SAN FRANCISCO – The Green Party of California has taken three crucial steps in its push for comprehensive actions on the climate crisis and vast social inequality in the face of Democratic and Republican politicians’ failure to act.

In early July, Green Party delegates from across the state voted to take an unequivocal stand on the party’s identity as EcoSocialist by adding a critical preamble to their platform stating that the alternative social, economic, and political system Greens have advocated for decades is EcoSocialism. https://www.cagreens.org/platform

Green Party of California
July 27, 2021

Subsequently the Green Party took the step of filing an updated statement of purpose with the California Secretary of State to also incorporate the term EcoSocialism.

As a third step, on July 18 the state party joined 110 other organizations to sign onto a letter drafted by the Green Party of the United States EcoAction Committee urging Biden and Congress to immediately fund an EcoSocialist Green New Deal with an annual $4.1 trillion investment for 10 years to help prevent climate collapse while helping our country recover from COVID-19. 

Emphasizing the term "EcoSocialism" has been an ongoing process for Greens, both nationally and locally, as the concept describes the key anti-oppression and anti-capitalist values on which the Green Party has been built.

In 2020, the Green Party presidential nominee Howie Hawkins ran on an EcoSocialist Green New Deal.

"Why embrace the word EcoSocialism? First, ‘Eco’ denotes the need for us to live in harmony with the natural world.

Secondly, the word ‘Socialism' has been weaponized far too long by free marketeers against social programs and institutions that benefit people in the US and other countries," said Nassim Nouri, member of the Green Party of California’s state Coordinating Committee. "It’s about time we in the US face the truth that we need EcoSocialism for our survival.”

The original Green New Deal was proposed in both Britain and the United States over a decade ago by Greens.

In February 2019 a drastically weakened Green New Deal was introduced in Washington DC with great fanfare, and then pushed to the back burner by the Democratic Party leadership, including California politicians Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Senator Dianne Feinstein.

They both refuse to support a Green New Deal despite the severity of the climate crisis, a global pandemic, the unconscionable rise in both inequality and injustice, and despite wide-spread approval of a Green New Deal among their constituents. 

"How will we pay for it? Biden’s administration is finding the money to upgrade nuclear weaponry, increase the Pentagon budget, ramp up interventions in other countries, and retain more than half of Trump’s corporate tax cuts," said Laura Wells, spokesperson for the Green Party of California."Stop those plans. Action on climate and inequality is needed now. We will pay for the EcoSocialist Green New Deal the same way those destructive plans were being paid for,” Wells added.