens Statement on the Occupy Movement
April 1, 2012
The Global Greens applaud grassroots movements for self-determination and justice. We view with hope and admiration, recent such movements that are sprouting up around the world, from the Arab Spring to the Spanish Indignants to the Occupy Movement worldwide.
Power structures that are unjust and out-dated are being rejected in every nation, and people arising in one part of our world are giving hope to people in others.
But to bring about truly transformative change, social movements need to affect both attitudes and public policy, and to affect public policy, one has to affect politics. This is a long and worthy process, but one that doesn’t come without risks.
The Occupy Movement is by nature and design an apartisan movement, that is rightfully distrustful of politics as usual. The role of money and corruption in politics is deep and pervasive around the planet, and too often traditional, establishment political parties simply try to ignore or co-opt social movements, rather than empower them.
Like the Occupy Movement, the Green Party has a deep commitment to internal democracy. We believe everyone’s voice must be heard, and that there is a wisdom inherent in our diversity that makes us stronger when we listen to it. Like the Occupy Movement, Greens also believe we have to practice what we preach in our own lives and organizations, in order to create the world we want to live in — in other words, to ‘be the change’ we want to see, including practicing a deep and unshakeable commitment to non-violence.
In the case of the Green Party, in country after county for the last forty years, social movement activists who were not initially interested in electoral politics, but who found that the establishment political parties were unresponsive to their concerns about peace, justice, democracy and the environment, eventually concluded that they needed to start their own, new Green political parties, rather than accept the limitations imposed upon them by the establishment parties. This step was often unanticipated by those who eventually came to this conclusion. But in retrospect, this was a natural evolution from pure activism, to seeking an electoral complement to that pure activism.
Without strong social movements pushing upon politicians, politicians are unlikely to make the changes we need, and we must not sacrifice activism to only do electoral politics. But at the same time, without an electoral complement to social movements, transformative change can often be very difficult to sustain.
Of course, no one political party has a monopoly on good ideas, and we don’t suggest that the Occupy Movement should tie itself to any particular party or parties. But we do believe that it is absolutely critical that strategies to increase democracy and representation should be high on the list of the strategies of the Occupy Movement, because with a greater voice for the people, the other demands of the movement are more likely to occur, and to occur more quickly.
Ultimately greater self-governance, where all people have a say in the decisions that affect them, from the local to the global, is our best hope for humanity — and by extension, for other life on this planet, as the growing and kindred Rights of Nature movement is demonstrating.
With this in mind, the Global Green Party movement stands with people all over our planet who seek that greater voice. Because as we know from our planet’s ecology, all of our fates are inseparable and intertwined.
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Filed under: 3rd party, grassroots democracy, Green Party, international politics, News, Occupy Wall Street, politics, progressive politics Tagged: | arab spring, global, Green Party, International, occupy, Occupy movement
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