The Green Party of New Jersey
Updated May 13, 2003
The Ten Key Values of the Greens

Ecological Wisdom

The Greens recognize that the Earth sustains all life forms. Whatever we do to the web of life, we do to ourselves.

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 gender, race, citizenship, or sexual preference.

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.

Nonviolence

Greens reject violence as a way of resolving disputes. It is shortsighted, morally wrong, and ultimately self-defeating. We advocate demilitarization and abhor state-organized killing of any kind; therefore we are against the death penalty and we work to end war forever.

Decentralization

Power and responsibility must be restored to local communities, within an overall framework of ecologically sound, socially just values and lifestyles. To counter the alienation of mass industrial society, we work toward the restoration of humanly-scaled communities, institutions, and technologies. We view political decentralization as a prerequisite for substantive participatory democracy.

Community-Based Economics

Greens seek the deconcentration of wealth and power; we assert that extreme disparities in personal wealth and concentrated control of productive assets are inherently undemocratic. Therefore we advocate a new economics which first and foremost assures that the basic needs of everyone on the planet are met (sufficiency) -- while taking account of the natural limits of the Earth. We advocate decentralization in the economic sphere as well as the political sphere; this would mean regionalizing economic activity as much as practical to foster local self-reliance and accountability.

Feminism

The ethics of cooperation and understanding must replace the values of domination and control. Gender should not be a basis for discrimination nor for role typecasting.

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.

Personal and Global Responsibility

Greens express commitment to global sustainability and international justice both through political solidarity and personal lifestyles based on sufficiency and living lightly upon the Earth.

Future Focus/Sustainability

Like the Iroquois Indians, Greens seek a society where the interests of the seventh future generation are considered equal to the interests of the present. Every generation should, minimally, seek to leave the planet no worse off than when it was bequeathed to them. We must act in the present in such a way as to reclaim the future for our children and their children. 

A value system unites Greens worldwide. There is no definitive, authoritative creed. Green Politics isn't like that. There are several other renditions of the Ten (or eleven) Key Values of the Greens: