GPCA Platform

Peace & Nonviolence





This category of our political program addresses a broad spectrum of the causes and effects of violence: from individual acts of violence to institutionalized acts of violence, and beyond, into our foreign policies that, too often, lead to armed conflict. The Green Party advocates a fundamental change in the way we socialize our citizens, structure our institutions, and relate to the planet and its people. Means and ends are inseparable. If a nation, and a people, prepare for violence, they will create a violent world. Conversely, if they prepare for peace, that is what they will achieve. Peace is not just the absence of violence, it is a willingness to resolve conflict in a constructive manner with a spirit of good will and respect.

Green principles oppose violence in all its forms: assaults against individuals, families, nations, wildlife and the environment. We also recognize that threats, intimidation and fear can be as destructive as physical violence. On the personal as well as the national level, means can never be separated from ends.

American society has an historical legacy of violence that results in a widespread acceptance of violent methods. This is reflected in high violent crime rates, the highest handgun murder rate in the world, a propensity for military solutions, and a patriarchal desire to dominate through threats and outright force.

Domestic violence is becoming more recognized and is being addressed, but it continues to linger as a major problem in our society. As with most acts of violence, the causes are known and the solutions are attainable.

Despite arguments about the second amendment, it is obvious that the easy availability of guns contributes to violent crime. The more guns there are in society, the more they will be used. Hunters, gun enthusiasts and those needing personal protection can be accommodated with minimal inconvenience while eliminating assault rifles and other such weapons whose primary purpose is to kill people.

Governments have a special responsibility to set good examples through their policies and actions. We, therefore, oppose the death penalty because executions are motivated more by vengeance than by justice. It has also been proven that executions are carried out in disproportionate numbers among minorities and the poor. More evidence is mounting that shows innocent people are being sentenced to death due to inadequate defense, false testimony from other criminals seeking reduction of their sentence, and over-zealous prosecution. Executing criminals has not proven to be an effective deterrent to crime, and it does not address the underlying causes of crime: lack of economic opportunity and education, drug use, child abuse, etc. In California, 125 organizations and religious groups have called for a moratorium on executions, as well as the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights. We recognize the need to protect society from violent criminals, but support a basic right to life and humane treatment. The lengthy appeals process is itself inhumane as well as costly. We also have a responsibility as a society to comply with international treaties regarding treatment of prisoners, both civilian and military. Yet we have a prison system that brutalizes prisoners, which hardens rather than rehabilitates them. And we have a system driven more by private profit than by penitence.

The role of violence in the media needs to be addressed because scientific studies have shown that an environment of unchallenged violence is conducive to the practice of violence. We need to reduce the tools and glorification of violence, keeping in mind content related to the freedom of speech and artistic expression protected by the First Amendment.

Violent individuals need to be encouraged, counseled, and taught how to best cope with their angry feelings in a therapeutic environment. Mental health, medical and health care services need to be provided as needed. Attacks on the vulnerable, such as the elderly, need to be addressed through victim restitution. Addressing gang violence requires community-based programs and public education.

Violence due to militarism and nationalistic actions is covered in other Platform Planks such as Disarmament and Foreign Policy.

The Green Party proposes these actions to counter patterns of violence:

Expand mass media campaigns to educate the public on the presence and long-term damage of domestic violence. Provide early screening and prevention training for those families at high risk, and provide more intervention and treatment for both victims and perpetrators of domestic violence.

Register all legal firearms, especially handguns and other concealable weapons. Strengthen the ban on sales of automatic and semi-automatic weapons.
Teach nonviolence and peaceful conflict resolution at all school levels. Abolish corporal punishment in schools since to use it is to teach violence. Provide training in nonviolent parenting skills.
Provide adequate funding to remedy the conditions that spawn violent crime. Such funding is economically more effective than the cost of trials and prisons. [see Criminal Justice plank]
Develop police training and procedures that stress the handling of situations through mediation and negotiation, while minimizing the necessity for armed confrontations.
Support incarceration rather than executions, with the provision that dangerous criminals will not be released as long as they pose a threat to society or other individuals. We support the growing call for a moratorium on executions.
Alter the disposition to violent behavior by boycotting the sale of items that promote violence such as media that display content with gratuitous violence, and by taxing the instruments of violence such as weapons and products generally adjudged to evoke violence that feature frequent beatings, keeping in mind content related to the freedom of speech and artistic expression protected by the First Amendment. Impose a high enough tax (at least 50% of cost or profit) to deter violence. The generated funds should be used to aid the victims of violence and to help fund counseling for the perpetrators of violence.
Advocate counseling/education programs/anger management/medical care/healthcare as appropriate in a therapeutic environment for victims of violence and for the perpetrators of violent acts according to their separate issues-- to include special communities like children, LGBTs, adolescents, men, women, seniors, ethnic minorities, the disabled, veterans, drug abusers/users, single parents, parents with jobs, the suicidal, and the homeless.
Promote less media glorification/sensationalism of violence, for example, through multiple non-Governmental sensitive rating systems, parental controls, and education.
Address gang violence through community-based programs and public education

Update adopted: May 17 2009

Militarism is harmful because it consumes both natural and human resources which could be better employed in useful endeavors. People have a basic right to decide how they will serve their society and contribute to it. This choice should be based on the individual's religious, moral and ethical beliefs.

Today, young men are still required by law to register with the Selective Service System. Even though actual conscription has not been used since the Vietnam War, the military's propaganda ("Be All That You Can Be"), and its invasive recruitment tactics in schools, have resulted in a so-called all volunteer force that is, in effect, a "poverty draft." Young men and women are enticed into the armed forces as an escape from poverty and may then find themselves obligated to fight wars that they don't believe in, or that they find morally objectionable.

The Green Party urges measures to counter the injustice inherent in militarism:

Abolish the Selective Service System.
Respect the right of all citizens in and out of the military to follow their principles in claiming conscientious objector status. Congress should monitor the military's procedures in processing CO claims.
Give equal time to opposing viewpoints in any school where military recruiters have access to students. This will allow students to make informed choices.
Deny access to student names from driver license records or school lists by military recruiters, unless the students, or their parents in the case of minors, sign a release authorizing access.
Hold military recruitment materials to the same "truth in advertising" standards that are required of businesses.

Green values emphasize the sanctity of life and the peaceful resolution of conflicts. Disarmament isn't just a desirable end result of these goals, it is also an important step toward attaining them.

Even though the cold war ended over a decade ago, our level of armament still grossly exceeds any reasonable estimate of what we need for national defense. These weapons' destructive capacity, if they were used, would guarantee an unimaginably horrific toll in human life and environmental damage that would affect many generations to come. When the USSR dissolved as a single sovereign entity, the rationalization justifying these weapons of mass destruction became obsolete. To date, we have conducted 1,054 nuclear weapons tests. This is more than the other six known nuclear- capable nations combined.

The continuing propensity for war, and the huge international arms market, has resulted in increased global conflicts. While such conflict decreased through the early 1990s, to a low of 20 conflicts in 1997, a sharp increase in recent years now shows 38 such conflicts in progress at the beginning of 2002. Many of these are caused by the collapse of nation states to where they cannot provide for the basic needs of their citizens. The resulting emigration of desperate people to neighboring states causes ethnic, social and religious conflicts, as well as strain on the resources of those neighbors. All of this perpetuates a general instability that easily leads to armed conflict.

Our continuing reliance on military solutions is reflected in the number of international agreements our government has refused to sign or failed to ratify. This not only includes agreements designed to reduce weapons, but also those aimed at improving the general human conditions. The list of unsigned or unratified agreements includes: Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines; Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty; Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty II; Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II; Kyoto Accord; Convention on the Rights of Children; Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women; and the Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. The current Administration has also announced its intentions to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.

The Green Party advocates progress towards disarmament by the following means:

Make a realistic assessment of our national defense needs. We must stop the research, development, testing and deployment of offensive weapons - especially nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. We must halt the international exchange of nuclear technologies and materials.
Immediately ban international arms sales, and enact a unilateral reduction in our current armaments stockpiles.
Set up a multi-level international peace-keeping force consisting of citizen groups as well as the U.N. Initiate international cooperation in the resolution of conflicts to prevent them from escalating into warfare.
Escalate talks with the former USSR republics to account for, and eliminate, their stockpiles of weapons - especially weapons grade plutonium. We call on the world community to assist in alternative job programs for weapons designers so they aren't tempted to sell weapons material.
Put our efforts into preventing conflicts and promoting stability by joining the rest of the world in signing, ratifying and enforcing the various international agreements that address these issues.
Achieve nuclear abolition by enforcing the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty. Article VI of this treaty mandates the elimination of nuclear weapons through a treaty on "general and complete disarmament... under international control." Ensure U.S. compliance.
Encourage local communities and governments to establish legally binding nuclear-free zones.

Green Parties around the world stand for international trade policies that respect the planet's ecology, peoples' social needs and the self-determination of communities, regions and nations.

The implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) constitutes a major step toward internationalization of commerce that, in many instances, supersedes local and national governments' authority. GATT's World Trade Organization and NAFTA's Trilateral Commission allow transnational corporations to circumvent national environmental, health, and labor standards and laws. Corporations characterize these laws, intended to protect people and the planet, as impediments to trade. For example, NAFTA's Chapter 11 allows for corporations to gain restitution if their assets are expropriated (taken by a government). However, corporate lawyers are now pursuing an interpretation that says any decrease in shareholder value is considered expropriation. In other words, any decrease in profit should be compensated by tax payers. This new interpretation is the basis for numerous lawsuits that will be settled in secretive tribunals with no public representation, but it is the public that will pay the penalties if these cases are found in favor of the corporations. One such case is a billion dollar lawsuit against the U.S. by the Canadian company that produces MTBE (the gasoline additive). Since California outlawed the additive, the corporation is claiming this to be an expropriation.

GATT and NAFTA seek to equalize protective regulations at the lowest possible level. Effectively, this is international deregulation of trade. Under GATT, for example, practices that have already been challenged include: U.S. Clean air Act rules; U.S. fuel efficiency standards; European regulations on hormones in beef; Thailand's restrictions on importation of cigarettes; Indonesia's halting of rattan exports to protect their forests; the U.S. ban on importation of asbestos; the U.S. ban on importation of tuna caught in violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act; and Massachusetts' ban on state purchases from companies doing business in Burma. Moreover, under NAFTA a U.S. corporation is suing the Canadian government for damages it claims are caused by Canada's pollution laws on gasoline additives. This trend implies a subversion of national sovereignty by multinational corporations. Issues such as child labor, resource conservation, worker health and safety, and environmental protection can now be compromised by corporations' unchecked pursuit of profit.

The inclusion of Low Income Countries (LIC's) into the high-roller world of unregulated global trade increases the pressure on these fragile economies to become export oriented. This complements the austerity programs of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund that have imposed economic colonialism on debtor LIC's (see the Third World Debt section below). GATT and NAFTA also limit a country's ability to regulate foreign investment, and open markets to services such as banking and lending. This can result in smaller countries losing control of their own national economies.

To foster economic, social and environmental justice in the internationalization of trade, the Green Party calls for supplementing these Trade Agreements:

Maintain governments' authority to regulate the health and safety of its workers, protect its environment, and preserve its natural resources.
Implement protective tariffs and trade barriers to protect local, state and national health, safety, labor and environmental standards against lower standards in other countries. These trade restrictions should only be used to promote better environment and labor conditions, and not to protect domestic employers from competition.
Counterbalance commerce becoming global by labor unions doing the same. The well established unions of the developed countries should expand their organizations to assist, or help establish, viable unions in LIC's. [see Unions plank]
Allow countries to refuse trade for human rights, workers' rights, social justice or other legal and moral concerns.
Insist international trade policies, agreements and institutions promote ecologically sustainable economic self-reliance in all countries. [see Third World Debt and Foreign Policy planks below]

Economic assistance should help recipient countries to achieve economic self-sufficiency, ecological sustainability and a democratic management of development projects. Peace cannot be achieved without economic security and general welfare for all countries.

The enormous external debt of many Low-Income Countries (LICs) not only endangers international economic stability, but also places undue pressure on the debtor nations to commercialize their natural resources. The debts make raising their citizens' living standards very difficult. These huge debts are largely a result of the capitalistic philosophy of accumulation of wealth by exploiting labor and resources. The effects of these predatory policies are compounded by exporting profits to foreign creditors. Currently, the net negative transfer of capital from LICs to advanced countries is over $42 Billion a year. Such capital flight has caused poverty to reach unprecedented levels.

Current debt relief policies center around "debt for development" swaps. The basic assumption in these schemes is that LIC debts have reached the point where they are unpayable. The high interest rates of the past decade, and the refinancing of debts, have driven the debt service to unmanageable levels. In debt swaps, external debts are sold to agencies or corporations at discounted rates. The debt bonds are redeemed in the LIC for local currencies and are used for development and/or conservation projects. These are ostensibly altruistic plans, but these swaps result in converting the external debt to internal debt, a process that causes inflation. Also the LIC must then redeem these bonds with public funds that had often been budgeted for social services and education. All too often, the swap-financed projects are managed by foreign interests with no local control over the projects. This maintains the existing debtor/creditor power structure.

The Green Party supports measures to ease such debts:

Initiate UN, OAS (Organization of American States) and World Court investigations into the legality of such debts. In most cases the principal has been paid many times over, and the debt has been increased through artificial mechanisms.
Allow LICs to buy back their own debts and to participate in managing swap-financed projects.
Write off debts when they are recognized as unpayable. Debt ceilings should be negotiated between LICs and their creditors.
Increase the participation of NGOs (Non-Government Organizations) in swap-for-development projects.
Link foreign aid and loans to demilitarization, land reforms, ecological preservation, democracy and human rights. Non-Government agencies should monitor the implementation of such programs.

The Green Party supports democracy and self-determination worldwide and promotes the U.S. ending its practice of economic and political colonialism. U.S. foreign policy should emphasize promoting other nations' self-sufficiency and self-determination, rather than ensuring security for overseas American business interests and the retention of military bases.

International business practices have taken advantage of countries lax environmental and safety standards and a needy labor force that is easily exploited. Such practices are often in conflict with local efforts to establish work place democracy, and to address environmental and safety problems.

The continuing establishment of bases and stationing of service personnel overseas heightens global tensions and tends to make the U.S. military a global police force. Together with economic leveraging, such military presence assures that self-serving U.S. businesses will encounter little resistance.

U.S. foreign aid programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) have promoted U.S. development methods without adequately examining their feasibility, appropriateness or cultural implications for the host country. Aid is given in inordinately greater amounts to countries that are considered strategically important to the U.S.

Of the foreign aid that the United States distributes, the majority is provided as military aid. This military aid is generally split between training foreign military officers and providing U.S. weapons to foreign governments. Both are basically cash handouts to our military industry and do nothing to bolster a foreign country's economy or living standards. The U.S. government's tradition of lax oversight of such aid results in it being used to wreak havoc on the local populace. Foreign aid is also commonly used to prop-up U.S. multinational corporations by using aid money to buy goods from the these companies and then ship them to foreign countries. This is not only corporate welfare, but it also invites conflicts of interest in public policy as politicians are tempted to reward the companies that have supported their re-elections. It also creates a dependency of domestic corporations on foreign policy decisions. Most of all, it robs the recipient country of the opportunity to build up its own industry and become self-sufficient in meeting the needs being addressed by foreign aid.

The Greens believe in policies consistent with participatory democracy and global responsibility:

Insist that U.S. corporations maintain foreign business practices that don't jeopardize workers, damage their environment or interfere with their government.
Negotiate a General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) that promotes the economic development and self-sufficiency of recipient countries, rather than profitability for the G-8 countries. [see International Trade Agreements section above]
Reevaluate our government's aid practices (USAID, for example) by emphasizing appropriate-level technologies, ecologically sustainable infrastructures and business projects, cultural sensitivity and monetary aid consistent with countries' real needs.
Encourage U.S. cities to develop municipal foreign trade policies centering around local trade agreements, "sister city" arrangements and cultural exchange programs.
Support and endorse United Nations conventions. Putting aside "new world order" rhetoric, we believe that the U.N. should finally be utilized for its intended purpose: it should act as an objective, multilateral body to maintain world order. The U.S. could help attain this objective by paying its U.N. dues on time.
Close all foreign military bases as soon as possible and clean up any toxic wastes left behind. Fair and responsible business practices would eliminate the need for such bases.
Military foreign aid should be discontinued. Any monetary foreign aid distributions should be provided as cash payments to foreign governments, or reliable non-government agencies. Recipient countries should have more authority in deciding how the money is spent, rather than simply using it to purchase U.S. domestic goods. All foreign aid should be based on the improvement of democracy and general living standards and/or to reduce overall suffering in the recipient country.

Green philosophy emphasizes the need to enable people to meet basic needs of quality food, housing, health care, education and employment. Our country needs economic and social revitalization that can only be achieved through sane resource use and future-focused planning.

Use of resources to meet basic human needs has long been sacrificed to pay for a huge military budget. This level of military spending is the result of a bloated defense budget based on unrealistic assessments of foreign military threats, inefficient and wasteful procurement practices, self-serving competition between different branches of the military and duplication of military functions. Local economies have become so dependent on military spending that "pork-barrel" legislation has become an accepted practice.

The fiscal year 2002 national budget (proposed before Sept. 11) requested about $1.9 trillion total. About one third of that is discretionary spending (non-discretionary spending is mostly entitlement programs mandated by law). Military spending accounts for about half of all discretionary spending in the budget proposal. This means that the combined budget for all other programs in all other agencies and departments just equals what the military is getting. This spending proposal includes $8 Billion for the Ballistic Missile Defense system, while providing no line item detail explaining on what this huge amount would be spent.

To fund the war in Afghanistan and the "war on terrorism," the Bush Administration has requested a $48 Billion increase over the fiscal year 2002 budget request. This level of spending is roughly equal to the combined defense budgets of the next 15 largest militarized countries. For example, it is 41-times larger than Russia's defense budget. This war money comes at the expense of funding for social programs and international assistance. The proposed budget is more than 50-times larger than what we spend on international food and assistance, and 47-times larger than the EPA budget.

The Green Party advocates a major shift in the allocation of resources:

Redefine the military's role in the light of post-Cold War circumstances, multi-national economics and the emergence of developing nations.
Develop a new national defense policy with participation by citizen and governmental representatives as well as the military. The Pentagon's "bottom-up review" in the 1990s - which concluded that funding is needed to support two major regional conflicts simultaneously - was strongly criticized both inside and outside military circles. Now the Pentagon must, once again, re-evaluate the threats to our country following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Reduce military spending to 25% of Cold War levels. Several studies supported the possibility of reducing such expenditures by 50% during the USSR's waning years. Today, no superpower threats justify even that spending level. While a 75% reduction is an arbitrary target, the Government and military should be made to explain to the country's citizens why they would need more.
Stop funding the Ballistic Missile Defense system. An intercontinental ballistic missile is not the weapon of choice for a terrorist organization or a developing country. With the demise of the cold war and the growth of global economic interdependence, no industrialized nation poses a threat of an all-out invasion of the U.S. Furthermore, the current missile defense schemes cannot be proved to work since they cannot be tested against real targets, and they remain vulnerable to countermeasures and decoys.
Distribute the resulting "peace dividend," in part, to state and local governments to handle the multitude of neglected problems in social welfare, the environment and the economy.
Simplify and decentralize the military procurement system, and consolidate military functions to eliminate duplication.

National security consists of economic and social well being at least as much as military strength.

The "military industrial complex" significantly shrunk in the early 1990s a few years after the collapse of the USSR. However, military spending has actually increased from the Cold War days, and much of that money still finds its way to local industries. We must continue converting military-dependent industries to economically and ecologically sound civilian production. Comprehensive planning is needed to minimize the affect on employment.

Excessive militarization of the economy during the Cold War drew much of our scientific and engineering talent away from commercial production. This decreased our commercial products' viability in world markets. Weapons production is capital and material intensive, resulting in a low ratio of jobs created to dollars invested. The world's general economic experience indicates that a peace economy is stronger than a military-dependent one.

The defense industry is selling less weaponry to the U.S. government these days. To compensate, sales to foreign governments has substantially increased. Exporting weapons, and arranging foreign loans for weapons purchases, in effect means that we are encouraging armed conflicts for our own profit. We are encouraging foreign countries to develop militarized economics with the same bad effects that we experienced. Eastern European countries are being pressured into joining NATO. But one of the requirements of NATO is that a country must devote a certain percentage of its budget to building armed forces. And, of course, they will be buying many of their weapons from U.S. companies. This dangerous trend perpetuates military solutions and diverts money away from social programs.

The Green Party supports a careful economic conversion plan:

Convert our economy to a peaceful basis, including the disposition of closed military sties. This should be planned and administered at local and regional levels. The peace dividend could help to fund these changes.
Conduct a survey of the resources and capabilities that are available, or potentially available, at facilities currently devoted to military production.
Conduct a survey of goods and services needed by society and match these with the capabilities of current military production facilities.
Forewarn employees of plant closures, and provide retraining for displaced workers.
Transfer the ownership of closed military bases to local communities for civilian use.

Last updated: 10/23/2010 (BH)