This article was written in response to this post at GreenChange.org

“We are neither left nor right; we are in front.”

-a Green slogan

I learned more about the Green Party from two old books* and two old white dudes** in my local chapter than anywhere else. I joined the party in 2001 and voted for its presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000, but it took me over ten years to even begin to get a sense of what it’s really all about.

There are some major things that distinguish the Greens from simply being more progressive than, or to the left of, the Democrats. I’d say the single-most important point is that the Green Party is an ecological political party, trying to establish an “ecological politics” in a country whose politics — left and right — has a fundamental disconnect with reality.

I hope to develop a better understanding of what ecological politics means in practice and theory both, but my simplistic version is that Greens view our economic, social, and political structures as complex systems of interrelated parts, all of which are ultimately woven into a greater fabric of natural systems — the environment our human-constructed systems are fully dependent upon, the solar system, and beyond.